Monday, April 30, 2007
(12:31 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
A Useful Principle for Work-Avoidance
It's intrinsically better to begin a task at a time that's an even number. TV schedules reveal this fundamental truth: life is most effective if lived in units that are evenly divisible into thirty-minute chunks. Thus, when thinking about "getting started" on something, waiting until the next even half-hour is crucial (i.e., don't start working at 12:20 -- wait until 12:30!).This also makes it easier to quantify the amount of time you've worked -- no hassle with "carrying" and "borrowing" to calculate it -- thus increasing the overall sense of accomplishment in the end. Starting immediately instead of waiting for the next half-hour increment would be cheating yourself, basically on every level.
