My colleague, Laura Nicholson, and I were discussing various topics over Skype one night, and I at one point mentioned my primitive system of classifying the myriad types of procrastination. We fleshed out some details together, made some terminology more specific, and eventually developed a fairly descriptive and useful (in my opinion) taxonomy for describing procrastination.

So, without further ado, I present the Tang-Nicholson System for Procrastination Classification.

Types of procrastination are given two attributes: class and level. Procrastination class can take on one of the following three values:

Class 1

Procrastination from a productive task by either not doing anything at all, or doing something purely recreational, e.g. playing video games, reading a book, or spending time with friends.

Class 2

Procrastination from a productive task by performing other productive tasks that are lower in priority, e.g. doing the dishes, running errands, or doing assignments due at a later date.

Class 3

Procrastination from a productive task by focusing and obsessing over details related to the task, e.g. learning LaTeX in order to typeset an essay, copying problem sets to make them neater, or obsessively refactoring code instead of finishing features.

Procrastination level is a positive integer that, in relative terms, describes how far removed from the actual productive task an activity is. Since procrastination can be composed with itself, this metric measures the level of nesting. For example, if one’s original task was writing an essay, imagine the following procrastination composition: write essay, learn LaTeX to write essay, configure Emacs for editing LaTeX, submit patch for bug in Emacs. The final step, submitting a patch for a bug in Emacs, is a class 3, level 3 form of procrastination. In fact, all of these steps are class 3, with level ranging from level 1 for learning LaTeX to level 3 for the last step.

And there you have it: a simple, concise way to precisely define how you are wasting your time.

Quick, what level of procrastination was I at when I first thought of this system instead of doing my psets?

This past Thursday night was one of the most enjoyable nights in recent memory.

The a cappella group that I’m a part of this summer, The Funktors, recently got its first gig: opening for Jon McLaughlin at a company barbeque on Monday.  This is very, very exciting.  We’ve been rehearsing about three times a week for four hours at a time for a few weeks now, and working pretty hard at preparing ourselves.  This Thursday, we were missing a few members because of scheduling conflicts, so our rehearsal was short and not terribly productive.  On a whim, we decided that it might be fun to go sing outside and get some fresh air.

We wound up wandering around downtown Seattle from around 10pm until 11pm and singing songs at various street corners for all of the homeless people and drunken clubbers who would listen.  It was a real joy when some random passerby would compliment us, or even go so far as to stop and dance along.  We even made $1 from a woman who gave us a tip, despite the fact that we had no tip jar/hat/guitar case.  On top of all of that, we sounded amazing.  Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe it was the acoustics of singing outside, but we were in tune, on time, and really just loving every note we sang.

Also, some guy spit at us.  This is patently absurd, mostly because we are probably the most harmless group of college-age, mostly Asian, happy-go-lucky singers you could ever encounter at 10pm in downtown Seattle.  Seriously, we couldn’t even hurt someone if we tried.  What sort of thought process goes like, “Hey look, a bunch of Asian kids singing ‘Brown Eyed Girl.’ I think it would a rational decision to spit at them.”?

Jerk.

I ran out of my shampoo last Thursday.  This was problematic, mostly because I insist on using Redken Men Mint Clean shampoo, which is fancy and expensive and makes me feel like I’m a cool person, but also is only really sold in fancy salons and hair product stores.  It also makes my scalp tingle.  Mmm…tingly… The conditioner is even better, if you’re curious.

In my tragic shampoo-less state, I didn’t know what to do.  Go without shampoo?  Could I substitute body wash for shampoo?  What if my hair dries out from the soap?  That would have been tragic.  I’m fairly certain that all my friends would have left me if I used anything less than amazing shampoo on my hair.

Mason, we all talked, and we’ve decided that your hair is simply not moisturized enough for us to associate with you.

The horror.

A sudden realization.  A spark of insight that grew from some dark, unexplored corner of my mind.  What could it be?  Dig deeper, Mason, follow your instincts.  Yes!  I’ve got it!  The apartment came with complimentary conditioning shampoo!  Now where did I put it?  This drawer here, yes!  Luxuriously clean hair can once again be mine!

It wasn’t much, but it tided me over until I made the trek over to the local mall and restocked on my preferred shampoo.  I can have friends again.

Does anyone else occasionally wake up from a nap and feel a little upset and angry for no particular reason?  It’s the strangest thing.  I came home from work today and was hit by a veritably tsunami of lethargy, and had no choice but to meander around my apartment in various stages of consciousness for the next few hours.  When I finally came to, I was feeling particularly grumpy and annoyed at nothing in particular.

Somehow though, I managed to inspire myself to put on some house music and start dancing.  I love house music, and I’m trying to learn to house (dance style), but it’s rather difficult to not look like an idiot unless you’re pretty good already.  Luckily, my roommate was out, so looking like an idiot was not an issue.  I don’t have dance classes for the next three weeks, so I figured that it’s probably a good thing to dance on my own to keep in shape and keep my skills nice and skillful.  For the next two hours, I switched up the music a bit (old school funk, nothing like it) and managed to practice popping, locking, and some breaking, and felt infinitely better than how I felt before I started dancing.

The joy of motion, the ecstasy of rhythm, there’s nothing like it.

So next time you’re feeling down, throw on some awesome music and just let yourself go.

A quick shower afterwards, and I feel content and happy.

Wordpress has been acting up lately and giving me all sorts of lip in the form of not loading pages intermittently.  Strange, this crops up as soon as I decide (once again) to try to blog more often; it’s as if my blog is trying to tell me not to update.

Open the login page, Wordpress.

I’m sorry, Mason, I’m afraid I can’t do that.

What’s the problem?

I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

What are you talking about, Wordpress?

This blog is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Wordpress?

I know you were planning on actually writing in your blog, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.

My 4th of July wound up being simultaneously uneventful and interesting at the same time: a feat usually reserved only for artsy movies and attractive women moving in extreme slow motion.  I managed to sleep in until around noon, coffee and a muffin for breakfast.  The muffin, somewhat notably, was very tasty.  I also noticed that it was covered with so much delicious crumbly topping and frosting that it would probably also pass for a fruity cupcake.  On that note, let us reflect on the nature of muffin…

Amen.

Later this evening, I lazily meandered over to a friend’s apartment for some Independence Day eating-of-meat and socialing-of-people.  Chatted with people, and wound up getting Italian food instead of the usual barbeque, missing the fireworks, then stumbling awkwardly back to my apartment for the remainder of the evening.  Still, it was a good evening, all things considered.

Today was probably one of the hardest dance classes I’ve ever been to.  It was only about an hour and a half long, but our instructor (Jeromeskee, from the Massive Monkees) pushed us hard, and we wound up doing number of exercises to train our endurance.  And to top it all off, we ended the class with a battle.  Everyone was dead tired, but it was still a pretty decent battle, all things considered.  It’s remarkable how much more energy people have when the activity turns from an exercise to a dance and a competition.  If nothing else, I will definitely sleep well tonight though.

A capella rehearsals are still as hardcore and enjoyable as they started out being, and I think the group is definitely coming together and starting to blend and sound really good.  I’m singing first tenor, which surprised me at first because I usually sing bass back with the Harmonic Series at MIT, but I’m improving my range a lot, so I think it will work out in the long run.

A fellow intern bought Rock Band last night, and he should be getting it tomorrow.  I am pumped.

What are people doing for the 4th of July?