From the first chapter in Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography:
A question was once, somehow or other, started between Collins and me, of the propriety of educating the female sex in learning, and their abilities for study. He was of opinion that it was improper, and that they were naturally unequal to it. I took the contrary side, perhaps a little for dispute’s sake. He was naturally more eloquent, had a ready plenty of words; and sometimes, as I thought, bore me down more by his fluency than by the strength of his reasons. As we parted without settling the point, and were not to see one another again for some time, I sat down to put my arguments in writing, which I copied fair and sent to him. He answered, and I replied.
Three or four letters of a side had passed, when my father happened to find my papers and read them. Without entering into the discussion, he took occasion to talk to me about the manner of my writing; observed that, though I had the advantage of my antagonist in correct spelling and pointing (which I ow’d to the printing-house), I fell far short in elegance of expression, in method and in perspicuity, of which he convinced me by several instances. I saw the justice of his remark, and thence grew more attentive to the manner in writing, and determined to endeavor at improvement.
About this time I met with an odd volume of the Spectator. It was the third. I had never before seen any of them. I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it. I thought the writing excellent, and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With this view I took some of the papers, and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days, and then, without looking at the book, try’d to compleat the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand. Then I compared my Spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them.
But I found I wanted a stock of words, or a readiness in recollecting and using them, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses; since the continual occasion for words of the same import, but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sound for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind, and make me master of it. Therefore I took some of the tales and turned them into verse; and, after a time, when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again.
I also sometimes jumbled my collections of hints into confusion, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, before I began to form the full sentences and compleat the paper. This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.
My time for these exercises and for reading was at night, after work or before it began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing-house alone, evading as much as I could the common attendance on public worship which my father used to exact on me when I was under his care, and which indeed I still thought a duty, though I could not, as it seemed to me, afford time to practise it.
a lot of Mann this week
This is a great speech Merlin Mann held at MaxFunCon. He discusses creativity, the importance of learning how to start, being okay with sucking and tolerating ambiguity.
In his book on Telling Lies for Fun & Profit — a book on writing fiction (and not a book on becoming a lawyer!) – Lawrence Block describes something he calls creative procrastination. Block introduces the subject — as so many other authors have done after him — by noting that Edward Young called procrastination the “thief of time” in 1742 and by referring to the the often quoted words by Lord Chesterfield: “No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today”.
Block doesn’t bash procrastination. Instead, he says that it has its place. He does observe that “those writers who sit down and write, day in and day out, are the very writers who get the most accomplished” and that “procrastination in general is a massive liability”.
After saying that, however, he writes about how something he calls creative procrastination can be a massive asset for writers. Block used to very quickly transform ideas into written text when he was in his youth. He would get one idea on an afternoon and have a written story ready for his agent the following morning (!). As he became older, he let go of the habit of immediately starting typing out this ideas.
As an example of how creative procrastination helped him he describes his experience of writing a mystery story. It began by him getting the idea to the story, he got what he calls a Noteworthy Idea. In his youth he would have gone straight to his typewriter to type out the story. In this case he wouldn’t have gotten far because he didn’t have anything other than an undeveloped idea, a fragment of a thought. He had no plot, no theme, no characters and no conflict — he lacked all the details necessary for good (or at least passable) fiction.
Instead of starting working on the story immediately, he scribbled down the idea on his todo list. He saw the idea every now and then — every time he looked at his memo pad. Block goes on describing how when he read the the note about the idea, his subconscious would develop it slightly, make it a bit fuller and more detailed.
By letting the idea rest, and by not starting to work on it immediately, Block allowed the idea to develop in his mind, while he was busy writing other stories and reading inspiring books and poetry. Then, one day, he felt that he was ready to write the story. So he sat down at his typewriter and started typing.
Block calls this process creative procrastination. I think that creative incubation is a more apt name for what he did. While it’s procrastination in the sense that there’s postponement involved, I don’t consider it procrastination if you let an idea rest before you have some kind of plan of action. I’m not a fiction writer and don’t plan on becoming one, but it makes sense to let ideas develop in your subconscious a while before you start typing them out.
That’s not procrastination, that’s just a smart thing to do.
A key part of this process is to keep the Noteworthy Idea visible.
“It’s important, I think, to keep the idea visible — in a notebook, on a wallchart, whatever. That way you’ll jog your memory from time to time, and when an idea or a piece of information comes along that you can use, you’ll reach out and incorporate it in the story as it evolves.”
