There are two kinds of things that you need to do in life; the things you do to survive, and those you do to achive your goals or dreams. Reaching where you wants to in life, is not only about money or fame or career, it is obviously also about relationships and friends; these are implied, but they do exist as an integral part of any dream. It is not about survival any more; the world is way out the league of people who strive only to survive. I think people instinctively adapt, evolve and survive, you don’t really need to put in a lot of effort to do that. Surviving thus, becomes a smaller thing to be done, compared to achieving your dreams.
Procrastinating well means focussing uninterruptedly on the bigger picture, postponing the smaller things until its high time that they need to be done. So I think, simply working in order to fill your stomach is not going to get you anywhere in life. Work to fulfil your dreams; you would always survive one way or another. A good procrastinator would put off the small things that do not require his immediate attention.
Check out what paulgraham has to say about this …
Now, when it comes to making decisions, you can mostly choose to procrastinate it if you arent entirely convinced about it. Its not about making quick decisions, its about making good decisions quickly. Even if you have all the information necessary to make the decision, procrastinate it if you don’t feel too good about it. Give yourself time to listen to your instincts.
In software, we always think about higher level abstractions while thinking about a problem or a design. In other words, it is very important to be able to procrastinate thinking about how you would implement it, as doing so may endanger a radical solution.
Also, if you think a particular problem isnt worth accounting for at that point of time, procrastinate it. It is very likely someone someday would find a far simpler solution to it. One of the best examples of this is the Y2K problem. Those COBOL engineers successfully procrastinated accounting for the first two digits of the date in order to save much needed space. Later, engineers successfully overcame this problem as they now had the tools and resources to do it.
2 comments:
Hi. Procrastinating sure can be fun, even useful. Procrastination of the less important things is called prioritising. Looking at the bigger picture is again more or less, ‘prioritising’.
Fighting for survival is the inner quality in all living things. The ones who do not have to struggle for physical survival are the only ones struggling to achieve their dreams and goals. This also involves fighting for survival but of a different kind.
In the fourth paragraph, you say that one should not make decisions if you do not feel good about it but how about times when you ‘HAVE’ to make a decision? You DO NOT have a choice. What do you do then? And to top it, you may not be having all the required information. Sometimes you may not know if you have all the information.
There is another school of though explained in the book ‘blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell. I would not go into the details but if I have to explain in a few words, it says that there are a few people in every field who can make decisions in a matter of seconds. They do not need all the information. They can ‘thin slice’ the situation and come up with correct answers more often than other people. Again, I would mention here that all people cannot do this and this may not apply to all fields.
Hey. Procrastination and prioritization are quite complementary to each other, in a way that prioritization talks about focusing on the bigger picture while procrastination talks about ignoring the insignificant aspects. Actions taken are the same in both cases, the difference though is in the approach. In the former, one picks out the significant aspects and focuses on that, while in the latter, one picks out the insignificant aspects and throws them out.
How can the dream of say being the best in the world be simply a matter of survival? Whats a dream if it is just about survival? Everybody survives, somehow.
Life is all about choices, and what we make of it. Our choices, our decisions can affect so many events and so many lives. [Watch "Crash"]. I believe that one must always make a decision when one is entirely convinced of it. If you think about all of the characters in 'blink' you would notice that they were all always convinced of their decisions. The only difference was that they made these in a very (very) short amount of time.
The bigger picture in 'blink' is not about time and neither is that in 'procrastination'. It is about being convinced about your decision and taking them only and only when you are convinced of it. Why take a bad decision in perfect time?
Sometimes one requires that time to allow the subconscious self to give its inputs. Some people do that in a blink, while others may require more than that. This is just another way of saying that if you don't FEEL sure about a yes, then ask for time, and if you have to make a choice then its a no. Very simple.
As far as information goes, I believe one must only make a decision when one knows he has enough information to make one. It is subjective to the issue and isn't about all information or no information. Again, to reiterate, more often than not, the 'enough' information is simply information about the bigger picture.
And it applies to every aspect of life (and beyond).
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