Re: [emacs-wiki-discuss] Structured procrastination

[Ray Fix]

Very entertaining!  I think the main point is "just get started."  
Along these lines, I am reminded of another great article on 
procrastination by Joel Spolsky, entitled "Fire and Motion."

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html

It's an entertaining read.

Now that I have been using planner a while.  Let's see... 5 days now.  
;-) I would like to suggest a different way of using the ABC priority 
scheme.  (I am not a very big believer in the Franklin/Covey scheme and 
I am glad that planner is flexible enough to allow multiple ways of 
thinking about things.)  Here is how I define my A B and Cs.

A   =  tasks with no dependencies
B   =  something I would like to do but have to do one or more A tasks 
first  (at some point these are revised to A)
C   = a task that I might do someday maybe (backburner idea)

Notice that they have nothing to do with importance.  As John Perry's 
essay points out, importance is mostly overrated.  And if you put off 
an important task off, you just feel guilty about not doing it.

But how, you ask, do you prioritize your work?  The answer, is that I 
only schedule MUST get dones on my daily page.  Once it goes there, 
it's sacred ... it's got to get done... that day... or my world comes 
to an end. ;-)  For that reason, I usually schedule only tasks that I 
have already accomplished and check them off immediately.

Currently I use that perl script ... the one I sent out to the list a 
couple of days ago ... to every so every so often scan through all of 
the projects and tasks at hand.

One of the great advantages of planner is its loosely structured 
nature.  It seems to be just enough structure to keep me organized but 
not so much structure that all I am doing is organizing.  After all, 
when all is said and done, it is in the doing that matters.

Ray Fix

On Apr 21, 2004, at 2:24 PM, Sacha Chua wrote:

> John Perry's 1995 essay entitled "Structured Procrastination" is a
> particularly good read for the procrastinator in all of us.
> Considering the way that planner-el works, I think it's a good fit. ;)
> Check it out!
>
> The essay is available at:
> http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/procrastination.html
> --
> Sacha Chua <address@hidden> - Ateneo CS faculty geekette
> interests: emacs, gnu/linux, making computer science education fun
> http://sacha.free.net.ph/ - PGP Key ID: 0xE7FDF77C
>
>
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