This is a great essay for capturing the true spirit of GTD - it would be a good antidote for all those who periodically claim that "GTD isn't good at dealing with the higher altidtude aspects of life", or that the real intention of GTD is to create highly-productive worker drones.

I will now add "productive procrastiantion" to my operational tool belt.

An old classic ... in praise of procrastination is Stanford Philosopher short essay from 1995 on "Structured procrastination": http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/procrastination.html

David here - Indeed, Pascal... though I hadn't read Perry's essay before, I'm fond of saying that if you really want to be motivated to clean your toilet, just tell yourself to write the Great American Novel!

I just read Graham's essay yesterday -- it is coursing through the web. Graham links to another essay (http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html) by the celebrated mathematician / computer scientist, Richard Hamming (the 'Hamming window' person). Hamming puts a new spin on setting life priorities:

'Over on the other side of the dining hall was a chemistry table... I went over and said, ``Do you mind if I join you?'' They can't say no, so I started eating with them for a while. And I started asking, ``What are the important problems of your field?'' And after a week or so, ``What important problems are you working on?'' And after some more time I came in one day and said, ``If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?'' I wasn't welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat with!'

Great article from Paul. It was procrastination that led me to GTD. I found my system had broken down so bad that I had no idea what I wasn't getting to. Heck, I thought I had a tumor from the stress.More on that story at: http://www.bizimpresario.com/2006/01/procrastination_3.html

Interesting article. Paul Graham's site has quite a few interesting articles. His whole site is fertile ground for type-B procrastination.

A humorous link on procrastination: