> Sympathetic Procrastination Rotor: a technique for Time and Task Management.

> To aid in the fight against procrastination, arrange all of your tasks in a cycle, such that the natural opportunity for procrastination is always another task on the roadmap. In this essay I will

https://x.com/jmclulow/status/1390544792946237442

This is also true from my observations but what this writing misses is another much more crucial aspect: People with severe, general procrastination problems have a high chance of having (usually undiagnosed) AD(H)D. This is a neurobiological disorder (more precisely, a spectrum), not something you can trick away by reading self-help books/writings. There is effective medication available for those patients.

Worst periods for me were when I had one clear, important goal, not particularly hard but hairy, and nothing else to do, sometimes because I myself cleared it up. I could spend months doing nothing useful, and end up very, very tired and burnt up.

I also several times had a conversation with managers, whom I told that I'd rather work on something very urgent, or otherwise give me something NOT (really) urgent and a big murky area of things to clear out which no one else knows how to deal with. That something won't probably be done, but that area will be improved a lot in creative ways. Typical managers' responses have been trying to micromanage my time up to personal hourly schedules, morning and evening personal reports, and scold me if I did anything out of the order of the list of priorities they imposed on me. Exactly the opposite of what's needed for me to be productive. And of course "let's just try that, and I'm not asking."

Next time I'll see such a response, I probably will quit on the spot; this is unbelievably cruel.

But it looks like the secret of the author is: just work in academia.

This is the reason this method has never really clicked for me, despite coming across the concept in various procrastination blogs. It's the more important tasks that need doing the most, and this method aims to avoid doing those in favour of less important tasks. Yes, the article acknowledges this:

> At this point you may be asking, "How about the important tasks at the top of the list, that one never does?" Admittedly, there is a potential problem here.

But the offered solution is to put fake important tasks to the top of the list: tasks which have deadlines and appear to be important but really aren't. I don't think the human brain is stupid enough to trick itself in this way. If I put a fake task at the top of my list, I'm going to know its fake (because I deliberately put it there for the reason that it's fake!), and it's going to be the actual important tasks which get neglected instead of the fake one.

This is wonderful framing. I love it

Rather, every day whenever other more important chores or duties loomed, I'd notice one of my guitars laying around, in my couch or my bed or leaning next to my desk. And most times, I'd give in. There's always a new skill, technique, lick, or song that I'm working on, or something I've recently mastered that gives me joy to play.

If anything I think discipline would have hurt my guitar skills over the years.

But, at the same time I have been procrastinating on getting myself diagnosed. Oh, well.

Now, after many years of applying stuff like this successfully for a couple months only to immediately regress at the first sign of life disruption, after an ADHD diagnosis & a bunch of therapy, this all seems like a fairly immature avoidant coping strategy in retrospect. I'm now fairly productive & don't procrastinate much (relatively speaking) and tbh I wish I'd read less of this crap in the past: I might've gotten help earlier.