The Fine Art of Procrastination

Annually The New Zealand Herald, one of my company's publications and the product I used to sell advertising for, publishes several issues of THE COLLEGE HERALD. This is a supplement that comes with the main daily newspaper where all the editorials are written by highschool students ("college" here refers to "highschool" and it's "uni" for university schooling, obviously) around the country. They invite write-ups of all sorts of subject matters and whichever the editor finds worth publishing gets to be printed in The College Herald.

There was one article that seized my attention. It was in fact stamped "the editor's choice". I so related to it I felt like I was reading my own diary. I thought I'd share it here...

THE FINE ART OF PROCRASTINATION

by Maya Shino

Year 13 student

IMPORTANT: DO NOT READ.

I have been intending to write this article for weeks. Why am I finally doing it? Something more important came up.

This concept has formed the basis of a method recognized by Stanford philosophy professor John Perry as structured procrastination. Structured procrastination allows procrastinators to adeptly put off arduous tasks by focusing their attention on tasks of a less pressing nature.

Many procrastinators acquire the reputation for getting a lot done. How so? They succeed in completing difficult and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of postponing work on something more important. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen.

Procrastinators are busy types. They don't want to waste time wasting time. They want the most effective means of wasting time, and structuring their procrastination is the key.

A popular misconception is that procrastinating means doing absolutely nothing, when it is in fact almost the opposite. Procrastinating is doing everything one can to avoid working on a more urgent task. Procrastinators are not guilty of wasting their time. They are guilty of misusing it.

Procrastinators seldom do nothing; they engage in a series of displacement activities which distract them from their principal task. Popular displacement activities include pencil sharpening, baking and devising your own Dewey Decimal System for arranging the books on your bedroom bookshelf. Or maybe that's just me.

Professor Perry believes many would-be procrastinators are being led astray. Some try to minimise their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. This is fair logic, but goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys their most important source of motivation. The few tasks on their list will be, by definition, the most important, and the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing. This is a way to become a couch potato and such specimens will not be getting my vote for ProcrastinIdol 05.

The successful candidate will exemplify the efficient procrastinator. That's right, procrastinators are efficient. They don't do things by halves. That is, of course, assuming they get around to doing the said thing at all.

A well-practised procrastinator will manage to avoid doing something important for prolonged amounts of time. The better can put off a tedious task indefinitely. The best can evoke in those around them a standard of frustrated impatience so great that they offer to undertake the task themselves. I'm thinking of entering, but I've got far less important matters to attend to.