Notes from reading “The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging, and Postponing” by John Perry

The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging, and Postponing (John Perry)

Introduction: The Paradox of Procrastination

Humans are supposedly rational. But social science shows we have akrasia, the state of acting against one’s better judgment. We are often not rational and mostly this works just fine.

In 1995, author wrote initial essay (Chapter 1) on “structured procrastination”: getting a lot done by not doing other things.

The phrase “structured procrastinator” gives permission to not feel rotten about procrastinating.

Chapter 1: Structured Procrastination

1930 Robert Benchley: “anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.

Maximize commitments, so you have many choices.

Put things on the top of the priority list that seem to have clear deadlines but don’t, and seem to be important but aren’t.

Example: Finish an essay for a volume on the philosophy of language. 11 months late, but many others were late too.

Chapter 2: Procrastination and Perfectionism

Perfectionism leads to procrastination.

Perfectionism doesn’t mean doing things perfectly. Instead it means that you have fantasies about the ideal outcome of the work that you do. You accept tasks and they feed your fantasy of doing things extremely well.

In the fantasy, you imagine taking a long time on each step to do a good job. “I need to read the manuscript, and work the author cites, so I need to access JSTOR, which requires a proxy server” which leads to spending a few hours trying to set up the proxy server.

Once the deadline passes, then the fantasy changes to more of thinking about the disaster of not finishing. You spend a few hours and just finish.

To not wait until the last minute, use “Task Triage”

For many tasks, just get started and plan to do an adequate job, but nothing perfect. Get into the habit of analyzing costs/benefits of doing a less-than-perfect job at the time you accept a task. This is the triage step. Then if you accept the task, give yourself permission to do a less than perfect job.

Chapter 3: To-Do Lists

You might have a “priority list” with day/week/month/lifetime tasks, like “Learn Chinese”

You might also have a daily to-do list. Main function is to give the experience of checking off tasks and getting the little psychological lift.

A good software would leave the crossed off item visible.

Break big daunting tasks into smaller, less daunting ones.

• Turn off the alarm
• Don’t hit snooze
• Get out of bed
• Go to bathroom
• Don’t get back in bed
• Go downstairs
• Make coffee
• Pour second cup
• Sit down at desk, not couch
• Turn on computer
• Do not check email
• Do not start surfing
• Open word
• Go to documents and select dummett review

Author ended up writing chapter 3 of book instead of doing review.

Put things like “Don’t google ‘Meg Ryan’” on the list if you picture yourself doing it.

Do the to-do list in advance, maybe even the night before.

Add a second loud alarm clock in the kitchen set 2 minutes after the first.

Chapter 4: Get Rhythm

Music has a connection with emotion.

Depression and procrastination reinforce each other.

Listen to cheerful upbeat/perky music in the morning, even if you hate the music.

Chapter 5: The Computer and the Procrastinator

Computers enable procrastinators because you can communicate instantly instead of having to wait for the post office.

But coping with email and surfing the web make it tempting an easy to do utterly worthless pursuits.

For email, author hasn’t solved it for himself yet:

• For surface mail, author put them in a pile on the desk, then some of the mail would never get dealt with and fall off the back of the desk onto the floor forever. It ended up being mostly okay in the end.
• For email, author tried to split into “really urgent stuff” folder, but would forget about that too. Tried to use gmail stars for that purpose which also got ignored.

For Web only start surfing when something is naturally going to interrupt anyway.

Unplug laptop before you start email – battery will eventually die, though as batteries get better, this will become less useful.

If nothing else works, set an alarm clock for an hour.

Chapter 6: A Plea for the Horizontally Organized

Vertical organizers actually use file cabinets.

Horizontal organizers spread out everything on the desk.

Vertical organizers think that a desk spread thick with paper is a sign of a disorganized person.

It’s a situational disadvantage – tools and furniture do not exist for horizontal organizers. It’d be nice to have a 15 foot diameter lazy Susan with everything on it (in a 16x16 foot room). Pie shaped sections labeled with letters of the alphabet. “M” for medical or “C” for clinic.

Chapter 7: Collaborating with the Enemy?

Team up with non-procrastinators.

Author talked about working with Jon Barwise on a book, Ken Taylor on “Philosophy Talk” and other examples.

Chapter 8: Fringe Benefits

Sometimes procrastinating lets you avoid doing things that you didn’t end up needing to do anyway.

2011 movie Melancholia: Planet crashes into earth and destroys it. Kirsten Dunst is depressed but copes with the end of the world better than her well adjusted family members.

Instead of “never put off until tomorrow what you can do today”, a better adage is “never do today any task that may disappear by tomorrow”

Others might do the tasks on your list. You might learn what you need to anyway as a side-effect of something else you’re going to do anyway.

Pat Suppes: A lot of people who are happy with themselves have taken an inventory of their shortcomings/flaws, adopted a code of values that treats those as virtues, and then admire themselves.

Procrastination isn’t a virtue, it’s a flaw. But it’s just not the worst flaw in the world.

Chapter 9: Do Procrastinators Have to Be Annoying?

Some people find procrastinators annoying.

Author’s anecdote: Looking at email from Harbor Supply, containing coupons for things I don’t need but would like to be the sort of person who needs. Wife asks question about Visa bill. Maybe she suspects that author is wasting time, but doesn’t know. Author feels annoyed and delays checking the Visa bill even longer.

Structured procrastinators tend to feel bad about inconveniencing others.

If someone finds you annoying, confront with philosophical advice, e.g. “Zoom out some. It will all be over soon enough. Sun go boom.”

Chapter 10: Deep Concluding Thoughts

Some people’s desire to be rational is so great, it dominates over their other desires, beliefs, urges, and whims.

But procrastination has much to recommend it.

Friedrich Hayek used to emphasize that in society, spontaneous organization is usually more productive than central planning, e.g. human language and the market system.

Structured procrastinators aren’t the world’s most effective human beings, but may accomplish all sorts of things she would have missed out on in a more structured regimen.

Use to-do lists, alarm clocks and other ways of booby-trapping your environment.

Above all, enjoy life.

Appendix: How to Kick the Habit—Read at Your Own Risk

If you want to stop, avoid books and articles that talk about procrastination being a flaw.

A good book is “The Procrastinator’s Digest” by Timothy Pychyl.

Has some mantras:

• Feeling good now comes at a cost.
• I won’t feel more like doing it tomorrow.
• Just get started.

And others that aren’t as inspiring:

• My personality provides both risk for and resilience against self-regulation failure.

If procrastination is making you unhappy, maybe instead focus on happiness. Wikipedia article “Philosophy of Happiness”

Search for “happiness” in Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Another good book is “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin.

UNC has a handout/demo writingcenter.unc.edu/resources/handouts-demos/writing-the-paper/procrastination

Lots of online tools. Google Calendar lets you set up reminders.

You can put in events like: “10 a.m. – Quit wasting time and get to work”

lazymeter.com gives you comforting statistics.

Danger is you could spend a lot of time looking for tools.