Procrastination and Perfectionism

There were several good HN conversations on this, back when HN was "young", if anyone cares to look for them. (Unfortunately, I've lost the references I saved.)

(I don't mean to be ironic; I just can't justify the time/effort to dig for them, right now. But I thought they were useful, when I encountered them.)

EDIT:

To clarify, I meant procrastination and "structured procrastination" generally, not just -- but also not excluding -- procrastination and perfectionism.

Also, I'm not comfortable with my vague "go search" suggestion, so here's a least a minimal start:

https://encrypted.google.com/search?&q=site%3Anews.ycomb...

which turns up, for just one quickly identified example,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=579979

Funny, just three days ago I attended a Master's Thesis info meeting where one of the slides had this exact headline :)

Thanks for the suggestion! What's interesting is that by coming at it from the philosophical and linguistic perspective, he doesn't discuss the psychological limitations of "I" as a concept -- multiple personas and personalities, self-definition via relationships. Or maybe he is discussing them, just using different terms?

A joke I read in a David Foster Wallace book went something like ... There was an employee at an ad agency who did good work but took a little too long to complete his assignments. One day the boss comes up to him and asks "Johnson did it ever seem ironic to you that the work paralysis rhymes with perfectionist?".

The employee thinks about it and says "Yea I think I see your point about perfectionist and paralysis being somewhat interrelated like that but there is actually a 't' on the end of the word 'perfectionist'. So even though I think you have a valid point, those two words don't really rhyme like what you're saying".

The boss looks at him for a second and says "Well, close enough".

Observations on procrastination:

I only do things like cleaning up around the house, vacuuming, etc. when there is something less pleasant that I'm required to get done. Need to call the insurance agent to work out a billing issue? Suddenly this carpet looks positively filthy.

I'm easily bored and addicted to certain brain chemicals. In interpersonal interaction, I generally lose interest quickly unless it's witty banter. Reddit is obviously a dangerous inhibitor of any productivity for me, then.

Since I'm easily bored, procrastination provides a handy way to create an interesting, high-pressure situation. I can't count the number of times I pulled all-nighters for the most inane school assignments. Usually, I thought I did terribly, yet yielded an acceptable or high score. This payoff feeds back into the excitement for next time.

Disappointment is painful. Truly putting one's best into something -- which turns out to require many times the amount of effort that you imagined -- only to find flaw in it (QA, or teacher grading) leaves one feeling devastated. It's much better to have my hand forced by 'external' factors (time restraint) so that I have an excuse for imperfect results.