5 ms·

Good and Bad Procrastination (2005)

93 points by mmphosis 4y ago

yellowapple 4y ago
Part of the issue with this "ignore errands to focus on important things" argument is that often times ignoring errands makes it harder to focus on important things. Kinda hard to get into a flow state when you're homeless and starving, for example, so you're inevitably going to need to do at least what's necessary to not be homeless and starving. That is: while you'll very likely never be memorialized for all those reports you generated or whatever as some faceless cog in a corporate machine, you still need to do them - or else you'll be in an even worse position to do the things for which you actually would be memorialized. (At least until we achieve fully automated luxury gay space communism, but in the meantime we're subject to the material conditions in which we live - and those conditions, at least for those of us in the working class, currently necessitate doing work which is unimportant in the grand scheme of things but pays us money with which we support our existences) There's also the issue of importance being arbitrary and relative. For example, I created a scripting language for Erlang/OTP applications. If you're looking for a scripting language for your Erlang/OTP applications (and you happen to think that Tcl's syntax is the best thing since sliced bread, and can tolerate the fact that my work is very unfinished), that might be very important to you. To the vast majority who don't know what the actual fuck "scripting language", "Erlang", "OTP", and/or "application" mean, that's almost certainly entirely unimportant to them. What's (possibly, at risk of over-inflating my ego) revolutionary in my niche is entirely irrelevant to how nearly everyone around me will know me beyond "that YellowApple guy was pretty good with computers". Is that niche accomplishment really more important than how I treat those around me? Would I rather be remembered as "some reclusive asshole who was smart with computers" or "a beloved friend who put others before himself"? The example about writing letters is perfect; I procrastinate on responding to texts/calls/etc. from friends and family all the time, and I absolutely hate myself for it because I do love my friends and family and it hurts me to know that I'm hurting them by being an unreliable shut-in. For some of us - hell, probably most of us - the "biggest thing" on which we can work is being the best human we can be to those around us. It's easy to forget that in a ruthlessly capitalist society like the one in which I and most other folks live (in general, let alone the subset reading Paul Graham's blog posts). Sometimes being that best human means sacrificing personal relationships for some revolutionary thing that'll improve the lives of hundreds or thousands or millions or even billions of people. Other times it means forgiving interruptions by loved ones, and treasuring those human connections over whatever mental state you just lost. Sometimes that might even mean figuring out how to reconcile the two, e.g. by writing down your thoughts as they occur so that interruptions by loved ones are less catastrophic to your workflow. What matters is whether what we do maximizes the positive impact on the world around us, and for most of us that maximization is realistically more likely to happen by supporting those around us and fostering mutually-healthy human relationships than discarding them in favor of self-important endeavors. Put more succinctly: determining whether procrastination is "good" or "bad" is doomed to inaccuracy if we're unable to examine ourselves from the outside-in and put our own notions of what's important into perspective - and irrelevant if we're unable to fulfill the "unimportant" dependencies of human existence necessary to accomplish those important things. ---- "Ye are the light of the world, a city set upon a mount is not able to be hid; nor do they light a lamp, and put it under the measure, but on the lamp-stand, and it shineth to all those in the house; so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and may glorify your Father who [is] in the heavens." -- Matthew 5:14-16, YLT I know not everyone here puts much stock into Bible quotes, but this one comes to mind after reading the essay and writing out my thoughts above. The important things (good works) are those which positively impact (shine light before) as many as possible, to as high of a degree as possible. You don't need to believe in some sky wizard to see the value of being remembered as a good person who left the world better than one found it.
hedari 4y ago
