7 ms·

Anticipatory Procastrination [pdf]

171 points by dedalus 6y ago

hprotagonist 6y ago
I can’t decide which i like more: Figure 1, or the authors’ contact information (and pointed lack thereof in the case of one notable name).
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Knuth famously doesn't use email, so, why would there be anything there? https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html
  - hprotagonist 6y ago
    that’s the point, yep!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
xenocratus 6y ago
This is right up there with `The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of "writer's block"` [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/?page=1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/?page=1
- Koliakis 6y ago
  It took me way too long to realize what I was looking at. Downloaded it twice wondering why there was only a single page.
vincent-manis 6y ago
I am too busy to read this today.
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  Same here. I opened it on a tab and suspended it so I can read it later (along w/ 200+ other tabs there for the same reason... >smile<).
  - MawKKe 6y ago
    Your reply is too long. I will get back to you in 6 months. Maybe.
MauranKilom 6y ago
"Sorry! The URL you requested was not found on our server." IA link: https://web.archive.org/web/20201224170020/https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~elder/stuff/ant-proc.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20201224170020/https://pages.cs....
- analog31 6y ago
  This is an artificial intelligence application of the principles described in the paper.
xyzelement 6y ago
Ten-ish years ago I worked on a trading system. NASDAQ created a new regulation that required us to change how our system worked on a very tight deadline. As an eager eng manager I was ready to pause other projects and dive into it. My business folks said there was no way this regulation would go into effect on time. They bet none of our competitors would comply in time and the exchange would have to extend the timeline by many months. So we did nothing, and they were right.
- chaboud 6y ago
  Schedule chicken is a hell of a drug. This also applies to start up difficulties in software/service ecosystems, where everyone is waiting for the greater fool to jump in and pay the "first through the door" cost. The GM EV1 is a great example of this.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  https://dilbert.com/strip/2007-12-26 https://dilbert.com/strip/2007-12-26
macintux 6y ago
Typo in the title (not the source). "Procrastination".
sn41 6y ago
This technique by John Perry (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Stanford) actually makes sense: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ The idea is that we'd rather be doing something else. For example, currently, I am postponing grading. So I don't mind doing a peer review of a paper. When that's the thing that's due, I'd rather be doing something else, and so on. You get work done by rearranging stuff :)
- tartoran 6y ago
  I usually procrastsinate till it’s very close to the deadline and have no problem doing it then, with a bit of stress. In general if I work on a couple of projects/tasks simultaneously I find it much easier to build up momentum to start pecking at the least pleasant of the tasks. If there is only one I have a harder time getting started and find myself doing anything but what I should be doing.
  - tawtawtaw 6y ago
    Agreed, I find it quite manageable to make time for a heavy workload, but any time management ability goes out the window when I only have a few small things to do.
  - purplecats 6y ago
    I didn't read the article but I do something similar. I like to cap how long I will probably spend on a project (ranging from minutes to months) and start right before (deadline - expected duration). I find there are no issues with discipline or motivation at that point. There are some downsides to this, but it prevents me "working" on it for months and trying to perfect it. why spend 2 months on something that I could do in a week if I wanted to.
    - smallnamespace 6y ago
      Don't miss the article, it's hilarious.
efoto 6y ago
It would appropriate to quote one old saying, possibly originated in armed forces of a certain country: "do not rush to execute an order, it will likely be canceled"
williwas 6y ago
Knuth wasn’t co author f this work. Must be a mistake
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
hawktheslayer 6y ago
When I'm tempted to procrastinate on something important I add a 15 minute block to the calender and force myself to do the smallest unit of effort against the task. Often I find it's enough to get the ball rolling. I use a similar method that I heard from Scott Adams when you are lying down and should get up but don't want to--start by moving just one finger, then your hand, etc. Odd but effective.
- happyrock 6y ago
  Or count to ten and then get up. Works great.
- colmvp 6y ago
  Seems reminiscent of the pomodoro technique.
foobarbecue 6y ago
FYI there's a typo in the title ("procastrination"). You could fix it now, or maybe just do it later.
- boraoztunc 6y ago
  ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
7OVO7 6y ago
This PDF is clearly a mocking, derogatory, and provocative article, written by people who are not ... they are not procrastinating, on the contrary, they immediately commit to writing something nonsense against useful reasoning; why is not relevant. the facts are decisive, the facts in this PDF are these: + put random sentences that are blatantly meaningless + they write the word STUFF as if to mean that whoever is to procrastinate uses this word as an important word + do not in any way describe a real experimentation + quote someone's phrase without a relative rational sense + they put on an image of an hand, clearly provocative, senseless, expressing nothing these in this article are considered academic-trolls, discrediting the natural method of procrastinating something not essential at the moment then if we could go and look in the world for all those who are against procrastination we would see just who the directors of these trolls are procrastination is rationality when applied to something not essential at the moment, it cannot be useful to apply it to everything, it does not refer to everything, and it is relative, like any other method of action, to rationality there is no rationality in committing to using an academic context to discredit a topic, you are not going anywhere; this is a world that instead of procrastinating what it can to do something else and optimize resources and possibilities, produces 1000 things when 100 are needed, allows 100 companies of a service when not even one would be needed and the service should be managed by those who know how to perform it (such as the Internet: experts and graduates in telecommunications ... what are the others?) reading this PDF is depressing (I'm sure they had some crazy laughs while writing it). or maybe I wrong all my comment (this comment) and you can try to procastinato to ∞ any reaction versus me and my comment
- bartread 6y ago
  I haven't read the whole thing because I don't have time, but it's intended as humour. Obviously it won't appeal to everybody, but it's harmless and absolutely not worth getting upset about.
- lolc 6y ago
  Thank you for your thorough review. I'm collecting articles for my first issue of Journal of Procrastination but articles and reviews are hard to come by. Today has been a very successful day for me browsing Hacker News!
chrisweekly 6y ago
Mods: title typo
MrXOR 6y ago
This paper was rejected from SIGROFL 2008 (LOL)
troelsSteegin 6y ago
Is anyone else finding the method in Figure 1 difficult to reproduce successfully?
- kbutler 6y ago
  The explanation was a bit hand-wavy.
togs 6y ago
I confess I’m slightly annoyed to be trolled. Maybe I just don’t know enough to appreciate it.

