Structured procrastination

Martha Nussbaum in her interview with Nigel Warburton talks about the value of humanities and how the humanities are under pressure in the contemporary world. In western education, she states, humanity is under pressure, since it is building on short term profit. The skills that we want are the skills that make short term profits in business and industries. Students don’t learn skills like critical thinking, understanding history, our relation with other cultures and imagination.

This triggers me to think about projects I participate. I see technical debt or ideas about different approaches and improvements tends to get lower on the backlog under time pressure, which is lots of time a reality. Maybe understandable but not always really healthy I would say. Sometimes I have the urge to learn something that might not directly fit the top priority of the backlog. In testing it may happen that I miss the opportunity for critical thinking, de-focussing big time, the feeling still wanting to continue a test mission however there is no time left or not a lot new information that will change a decission from stakeholders is to be expected and so forth. This gives a kind of a twisted feeling. You want to perform and there are expectations of performance but also you try to produce at the same time.

How can procrastination and even better structured procrastionation help. Within testing but also in general I interpret procrastination as basically about doing what is not the most important thing (for yourself or at least not for somebody else, who is in charge of the prioritzing). Structured procrastination, to me, is how to turn this to be effective for yourself. James Bach in his book “Secrets of a buccaneer-scholar” talks about “disposable time”.  Quote: “But without disposable time, I will be too conservative about what I learn. I will surpress my curiosity”. If I interpret what James Bach writes correctly this is structured procrastination. To really take a next step in learning you need some time to actually procrastinate. I am not easily being satisfied with work that has been done, since there is always room for improvement and learn more to become better at what I do. 

An idea that help me do it;  To procrastinate you need a list with prioritized tasks. With only one task on the list you cannot procrastinate. Without doing that one task you might end up sitting on the couch drinking beer, eating chips and watching television without a clue what’s going on or that there is a world around you. You might even get depressed. That list can be fairly long, because there are so much things you can do and learn about. The list can ofcourse also consists some vague ideas and change over time. Also reflect on the value of the task and the impact on the top priority task,. My experience is that there is actual a lot more added value than expected.

The added value(s) and happiness by doing those tasks can been seen as a product of the pursuit of my goals.  I defintely agree with the quote “I am not wasting time I am a structured procrastinator”.