Structural Procrastination An Effective Way to Procrastinate

[Applause]

so

when the organizers of this tedx event

first reached out to me and asked me

hey george do you want to do a tedx

event i almost immediately said yes i

mean

come on a tedx talk how cool does that

sound

but also immediately i realized a

problem

you see as a regular high school student

who just

didn’t cure cancer nor find a solution

to climate change

i didn’t know what i could talk about i

i mean granted i do have many interests

and hobbies but

i don’t think i’m good enough to talk

about them and give you

insights so i was kind of hopeless

and just as i was about to postpone on

making that decision

it struck me i am indeed good and

proficient

sometimes too proficient at something

and that’s something

is procrastination and anyone who knows

me well

will know and they will not doubt even

the slightest bit on my expertise

towards this field

in fact the script of this very talk was

completed

about two hours ago and i started

working on it on the subway

coming to coming here so

put that aside uh there is a more

serious and arguably more important

reason

as to why i eventually chose

procrastination as my topic

and that is i think there is an

overwhelmingly

negative sentiment towards

procrastination in fact

i mean you there’s a lot of chinese

audience here you’ll know that

the chinese translation for

procrastination contains the very word

for disease and recently a variation of

it

which substitutes disease for cancer has

also been gaining wide usage

on chinese social media

in addition to that you have countless

books

courses articles and other resources

that aims at

curing procrastination and they say

they explain in length how bad

procrastination is to you

and they try to teach you myriads of

methods and ways and tricks

to help you get out of it and yeah so

over time it is completely

understandable that one becomes

worried if not frightened by the notion

of procrastination

and once they start to see signs of

procrastination exhibiting in themselves

they start actively trying to avoid and

getting rid of it

um but that doesn’t usually work out i

mean

show me uh by a show of hands how many

you

think you are yourself a procrastinator

exactly so you know how hard it is to

overcome procrastination

so when this doesn’t work out you

usually fall into

self-doubt and misery why am i so bad

why am i failing at everything in my

life

and that in turn actually leads to more

procrastination

right so this is a vicious cycle of

course and we don’t want that to happen

um

sorry and that is a vicious cycle of

course and we don’t want that to happen

um but basically what i’m trying to say

is that

i wish that we can evaluate

procrastination more carefully

and with more nuance but there is a

disclaimer that i want to make

first which is that i’m not trying to

advocate procrastination here to any of

you

i’m not trying to say procrastination is

such a good thing that we should all

have it

procrastination has brought me

tremendous pressure over the years

that could have been easily avoidable

should i have not procrastinated

i mean the same goes for you as well

definitely

and um also uh procrastination is

definitely not good for anyone’s health

both physical health from pulling

one-nighters all-nighters

and mental health from just dealing with

multiple approaching last-minute

deadlines i understand

and frankly i i really want to be

someone who just

doesn’t procrastinate who just doesn’t

have to worry about how many minutes

are left before the next deadline

approaches and

someone who just in general lives an

organized and happy life

and from my personal experience i know

people like this do exist

they’re not an alien creature that’s

living in uh

planet earth so no

i’m not trying to say that

procrastination is good what i’m trying

to say

is simply for those procrastinators out

there i wish

that when you fin when you finish

listening to this talk you can walk away

and maybe just maybe view your

procrastinating habits

a little differently so with that let’s

get started

before my junior year of high school i

sort of had this very interesting

work habit um because the workload was

generally manageable and you know i

don’t have to stay

stay really late to finish all my

homework it allowed my habit

of procrastination to cultivate

so every night during study hall i would

sit down in front of my desk

i would start to recall okay what

homework do i have

that i need to complete for tonight and

usually it’s the ones that are due the

very next day

yet not for long i would discover

a really cool project that someone’s

working on on the internet or i would

think of this very interesting idea or i

would just

discover something that is totally

irrelevant to my homework

but then i will start working on that

and quickly my attention will be drawn

away from my homework

and i would start doing whatever it is

maybe it’s a

design tutorial maybe it’s a spacecraft

how to create a spacecraft tutorial but

whatever it is

it’s not related to my homework so

but that worked out fine i mean the

workload was manageable so

yes if you’re wondering i did finish my

workload i did finish

i did finish my schoolwork uh you know

right before their deadline of course

um and yes if you’re wondering i

probably should have spent more time

you know perfecting those uh just

looking over those checking over details

but you see i’m a procrastinator

and if i had done that i would not be

standing here talking to you today

and most importantly the fantasies of

submitting a perfect work always

collapses

right before the deadline approaches

but that changed and that changed when

i entered my junior year of high school

and started

the ib diploma program which i’m sure

you have heard of

now it is a notoriously hard

and highly demanding and highly

time-consuming

program so i told myself because of that

i told myself

george you cannot procrastinate further

you have to start organizing the

timetable daily timetables

uh just to to be able to survive through

this program

and so i did that i adopted a new

strategy

which contained two steps first of all

um

i would actually eliminate and minimize

my to-do list to only

the ones that i need to do so basically

homework

right i was i would strip away those

unimportant

and distracting tasks like uh i don’t

know building a trash bin that can

automatically categorize a uh uh trash

garbages um so i eliminated those and

then the second step was that i

i forced myself to not work on any side

projects

before i can i am able to actually

