How to Procrastinate Productively
<i>[...] what procrastination looks like for most people:<p>- Think about working.<p>- Immediately feel the urge to procrastinate.<p>- Start beating themselves up with a bunch of negative self-talk for wanting to procrastinate (I’m such a procrastinator, why can’t you just stay focused?)<p>- Feel badly, including a bunch of negative emotions like shame and disappointment, on top of the already-strong urge to procrastinate.<p>- Procrastinate on something emotionally numbing.</i><p>Is that really how it works for most people? I (and I always assumed that's how it is for most people) often just rationalize procrastination ("My tasks are not that important/interesting, I'll do them later", "Reading just one more article is fine, then back to work") without any negative thoughts at that time. Sometimes I do some research and suddenly realize I ended up on StackOverflow or HN and think "wait a minute, that's not work any more". But that's ok if I get all work done.<p>I think that is the usual way of procrastination. What the article claims how most people procrastinate (negative thoughts, getting no work done) sounds like more extreme but rarer cases.