Tick, tock...

I'm feeling a little bit under the weather, so rather than trying to force myself to finish gestating the next Carnival of Mathematics, I'm going to get some rest. But don't worry, the delivery shouldn't be more than a few hours overdue.

Let me take this moment to remind everyone that the Blog Carnival submission form will continue to forward submissions to me until midnight tonight, so please do send in those last-minute entries. Or you can email them to me at kurt (at) learningcomputation (dot) com.

And now, back to bed. Zzzzzzzzz.

Procrastination and Blocking

A reader of this blog wrote me asking a question about CS graduate programs (which I don't know a lot about, so I wasn't able to be of much help), and added the following:

I enjoy your blog very much, and I wish that you could write more often. I suppose that you don't have enough time to do it.

Well, I'm not above posting complements on my blog. But the ironic thing about it is that I actually have a lot of free time at the moment, but I haven't been making very good use of it. I find myself afflicted with "procrastination and blocking". This has always been a problem for me, but lately it's grown to the point where I'm nearly immobilized by it.

As it turns out, there may be some help for me. The problem of procrastination has been getting some attention from academics, and there are apparently some strategies available that have been shown to be effective against it. Following are a few resources I've come across recently that look promising. I can't vouch for any of these yet, but I'll let you know my impressions after I've tried them out.

The first item is the text Procrastination and Blocking by Robert Boice. This is a somewhat scholarly approach to the subject, published in 1996. Boice describes the problem of procrastination and blocking, or PB, as being seriously under-studied; this situation would seem to have changed in the 10 years since this book was written. Boice gives some history of the problem, presents a formal model for PB, and offers some intervention techniques. This particular book is only available in hard back and is somewhat expensive, but Boice has several other books which cover similar material. Professors As Writers is available as an inexpensive paperback and applies unblocking techniques to scholarly writing.

The NPR program "Talk of the Nation" recently featured a segment on procrastination. One of the people interviewed was Bruce Tuckman, who has created a college course to help students develop good study skills and avoid procrastination and blocking. The text for the course is Learning and Motivation Strategies: Your Guide to Success. Stylistically, this is the opposite of Boice's text, with perforated workbook pages and a cook-book list of exercises geared at new college students. But I suspect that this is exactly what is required for the target audience.

I think that a big part of my problem started in high school. High school was very easy for me, too easy, and as a result I developed some very bad study habits which have stuck with me. I don't know if this blog is followed by any high-school students, but for the sake of completeness let me offer an item for that group. The Teaching Company has a course called How to Become a Superstar Student, which covers procrastination and blocking as well as other topics relating to good study skills. Get your parents to buy this for you. (By the way, I'm a fan of The Teaching Company (even though they don't have any CS courses), but don't pay list price for any of the courses. They all go on sale on a rotating basis.)

If any of these materials prove to be useful, I'll let you know. If not, well, I'll try to let you know that too, but don't hold your breath waiting.

Addendum

I hit "publish" a little earlier than I meant to; I have a couple of points I want to add. There is a certain amount of satisfaction in knowing that you're a member of a named group. I'm no longer just a slacker who never seems to complete anything; I'm a PBer. I can almost feel my self esteem rising just saying that. Not to make light of any of the other afflictions that make the rounds of daytime talk shows, but one of the points that Robert Boice makes is that PB is a serious problem, deserving of serious attention. For example, the implications just in terms of lost work productivity are enormous. And if these self-help techniques work and I overcome my affliction, maybe I'll even write a book about it. I'm not exactly sure what it will include, but I already have a title in mind...I think I'll call it "Exponentially many little pieces". See you on Oprah.

On the other hand, instead of trying to overcome PB, maybe I should just embrace it. I point you to Despair, Inc.'s homage to procrastination:



And about this last item, I can report to you that having this picture hanging on your wall will in fact not shame you out of your procrastination!