Constructive procrastination (v.) 


I am eternally indebted to Leigh Dodds for introducing me to the concept of constructive procrastination. Put simply, this makes use of the well known principal that everything except what you're currently supposed to be doing seems to be infinitely more interesting, attractive or otherwise enthralling to enable you to carry out tasks that would be otherwise boring, mundane or just plain annoying. 

For example, suppose that the dishes need washing. Although you have no desire to do the dishes, this will suddenly become the more appealing option when something even less interesting crops up, like going to the supermarket, for example. The trick is to wait until going to the supermarket seems inevitable and then use the dishes as an excuse for not going shopping, and hey presto, suddenly they're not so much of a chore after all. Of course, shopping can then serve as a convenient distraction from doing something else even more tedious such as mowing the lawn, and so on and so forth, until every job gets done except for the REALLY important thing that you were putting off in the first place. (In many cases, it's hard to determine exactly what that was because you've been trying so hard not to think about it that all knowledge of its existence has been erased from your consciousness.)

Without this kind of tactic for the avoidance of doing any real work (or in my case, study), this blog (and indeed my entire web site) would be completely inactive, Ingenta would get even less of my time than it currently does, and there would be no explanation for the strange and often misunderstood fact that student houses are at their cleanest when essay deadlines are looming... You figure it out! 

Posted on Wednesday - February 02, 2005 at 12:11 AM            

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