Procrastination Buffers

[Thorin]

Do you have a procrastination buffer?  I know I do, I let all kinds of things pile up and swirl around in my subconscious before finally tackling them: http://notinventedhe.re/on/2011-8-29/regarding/My%20Procrastination%20Buffer

[Lazybones]

Do you have a procrastination buffer?  I know I do, I let all kinds of things pile up and swirl around in my subconscious before finally tackling them: http://notinventedhe.re/on/2011-8-29/regarding/My%20Procrastination%20Buffer

Sometimes for me I leave things until they amount to a significant challenge... lets say I am getting tickets and they are all minor and not very time dependent.. I will work on something else for a while till they build up to a unit of work that I might have to dwell on for a while... Sometimes this has a very large advantage of problems solving them selves or multiple issues highlighting a root cause.

[Mr. Analog]

I have a procrastination buffer for sure, if I know I can't figure something out directly I switch tasks, very often going back to it after letting something idle in my subconscious just works.

Unfortunately due to issues I've had over the last few years with memory (due to apnea) I seem to have relied on this more often than I would like and it makes me feel like an idiot savant at times (when a problem presents itself I sort of already have the solution worked out in detail without a lot of conscious effort). I mean give me any complex idea and I can build you a data set / class structure to support it without really thinking... and frankly that scares me.

Another thing I find myself doing (and I don't know why) is like Lazy says is let stuff build up until it's a "big enough" task to deal with. I do this with art, dishes hell even keeping the house clean. It's a nasty habit and I have to stop it because it gives me anxiety when it gets beyond the "controllable" state i.e. I have a backlog of art to do, I just finished doing a MASSIVE (and horrible) "spring cleaning" and I have a weeks' worth of dishes piled up in the kitchen.

Arrgh! You'd think by now I'd learn!

[Darren Dirt]

fascinating.


for convenience, here's a link directly to the interview where The Buffer is discussed:
"NEAL STEPHENSON'S WRITING BUFFER"


irony: oh wait that is still just an EXCERPT; the full interview is actually here.