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Good and Bad Procrastination

December 2005 2005 年 12 月

The most impressive people I know are all terrible procrastinators. So could it be that procrastination isn't always bad?
我認識的最令人印象深刻的人都是糟糕的拖延症患者。那麼,拖延真的不一定是壞事嗎?


Most people who write about procrastination write about how to cure it. But this is, strictly speaking, impossible. There are an infinite number of things you could be doing. No matter what you work on, you're not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well.
大多數寫關於拖延的人都是在寫如何治癒它。但嚴格來說,這是不可能的。你可以做的事情有無限多。無論你在做什麼,你都沒有在做其他所有事情。所以問題不是如何避免拖延,而是如何有效地拖延。


There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I'd argue, is good procrastination.
有三種拖延的變體,取決於你在不工作時做什麼:你可以不做任何事情、做一些不太重要的事情,或者做一些更重要的事情。我會說,最後一種類型是良好的拖延。


That's the "absent-minded professor," who forgets to shave, or eat, or even perhaps look where he's going while he's thinking about some interesting question. His mind is absent from the everyday world because it's hard at work in another.
那就是那位「心不在焉的教授」,他會忘記刮鬍子、吃飯,甚至可能在想著一些有趣問題時不注意走路。他的思緒離開了日常世界,因為他的頭腦正忙於另一個世界。


That's the sense in which the most impressive people I know are all procrastinators. They're type-C procrastinators: they put off working on small stuff to work on big stuff.
這就是我認識的最令人印象深刻的人的特點。他們都是拖延症患者,屬於 C 型拖延症患者:他們延遲處理小事情,以處理重要的事情。


What's "small stuff?" Roughly, work that has zero chance of being mentioned in your obituary. It's hard to say at the time what will turn out to be your best work (will it be your magnum opus on Sumerian temple architecture, or the detective thriller you wrote under a pseudonym?), but there's a whole class of tasks you can safely rule out: shaving, doing your laundry, cleaning the house, writing thank-you notes—anything that might be called an errand.
什麼是 "小事"? 大致上,指那些在你的訃聞中絕對不會被提及的工作。很難在當下說出哪些工作最終會成為你的傑作(是你關於蘇美爾神殿建築的巨著,還是你用筆名寫的偵探驚悚小說?),但有一整類任務你可以安全地排除在外:刮鬍子、洗衣服、打掃房子、寫感謝卡 — 任何可能被稱為差事的事情。


Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work.
良好的拖延是避免跑腿,而是做真正的工作。


Good in a sense, at least. The people who want you to do the errands won't think it's good. But you probably have to annoy them if you want to get anything done. The mildest seeming people, if they want to do real work, all have a certain degree of ruthlessness when it comes to avoiding errands.
從某種意義上說,至少是好的。想讓你跑腿的人不會認為這是好事。但如果你想完成任何事情,可能就必須讓他們感到煩惱。即使是看似最溫和的人,如果想要做真正的工作,對於避免跑腿都會有一定程度的無情。


Some errands, like replying to letters, go away if you ignore them (perhaps taking friends with them). Others, like mowing the lawn, or filing tax returns, only get worse if you put them off. In principle it shouldn't work to put off the second kind of errand. You're going to have to do whatever it is eventually. Why not (as past-due notices are always saying) do it now?
有些差事,像是回覆信件,如果你不理會它們的話,它們就會消失(或許還會帶走一些朋友)。另一些,像是除草或是申報稅款,如果你拖延它們,情況只會變得更糟。原則上,拖延第二種類型的差事是行不通的。你最終還是得處理它們。為什麼不(就像逾期通知總是說的那樣)現在就做呢?