171 points by dedalus 6y ago

I can’t decide which i like more: Figure 1, or the authors’ contact information (and pointed lack thereof in the case of one notable name).

pmiller2 6y ago
Knuth famously doesn't use email, so, why would there be anything there? https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html
- hprotagonist 6y ago
  that’s the point, yep!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

xenocratus 6y ago

This is right up there with `The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of "writer's block"` [1] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/?page=1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/?page=1

Koliakis 6y ago
It took me way too long to realize what I was looking at. Downloaded it twice wondering why there was only a single page.

vincent-manis 6y ago

I am too busy to read this today.

EvanAnderson 6y ago
Same here. I opened it on a tab and suspended it so I can read it later (along w/ 200+ other tabs there for the same reason... >smile<).
- MawKKe 6y ago
  Your reply is too long. I will get back to you in 6 months. Maybe.

MauranKilom 6y ago

"Sorry! The URL you requested was not found on our server." IA link: https://web.archive.org/web/20201224170020/https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~elder/stuff/ant-proc.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20201224170020/https://pages.cs....

analog31 6y ago
This is an artificial intelligence application of the principles described in the paper.

xyzelement 6y ago

Ten-ish years ago I worked on a trading system. NASDAQ created a new regulation that required us to change how our system worked on a very tight deadline. As an eager eng manager I was ready to pause other projects and dive into it. My business folks said there was no way this regulation would go into effect on time. They bet none of our competitors would comply in time and the exchange would have to extend the timeline by many months. So we did nothing, and they were right.

chaboud 6y ago
Schedule chicken is a hell of a drug. This also applies to start up difficulties in software/service ecosystems, where everyone is waiting for the greater fool to jump in and pay the "first through the door" cost. The GM EV1 is a great example of this.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
https://dilbert.com/strip/2007-12-26 https://dilbert.com/strip/2007-12-26

macintux 6y ago

Typo in the title (not the source). "Procrastination".

