Scientific American has this article about how to kick the bad habit of procrastinating. I mean to post it last week, but you know how that goes…
Turns out that human personalities are unique combinations of differing degrees of five basic traits: conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness and extroversion. If those remind you of Carl Jung’s archetypes or the four axes of the Myers-Briggs Index, you’re catching on. Procrastination is generally a trait of someone with a low degree of conscientiousness or a high degree of neuroticism. Heaven help the individual who is both lacking in conscience and abundantly neurotic — of course, the does help to explain Congress.
The article is a bit of a gyp because it doesn’t actually tell you how to kick the habit of procrastinating at all. It does give you some very good excuses (“I couldn’t help it, professor, I’m genetically predetermined to blow off my assignments!”), but all they can really offer is “just do it”. I’m sure Nike’s lawyers will be in touch just as soon as they can get around to it.
