Thinking & Personal Effectiveness · Productivity & Work Systems
A topic within Productivity & Work Systems, itself one of 11 topics in that field and part of Thinking & Personal Effectiveness.
No prior grounding assumed.
Good and Bad Procrastination
Paul Graham · 2005
Argues that avoiding an important, ill-defined problem in favour of well-defined small tasks is worse than doing nothing, because the small tasks…
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Primary sources and full treatments.
The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure
Piers Steel · 2007
Synthesises the procrastination literature into temporal motivation theory, arguing that delay rises with a task's aversiveness and the delay of its…
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Paul Graham
Argues that avoiding an important, ill-defined problem in favour of well-defined small tasks is worse than doing nothing, because the small tasks feel like productivity while the real work never starts.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Tim Urban
Argues that chronic procrastination is driven by an 'instant gratification monkey' overriding a rational planner, and that only a looming deadline's panic restores control — which is why work without deadlines never gets done at all.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Piers Steel
Synthesises the procrastination literature into temporal motivation theory, arguing that delay rises with a task's aversiveness and the delay of its reward, and falls with self-efficacy and impulsiveness control.
link checked 17 Sept 2026