Being interrupted is a killer and that's why I absolutely hate open-plan offices, cubicle hells, or what ever those farms are called. But self-induced "interrupts" are a completely different story for me... I used to fear my tendency to procrastinate. I looked at people that were able to just sit down and start typing. I tried to do the same, but it was torture to stare at a blank screen. Whatever method I tried to be productive, I always slipped to procrastination. Finally I realized that what I was doing, was simply letting my subconscious to do the work. When I understood that, everything got a lot easier. No more guilt. So, when PG writes: > Someone who has decided to write a novel, for example, will suddenly find that the house needs cleaning. People who fail to write novels don't do it by sitting in front of a blank page for days without writing anything. They do it by feeding the cat, going out to buy something they need for their apartment, meeting a friend for coffee, checking email. "I don't have time to work," they say. And they don't; they've made sure of that. Personally, I am very much opposite of that. I do both writing and coding and with both activities I first do some research or other base work and the I let myself procrastinate guilt-free. I will clean up the house, empty the dishwasher, walk the dog. Go to the grocery store or solve some simple puzzles. Usually these are stuff that don't really require deep thinking or take up too much time. Then, when I get this "feeling" (inspiration?) - even in the middle of my procrastination - I will sit down and type out the work. Then, rinse and repeat. And somehow I always seem to hit the deadline. Although, I have to admit, I have never tried to write a full novel.
elptacek 4y ago
These past few months, I have been slowly working through the audiobook version of Steven Strogatz' Infinite Powers. The work is enjoyable exactly because there's a bit of effort made to breathe life into the names everyone remembers. For example, Strogatz describes Archimedes as being so "neglectful of his person" that he had to be dragged to the bath; the irony being that one of the most famous anecdotes about him was a discovery he figured out in the bath. This is extra delightful to me since the beginning of my career was spent supporting these absent-minded professor types. I clearly remember realising that the path ahead of me was not going to result in some obvious legacy, despite whatever ambitions I had, but I could fix Dr Gell-Mann's printer. The working printer seemed to make him very happy, and I decided that was good enough. In 250 BC, someone just like me made sure Archimedes was clean and fed. This post is pretty old, and I'm curious why it's been put up here today and what sort of conversation mmphosis was hoping for. To me, it reads as a half-considered opinion. Could it be that the siren song of ambition and personal legacy is a nice little perk if you can afford it? Is there a counter argument to be made that if you can't keep your personal shit together, you obviously lack the discipline required to turn those deep-thinky thoughts into a legacy? Are we taking digs at how the progress 2-3 productive coders make in the early, dark hours of a startup loses steam as it tries to scale? Anyone of these conversations overlooks a pretty crucial idea, which is potentially a more productive conversation in itself: how do we find and conscript those people who will fix our printers, run our errands, and generally work to move objects out of our way while we follow our delight? Do we have to occasionally treat their fiddly petitions for reassurance with respect, as a sort of payment for their efforts or do we simply assume that being around greatness is enough?
rmckayfleming 4y ago
I find this to be the absolute hardest part of living with someone. You’re at the mercy of their ability to interrupt you and I find it incredibly demoralizing.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pjmorris 4y ago
  After a number of frustrating episodes for my wife and I, we came up with a plan. At my home office desk, I've got a 5x7 index card with a big red dot on one side and a big green dot on the other, which I use to communicate whether I'm interruptible. When green is showing, she's free to chime in about any random thing. When red is showing, it needs to be some kind of emergency. This has help us maintain domestic peace. The shape and color of the dots borrowed from Brazilian steak houses where they have markers used to indicate whether the people serving various cuts of meat should stop by your table.
  - manmal 4y ago
    Reminds me of the „On air“ signs radio stations have on the wall to ask for silence.
  - afarrell 4y ago
    It is worth having a system like this. It is also worth having a shared understanding of what constitutes an emergency.
  - hmsimha 4y ago
    I made a home dashboard to display on the TV, which integrated with Toggl (time tracker extension) when my partner and I were living together: https://github.com/HartS/toggl-home-dashboard https://github.com/HartS/toggl-home-dashboard Surprisingly, a feature to just "display a light when you're working" isn't super common. Since it was just a keyboard shortcut to start the timer (I was also contracting at the time), this ensured my partner could see I was working easily without having to ask me :) (apologies for poor code quality, this was hacked together extremely quickly... behind on tasks and needed a productivity boost, etc.)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