The reason it pays to put off even those errands is that real work needs two things errands don't: big chunks of time, and the right mood. If you get inspired by some project, it can be a net win to blow off everything you were supposed to do for the next few days to work on it. Yes, those errands may cost you more time when you finally get around to them. But if you get a lot done during those few days, you will be net more productive.
拖延甚至連那些雜事都值得的原因是真正的工作需要兩樣雜事所不具備的東西:大塊的時間和正確的心情。如果你被某個項目激發靈感,放棄接下來幾天應該做的一切來投入工作可能是一個正收益。是的,當你最終開始處理這些雜事時,這些雜事可能會花更多時間。但如果在這幾天內完成了很多事情,你將會更有效率。


In fact, it may not be a difference in degree, but a difference in kind. There may be types of work that can only be done in long, uninterrupted stretches, when inspiration hits, rather than dutifully in scheduled little slices. Empirically it seems to be so. When I think of the people I know who've done great things, I don't imagine them dutifully crossing items off to-do lists. I imagine them sneaking off to work on some new idea.
事實上,這可能不是程度上的差異,而是種類上的差異。也許有些工作只能在長時間、不間斷的時刻完成,當靈感來臨時,而不是按部就班地分段進行。從經驗來看,似乎是這樣。當我想到那些做出偉大成就的人時,我不會想像他們按照待辦事項清單執行任務。我會想像他們偷偷溜走去工作某個新點子。


Conversely, forcing someone to perform errands synchronously is bound to limit their productivity. The cost of an interruption is not just the time it takes, but that it breaks the time on either side in half. You probably only have to interrupt someone a couple times a day before they're unable to work on hard problems at all.
相反地,強迫某人同步執行雜事必定會限制他們的生產力。中斷的成本不僅僅是花費的時間,還有它將時間分成兩半。在他們完全無法處理困難問題之前,你可能每天只需要打擾某人幾次。


I've wondered a lot about why startups are most productive at the very beginning, when they're just a couple guys in an apartment. The main reason may be that there's no one to interrupt them yet. In theory it's good when the founders finally get enough money to hire people to do some of the work for them. But it may be better to be overworked than interrupted. Once you dilute a startup with ordinary office workers—with type-B procrastinators—the whole company starts to resonate at their frequency. They're interrupt-driven, and soon you are too.
我一直很好奇為什麼初創公司在剛開始時最具生產力,當時只有幾個人在公寓裡。主要原因可能是還沒有人來打擾他們。從理論上講,當創始人最終有足夠的資金來雇用人來幫他們做一些工作時,這是好事。但被打斷可能比被過度工作更好。一旦你用普通辦公室工作人員──B 型拖延症患者──來稀釋一個初創公司,整個公司就開始以他們的頻率共鳴。他們是被打斷驅動的,很快你也會變得如此。


Errands are so effective at killing great projects that a lot of people use them for that purpose. Someone who has decided to write a novel, for example, will suddenly find that the house needs cleaning. People who fail to write novels don't do it by sitting in front of a blank page for days without writing anything. They do it by feeding the cat, going out to buy something they need for their apartment, meeting a friend for coffee, checking email. "I don't have time to work," they say. And they don't; they've made sure of that.
跑腿對於扼殺偉大計劃非常有效,許多人都利用它來達到這個目的。舉例來說,一個決定寫小說的人會突然發現家裡需要打掃。沒有寫小說的人不是坐在空白頁面前幾天什麼都不寫來做到的。他們是通過餵貓、出去買公寓需要的東西、和朋友喝咖啡、查看郵件來做到的。「我沒有時間工作」他們說。事實上,他們確實沒有時間工作,他們確保了這一點。


(There's also a variant where one has no place to work. The cure is to visit the places where famous people worked, and see how unsuitable they were.)
(還有一種變體,即一個人沒有工作的地方。治療方法是參觀名人工作過的地方,看看它們是多麼不適合。)


I've used both these excuses at one time or another. I've learned a lot of tricks for making myself work over the last 20 years, but even now I don't win consistently. Some days I get real work done. Other days are eaten up by errands. And I know it's usually my fault: I let errands eat up the day, to avoid facing some hard problem.
我曾經或多或少地使用過這兩個藉口。在過去的 20 年裡,我學到了很多讓自己工作的訣竅,但即使現在,我也沒有持續贏下來。有些日子我能完成真正的工作,而有些日子則被琐事耗盡。我知道這通常是我的錯:我讓琐事佔據了一整天的時間,以避免面對一些困難的問題。