finish uh all my schoolwork

so those are the two steps in my strat

my strategy and over time

it did work out somewhat um

i say somewhat because i did uh

i i i i have became accustomed to

completing everything uh that that the

school

requires me to do before actually going

on to side projects

but quickly i also discovered that i

didn’t like this strategy

why well you see the problem was

the problem was first of all that

i realized my efficiency didn’t increase

simply because i prioritized my

schoolwork and eliminated

those distracting tasks the second

reason was because i actually find

myself

less efficient and actually completing

less things because i adopted the

strategy

and it makes sense because from the

increased workload and also the decrease

in efficiency

you would expect that i will have

completed less of the extracurricular

activities and side projects

that i used to work on right so it did

make sense

but why was it like this i mean this

strategy sounds like

it would make it will work right it

sounds it sounds very sensible

so why well

one thing uh as i was browsing through

the vastness of the internet

a book title called my eye it’s called

the art of procrastination

an effective a a guide to effective

dawdling

lollygagging and postponing now

upon reading it and yes despite being a

procrastination

procrastinator i do read books uh rarely

of course

but upon reading it i discovered that

it’s not another one of those books and

guides that

will make you feel bad about yourself

after reading this after finishing it

that is

if you can finish it of course um

but rather the author john perry which

is um

an emeriturist professor of philosophy

at stanford university

is actually shockingly similar to me in

the ways that he procrastinated

and let me let me explain right he

provided many different insights to how

we should view procrastination

and in particular a special kind of

procrastination

which he named structural

procrastination now what is

structural procrastination you might ask

good question

we need to first understand a simple

fact

because a lot of you are procrastination

are our procrastinators you know this

when you procrastinate you rarely rarely

do

absolutely nothing right you really just

sit there

and stare into the void like absolutely

doing nothing

usually you know you would go do

something else so imagine that everyone

has a to-do list whether it’s a mental

one

or a physical one but when we have a

to-do list

and we usually order the elements the

tasks

according to their priority right and so

it will make sense that we should

work we should start from the very top

and work downwards because the top

task is the most important and the most

urgent ones

[Music]

yet when one procrastinates this is not

what happens

when one procrastinates one turns to a

less important and less urgent

task uh as a way of actually

not doing the tasks on the top of that

to-do list

that might sound very weird i’m like i’m

going to let that sink in

but the most important thing is most a

lot of procrastinators are not

i’m not going to say all but a lot of

procrastinators they are actually

capable

of completing a more difficult a more

time

time consuming project a more um

just arduous project or a task uh

if it is an instrumental part of

avoiding

doing something more important

and that thank you and that

is called structural procrastination so

let me give you an example um say that i

have

an option to either work on a homework

or work on a website that i’m developing

i will almost

certainly work on the latter because

of course the homework is much more

important and the website is

of course more fun but if say that i

finished the homework right and now

that all all that i’m left is the

website and all that i can do is the

website

well now it’s actually very very

difficult

to tell me to get started working on the

website

because now it has become the most

important task

on my to-do list so that

is structural procrastination at its

peak

and what structural procrastinators do

whether intentional or not

is that they arrange the structure of

their tasks

to be able to actually do useful and

worthwhile things

despite their procrastination which is a

very interesting thing right

um so they might not be the most

effective person to get things done

to get homework done but still

structural procrastinators are able to

get a lot of things done

and even give others the illusion that

they are very productive

and that they can get a lot of things

done which which is which did happen to

me

right um yeah

so after having read that book i looked

back

i looked back at my junior yourself and

i realized

that the strategy of minimizing my to-do

list was definitely not suitable for me

in fact i had the wrong assumption that

if i have less to do

i will for sure not procrastinate and

finish doing them

right well no of course not

so having understood the psychological

mechanism

of a structural procrastinator i

realized that

this strategy was actually in contrary

to the very nature of my working habit

you see because by minimizing my to-do

list i am eliminating

the very most important source of

motivation for me

which is the less important tasks down

the list

and also i’m the remaining tasks are by

definition the most important tasks

and so what do i do with the most

important tasks i don’t do them

but i have nothing else to do so i do

nothing so i

find myself staring into the blank

staring into the void

for minutes tens of minutes or even half

an hour

and that is definitely not a good use of

time

so i’ve spoken a lot and

maybe you don’t agree with everything i

said which is fine

but i do want to end by re-emphasizing

that i’m not telling anyone

to practice to exercise your

self-deception skills

and try to persuade yourself that

procrastination is such a good virtue

that

no other mortals can possibly understand

no i’m simply trying to say that

procrastination

being simply a manifestation of your

various working habits and values that

you have

is not the worst trait you can possibly

possess

and most importantly a procrastinator

can still get a lot of done

a lot of things done and they can

accomplish a lot of things

given that you arrange the structure of

your tasks appropriately of course

and so with that thought uh i really

genuinely hope that

any of you who are self-doubting because

of procrastination can

listen to this talk and walk away

feeling just a little bit better about

themselves

a little more confident and perhaps they

can get a little more done

in the future thank you