Procrastination, or I see you later
Procrastination, or I see you later
Just the idea of getting my butt of this chair and start doing what I am supposed to do is deterrent enough so as not to get into any of that.
So, of course I went to 43folders, to see if Merlin had some magic regarding that: not so much about doing things, because that is easy: Dealing with procrastionatin’. And lo and behold, he wrote something about that:
For a writing assignment, initially capture 5-10 bullets that you want to make sure to cover, and then add to the list periodically as things occur to you. Who knows what your brain could do with an extra four weeks of active percolation time?
The same malady that affects Deane when coding has also afflicted a lot of people, Feynman included: check his book, Surely you are joking, Mr. Feynman. To the point: we have to let concepts mature, and discard the facile and impracticable ideas that pop up on learning about a problem: Thus, the need for space and time. At the same time, we need to have the ability to focus on our solution landscape, if we are ever to try to effectively solve any problems that we face.
I do not like the idea of waiting, although I can see the sense in it: I jump on activities like a crazy madman, without thinking or waiting; I demand instant gratification, instantaneous response, attend to me right now! But the procrastinating behavior helps in this: if you just postpone a costly alternative, there might be an alternate solution that appears later on - So, obviously, there is an advantage to not doing right now. Besides, that imposed wait also helps prioritization: you have to deal with the most important stuff first, you know, fighting tigers and hunting oranges, before you engage in the more abstruse and complex problems - while we hope that they are being addressed in the back of our brains.
And here is the typical example: otherwise this wouldn’t be a blog, and they would kick me out of the club: when dealing with some market data, I was confronted with the need to come with some relevant numbers, any numbers! So, naturally, after dealing with multidimension graphs, covariances and the like, I came up with some Bayesian alternative to explore the landscape, and it seemed great! However, the cost of implementing that particular analysis is higher than the reward I can get from just checking averages, so there: complex alternative evaluated, problem solved, cost-benefit analysis performed, decision reached. I might implement the Bayesian, just to see what happens, but for now I am cool with what I have got.
Meanwhile, and going back to the procrastination issue, I have to write my grad school admission essay. So, see you later.
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