I have plenty in my schedule and it would be easy to simply attribute the stress of last-minuteism as an inevitable consequence of a busy life: however while some stress and being busy goes hand in hand I can’t honestly lay the blame squarely there. I am instead of the opinion that most of the pain could have been avoided with more foreplanning and self-discipline: or in short, less procrastination, and that I can always fit more into my schedule, by means of the proper organisation. In the words of Lucille Ball: “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.”

So in order to see forward motion on the plethora of items on my life to-do, procrastination, the tarball of progress, the thief of time must be dealt with, and more effective personal organisation strategies established. I have recently given this some thought.

Proper identification and subsequent recognition of the beast is a very important step to defeating it. After some examination of my own behaviour related to assignment work, I realise that for me, procrastination has two primary modes.

The first is the putting off of starting a task, I’ll call it “Getting Started Procrastination”. This phase, depending on the due date, can last for weeks, months, years. The further away or the more indistinct a deadline is, the easier this one is to perform (I have since learned this is a documented phenomena called Temporal Discounting). The void between intention and action is filled with other activities, and the odd pang of regret at the already lost time, whilst simultaneously repeating the patterns which ensure more time continues to be lost.

The second and more immediately painful mode is the unnecessary prolonging of the task once I have finally been prodded into action, more often than not by a screaming deadline. This is the more memorable state, and the one I am going to talk about here, as I think its the most difficult for me personally to deal with (Getting started is usually not a problem, staying started is). I am labelling this type “On-Task Procrastination”.

On-Task Procrastination begins after I have made the decision to begin work, and has a number of guises which can make it tricky to recognise. It can be as mundane and obviously time wasting as finding myself staring at the screen, my calendar, or a piece of paper, having allowed my mind to wander, or an obsessive tidying of my room which started with picking up a few socks. Then there are the ‘escapist’ activities. These are blatant escapes from the unpleasantness or difficulty of the immediate, important task. These usually manifest as grabbing a book, putting a movie on, or deliberate, mindless web surfing. These are actually pretty easy to recognise and once spotted, simply require an effort of will to overcome – put the book away, turn the movie off, close the distracting web browser.

Less obvious and more difficult to defeat is when on-task procrastination cloaks itself in legitimate seeming activity. I have found some of the most insidious on-task procrastination attempts to insert itself into my workflow in the form of other productive tasks – just not the ones I’m supposed to be doing at the moment. Stuff like catching up on emails, sorting long overdue bills and tax papers, tweaking my linux setup to fix some annoying quirk that’s been bugging me, even working on other assignments which are not due yet.

Harder yet to spot are time-wasters which are somehow – however tenuously, related to the more important task I am supposed to be working on (for example, I will find myself looking up ‘interesting’ wikipedia and other articles which are peripherally related to the assignment topic). These require constant evaluation to detect, as they hide like weeds amongst the crops of productivity.

The product of this categorisation is a simple litmus test I can now apply whenever something attempts to divert me from my main task: If the diversion amounts to swapping progress towards my goal for activity on anything of a lesser priority – drop it and get back on task. It sounds very simple, but often easier to conceptualise than implement.

A recent bout of on-task procrastination in the face of a looming assignment deadline just about had me beat so I went on a little search-engine journey to see what others have to say about it. Plenty, as it turns out: The Google is brimming with anti-procrastination links:  and I found a couple of gems which I’ll share.

First, this blog article on Psychology Today was enlightening. It casts procrastination as a misfiring of our basic evolutionary survival trend to instinctively avoid unpleasantness. In other words, procrastination is a mind game which is played against yourself, a conflict with your own desire to avoid having to do something difficult. It is the opposition of your long term desire to accomplish something, versus your short term need to feel good.

This resonated strongly with me: often my on-task procrastination is triggered instantly as knee-jerk avoidance when running into difficulties, getting bored with a tedious piece of work, or encountering a particularly vexing sub-task. I realised that this was exactly what I had been doing: task hard = brain hurts = swap to something more gratifying. Procrastinate.

