
This is not a book for Bill Gates. Or Hillary Clinton, or Steven
Spielberg. Clearly they have no trouble getting stuff done. For the
great majority of us, though, what a comfort to discover that we're not
wastrels and slackers, but doers . . . in our own way. It may sound
counterintuitive, but according to philosopher John Perry, you can
accomplish a lot by putting things off. He calls it "structured
procrastination." "In 1995, while not working on some project I should
have been working on, I began to feel rotten about myself. But then I
noticed something. On the whole, I had a reputation as a person who got a
lot done and made a reasonable contribution. . . . A paradox. Rather
than getting to work on my important projects, I began to think about
this conundrum. I realized that I was what I call a structured
procrastinator: a person who gets a lot done by not doing other
things. "Celebrating a nearly universal character flaw,
The Art of
Procrastination is a wise, charming, compulsively readable
book--really, a tongue-in-cheek argument of ideas. Perry offers
ingenious strategies, like the defensive to-do list ("1. Learn Chinese .
. .") and task triage. He discusses the double-edged relationship
between the computer and procrastination--on the one hand, it allows the
procrastinator to fire off a letter or paper at the last possible
minute; on the other, it's a dangerous time suck (Perry counters this by
never surfing until he's already hungry for lunch). Or what may be
procrastination's greatest gift: the chance to accomplish surprising,
wonderful things by not sticking to a rigid schedule. For example, Perry
wrote this book by avoiding the work he was supposed to be
doing--grading papers and evaluating dissertation ideas. How lucky for
us.