It seems appropriate that I was procrastinating writing this column when I surfed across the phrase “structured procrastination,” coined by Stanford philosophy professor John Perry. It took but a few paragraphs for me to recognize Professor Perry’s brilliance, especially considering that it justified what I’d been unwittingly doing most of my life.

“Structured procrastination,” writes Perry, “is a strategy that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time.”

I’m not sure about the “respected and admired” part, and I could use some clarification on what’s considered a “good use” of time, but I do accomplish a lot. It’s just not often a lot of what I actually set out to do.

Simple procrastination is putting off things you have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you.

Basically, an ordinary procrastinator avoids doing the most pressing or important task by using up his or her time doing a variety of menial tasks. But a structured procrastinator recognizes this “flaw” and makes it work for them by randomly knocking off other worthwhile tasks - ones that fall farther down that often unwritten list of things to do.

“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,” writes Perry on his Web site, structuredprocrastination.com.

I suspect I’ve long known that if I need to get my house in company’s-coming condition, the best way to guarantee the cleaning gets done is by getting up early to write. Heaven knows I can’t be creative if there are dishes in the sink and crumbs on the counter. I love to write, but even more I love to procrastinate about writing.

If I need to get a pile of pictures put in an album, I should set about organizing the closet the pictures are in. The closet will remain a disaster, but the pictures will get organized - or a load of stuff will get taken to Goodwill or I’ll fix a loose hem or read through the many magazine articles I’ve torn out and saved. Even though the end result might be far from what I intended, something productive - and needed - will be done.

I’ve occasionally thought I was cutting myself a break when I’d whittle my weekend to-do list down to one or two minor tasks. Inevitably, though, the weekend would pass with that short list untouched, and I’d be left feeling thoroughly disgusted with myself.

Professor Perry warns that procrastinators shouldn’t try to minimize their commitments under the assumption that if they have only a few things to do, they’ll quit procrastinating and get it done. “This goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation. The few tasks on his list will become, by definition, the most important, and the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing.”

Although my husband wasn’t familiar with the term, he now recognizes himself as a structured procrastinator, admitting that the two novels he’s written were completed entirely through his avoidance of more strenuous chores. He says at some point, when he realized how productive those repugnant responsibilities helped him to be, he made a conscious decision to leave them unfinished.

For structured procrastination to work, self-deception is required, “since one is, in effect, constantly perpetrating a pyramid scheme on oneself,” wrote Perry. “Fortunately, this is not often a problem, as deceiving oneself apparently comes naturally to procrastinators.”

I’d tend to agree. Self-deception is a “skill” at which I’m quite adept.

Carrot cake is a vegetable. Cherry pie is a fruit.

And sticking to a diet is at the top of my list.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.