An interesting and related tip I read somewhere is forming the habit of staying on task even when you are blocked and feel like you are unable to progress. Procrastination is positive reinforcement of a bad habit – instant feel-good, getting away from an unpleasant task to a pleasant one. By the same principle, if you make a rule not to get distracted no matter what, then stick at the unproductive-feeling yet goal-related task for long enough, eventually not-working becomes more arduous than actually doing something on the task, anything at all, and you will start. (Its largely down to removing distraction as an available option – limit your choices to those which involve progress).

A particular wake up call for me was the authors comment that to indulge this behaviour is to carry on like a three year old with no self discipline beyond what feels good at a particular moment. Children might not want to pick up their toys simply because its not the most fun thing they could be doing: mature, goal oriented adults behave differently, and I would prefer to count myself amongst the latter.

Next, I discovered an extremely insightful, helpful piece of writing on procrastination which has since helped me no end.

The article, written by someone sharing what they learned while writing a doctoral thesis, espouses several very simple, very important ideas, and manages to encapsulate an entire procrastination-busting formula within three crisp statements. These words made it onto a yellow sticky notes which are now stuck to my monitors wherever I work:

1) Don’t get distracted
2) You must keep starting
3) That’s all

Extremely simple, and if you keep reminding yourself whenever distraction looms, very effective.

“Don’t get distracted”. This simple command set me up as a watchdog on my own activities, categorising them according to a simple formula: goal related, and not goal related. Every time I noticed myself diverging from the goal-related workflow, I look at the note, and halt the distraction. (In a short period of time the note is no longer required: a habit is formed, and the idea becomes internalised).

Next: “You must keep starting”. This is also very very helpful, as one of the tricks of on-task procrastination is to lever the interruption of a distraction to break your flow. Once you’re stopped, its easier to stay stopped. This next command simply gets you back on track. If interrupted, or distracted, you simply start again. Whether that means re-reading the task spec, or re-reading the document you are writing from the beginning to re-attain your flow, this is what you must do. “You must keep starting”.

Also written on my sticky note, from the same article and of particular help when I am working on something difficult and / or confusing (when most prone to diversion): “You are particularly vulnerable to distractions when you can’t decide quickly how to proceed… Make a decision”.

This last directive follows “keep starting“. I actually wrote myself an easy-reference formula on another piece of paper about how to re-start the particular project I was working on at the time if I found myself stalled, eg: Re-read the assignment spec, read my notes, read the document from the beginning and start when I reach a part that needs working on. (If nothing needs working on either I am either finished or I need to add more content!)

I’ll be doing more investigation into effective procrastination busting strategies, but for now these simple ideas have been very helpful.

References:

Jung, W.E (2003). Eddies Anti-Procrastination Site: Don’t get distracted. Keep starting. That’s all. Retrieved October 25th, 2009 from http://www.geocities.com/writethethesis/index2.html

Update: Above site disappeared, linking to Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20091022222819/http://geocities.com/writethethesis/index2.html

Pychyl, T.A (2008) Giving in to feel good: Why self-regulation fails. Retrieved October 25th, 2009 from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/200804/giving-in-feel-good-why-self-regulation-fails

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By way of a follow on to the earlier post on the topic: The (academic) security project rolls on, with about a month to complete our tasks, which essentially involves superficial evaluation of certain mobile phone data acquisition software which purport some valid ‘forensics’ functions, the actual efficacy of which I am at this point fairly dubious of.

The project has so far, had a late (false?) start: the team started out strong, meeting every week and discussing possible activities, making some preliminary documentation, taking care of administrative overhead such as our blog and google group mailing list, but with little input from the supervisor for the first month (and consequently no real research material or project direction to forge ahead with) we slowed down and lost momentum, not from lack of enthusiasm, but simply because there was nowhere to go.

Input was finally recieved and we have started working on a task which will eventually generate our assessible output, but I have the unfortunate feeling that the intervening weeks/months were spent in a state of drift: I really do dislike the sensation of wasted time.

I must confess, this type of thing instills doubts in me concerning the potential allure of completing a postgraduate degree in this field, and I am contemplating my options.

Granted: this is undergraduate research, albeit a dry run, research with training wheels on, and I have little doubt the main point of the exercise is far less one of generating any meaningful or useful output, and more the demonstration of hoop jumping by us, the so called ‘researchers’, in order to demonstrate our ability to jump said hoops to the required level of technical precision, documenting and referencing of each hoop along the way.

