Structurally Procrastinating

I have been getting a lot done recently. I’m living the life I always tell myself I should live: disciplined and aware. Not frittering away precious time hanging out online, endlessly checking for comments and endlessly waiting for my favorite bloggers to update. Instead, everything is on a schedule, even lazy-time is carefully apportioned, and anything that needs to get done, is getting done.

Except one important thing which I’m putting off by doing all of the above.

I’m a champion structured procrastinator. If you don’t know how that works, read this essay:

I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, 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.