I mean, the crux of the problem is you might have a problem space where everything has a very, very strict, tight deadline. It’s not gonna work for that.
But this is simply not true in the real world. As the author notes, he has papers to grade and a mess of work to do in the evenings. These are important and have deadlines.
But the reality of the matter is that procrastinating them really doesn’t hurt anyone that much, and the benefit of just spending time with students is incredible.
If every problem is deeply important and has to be done yesterday, you wind up stretched very thin. It’s stressful!
I don’t think this is about creating a fake task at the top. It’s more about recognizing that it’s very frequently ok to procrastinate important things if you get value from what you did instead, and aiming to maximize that value. You’re tricking yourself, but in a way that fits how some procrastinators think. As he says, it relies on some level of self-deception.
And it should go without saying that there are obviously exceptions, and that it’s just one tool in the toolbox.
The part I'm not convinced about is that the self-deception actually works. In order to achieve it, I have to go through the thought process of "I have papers to grade and a mess of work to do which are important and have deadlines, but actually if I don't do them it won't hurt anyone". Once I go through that thought process, I now know that the task isn't genuinely important. Writing it down at the top of some list doesn't change what I know. Somewhere else on that list is the real important task (the one that will cause harm if I don't do it) and my brain knows which one it is and will try to procrastinate it.
But this is simply not true in the real world. As the author notes, he has papers to grade and a mess of work to do in the evenings. These are important and have deadlines.
But the reality of the matter is that procrastinating them really doesn’t hurt anyone that much, and the benefit of just spending time with students is incredible.
If every problem is deeply important and has to be done yesterday, you wind up stretched very thin. It’s stressful!
I don’t think this is about creating a fake task at the top. It’s more about recognizing that it’s very frequently ok to procrastinate important things if you get value from what you did instead, and aiming to maximize that value. You’re tricking yourself, but in a way that fits how some procrastinators think. As he says, it relies on some level of self-deception.
And it should go without saying that there are obviously exceptions, and that it’s just one tool in the toolbox.