Forget David Allen and “Getting Things Done”. So long Stephen Covey and your Seven Habits. I will no longer be bound to the Time Trap. I have found the time-management strategy that is perfect for me:

　　Structured Procrastination

　　John Perry, a professor in Standford’s philosophy department, has articulated a radical concept for getting things done.

　　“the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.”

　　What could be easier?

　　Perry notes that procrastinators rarely do nothing; they do marginally useful things as a way of avoiding more important things. The trick is to ensure you have important tasks at the top of your list thereby driving you to complete tasks of “lesser” importance.

　　Perry emphasises the importance of picking the right projects for the top of the list. They require two key characteristics:

　　They seem to have clear deadlines (but really don’t).

　　They seem awfully important (but really aren’t).

　　I think this is going to work for me. I’ve got some policy manual work to do, so I’m going to reply to email that I received a couple of weeks ago. Once that is complete, I can consider John’s thoughts on being Horizontally Organized.

　　暂且别想大卫艾伦的‘时间管理’,先忘了斯蒂芬柯维以及你的‘七个习惯’。我已经不用整天抱着‘时间陷阱’寻找答案了,因为我已经发现了适合自己的时间管理策略。

　　拖延管理

　　斯坦福哲学系教授约翰佩里,阐述了关于时间管理的新观点:可以让爱拖延的人做有难度和有时间限制的重任,前提是这些任务相对来说更不重要。

　　那更容易的是什么呢

　　佩里注意到,拖延者很少什么都不做,他们避开更重要的事情,而做一些相对无关的事。秘诀是你的时间表最上面要有重要的事情,因此你就会愿意去完成相比较不太重要的事了。

　　佩里强调,选择时间表最上面的合适的计划很重要,需要具备两个特点:

　　1. 似乎有截止日期(实际上没有)

　　2. 似乎相当重要(实际上不是)

　　我觉得这对我很有效。当我手头有关于保险手册的工作要处理时,我就打算去回复我两周前接到的邮件去了。等完成之后,我开始觉得约翰的看法太正确了。