Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Structured Procrastination

Here's a hint to conquering those tasks that loom too large to complete or even approach. I read about this yesterday on Lifehacker, and it rang so true that I have been thinking about how to implement it ever since. See, I always like to have one big task of doom looming over my head. I'm just not happy otherwise. Sick, I know, but that's how it works. Thing is, I'm always working. I don't laze away the days. I paint, I landscape, I clean the house. All instead of doing what I need to do: find a job.

In light of this, I'm trying to work on making other things of more priority. Like this: I should sell my car. I don't have insurance on it, and thus do not drive it. I haven't driven it in months, and could use the $1,000 I can get on it. So, needing to wash it...I put it off until today. I love that car though and know I cannot get another of the same quality for $1,000. So, in order to motivate myself to get crackin on gettin a job, I'm not allowed to sell the car until I have at least 10 resumes out there in the world. I could have wasted the rest of today researching how to sell my car most efficiently, instead...

I've revamped what I need to and now just have to tailor for each position. I could send out the first one tomorrow.

Here's the article:

Structured Procrastination: "All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad 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, like 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 do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important."

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