And as for the difference between regular procrastination and creative procrastination, Block writes:
“When it [procrastination] consists of avoiding work rather than postponing it, and when my alternative to working on Project A is not working at all. Since I’m inherently lazy, I force myself to work on Project B instead.”
I don’t know how useful it’s to label yourself as “inherently lazy” and I think there are better ways of getting started than “forcing” yourself, but those are subjects for another post. If you get a good idea, write it down, look at it at regular intervals, and notice how your subconscious develops it automatically until you one day pretty much just know what you want to write, or create.
Sometimes it might feel like you’re the only one procrastinating, that you’re the only one who doesn’t start working in time. A look at the procrastination research shows that most people procrastinate to a degree and that procrastination is a major problem for a large part of the population.
academic procrastination
For many students procrastination is an essential part of the college lifestyle. We’ve all heard the anecdotes about the all-nighters, the late term papers and the creative excuses people come up with. According to Ellis & Knaus [1977] around 70% of all college students procrastinate. That’s a huge percentage of the student population.
pre-internet procrastination
It’s worth noting that these figures are from the late 70s. I wasn’t around back then, but I’m pretty sure that ubiquitous internet connections, cell phones and computers weren’t available for the students of that time. Despite that , those who were students then, procrastinated — a lot.
That tells us something about the problem of procrastination — it’s not about the distractions around us. Yes, you might be spending a lot of time on Facebook, on Youtube or on reading blogs, but that doesn’t mean that those things are the cause of your procrastination. They are merely the symptoms, the displacement activities you use. [displacement activity = the thing you do instead of doing what you should be doing]
More recent studies confirm that procrastination is common. One study from 1984 (still pre-ubiquitous-internet) reports that half of all students say that procrastination is a moderately or highly problematic problem for them [Solomon et al]. Day gives a similar picture, reporting that about 50% of college students procrastinate chronically [Day et al. 2000].
procrastination is normally distributed
Schouwenburg — editor of the the book Counseling the Procrastinator in Academic Settings
– writes about procrastination in a conference paper from 2005. He discusses the results of a procrastination survey that was given to two thousand students. When the data from the survey is plotted on a diagram, you see that procrastination is normally distributed among students. The base rate of procrasination is high, that is, most students procrastinate to at least some degree.
problematic procrastination?
Schouwenburg notes that there’s no clear definition of when procrastination should be classified as problematic or chronic. Many arbitrary conventions are used. For example, if you define people who according to the survey procrastinate one standard deviation more than the mean as problematic procrastinators, you end up with a figure of about 10%. In other words, for about 200 of the two thousand students who participated in the survey, procrastination is a major problem.
the rest of the population
That students procrastinate a lot is hardly surprising. But what about the rest of the population? Are adults, working in ‘real’ jobs with ‘real’ deadlines, and where postponements result in ‘real’ consequences doing any better? Perhaps, but not by a large degree.
Depending a bit on which data you look at, it looks like about one in five have major problems with procrastination. That’s what McCown and Johnson reported in a paper from 1989. It’s worth noting that for forty percent of the people, procrastination had caused significant financial loss. Schouwenburg writes that one fifth of all students say that they procrastinate when it comes to doing routine tasks such as paying the bills or the taxes, or visiting the doctor’s office (Schouwenburg, 2004).
summary
It’s clear that procrastination is prevalent, especially among college students. This can be comforting to know while you’re struggling with getting started. It also means that if you manage to reduce or eliminate your procrastination behavior, you’ll be far ahead of a large part of the population.
References
Ellis, A., & Knaus, W. J. (1977). Overcoming procrastination. New York: Signet Books.
Day, V., Mensink, D., & O’Sullivan, M. (2000). Patterns of academic procrastination. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 30, 120–134.
McCown, W., & Johnson, J. (1989). Validation of an adult inventory of procrastination. Paper presented at the Society for Personality Assessment, New York.
Solomon, L. J., & Rothblum, E. D. (1984). Academic procrastination: Frequency and
cognitive-behavioral correlates. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 31, 503-509.
Schouwenburg, H. C. (2004). Trait procrastination in academic settings: An overview of students who engage in task delays. In H.C. Schouwenburg, C. Lay, T. Pylchyl, & J. Ferrari, (Eds.), Counselling the procrastinator in academic settings (pp. 3-18). Washington: American Psychological Association.
