The best lines I read about Procrastination
- 8.3.21
There are three variants of procrastination,
depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a)
nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That
last type, I'd argue, is good procrastination.
That's the sense in which the most impressive
people I know are all procrastinators. They're type-C procrastinators: they put
off working on small stuff to work on big stuff.
Errands (unimportant daily routine works) are so
effective at killing great projects that a lot of people use them for that
purpose. Someone who has decided to write a novel, for example, will suddenly
find that the house needs cleaning. People who fail to write novels don't do it
by sitting in front of a blank page for days without writing anything. They do
it by feeding the cat, going out to buy something they need for their
apartment, meeting a friend for coffee, checking email. "I don't have time
to work," they say. And they don't; they've made sure of that.
It's usually my fault: I let errands eat up the day, to avoid facing some
hard problem.
The most dangerous form of procrastination is
unacknowledged type-B procrastination, because it doesn't feel like
procrastination. You're "getting things done." Just the wrong things.
Unless you're working on the biggest things you
could be working on, you're type-B procrastinating, no matter how much you're
getting done.
What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?
Most people will shy away from this question. I
shy away from it myself; I see it there on the page and quickly move on to the
next sentence. Hamming used to go around actually asking people this, and it
didn't make him popular. But it's a question anyone ambitious should face.
Another reason people don't work on big projects
is, ironically, fear of wasting time. What if they fail? Then all the time they
spent on it will be wasted. (In fact it probably won't be, because work on hard
projects almost always leads somewhere.)
If you want to work on big things, you seem to
have to trick yourself into doing it. You have to work on small things that
could grow into big things, or work on successively larger things, or split the
moral load with collaborators. It's not a sign of weakness to depend on such
tricks. The very best work has been done this way.
I think the way to "solve" the problem
of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list
push you. Work on an ambitious project you really enjoy, and sail as close to
the wind as you can, and you'll leave the right things undone.