The most dangerous form of procrastination is unacknowledged type-B procrastination, because it doesn't feel like procrastination. You're "getting things done." Just the wrong things.
拖延中最危險的形式是未被承認的 B 型拖延,因為它不會感覺像是在拖延。你正在「做事情」,只是做了錯誤的事情。


Any advice about procrastination that concentrates on crossing things off your to-do list is not only incomplete, but positively misleading, if it doesn't consider the possibility that the to-do list is itself a form of type-B procrastination. In fact, possibility is too weak a word. Nearly everyone's is. Unless you're working on the biggest things you could be working on, you're type-B procrastinating, no matter how much you're getting done.
任何關於拖延的建議,如果專注於刪除待辦事項清單上的事項,不僅是不完整的,而且如果不考慮待辦事項清單本身就是 B 型拖延的可能性,那麼這些建議實際上是誤導的。事實上,「可能性」這個詞太過於弱了。幾乎每個人都是如此。除非你正在處理可能處理的最重要的事情,否則你正在進行 B 型拖延,無論你完成了多少事情。


In his famous essay You and Your Research (which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter what they're working on), Richard Hamming suggests that you ask yourself three questions:
在他著名的文章《你和你的研究》(我建議任何有野心的人都應該閱讀,無論他們在做什麼),Richard Hamming 建議你問自己三個問題:
  1. What are the most important problems in your field?
    在您的領域中,最重要的問題是什麼?


  2. Are you working on one of them?
    你是在處理其中一個嗎?


  3. Why not?  為什麼不呢?
Hamming was at Bell Labs when he started asking such questions. In principle anyone there ought to have been able to work on the most important problems in their field. Perhaps not everyone can make an equally dramatic mark on the world; I don't know; but whatever your capacities, there are projects that stretch them. So Hamming's exercise can be generalized to:
Hamming 在貝爾實驗室時開始提出這樣的問題。原則上,那裡的任何人都應該能夠解決他們領域中最重要的問題。也許不是每個人都能對世界產生同樣戲劇性的影響;我不知道;但無論你的能力如何,都有一些能夠挑戰它們的項目。因此,Hamming 的練習可以概括為:
What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?
你最應該致力於的事情是什麼,為什麼你還沒開始呢?
Most people will shy away from this question. I shy away from it myself; I see it there on the page and quickly move on to the next sentence. Hamming used to go around actually asking people this, and it didn't make him popular. But it's a question anyone ambitious should face.
大多數人都會避開這個問題。我自己也會避開它;我看到它在頁面上,然後迅速移到下一句。Hamming 過去經常會實際向人們詢問這個問題,這並沒有讓他受歡迎。但任何有野心的人都應該面對這個問題。


The trouble is, you may end up hooking a very big fish with this bait. To do good work, you need to do more than find good projects. Once you've found them, you have to get yourself to work on them, and that can be hard. The bigger the problem, the harder it is to get yourself to work on it.
問題在於,你可能會用這個誘餌釣到一條很大的魚。要做好工作,你需要做的不僅僅是找到好的項目。一旦找到它們,你必須讓自己投入工作,這可能很困難。問題越大,讓自己投入工作就越困難。


Of course, the main reason people find it difficult to work on a particular problem is that they don't enjoy it. When you're young, especially, you often find yourself working on stuff you don't really like-- because it seems impressive, for example, or because you've been assigned to work on it. Most grad students are stuck working on big problems they don't really like, and grad school is thus synonymous with procrastination.
當然,人們覺得很難處理特定問題的主要原因是他們不喜歡它。特別是在年輕時,你常常發現自己在做一些自己不太喜歡的事情 —— 例如,因為這似乎很令人印象深刻,或者因為你被指派要處理這個問題。大多數研究生被困在自己不太喜歡的大問題上,因此研究生院通常與拖延行為同義。


