Structured procrastination

It's a wonder that I've ever achieved anything in my life, what with my highly developed procrastination skills. Tonight, as a way of procrastinating, I decided to do a little research on procrastination and I came across the concept of structured procrastination on a website by John Perry, a Stanford Philosophy professor. It makes good sense to me.

"Structured procrastination," writes Perry, "is a strategy that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time."He suggests that, "the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important."

He points out that many procrastinators make the mistake of trying to minimise commitments in the misguided belief that having less things to do will mean they are more likely to get done. This actually destroys the procrastinator's key source of motivation. "The few tasks on his list will be by definition the most important, and the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing."

I like the idea that procrastination can be used for good. You just have learn to manipulate it the right way, which might be easier said than done...