93 points by mmphosis 4y ago

Part of the issue with this "ignore errands to focus on important things" argument is that often times ignoring errands makes it harder to focus on important things. Kinda hard to get into a flow state when you're homeless and starving, for example, so you're inevitably going to need to do at least what's necessary to not be homeless and starving. That is: while you'll very likely never be memorialized for all those reports you generated or whatever as some faceless cog in a corporate machine, you still need to do them - or else you'll be in an even worse position to do the things for which you actually would be memorialized. (At least until we achieve fully automated luxury gay space communism, but in the meantime we're subject to the material conditions in which we live - and those conditions, at least for those of us in the working class, currently necessitate doing work which is unimportant in the grand scheme of things but pays us money with which we support our existences) There's also the issue of importance being arbitrary and relative. For example, I created a scripting language for Erlang/OTP applications. If you're looking for a scripting language for your Erlang/OTP applications (and you happen to think that Tcl's syntax is the best thing since sliced bread, and can tolerate the fact that my work is very unfinished), that might be very important to you. To the vast majority who don't know what the actual fuck "scripting language", "Erlang", "OTP", and/or "application" mean, that's almost certainly entirely unimportant to them. What's (possibly, at risk of over-inflating my ego) revolutionary in my niche is entirely irrelevant to how nearly everyone around me will know me beyond "that YellowApple guy was pretty good with computers". Is that niche accomplishment really more important than how I treat those around me? Would I rather be remembered as "some reclusive asshole who was smart with computers" or "a beloved friend who put others before himself"? The example about writing letters is perfect; I procrastinate on responding to texts/calls/etc. from friends and family all the time, and I absolutely hate myself for it because I do love my friends and family and it hurts me to know that I'm hurting them by being an unreliable shut-in. For some of us - hell, probably most of us - the "biggest thing" on which we can work is being the best human we can be to those around us. It's easy to forget that in a ruthlessly capitalist society like the one in which I and most other folks live (in general, let alone the subset reading Paul Graham's blog posts). Sometimes being that best human means sacrificing personal relationships for some revolutionary thing that'll improve the lives of hundreds or thousands or millions or even billions of people. Other times it means forgiving interruptions by loved ones, and treasuring those human connections over whatever mental state you just lost. Sometimes that might even mean figuring out how to reconcile the two, e.g. by writing down your thoughts as they occur so that interruptions by loved ones are less catastrophic to your workflow. What matters is whether what we do maximizes the positive impact on the world around us, and for most of us that maximization is realistically more likely to happen by supporting those around us and fostering mutually-healthy human relationships than discarding them in favor of self-important endeavors. Put more succinctly: determining whether procrastination is "good" or "bad" is doomed to inaccuracy if we're unable to examine ourselves from the outside-in and put our own notions of what's important into perspective - and irrelevant if we're unable to fulfill the "unimportant" dependencies of human existence necessary to accomplish those important things. ---- "Ye are the light of the world, a city set upon a mount is not able to be hid; nor do they light a lamp, and put it under the measure, but on the lamp-stand, and it shineth to all those in the house; so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and may glorify your Father who [is] in the heavens." -- Matthew 5:14-16, YLT I know not everyone here puts much stock into Bible quotes, but this one comes to mind after reading the essay and writing out my thoughts above. The important things (good works) are those which positively impact (shine light before) as many as possible, to as high of a degree as possible. You don't need to believe in some sky wizard to see the value of being remembered as a good person who left the world better than one found it.

