Wait: The useful art of procrastination. 3rd Jul 2012; 13:00 Listen to the audio (full recording including audience Q&A) Please right-click link and choose "Save Link As... " to download audio file onto your computer. Watch the video (edited highlights) RSA Keynote The twenty-first century is hectic. We live our lives at break-neck speed. We make snap judgements and decisions, which often harm us more than they help. Frank Partnoy, ex Wall Street high-flying derivative trader and self-confessed procrastinator, reveals the science behind our decision-making disasters and successes at work and at home, in matters of love, on the sports pitch, and in government. The art of knowing how long you can afford to delay before committing is at the heart of many a great decision, whether in a corporate takeover or a marriage proposal.
Join Frank Partnoy at the RSA as he shows how training our brains to wait can be genuinely life-changing. Speaker: Frank Partnoy, George E. Chair: Dr Jonathan Rowson, the RSA Social Brain project. What we can learn from procrastination. Some years ago, the economist George Akerlof found himself faced with a simple task: mailing a box of clothes from India, where he was living, to the United States. The clothes belonged to his friend and colleague Joseph Stiglitz, who had left them behind when visiting, so Akerlof was eager to send the box off.
But there was a problem. The combination of Indian bureaucracy and what Akerlof called “my own ineptitude in such matters” meant that doing so was going to be a hassle—indeed, he estimated that it would take an entire workday. So he put off dealing with it, week after week. This went on for more than eight months, and it was only shortly before Akerlof himself returned home that he managed to solve his problem: another friend happened to be sending some things back to the U.S., and Akerlof was able to add Stiglitz’s clothes to the shipment. Given the vagaries of intercontinental mail, it’s possible that Akerlof made it back to the States before Stiglitz’s shirts did. Psychology Today: Procrastination: Ten Things To Know. There are many ways to avoid success in life, but the most sure-fire just might be procrastination . Procrastinators sabotage themselves. They put obstacles in their own path. They actually choose paths that hurt their performance.
Why would people do that? I talked to two of the world's leading experts on procrastination: Joseph Ferrari, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at De Paul University in Chicago, and Timothy Pychyl, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Neither one is a procrastinator, and both answered my many questions immediately. Twenty percent of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators. Joel on Software - Fire And Motion. By Joel Spolsky Sunday, January 06, 2002 Sometimes I just can't get anything done. Sure, I come into the office, putter around, check my email every ten seconds, read the web, even do a few brainless tasks like paying the American Express bill.
But getting back into the flow of writing code just doesn't happen. These bouts of unproductiveness usually last for a day or two. But there have been times in my career as a developer when I went for weeks at a time without being able to get anything done. As they say, I'm not in flow. Everybody has mood swings; for some people they are mild, for others, they can be more pronounced or even dysfunctional.
It makes me think of those researchers who say that basically people can't control what they eat, so any attempt to diet is bound to be short term and they will always yoyo back to their natural weight. But it's not the days when I "only" get two hours of work done that worry me. I've thought about this a lot. I remembered this for a long time. Structured Procrastination. Eat and Code (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog) Dear Diary: Sorry I haven’t written so long. Running a startup is hard!
That and finally having people to talk to sort of takes some of the time and desire out of writing. I’m thinking maybe instead of a full blow-by-blow account of what happened, I’ll write posts about different topics, that will recap the story so far. My first attempt follows. -ASw Life seems so incredibly overworked and overcomplicated that you pare it down to the bare essentials: eat and code. Let’s take eating. To be honest, I’ve always had a problematic relationship with food. Finally, one day at an oriental restaurant by Stanford (years before I went to school there), we had the typical discussion except this time Cory Doctorow spoke up: ‘are you sure you’re not a supertaster?’
In any event, I’m not one for the fine arts of cooking. There were some problems, though. At the same time, I was suffering from bouts of acid reflux which continued to grow in frequency and severity. And then what do I eat instead? Aaron,