Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by almostnormal 901 days ago
An alternative to boredom is something else more important even less desirable that needs to be done, that drives progress on what is being procastrinated. Unfortunately, it only shifts the problem elsewhere.
4 comments

I have seen it called "structured procrastination".

The idea is that instead of trying to focus on what's important, leaving out everything else, make a long task list, including things that are not that important, but still productive. So that you have plenty of things to do to avoid doing the top items.

To avoid shifting the problem, it suggests self-deception, so that you put items on top that appear important, but are not really. So that you do the really important ones in order to avoid doing the falsely important ones.

I don't know how effective it is though.

I call this procasti-working and it is absolutely my most productive space. I don't really see it as a problem though; I might be completing lower-priority tasks, but they would have later become high- or critical-priority tasks; it's ultimately a net win.
This does not solve the issue of procrastination at all. A common myth is that procrastinators are simply lazy people who don't do anything useful. This is not the case. Many procrastinators are super-efficient at working on what they need to do; it's just that they are procrastinating on another useful task/project that objectively should have a priority.
As in, pursue something else that seems even more important, yet less desirable than what we were already considering? Or am I mixing something up?