Procrastinating productively
Reading Analogpixel's very sensible How to Procrastinate reminded me of John Perry's Structured Procrastination, very much the opposite, a work of genius and comedy.
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.
A lot of writers will recognise this phenomenon of being under a deadline yet having sparkling clean houses. In fact, that might be the best way to achieve a sparkling clean house.
Many of my most productive days have been spent avoiding something else. I've climbed onto the roof and cleaned the windows to avoid reorganising the stationery cupboard and I've reorganised the stationery cupboard to avoid having to phone the garage to book an MOT.
The efficiency-optimised people with their focussed-work three-priority to do lists can keep them. I like a sprawling smorgasbord to choose from.
The system works for me because as Perry outlines in the article, I am a procrastinator with high self-deception. I'm also stubborn and contrary and a surefire way to make sure I never do something is to tell me to do it. Especially if I was just about to do it. I'm comically easy to perpetrate reverse psychology on.
Another good approach is the slippery slope, or dominoes. True example: I needed to tidy the spare room because my mother-in-law was coming to stay. Naturally, I didn't want to. In the spare room are some largely neglected houseplants. They needed sorting out really. Probably repotting. As did several others in the house. Which I'd been avoiding, obviously. So before I could start hoovering that room, several plants needed attending to. However, all the houseplant soil and bits are in the shed and the shed was also a horrible mess. So before I repotted any plants I needed to tidy the shed.
There's an added comedy value in being able to reply to my wife asking "What are you doing?" (I suspect she really meant, "Why are you doing this?") with "Hoovering the spare room" when one is very clearly emptying the contents of the shed onto the lawn.
The slippery slope can go much further than this - imagine if in tidying the shed I had found the replacement greenhouse pane and decided that fixing the broken greenhouse glass was much more of a tempting prospect than tidying the shed? But before I put in a new pane I should probably wash the others.
In this case I stopped at a tidy shed - I even put up the hooks I'd bought. And repotted the plants. In a way that's even better - that's two jobs, rather than just one. In the end of course the spare room did get cleaned. The threat of the mother-in-law is too powerful.
As well as looking productive, if you turn it outwards it also makes you look very helpful. I've weeded my sister's patio despite my own being in dire need.
So there we go. If you can't beat procrastination, join it. Make it work for you.