Falling is inevitable, the question is...do you feel the pain? How are you going to deal with it? Are you going to let it fester and ooze or will you treat it, bandage it up and find the support you need not to fall again. 

Structured Procrastination

I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.
Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.
The most perfect situation for structured procrastination that I ever had was when my wife and I served as Resident Fellows in Soto House, a Stanford dormitory. In the evening, faced with papers to grade, lectures to prepare, committee work to be done, I would leave our cottage next to the dorm and go over to the lounge and play ping-pong with the residents, or talk over things with them in their rooms, or just sit there and read the paper. I got a reputation for being a terrific Resident Fellow, and one of the rare profs on campus who spent time with undergraduates and got to know them. What a set up: play ping pong as a way of not doing more important things, and get a reputation as Mr. Chips.
Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation. The few tasks on his list will be by definition the most important, and the only way to avoid doing them will be to do nothing. This is a way to become a couch potato, not an effective human being.
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.
The trick is to pick the right sorts of projects for the top of the list. The ideal sorts of things have two characteristics, First, they seem to have clear deadlines (but really don't). Second, they seem awfully important (but really aren't). Luckily, life abounds with such tasks. In universities the vast majority of tasks fall into this category, and I'm sure the same is true for most other large institutions. Take for example the item right at the top of my list right now. This is finishing an essay for a volume in the philosophy of language. It was supposed to be done eleven months ago. I have accomplished an enormous number of important things as a way of not working on it. A couple of months ago, bothered by guilt, I wrote a letter to the editor saying how sorry I was to be so late and expressing my good intentions to get to work. Writing the letter was, of course, a way of not working on the article. It turned out that I really wasn't much further behind schedule than anyone else. And how important is this article anyway? Not so important that at some point something that seems more important won't come along. Then I'll get to work on it.
Another example is book order forms. I write this in June. In October, I will teach a class on Epistemology. The book order forms are already overdue at the book store. It is easy to take this as an important task with a pressing deadline (for you non-procrastinators, I will observe that deadlines really start to press a week or two after they pass.) I get almost daily reminders from the department secretary, students sometimes ask me what we will be reading, and the unfilled order form sits right in the middle of my desk, right under the wrapping from the sandwich I ate last Wednesday. This task is near the top of my list; it bothers me, and motivates me to do other useful but superficially less important things. But in fact, the book store is plenty busy with forms already filed by non-procrastinators. I can get mine in mid-Summer and things will be fine. I just need to order popular well-known books from efficient publishers. I will accept some other, apparently more important, task sometime between now and, say, August 1st. Then my psyche will feel comfortable about filling out the order forms as a way of not doing this new task.
The observant reader may feel at this point that structured procrastination requires a certain amount of self-deception, since one is in effect constantly perpetrating a pyramid scheme on oneself. Exactly. One needs to be able to recognize and commit oneself to tasks with inflated importance and unreal deadlines, while making oneself feel that they are important and urgent. This is not a problem, because virtually all procrastinators have excellent self-deceptive skills also. And what could be more noble than using one character flaw to offset the bad effects of another?

Its that time when some days are eerily quiet and some days and insanely chaotic. 

Finals are done, papers turned in, and books put away. 

Its time to sleep. Its time to put the coffee back on the shelf. 

I never thought the semester would finish. I never thought it could possibly be as difficult as it was. 

There were so many moments when i thought there was no way i was going to finish. So many times i was plagued with self doubt. So many times i wondered if i may the right choice. 

Every test was accompanied with a whispered prayer. 

Chasdei Hashem. I passed the semester. I have set myself up for another semester of this strange form of torture.But not everyone in my class was so blessed. 

So many hours spent studying. How many gallons of coffee drunk in effort to stay awake. How many sleepless nights?How many family functions missed? How many friends estranged...all for what?

Nothing to show for it. 

The number of people taking finals diminished daily. 

What do they do? Where do you go after your dream slips through your fingers? 

Do you have what it takes to pick yourself up and try again? Do you reapply and start over? Do you wallow in self-pity? Do you pick a different career? Do you take it as a divine sign that it was not meant to be? Do you have the self-confidence to commit yourself completely to something other path that may not work out? Do you have the strength to apply yourself with the same intensity you did last time?

Or will you put on a brave face and try to piece your life back together only to live your life in black and white instead of in technicolor? Will lackluster be the one word that describes you?

What would you do? Where would you go after everything you've worked for ever ends up in failure? How would you cope?

When it comes to online chatting there are two kinds of people:

People who type up the whole megilla out and then press enter 

and then there are people who send what they say as they say it.

Which category do you fall in and why do you choose that method?

this was one of the SAT essay questions this year..what are your thoughts?

The last post got me thinking about the heart on a different level. 

We often refer to the heart as the source of our emotions, our spirituality. In essence it is our life source on so many levels. 

A defective heart has catastrophic ramifications. Someone who is emotionally stunted will have difficulty with relationships. A spiritually defective heart will have a hard time connecting to G-d, to one's own spirituality. No one needs me to go into the myriad of problems that come about for a person that has a physical defect. 

We all do things to make sure we keep "heart healthy." We eat our cheerios, exercise. We carefully guard who we let in and who we don't. Spiritually, the Torah gives us guidelines. What will keep our hearts healthy. Clearly, keeping the mitzvos all 613 of them, maintain the strength of our heart, it allows for us to maintain a relationship with G-d. But there are certain mitzvos we know that define us as Jews. Certain mitzvos, if we did not keep them, it would be like taking a syringe of cholesterol and sticking it straight into your heart, thereby blocking all blood flow to the body.

One of these mitzvos is kosher. Hashem tells us that eating treif is "mitamtem et halev" it blocks the heart. Someone who does not keep kosher has made it extremely difficult to ever connect spirituality. The non-kosher food puts a blockade around the heart making it difficult, not impossible, but extremely difficult for any inspiration, holiness or connection to penetrate the fortress that has been put up.

Yesterday in class a girl was eating pretzels and offered me one. There was no bag but I asked her what brand it was..she didn't know. Since there was no box present there was no checking. She told me "I'm sure its kosher. you want?" I said thanks..but when in doubt do without.

Kashrus is not something to mess with. We face enough spiritual challenges as it is. The world is filled with enough darkness and impurity as it is. My challenges that i bring on my own, too numerous to count. But keeping my heart healthy? That is not something I want to mess with. If i keep my heart strong then I have a fighting chance against Manhattan. So I choose to eat right.