Blogpost 6: Structured Procrastination

Art ... can procrastination be called art? Usually we think of procrastination as a bad habit to kick or a personal flaw that needs to be overcome with will power and some convincing and self-trickery. You probably know what procrastination is, but have you heard about "structured procrastination"? Structured procrastination is an act where you do put off the main tasks aside and don't get those finished but you actually accomplish a lot by procrastinating because you make do of your time with something else.

Structured procrastination is the art of making this negative trait work for you. The process in which a ton of work unrelated to what you're supposed to be doing gets done. It may sound counterintuitive, but you can accomplish a lot by putting things off.

I've read an article named, "Structured Procrastination" written by John Perry; you need to bend your time and knowledge to get things done even though you're procrastinating the big projects. By procrastinating the big projects, you procrastinate it with smaller tasks that needs to be done with a little bit of self-trickery and concentration. Leaving things until the last minute is a way of budgeting your time. You should make sure a task is really necessary before committing yourself to doing it. Most the people who stick their nose in your office to ask how some overdue task is coming, are just procrastinators themselves, tending to your business as a way of not tending to their own.

As John said, "I believe that productivity and "getting a lot done" are overrated, in fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done."

I have to agree with John whole heartedly because for the fact that I also think productivity is overrated. I'm a lazy person by choice and by habits so really getting something done should depend on my mood and what will it get me when I do it. Doing tasks for me is a pain in the arse and doing it depends on how important it is for me; school work is shit that's why it's in the low priority check list for me, catching up on shows, working on some WIPs ( artworks that are Work In Progress ) and insulting rude-ass b*tches on Facebook are much more important. Unless the school work that requires doing is really important, that's what I'll do first. It all just depends.

Now procrastination can be called a form of art; the art of putting things off until tomorrow that is. This led me to finding an article named, "The Art of Procrastination" which was written by Mathilda Mottet; nobody’s perfect, 'Nothing' isn’t really the exact word, because procrastinators always find something more appealing and stupid in most cases than what he or she should actually do and procrastination is the witness of a society ruled by irksome people ignoring the pleasures of life. Every human behaviour occurs for a reason because iy depends on how the person is and what are their habits or views in life.

Mathilda said and I quote, "Our generation is victim of a particular disease that slows millions of people down against their weak wills : procrastination. Procrastination is the art of putting things off until tomorrow, and there is no need to tell you how good I am at that."

I can't tell you how much I agree with her because I too am proud to say that I'm really good at procrastinating. Procrastination has provided me with skills like multitasking and cramming at the last minute and even if those things happen I still get an A* or a first in the things I procrastinate on. It just comes to show that practice actually makes do.