chaos and noise

Structured procrastination: the art of starting new tasks, so that old ones will get worked on when you inevitably start procrastinating the new ones.

This is me writing a research proposal. After an hour of writer's block, I realised that what I really needed was to start writing something different... so by the time I finish writing this journal entry I'll have gone back to finish off the proposal. That's the theory, anyway.

aeliel and I spent the weekend in Somerville, enjoying the brief green resurgence brought on by last week's rain. I picked a bag of cherry plums from a self-sown tree (now about 10m high), after discovering that the birds hadn't stripped it bare this year. I suspect that's because they're too full of all the other fruit on the property - about a dozen trees are heavily laden at the moment, with another dozen soon to be ready. It's a good place to be a bird, or a possum for that matter.

I also found the first hazelnuts on a tree we've had for about a decade. Not many - probably 20 across the whole tree - but it's nice to finally see them. The walnut tree nearby still hasn't had fruit, and the two almond trees are always stripped by galahs months before we could pick anything from them.

You can never really get away from work on the weekend. While sitting on a beach in Mornington, we also bounced around ideas on ways of combining tools from Google For Educators with scenario-based roleplaying to teach kids about different subject areas - particularly Year 10 French, but the general skills could be applied across a whole range of disciplines.

Of course, you'd probably need IT staff who weren't outright hostile to the idea of kids using the equipment (employing them in a classroom support role like science teaching aides, instead of as password-resetting techsupport drones). It would help to satisfy the bureaucracy ("thou must implement ICT into thy classroom practice!"), and provide a broad learning environment that could engage kids from a range of learning styles.

Competitive procrastination: the process of running several tasks simultaneously, where progress on any of them is a positive thing. I have a very long base attention span, and I'm quite capable of sitting perfectly still for unhealthy amounts of time while I work on something. I also have a very short superficial attention span, so I constantly jump between tasks while working towards any distant goal. There's a risk that I'll spend too much time mentally channel-surfing, hamstringing any attempt to get "real" work done...

Instead, I deliberately set up as many tasks as I can manage, crowding out any unproductive habits. Procrastinating one task leads me to do something constructive on another, so I can always get something done.

I've also noticed that it helps to pick varied tasks to work on. Formal writing tends to spur creative ideas, painting and sculpting often interrupt (or are interrupted by) anything that forces me to present information to other people in some logical fashion, such as planning a meeting. Rather than fighting the impulse to be analytical when I'm meant to be creative, or vice versa, I ride out the ideas in whatever direction they take me. It seems to aid productive work: whatever I'm doing, I'll be playing to my strengths at the time.

There are lots of contradictions, of course. I adapt to most changes very quickly, but I'm not an impulsive person. Generally, I've considered something similar previously, so by "changing" I'm just moving to another area that already has established boundaries. If I step into something completely unknown, I've probably spent a long time thinking my way through it before starting. It's a strange form of time travel, reaching forward through different possibilities. Move far enough ahead and it becomes too difficult for conscious thought. I've often noticed that I dream one day in advance, when I'm doing something stressful - I don't remember all the ground that I've covered, but I can recognise important decisions when I reach them.