Letter to a Young Procrastinator

This reminds me of a thesis I once read titled "The Mythos of Engineering Culture", that claims engineers "procrastinate to introduce challenge, uncertainty, and risk into engineering work."

http://www-plan.cs.colorado.edu/pltools/pubs/Leonardi.pdf

I started reading the article and got to Dear chronically procrastinating young person,

I clicked my read it later button and closed the window - "I'll read it later" I said to myself, before I realised the irony.

I've always had a problem with procrastination and I've always known it's nothing more than fundamental laziness. Perhaps combined with my heightened sense of self-preservation it's why my ancestors managed to survive, after all a few of them fought in world wars and had kids afterwards. My lineage wasn't conceived by a lack of birth control and horny teenagers, my genes actually come from survivors of WW1 and WW2... and as I'm English likely the survivors of many, many more wars, as we really liked them.

Anyway, I'm losing my point. At the moment I'm trying to type up some of my work, which I'm completely ignoring. However, I found a great radio station that's not available in the southern Toronto region (thewolf.ca). Sadly the bastards put a tic-tac-toe game on the audio player, I never knew how distracting a simple game could be when trying to get something done.

Just for fun, in my wardrobe you'll find: http://www.threadless.com/product/487/Procrastinators_leader...

I must admit that the best ideas and solutions I have ever had were born under the heavy stress of almost missed deadlines.

Hmmm, hasn't this been posted on HN before?

It does show that he was pressed for time.

I don't think deadlines help you focus, because fearing that you won't make it and thinking that you could have done a better work make you nervous.

I clicked the link and got the "Get back to work" page. I dutifully clicked the "ignore" link and succeeded in putting off work for another 60 minutes.

People procrastinate for the same reason we stay up later than we should, and stay in bed even when there's no point in sleeping more. It's aversion to change. Everyone has this trait to some extent. What the few non-procrastinators seem to get right is that they start the day off working, making it hard to stop.