# Strategically Procrastinate as an Anti-Rabbit-Hole Strategy

This is highly ironic, since I'm all about commitment devices as a tool to not procrastinate. But fun fact: you can use procrastination itself strategically as a commitment device to cap the amount of time you spend on something.

This is really just a corollary of [Parkinson's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law), that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". Here's a cute way to put it, apparently original to Wikipedia[^1u16juj4yky]:

> If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.

So, that's all. If you don't want to let yourself spend more than X hours on something, don't start working on it till X hours before the (hard) deadline.

Is this like Structured Procrastination?
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No, that's quite different. [Structured Procrastination](https://www.structuredprocrastination.com/) is an elaborate psychological game you can play with yourself in which you get yourself to do important work by framing it as procrastination on some other supposedly more urgent task — a decoy task. It reminds me a little of setting your clocks 10 minutes fast to trick yourself into being more punctual. I personally hate things like this. Some people think of Beeminder as being in this category — or that it's even worse than self-trickery, namely, [self-blackmail](https://blog.beeminder.com/blackmail). I don't think either are fair characterizations. I see it as merely [incentive alignment](https://blog.beeminder.com/incentalign). Like strategically removing your ability to go down fractal rabbit holes all day while writing a blog post because you started it at 9pm and if you don't hit publish by midnight you'll be kicked out of [Inkhaven](https://inkhaven.blog).

What about "Strategic Procrastination"?
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Sigh, if you google that, you get a lot of platitudes about how it's good to take breaks and let your subconscious mind process information. I'm sure that's true, but not at all what I mean. But since "strategic procrastination" and "structured procrastination" are both taken, we could make up a concept handle like *Parkinson capping* or *t-minus timeboxing* or *just-in-timeboxing.* Maybe one of those will stick?

The Principle of Delayed Commitment
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This one should maybe be its own post \[EDIT: ok, [done](https://blog.beeminder.com/delay)\] but since it's related, let me quote myself from a footnote of an [old Beeminder blog post](https://blog.beeminder.com/shirknturk/):

> The principle of delayed commitment, also known as the principle of least commitment in \[old-school\] AI circles, is the simple decision-theoretic fact that you shouldn't commit to a course of action until you have to. Flexibility is valuable; laziness is a virtue. It's also one of the [Lean Software Development principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_software_development#Decide_as_late_as_possible). And I'm sure it comes up in other fields as well.

In short, deliberately waiting till a strategically chosen amount of time before a deadline to start working can be perfectly rational, by preserving optionality, and meta-rational, by leveraging the panic of a looming deadline in order to focus.

PS: Remember that if you're nodding along too hard to this advice, you [might need to reverse it](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/24/should-you-reverse-any-advice-you-hear/).

[^1u16juj4yky]: I hear you, Wikipedia doesn't allow original research. Unless you do this:I believe that what Wikipedia calls the Stock-Sanford corollary of Parkinson's law is a bonafide example of citogenesis. Wikipedia cites a 2013 book which states the so-called Stock-Sanford corollary with no citation of its own. But checking the history of the Wikipedia page, the cute corollary was added in 2010! (Side note that GPT-5-Thinking figured this out but I confirmed it myself.)