In other words, an undergraduate research project intended to be completed inside a semester, effective working time actually in the region of 4-5 weeks, isn’t inspiringly worthwhile in terms of either ‘research’ or ‘project’. This is less those things, and more along the lines of an assignment from any of a number of the other units I have completed over the past few years.  A month is not an unreasonable amount of time to complete a simple assignment, even a group assignment with its associated organisational complications, but the whole shebang falls far short of expectations.

So back on the topic of postgraduate options, of which I am constantly exploring: Conditions are more or less optimal for me to continue my studies here in comfort (I work at the institution already), but I will need to seriously examine whether or not I feel the time and effort investment is worthwhile. I am certain if progress in this direction is continued I will gain my qualification up to the PhD level within a tolerable number of years, and a doctorate is something I’ve always liked the idea of, but on the flip side, that chunk of energy could be expended in another, different, possibly more rewarding direction.

Plenty to consider. In the meantime, I have six months left to complete this degree. On the project front, our team is poking away at the forensics report: with a couple of weeks solid effort I’m hoping we can wipe out most of the actual work so I can stop thinking about it and move on to items of more interest.

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Our group paper for this unit was to situate a government data center in a facility of political and civil unrest with an ongoing history of violent activity. Slightly tongue in cheek, our group located our fictional installation on the edge of the Gaza Strip: thanks to google earth we were able to do all the surveying needed.

The co-ordinator for the unit remarked that he had been trying to think of more interesting scenarios for the assignments, and I lightheartedly suggested mitigation strategies for a Godzilla attack.

I wasn’t serious when I first suggested it, but thinking a bit further I think it would make for an amusing write and hopefully an entertaining read, so I’ve decided to do it. I read with great enjoyment the Zombie survival Guide by Max Brooks, and my paper would be a heck of a lot shorter than that (say 3000 words or so, depending on my mood), so I think its a goer.

Shortly after I’ve decided to go ahead with the paper, I’m down at my favorite local bookshop talking to the guy behind the counter. I’m purchasing my usual eclectic range of tomes: the fact that I’m a security student comes up and I mention the idea for the godzilla paper.

He gets excited and rushes off for a moment, producing from the shelves a copy of Daikaiju! Giant Monster Tales. It turns out his name is Robin Pen and he is the co-editor of said volume, along with Robert Hood who he refers me to as a source for any and all information on giant monsters which may be needed in aid of this paper. Also, the interesting possibility that since the third volume of the series is on its way to the press and they are always looking for new material, there is a distinct possibility that a well written paper focusing on a godzilla attack may find its way into a future edition.

I think I will title the paper something along the lines of: Kaijū encounters: Analysis and Mitigation Strategies for Seaboard Population Centers.

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After being divided up by specialty last week (Software Development, Networking, Security) we had a brief meeting with our supervisor whereby several things were iterated:

• This is a relatively small project: around 40 man hours per student.

• We may choose to be involved in an existing project listed on the research page subject to eligibility for undergrads and number of others interested, or we may generate a new proposal to be presented at the next meeting. This may include one-man projects. I am in the Security stream which means my options are generally forensics or log-analysis related.

• We are now granted access to the forensics / security research lab and if we mess with anybody elses lab work they will be allowed to destroy us in retribution. (Not particularly groundbreaking for me since I am a staff member with all areas access to this building anyway).

Several basic project management dos and don’ts were covered very briefly, amongst which the supervisor strongly recommended we maintain a journal of activities throughout: both to track our own progress and provide support for any case against potentially slack team members further down the road.

To that end I will be maintaining my progress journal via wordpress – probably via glenscott.net, but possibly also on another site dedicated to the task.

I am more of less decided to progress with my original choice of PDA / Mobile Phone / SIM card forensics, especially as there seem to be a number of others in the group interested and we can form a team at the outset. The possibility of proposing my own project is interesting though, and I am giving it some thought over the next few days before the next Thursday morning meeting. I would like to do something involving researching / investigating user psychology and how it affects system security, but at short notice and for a small starter project I think it may be a little ambitious. Possibly something best left to the postgraduate treatment.

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