But even when you like what you're working on, it's easier to get yourself to work on small problems than big ones. Why? Why is it so hard to work on big problems? One reason is that you may not get any reward in the forseeable future. If you work on something you can finish in a day or two, you can expect to have a nice feeling of accomplishment fairly soon. If the reward is indefinitely far in the future, it seems less real.
但即使你喜歡自己正在從事的工作,也比較容易讓自己去處理小問題而不是大問題。為什麼呢?為什麼處理大問題這麼困難?其中一個原因是你可能在可預見的未來得不到任何回報。如果你處理一些可以在一兩天內完成的事情,你可以期待很快就會有一種成就感。如果回報在遙遠的未來,它似乎變得不太真實。


Another reason people don't work on big projects is, ironically, fear of wasting time. What if they fail? Then all the time they spent on it will be wasted. (In fact it probably won't be, because work on hard projects almost always leads somewhere.)
人們不願意從事大型項目的另一個原因,諷刺的是,他們害怕浪費時間。如果失敗了怎麼辦?那麼他們花在項目上的所有時間都將被浪費。(實際上,這可能不會發生,因為從事困難項目的工作幾乎總是會有所收穫。)


But the trouble with big problems can't be just that they promise no immediate reward and might cause you to waste a lot of time. If that were all, they'd be no worse than going to visit your in-laws. There's more to it than that. Big problems are terrifying. There's an almost physical pain in facing them. It's like having a vacuum cleaner hooked up to your imagination. All your initial ideas get sucked out immediately, and you don't have any more, and yet the vacuum cleaner is still sucking.
但是大問題的問題不僅僅在於它們並不立即獲得回報,可能會讓你浪費很多時間。如果僅僅如此,它們就不會比去拜訪岳父母更糟糕。事情並不僅僅如此。大問題是令人恐懼的。面對它們幾乎是一種身體上的痛苦。就像將吸塵器連接到你的想像力上一樣。你所有最初的想法立即被吸走,你再也沒有了,但吸塵器仍在吸。


You can't look a big problem too directly in the eye. You have to approach it somewhat obliquely. But you have to adjust the angle just right: you have to be facing the big problem directly enough that you catch some of the excitement radiating from it, but not so much that it paralyzes you. You can tighten the angle once you get going, just as a sailboat can sail closer to the wind once it gets underway.
你不能直視一個大問題。你必須以略微偏斜的角度來處理它。但你必須調整角度得當:你必須直接面對這個大問題,以便感受到它散發出的一些興奮,但不要讓它使你癱瘓。一旦開始行動,你可以收緊角度,就像一艘帆船在啟航後可以更靠近風航行一樣。


If you want to work on big things, you seem to have to trick yourself into doing it. You have to work on small things that could grow into big things, or work on successively larger things, or split the moral load with collaborators. It's not a sign of weakness to depend on such tricks. The very best work has been done this way.
如果你想做大事,似乎必須欺騙自己去做。你必須從小事做起,這些小事可能會成長為大事,或者逐漸從事更大的事情,或者與合作者分享道德負擔。依賴這些技巧並不表示軟弱。最好的工作就是這樣完成的。


When I talk to people who've managed to make themselves work on big things, I find that all blow off errands, and all feel guilty about it. I don't think they should feel guilty. There's more to do than anyone could. So someone doing the best work they can is inevitably going to leave a lot of errands undone. It seems a mistake to feel bad about that.
當我與成功讓自己投入重大事務的人交談時,我發現他們都會拋棄雜事,並對此感到內疚。我認為他們不應該感到內疚。要做的事情比任何人都多。因此,盡力做好工作的人必然會有許多雜事未完成。為此感到難過似乎是一個錯誤。


I think the way to "solve" the problem of procrastination is to let delight pull you instead of making a to-do list push you. Work on an ambitious project you really enjoy, and sail as close to the wind as you can, and you'll leave the right things undone.
我認為解決拖延問題的方法是讓喜悅引導你,而不是讓待辦事項清單推動你。致力於一個你真正喜歡的雄心勃勃的項目,盡可能接近極限,你會留下正確的事情未完成。






Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Robert Morris for reading drafts of this.
感謝 Trevor Blackwell、Jessica Livingston 和 Robert Morris 審閱本文稿。



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