Page 131 - A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

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procrastination zombie wrap-up

e’ve swept through a number of issues related to procrastination in these
W last few chapters. But here are a few final thoughts that can shed new
insight into procrastination.

The Pluses and Minuses of Working Unrelentingly in “The
Zone”

A chance meeting of two Microsoft techies at a Friday-night party in 1988
resulted in an exciting solution to a major software stumbling block that

Microsoft had basically given up on. The pair left the party to give the idea a
shot, firing up a computer and going through the problematic code line by line.
Later that evening, it was clear that they were onto something. That something,
as Frans Johansson describes in his fascinating book The Click Moment, turned
the nearly abandoned software project into Windows 3.0, which helped turn
1
Microsoft into the global technology titan it is today. There are times when
inspiration seems to erupt from nowhere.

These kinds of rare creative breakthroughs—relaxed moments of insight
followed by mentally strenuous, all-out, late-night labor—are very different from
a typical day of studying math and science. It’s rather like sports: Every once in
a while, you have a day of competition when you need to give everything you
have under conditions of extraordinary stress. But you certainly wouldn’t train
every single day under those kinds of conditions.

On days when you are super productive and keep working away long into
the night, you may get a lot done—but in subsequent days, if you look at your
planner-journal, you may note that you are less productive. People who make a