From “Structured Procrastination” by John Perry, philosopher and author of The Art of Procrastination (delightfully subtitled: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing):
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.
Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.
This is the story of my life. Everything I’ve written stems from this reality. This blog started in 2009 to escape studying as a medical student. I even started writing and publishing Twitter fiction (of all things!) to further fit something creative in the cracks of my day.
For most of my life, the easiest way to get anything done was to have an overly full plate and just juggle interesting distractions with the sheer terror of missing deadlines.