How to Be a Better Procrastinator | Hacker News Reader

How to Be a Better Procrastinator

online.wsj.com

71 pointsgeorgecalm25 comments

Years ago, I was eating dinner at a restaurant one evening, at a table by myself, and overheard a conversation at another table. "It's my N - 1 theory of work," someone was saying. "You always do the second most important thing." It was so true I burst out laughing.

Another relevant article on procrastination: http://lesswrong.com/lw/9wr/my_algorithm_for_beating_procras...

This is one of the original sources on structured procrastination: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

The author of http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ is the author of the linked wsj article.

I've posted this on HN a long time ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1125284

I liked the advice: First, don't listen to most of the advice offered to procrastinators. Second, don't sit around feeling bad because you lack willpower. Third, avoid perfectionism.

Sometimes procrastination happens because you are not prepared enough to do a specific task or achieve a goal. The article has some concrete suggestions to address those situations as well.

Thanks. Totally bookmarked this to read later.

Commenting so I can remember to bookmark later.

Maybe people who get around to publishing articles in the WSJ aren't really procrastinators.

Yeah, the universality of certain experiences can tempt people to think they're afflicted with something when they just have a normal human allotment of it. Things like procrastination and anxiety may not be (or may be) distributed according to a perfect bell curve, but they are distributed on a continuous distribution. Advice from one part of the continuum isn't necessarily helpful on to people on other parts.

The most helpful and self-aware non-advice I ever got was in Little League. I asked an older kid how to remain calm when batting in a crucial situation. He said, "Just think of all the home runs you've hit, and how good people think you are. They don't think that for nothing. Think of how nervous the pitcher must be to be pitching to you. If he's scared, why should you be?" He was a wise-ass, but he had a point. Why should I expect him to have answers that were applicable to my (very different) situation?

It isn't procrastination if by putting it off you might get out of doing it entirely.

Love to know when I'm already ahead of the curve: http://www.lanceramoth.com/blog/2011/09/how-to-successfully-...

OK, good read.

Now, raise your hand if you've ever had a manager who responded to your N - 1 theory of work protocol by eliminating all tasks other than N.

And how did that work for you?

I would imagine such a manager wouldn't have to eliminate all tasks but N. The simplest solution would be to make N the least important task.

Are you hiring?

;-)

My thoughts on procrastination: http://quandyfactory.com/blog/1/productivity_and_procrastina...

Pro tip: if you read this article right away, you've already failed.

Good that I've passed that test.

But I read this article instead of working so...

Procrastination seems to be a hot topic on HN lately

Talking about procrastination is my favorite form of procrastination :)

Probably because its the reason everyone is here

Wow,

The whole article read like a description of my day to day life.

I'm a procrastinator and didn't even realize it till now!

Has anyone here had success with reducing procrastination using Neuro-Linguistic Programming?

There is fairly strong evidence that NLP is not effective: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming#Sc...

Now I simply must go read the Wikipedia article on Tajikistan...

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