Positive Procrastination
Yesterday morning I woke up thinking about procrastination, for some reason, perhaps from reviewing the long list of things I'd been wanting to get done recently, and I thought I'd write a few notes. This morning I woke up thinking about procrastination again, probably because I hadn't written about it yesterday.
I am a world-class procrastinator, always have been. But what does that mean, I asked myself. Certainly it can describe the fact that I frequently have lists of outstanding tasks that have been outstanding for some time before I get around to completing them.
It seems to me that the language of procrastination is oddly positive, as though "procrastination" is a sin of commission rather than a sin of omission. There are times when I look at some pending tasks and think that I'll do some later rather than now — but how does that differ from prioritizing? In intent rather than fact, it would seem. But note how everyone seems to treat "to procrastinate" as though it's a very active verb, as though one is continually making decisions to keep putting something off. You know, it just doesn't work that way, and I suspect that this approach to the verb is a vast conspiracy among tedious, extroverted, let's-do-it-now! kinds of people, those who seem to flail about a lot but not accomplish very much despite all their activity. (There are, of course, people I secretly envy who speed through tasks and accomplish a great deal, but that seems about as inscrutable to me as rocket science apparently does to normal people.)
I prefer to take up each task in the fullness of time, the ripeness of priorities. Have you ever noticed that there are frequently urgent tasks that, if they mature a bit, are shown to be not so urgent after all? Recognizing true urgency rather than manufactured urgency takes careful consideration, in my opinion.
But, still, I'd generally be recognized as a procrastinator. Sure, there are reasons — or excuses, if you prefer, it doesn't matter much to me what you call them.
In my advancing dotage I've been becoming ever more absent-minded; while I've always been a bit too much on the absent-minded-scientist side of things, it only seems to be getting worse. It's similar to the familiar refrigerator amnesia: standing in front of the open refrigerator wondering how and why one is there. Well, things I think of fly out of my head in no time at all — a few seconds can be enough. I have some idea I want to remember, I reach for my pocket notepaper to write it down, and half the time it's gone before I get the paper out of my pocket.
There's some single-mindedness, oddly enough. Years ago I used to think that I was not very good at concentrating on a particular task, but that's not really true. I don't know whether I've changed or my self-perception has changed, but sometimes now my concentration can be consuming and immediate. Oh, I think, let's take a short break and call, say, for a doctor's appointment. Whoosh! Before I know it my mind is back to work on some absorbing task and it quickly turns into evening, tomorrow, next week, or next month. I could, of course, make notes and task lists but … (see the previous paragraph).
Yes, there's good, old-fashioned avoidance, too. There are many things that I'm quite good at avoiding these days, particularly things that need doing but cost money, since I try to minimize cash outflow while I have so little cash inflow. That sort of avoidance also depends on whether I'm feeling more or less depressed; avoidance was high on my list of coping tactics a couple of years ago, but the dark clouds are substantially reduced these days compared to those days.
So, I'm working on coming to a new, self-empowering understanding. Coupled with my absent- and single-mindedness, it's also the case that I tend to work rather slowly on my projects in progress, largely because so many of them are in progress at the same time. Over long time periods — sometimes approaching geological time-scales, it seems — I've discovered that things I'm doing do get done. I could, I suppose, try to make progress of fewer fronts simultaneously, but I have way too many things I want to get done to attempt that.
Sometimes I think that maybe my only recourse is to start a company to work on lots of these projects, and hire some employees to remember things for me.
What a lucky coincidence that that's one of the projects that I'm working on!
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on Thursday, 20 September 2007 at 01.19
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I tend to procrastinate on some things and not others and at some times more than others, so I guess I qualify as a hybrid. (To use a trendy term.)
I think a goodly portion of my procrastination derives from shifting priorities along with certain back-of-the-mind thoughts about doing a better or more-efficient job when I get to a point of being ready, motivated or even inspired to get on with it. I can easily recall examples of doing things, after having procrastinated, that turned out better for not having been rushed into.
Daily posting seems to be a discipline serious bloggers are expected to adhere to. Start missing days and others might think I'm losing interest. The same holds true even for the bots aggregators like Bloglines and Yahoo! send around.
I have times where I have a topic I want to write about, but not until I've had some time to think about it, maybe await some additional information, maybe await the trigger effect of sampling others' observations and then reacting to those. I often find myself trying to resolve the desire to hold off a day or two with meeting the expectation of a daily post.
I've seen firsthand more than a few times how professional news organizations and bloggers have gotten it wrong in their rush to get it fast, or better, first. Makes me think our society overemphasizes fast and first.
My missus would probably tell you I'm a hard core procrastinator. Her certitude is bolstered by where she's coming from. That is, she's a hard core "speed through tasks and accomplish a great deal" person if there ever was one.
Vive le difference!
on Saturday, 27 October 2007 at 16.12
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Understanding begins to dawn. From "The Well-Tempered Web", by Alex Ross (The New Yorker, October 22, 2007, page 78):
"Like many people, I started blogging out of an urgent need to procrastinate."
I SEE!!