{"id":3412,"date":"2014-01-15T20:54:45","date_gmt":"2014-01-16T04:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lmlrn.com\/?p=3412"},"modified":"2021-02-25T06:48:10","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T06:48:10","slug":"procrastination-bad-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drprem.com\/life\/procrastination-bad-habit","title":{"rendered":"Procrastination: Is it a bad habit?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The early bird may get the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.”<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Procrastination: Is it a bad habit?<\/h1>\n

I’ve been meaning to write an article about procrastination<\/strong>, but I’ve been putting it off for a while now. That might seem like\u00a0 joke, but after reading the The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging, and Postponing<\/strong>, I’ve come to realize that procrastination <\/strong>is not a bad thing at all. Even as far as this article goes, procrastinating<\/strong> has made it better than it would have been if I had published it months ago, when I started typing the title.<\/p>

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\"procrastination<\/h1>\n

I have always liked the Spanish word Manana<\/em><\/strong>, which means tomorrow. It has a good ring to it, and I use it any chance I get, even if the person doesn’t habla<\/strong> Espanol<\/strong>. <\/em>Sometimes, putting things off can work out for the best, and all you procrastinators<\/strong> will be happy to hear, sometimes work can be better if you wait till manana<\/em><\/strong> to finish it.<\/p>\n

Below are 3 excerpts<\/strong> from the book<\/strong>, to give you a taste and hopefully an insight into how procrastination<\/strong> can be an asset.<\/p>

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1. Treat Your Flaws As Virtues<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cWhen I was a young philosopher, I asked a senior colleague, Pat Suppes (then and now a famous philosopher of science and an astute student of human nature), what the secret of happiness was. Instead of giving me advice, he made a rather droll observation about what a lot of people who were happy with themselves seem to have done, namely:
\n1. Take a careful inventory of their shortcomings and flaws
\n2. Adopt a code of values that treats these things as virtues
\n3. Admire themselves for living up to it
\nBrutal people admire themselves for being manly; compulsive pedants admire themselves for their attention to detail; naturally selfish and mean people admire themselves for their dedication to helping the market reward talent and punish failure, and so on.\u201d
\n\u2015 John R. Perry, The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing <\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

2. Rationality Doesn’t Always Make You Happy<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cI really have nothing against rationality, or even doing what you think is best, or doing what is more likely to satisfy your desires. I have tried these strategies at various times, occasionally with good results. But I think the ideal of the rational agent is the source of lots of needless unhappiness. It’s not the way many of us operate; it’s certainly not the way I operate. And operating the way we do usually works just fine, and really isn’t a reason to hang our heads in shame and despair.\u201d
\n\u2015 John R. Perry, The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

3. Procrastinators End Up Doing What No-one Else Will, Just So They Don’t Have To Do Whats Important<\/h3>\n

\u201cAll procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this negative trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, such as gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him to do it. The procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely, and important tasks, however, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.\u201d
\n\u2015 John R. Perry, The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing <\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

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