sn41 6y ago

This technique by John Perry (Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Stanford) actually makes sense: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ The idea is that we'd rather be doing something else. For example, currently, I am postponing grading. So I don't mind doing a peer review of a paper. When that's the thing that's due, I'd rather be doing something else, and so on. You get work done by rearranging stuff :)

tartoran 6y ago
I usually procrastsinate till it’s very close to the deadline and have no problem doing it then, with a bit of stress. In general if I work on a couple of projects/tasks simultaneously I find it much easier to build up momentum to start pecking at the least pleasant of the tasks. If there is only one I have a harder time getting started and find myself doing anything but what I should be doing.
- tawtawtaw 6y ago
  Agreed, I find it quite manageable to make time for a heavy workload, but any time management ability goes out the window when I only have a few small things to do.
- purplecats 6y ago
  I didn't read the article but I do something similar. I like to cap how long I will probably spend on a project (ranging from minutes to months) and start right before (deadline - expected duration). I find there are no issues with discipline or motivation at that point. There are some downsides to this, but it prevents me "working" on it for months and trying to perfect it. why spend 2 months on something that I could do in a week if I wanted to.
  - smallnamespace 6y ago
    Don't miss the article, it's hilarious.

efoto 6y ago

It would appropriate to quote one old saying, possibly originated in armed forces of a certain country: "do not rush to execute an order, it will likely be canceled"

williwas 6y ago

Knuth wasn’t co author f this work. Must be a mistake

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

hawktheslayer 6y ago

When I'm tempted to procrastinate on something important I add a 15 minute block to the calender and force myself to do the smallest unit of effort against the task. Often I find it's enough to get the ball rolling. I use a similar method that I heard from Scott Adams when you are lying down and should get up but don't want to--start by moving just one finger, then your hand, etc. Odd but effective.

happyrock 6y ago
Or count to ten and then get up. Works great.
colmvp 6y ago
Seems reminiscent of the pomodoro technique.

foobarbecue 6y ago

FYI there's a typo in the title ("procastrination"). You could fix it now, or maybe just do it later.

boraoztunc 6y ago
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

7OVO7 6y ago

This PDF is clearly a mocking, derogatory, and provocative article, written by people who are not ... they are not procrastinating, on the contrary, they immediately commit to writing something nonsense against useful reasoning; why is not relevant. the facts are decisive, the facts in this PDF are these: + put random sentences that are blatantly meaningless + they write the word STUFF as if to mean that whoever is to procrastinate uses this word as an important word + do not in any way describe a real experimentation + quote someone's phrase without a relative rational sense + they put on an image of an hand, clearly provocative, senseless, expressing nothing these in this article are considered academic-trolls, discrediting the natural method of procrastinating something not essential at the moment then if we could go and look in the world for all those who are against procrastination we would see just who the directors of these trolls are procrastination is rationality when applied to something not essential at the moment, it cannot be useful to apply it to everything, it does not refer to everything, and it is relative, like any other method of action, to rationality there is no rationality in committing to using an academic context to discredit a topic, you are not going anywhere; this is a world that instead of procrastinating what it can to do something else and optimize resources and possibilities, produces 1000 things when 100 are needed, allows 100 companies of a service when not even one would be needed and the service should be managed by those who know how to perform it (such as the Internet: experts and graduates in telecommunications ... what are the others?) reading this PDF is depressing (I'm sure they had some crazy laughs while writing it). or maybe I wrong all my comment (this comment) and you can try to procastinato to ∞ any reaction versus me and my comment

bartread 6y ago
I haven't read the whole thing because I don't have time, but it's intended as humour. Obviously it won't appeal to everybody, but it's harmless and absolutely not worth getting upset about.
lolc 6y ago
Thank you for your thorough review. I'm collecting articles for my first issue of Journal of Procrastination but articles and reviews are hard to come by. Today has been a very successful day for me browsing Hacker News!

chrisweekly 6y ago

Mods: title typo

MrXOR 6y ago

This paper was rejected from SIGROFL 2008 (LOL)

troelsSteegin 6y ago

Is anyone else finding the method in Figure 1 difficult to reproduce successfully?

kbutler 6y ago
The explanation was a bit hand-wavy.

togs 6y ago

I confess I’m slightly annoyed to be trolled. Maybe I just don’t know enough to appreciate it.