structured procrastination

I came across this essay the other day while scrolling through Hacker News. It’s by John Perry, an American philosopher and professor emeritus at Stanford University and the University of California, Riverside. And I found it so interesting that I had to write a blog post just about it.

The main idea here is that procrastination isn’t just sitting around and staring at the ceiling. Many of us procrastinators end up doing marginally useful things just to avoid more important ones. So, by strategically structuring your to-do list, you can use that instinct to your advantage. The trick is to put tasks that seem urgent and important at the top. That way, you’ll do other valuable work as a way of avoiding them.

What makes Perry’s argument so compelling is that he doesn’t try to fix procrastination. He gets that some of us are just wired that way, and then he turns it into a system that works. It has less to do with discipline and more about understanding your own mindset.

And honestly, that’s kind of what I’m doing right now. I’ve got a list of some important things I should be working on, yet here I am writing this post instead. Somehow, this feels productive enough to make up for the delay.

So maybe the lesson here is: don’t fight procrastination. Outsmart it. Turn it into something that actually gets stuff done.