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