hedari 4y ago

Being interrupted is a killer and that's why I absolutely hate open-plan offices, cubicle hells, or what ever those farms are called. But self-induced "interrupts" are a completely different story for me... I used to fear my tendency to procrastinate. I looked at people that were able to just sit down and start typing. I tried to do the same, but it was torture to stare at a blank screen. Whatever method I tried to be productive, I always slipped to procrastination. Finally I realized that what I was doing, was simply letting my subconscious to do the work. When I understood that, everything got a lot easier. No more guilt. So, when PG writes: > Someone who has decided to write a novel, for example, will suddenly find that the house needs cleaning. People who fail to write novels don't do it by sitting in front of a blank page for days without writing anything. They do it by feeding the cat, going out to buy something they need for their apartment, meeting a friend for coffee, checking email. "I don't have time to work," they say. And they don't; they've made sure of that. Personally, I am very much opposite of that. I do both writing and coding and with both activities I first do some research or other base work and the I let myself procrastinate guilt-free. I will clean up the house, empty the dishwasher, walk the dog. Go to the grocery store or solve some simple puzzles. Usually these are stuff that don't really require deep thinking or take up too much time. Then, when I get this "feeling" (inspiration?) - even in the middle of my procrastination - I will sit down and type out the work. Then, rinse and repeat. And somehow I always seem to hit the deadline. Although, I have to admit, I have never tried to write a full novel.

elptacek 4y ago

These past few months, I have been slowly working through the audiobook version of Steven Strogatz' Infinite Powers. The work is enjoyable exactly because there's a bit of effort made to breathe life into the names everyone remembers. For example, Strogatz describes Archimedes as being so "neglectful of his person" that he had to be dragged to the bath; the irony being that one of the most famous anecdotes about him was a discovery he figured out in the bath. This is extra delightful to me since the beginning of my career was spent supporting these absent-minded professor types. I clearly remember realising that the path ahead of me was not going to result in some obvious legacy, despite whatever ambitions I had, but I could fix Dr Gell-Mann's printer. The working printer seemed to make him very happy, and I decided that was good enough. In 250 BC, someone just like me made sure Archimedes was clean and fed. This post is pretty old, and I'm curious why it's been put up here today and what sort of conversation mmphosis was hoping for. To me, it reads as a half-considered opinion. Could it be that the siren song of ambition and personal legacy is a nice little perk if you can afford it? Is there a counter argument to be made that if you can't keep your personal shit together, you obviously lack the discipline required to turn those deep-thinky thoughts into a legacy? Are we taking digs at how the progress 2-3 productive coders make in the early, dark hours of a startup loses steam as it tries to scale? Anyone of these conversations overlooks a pretty crucial idea, which is potentially a more productive conversation in itself: how do we find and conscript those people who will fix our printers, run our errands, and generally work to move objects out of our way while we follow our delight? Do we have to occasionally treat their fiddly petitions for reassurance with respect, as a sort of payment for their efforts or do we simply assume that being around greatness is enough?

rmckayfleming 4y ago

I find this to be the absolute hardest part of living with someone. You’re at the mercy of their ability to interrupt you and I find it incredibly demoralizing.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pjmorris 4y ago
After a number of frustrating episodes for my wife and I, we came up with a plan. At my home office desk, I've got a 5x7 index card with a big red dot on one side and a big green dot on the other, which I use to communicate whether I'm interruptible. When green is showing, she's free to chime in about any random thing. When red is showing, it needs to be some kind of emergency. This has help us maintain domestic peace. The shape and color of the dots borrowed from Brazilian steak houses where they have markers used to indicate whether the people serving various cuts of meat should stop by your table.
- manmal 4y ago
  Reminds me of the „On air“ signs radio stations have on the wall to ask for silence.
- afarrell 4y ago
  It is worth having a system like this. It is also worth having a shared understanding of what constitutes an emergency.
- hmsimha 4y ago
  I made a home dashboard to display on the TV, which integrated with Toggl (time tracker extension) when my partner and I were living together: https://github.com/HartS/toggl-home-dashboard https://github.com/HartS/toggl-home-dashboard Surprisingly, a feature to just "display a light when you're working" isn't super common. Since it was just a keyboard shortcut to start the timer (I was also contracting at the time), this ensured my partner could see I was working easily without having to ask me :) (apologies for poor code quality, this was hacked together extremely quickly... behind on tasks and needed a productivity boost, etc.)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]