A few years ago, Paul Graham wrote an essay[1] about type (3) failures which he referred to as type-B procrastination. I’ve found that just having a label helps me avoid or reduce the effect, e.g. “I could be productive and creative right now instead of wasting my time on type-B procrastination” or “I will give myself exactly this much type-B procrastination as a reward for good behavior, and then I will stop.”
(Embarrassing aside: I hadn’t looked at the essay for several years and only now realized that I’ve been mentally calling it type-A procrastination this whole time.)
EDIT: The essay goes on to link type-C procrastination with doing the impossible, yielding a nice example of how I-rationality and self-help are linked.
A few years ago, Paul Graham wrote an essay[1] about type (3) failures which he referred to as type-B procrastination. I’ve found that just having a label helps me avoid or reduce the effect, e.g. “I could be productive and creative right now instead of wasting my time on type-B procrastination” or “I will give myself exactly this much type-B procrastination as a reward for good behavior, and then I will stop.”
(Embarrassing aside: I hadn’t looked at the essay for several years and only now realized that I’ve been mentally calling it type-A procrastination this whole time.)
EDIT: The essay goes on to link type-C procrastination with doing the impossible, yielding a nice example of how I-rationality and self-help are linked.
[1] Paul Graham, Good and Bad Procrastination