Schouwenburg. On Counselling the Procrastinator in Academic settings. Fedora Psyche Conference. June, 2005.
I try hard to identify my most dangerous patterns of thought, but since the most dangerous ones are by definition those difficult to detect or apt to masquerade as beneficial, progress is slow. By “dangerous”, I generally mean the ones that excuse mediocrity. Procrastination’s thousand guises provide ready, accessible examples: “I’ll work on the project first thing in the morning.” “I’ll start the diet next week.” “I’ll get to that novel someday.” But the literature on procrastination forms mountains; I’ll refrain from adding my own crag today.
The dangerous thought I recently caught in one of its unguarded moments gets much less press than the p-word, but it’s similar in form and quite possibly even more poisonous. I call it the “Things will be fine when x” mindset, where x is any future condition or set of conditions.
My cross-country trip had been based on an assumption and a gamble. The assumption was that the borrower was going to stop payment on the $15,000 check; the gamble was that he would make the mistake of procrastinating and not take care of the matter until the bank opened the next morning.
I grabbed a couple hours of restless sleep at the motel, then dragged myself out of bed at the crack of dawn. I was taking no chances on not being at the front door of the bank when it opened. I felt as though I hadn’t slept in a week, but a cold shower and the thought of $15,000 was stimulating enough to keep me moving.
Have you noticed how much easier it is to write a short comment on a blog than to write an article?
The small text area and the button labeled “Preview” removes a lot of the pressure from writing. The subject is clear and delimited – you know what you want to say.
You’re agreeing or disagreeing with something the author wrote. You thought of something when reading the post. Perhaps you gained some form of insight that you want to share. Or the post reminded you of an anecdote or that really really great quote.
No one expects your comment to be exceptional or perfect. You don’t try to write the ultimate, all-encompassing comment that nobody can critique.
There’s no pressure. It’s okay to suck, to be mediocre. Who tries to write the perfect comment? No one. Blog comments aren’t supposed to be perfect.
You don’t spend a lot of time writing the comment. 5-10 minutes? Sometimes a bit more. Seldom longer than fifteen or twenty minutes. There’s so many other posts you want to comment on, so many other blogs to read. You can’t waste too much time on a single comment.
Misspellings aren’t the end of the world. (Maybe you were in a hurry or distracted. Or just really tired.)
You stop writing when you run out of things to say. (Tip #13: Have something to say!) You don’t aim for a specific word count.
If you happen to write something really insightful, people will agree with you and give you props. Most likely a couple of readers will read your comment, and then go on with their lives.
Forget the articles for now. Write comments. Lots of comments.
I’m a 23 year old guy. My parents are Finnish, but I’m grown up in Sweden and currently living in the vicinity of Stockholm. I’ve begun a lot of college courses, but haven’t finished many. I have a eerily tendency to drop out after a while and my CV resembles a black hole. I’ve got lots of on-going projects, few of them are progressing .
yet another productivity blog?
Not really. The name of the blog is written slightly tongue in cheek. I’m not too fond of bullet-pointed lists with rehashed productivity “tips” so there won’t be too many of those on this blog.
During the following months I’ll be exploring the subject of procrastination, particularly more chronic and destructive versions of the phenomenon. I’ll be using this place as a repository for my thoughts, insights and notes. I’m writing first and foremost for myself — to clarify my thinking, to improve my writing.
deconstructing procrastination
I’m pretty confident that procrastination is a solvable problem (if you consider it to be a problem — I’m of the view that it’s more like a symptom). It’s not an inherent character trait, it’s not about laziness, and it’s not something that has to be a permanent part of your life.
Procrastination is the result of thought and behavioral patterns — patterns that can be changed. That’s what this blog will be about, at least initially– changing patterns.
Most blogs on productivity seem to be focused on what you should be doing. But if you’ve spent more than a few hours on productivity blogs, you already know what you should be doing. I’ll try to look at how you go from being somebody who self-identifies as a procrastinator, as a person who doesn’t get things done, to a person who’s got his shit handled and who considers himself to be productive.
When I’m talking about productivity, I’m not talking about cranking out as many widgets as possible. Rather, I’m talking about creating stuff that makes the world a little — or a lot — better.
(nowadays sold as