Ironic that i'm reading this at work.
Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)
#12Nice essay. The "small stuff" that you mention has a function - to enable a society. If you don't shave and shower, you will look terrible, and for biological reasons people will think that you're nuts, that's you're an outliar, and expect strange things from you. It is not necessarily too bad, per se. However, I argue that balance (some small stuff, but not too much, so you have time for important stuff) is better t…
Society can be pretty tolerant of eccentricity and a lack of personal hygiene when it's accompanied by genius. Look at Albert Einstein and even Richard Stallman.
Re: Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)
#13I think sometimes the mind just needs to think about other things. I mean, I love what I am doing now too, and I have moments where I'll want to just spend all day and night on it, but there are also times where I would rather do something else like watch funny videos on youtube or enjoy a karaoke session with my 2 year old daughter. It just makes me a happier person to be doing other things as well. I think diversity is important for the mind, that's why we procrastinate.
Re: Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)
#14Here's a good, quick post by Cal Newport titled, "Don't fight distraction, make it irrelevant" that his some of the same points that PG makes:
http://calnewport.com/blog/2014/06/05/dont-fight-distraction...
"Distraction, from this perspective, is not the cause of problems in your work life, it’s a side effect. The real issue comes down to a question more important than whether or not you use Facebook too much: Are you striving to do something useful and do it so well that you cannot be ignored?"
Re: Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)
#15You should add a (2005) to the end of the title.
Yeah, I got all excited thinking it would be a new essay from PG.
Re: Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)
#16> What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?
Because that probably will probably not make me enough money to pay the rent.
If I were rich and didn't need to work. I would.
Re: Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)
#17I am constantly struggling with procrastination even though I love my job and what I do. It seems like sometimes I'd rather do anything other than what I'm actually suppose to do and what pays the bills, almost like a mental disorder. I've tried setting goals, blocking websites, uninstalling games, creating logs and even creating rewards for doing X amount of work, none of those seem to really help so far. The procra…
From the comments of self-confessed procrastinators, it seems that they're all working more or less alone. We're a social species, our brain is shaped by a million years of tribal lifestyle. Inability to do the work may be a symptom of the loneliness in our modern society.
Re: Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)
#18So could reading this article qualify as a form of "type B" procrastination?
Re: Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)
#19I am constantly struggling with procrastination even though I love my job and what I do. It seems like sometimes I'd rather do anything other than what I'm actually suppose to do and what pays the bills, almost like a mental disorder. I've tried setting goals, blocking websites, uninstalling games, creating logs and even creating rewards for doing X amount of work, none of those seem to really help so far. The procra…
Hi. Can I be frank? I find it a bit hard to believe that your "real work" is "fun, time critical, and offers REAL rewards". Are you maybe trying to convince yourself here?
It happened to me to believe wrongly that I had fun and rewarding tasks at hand. But when I really have such tasks, procrastination is completely out of the way, and I am certainly not on HN to discuss about it.
When I have a task that is really interesting to me, I think about it when I shower, before falling asleep, while riding my bike, and when I quickly parse HN (because I have this habit), one of the first five titles will be remotely related and pull some strings, and I'll quickly go back to my code.
However, most of the time, I still say (and believe) that my work is "very interesting", "very rewarding", but I procrastinate on HN like everyone else (and right now).
Re: Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)
#20I think the pg's message is good on a higher level, though think about what would happen in an average software development team if everyone followed the rule.
Everyone would be working on fancy, interesting, big problems, while there would be no one to fix the leaking ceiling until after the sudden storm has started.
Oops, it seems it's actually the case in majority of the projects. Most people prefer doing new development than fixing bugs and writing docs, because it's way easier to crush hundreds of new lines of code than to write a good documentation, and it's more enjoyable than trying to reproduce a weird edge case. Also, usually new development is adding more business value than fixing bugs (provided that the whole product is not a one big bug).