Good and Bad Procrastination

I'll admit it: I'm a procrastinator. I can try to describe to you how many stupid, little arguments I've gotten into over my procrastination, but we'll save that for later. The point is that I've been a procrastinator for as long as I can remember, and I'll likely continue to be one far into the future. I've accepted who I am, and I'm comfortable with it.

Except that I've always, ALWAYS been told that it's an exceedingly bad thing to do, and that I'm lazy, or worse yet, divisive. And then I read this essay by Paul Graham, and suddenly, I feel like 10,000 pounds of internalized shame has been lifted from my shoulders. Finally, someone understands exactly why I procrastinate, and better yet, has explained it to me! And I'm now proud to say that I'm a "Type-C Procrastinator." You should definitely read the full essay, but here's the meat of it:

There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I'd argue, is good procrastination.

That's the "absent-minded professor," who forgets to shave, or eat, or even perhaps look where he's going while he's thinking about some interesting question. His mind is absent from the everyday world because it's hard at work in another.

That's the sense in which the most impressive people I know are all procrastinators. They're type-C procrastinators: they put off working on small stuff to work on big stuff.

What's "small stuff?" Roughly, work that has zero chance of being mentioned in your obituary. It's hard to say at the time what will turn out to be your best work (will it be your magnum opus on Sumerian temple architecture, or the detective thriller you wrote under a pseudonym?), but there's a whole class of tasks you can safely rule out: shaving, doing your laundry, cleaning the house, writing thank-you notes—anything that might be called an errand.

Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work.

So, thank you Paul Graham for showing me that procrastination doesn't have to be bad; in fact, it can be the stuff of legend. That just because I don't want to attend to an errand or chore immediately - or when you want me to - doesn't mean that I don't want to do it. It's just that I just have bigger, better, REAL things on my mind, and the small stuff can definitely wait until later.

Click here to read Paul Graham's essay on Procrastination