Anti-Akrasia Technique: Structured Procrastination

SP suggests that I find other things which both feel like productive avoidance and actually are. For example, rather than reading blogs, I could read one of the dozens of books piled up that have been suggested as relevant to my areas of research.

That's how I started reading OB (and now reading LW) on a regular basis. >.>

I've found that mediocre video games become far more fascinating when I have some work to avoid.

Yes, this is the main way I've been very productive in the past - by "cheating" on some other "important" task to sneak time for something that at the time feels rebellious, but is eventually more important.

I like reading books, but it can be quite hard to sit down and consume those 800 pages. I have found that audio books are a great way to avoid procastination in that area. Obviously, it doesn't work for all kinds of books (e.g., highly technical books), but it does work very well for more 'prozaic' works.

Now, whenever I commute to work or go running etc., I listen to a book, allowing me to read more than 60 books this year - basically all in my 'idle time'. The power of multi-tasking!

Many classic audio books are available for free at LibriVox, as well as on Project Gutenberg. These audio books have been created by volunteers -- but the quality is often quite good. Many commercial audio books (with professional speakers, and of books whose copyrights haven't expired) can be found in many other places on the net.

Paul Graham also wrote on this.

From the linked essay:

Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation.

This seems to vary by individual somewhat - while I do have a problem with procrastination, I do find that it's helped by having less things to do. If I have too many tasks I should be doing, the end result isn't that I end up being productive on part of them. The end result is that I become paralyzed by indecision and get absolutely nothing done.

In my experience, procrastination seems to keep me from doing any task that can't be done quickly, whether or not it's important. For example, I can't play Dwarf Fortress if I have anything important to do. Is there any sort of trick to procrastinating with significant things, or am I just a different kind of procrastinator?

Edit: Also, I have no trouble doing things with a deadline (though I tend to wait until it gets close). I procrastinate things without a clear deadline, and things that I have plenty of time to complete. The former is my main problem. I think I'm just a different kind of procrastinator.

Sharing a less-than-2-minute example of structured procrastination.

I'll slap myself on the face if it doesn't sound terrifyingly familiar to at least 75% of LW community...

You suggested this technique to me years ago -- and I am so glad you did! I like to keep one fun project that I can use for procrastinating, which I manage to get a lot of work done on before exams!

Also, I find that mindless tasks, like data entry of some sort, scratch the itch that Facebook scratches but are more productive. There's just something to that dopamine rush of click-reward, click-reward...

I study basically by this technique: when one source becomes boring or too hard, I just switch to another. Often enough, new perspective shows that I should drop some of the stuff that was previously halted, and so would've wasted time and suffered needlessly if tried to force it on the first try. If the topic remains important, going around via redundant amount of literature on basically the same topic ultimately allows to understand it deeply and intuitively.

I'm still not convinced that willpower is a limited resource. In fact, thinking of it as such may be self-fulfilling prophecy; ironically, you can use "out of willpower" as an excuse to slack off.

Excellent idea! I've tried various anti-procrastination schemes but not this.

On another note, one thing I've noticed of myself is that at the moment that I have an important insight or get something really working I'm inclined to get up from my desk and grab a drink or go talk to a friend or something similar. It always involves getting up and walking away from my desk, and I never actually need the drink or have a good reason to chat. I often don't realise that I'm going it until I'm a couple of paces away. Anybody else experienced this?

I was just talking to a friend about what I do when I get bored with a book I am reading. I switch to a different book until I get bored with that one (in which case I switch back to the first book). It works almost every time.

A friend of mine delightfully dubbed this "fauxductivity." I've myself glossed it as "productivity by the willful misprioritization of one's various responsibilities."

And yes, as Perry says, it's pretty much the only way to ever get anything done. He's equally right when he points out elsewhere in the essay that you have to take on a lot of responsibilities for it to work. Don't cut your responsibilities back to only the MOST important things, in the mistaken belief that you'll then stop procrastinating and accomplish them -- you need the pressure of lots of responsibilities to spur you to accomplish anything at all.

It's seemed to me that, assuming I commit to a volume of responsibility that is at least hypothetically physically possible, the amount I accomplish varies linearly with what I commit to -- maybe at the 80% level or so. So it's very important not to do something stupid like decide "I'm going to clear out my schedule for the next three months so I can really finish that article." And of course, for the remaining 20% (or however much), you fall back on the kinds of techniques Perry recommends -- being apologetically late on deadlines, letting adequate work stand in for the much-better-than-adequate work you fully intended to accomplish, etc.

The neatness of my bedroom is a fairly reliable barometer of how many papers I have due, and when I first consciously noticed that phenomenon a few years ago, I started to attempt to take advantage of it. However, I have discovered that there are more constraints than just having something more important I should be doing. When I'm procrastinating badly I find it almost impossible to sit still long enough to settle to anything. I can clean or do errands, but I require a podcast to keep me entertained. I had great success getting myself to practice piano, and indeed achieved daily practice for the better part of six months, but piano also had the advantage of being something I could effectively practice in ten minute bursts, rather than requiring a more sustained effort, and it involves movement. Sitting still becomes such a great effort of willpower that I can't accomplish anything, even fun projects or reading fiction. If anyone has suggestions for overcoming that particular hurdle, I suspect it would help my procrastination significantly.

Why the http://web.archive.org/web/20070613061354/www.structuredprocrastination.com/ link? As far as I can tell, the website is up just fine and the same essay is the top page.

Typo spotting: “information works” ⇒ “information workers” in paragraph 5?

I wrote a blog post on this last month, and I've always just referred to this as "good procrastination", and indeed it has been very successful overall. It's also fun to tell people "Procrastination really helps me get things done."

Where I'm refining my technique is in exploiting this to get things done that I still really want to do but normally procrastinate. #2 on my priority list, if you will, while I'm procrastinating #1.

Hmm... maybe I should start putting my grading off until the last minute so that I'm more motivated to do homework and study. There's another productivity boost here: the last minute effect. I have a lot of trouble doing tedious things, unless it's the last minute. I can grade extremely fast if I need to have them entered before morning so the course coordinator can run an anova on the grades of the different sections, but if I try to grade the weekend before, it will take all weekend.

On the other hand, I'm usually fairly productive doing homework - as long as it isn't a tedious or especially difficult problem. I also structure studying to take advantage of this - doing problems. When I need to memorize things while studying, I think I already partially take advantage of what patri is talking about - instead of some great studying technique, i just copy and recopy whatever I need to memorize. It feels like I'm avoiding what I should be doing, but i find it helps me memorize things rather well - and I can will myself to do it.

To be read in conjunction with this.

See also this.