I don’t remember when I first came across a reference to John Perry’s essay on Structured Procrastination. It’s an Internet standard by now.
“Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this 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.”
Every now and then I go through a spell where I am reminded that this is exactly how I allocate my own time. This week, for example, I have floored another chunk of our loft, cut the grass and done a big tidy-up of our front garden, and started work on the next version of the AmphetaFrames templates.
What I should have been doing is catching up on my correspondance. So if you’re one of the people I owe an email…sorry! I’d like to say that I’ll get round to it soon, but realistically I’ll probably end up tidying our garage instead.