Paul Graham谈应对拖延

Paul Graham在其个人网站最近发布了名为《How to do great work》的文章，给仍然雄心勃勃的年轻人提了一些建议，适合每位对自己仍有期望的朋友反复阅读。下面是本文的第五部分摘录：

Since there are two senses of starting work — per day and per project — there are also two forms of procrastination. Per-project procrastination is far the more dangerous. You put off starting that ambitious project from year to year because the time isn’t quite right. When you’re procrastinating in units of years, you can get a lot not done.

One reason per-project procrastination is so dangerous is that it usually camouflages itself as work. You’re not just sitting around doing nothing; you’re working industriously on something else. So per-project procrastination doesn’t set off the alarms that per-day procrastination does. You’re too busy to notice it.

The way to beat it is to stop occasionally and ask yourself: Am I working on what I most want to work on? When you’re young it’s ok if the answer is sometimes no, but this gets increasingly dangerous as you get older.

由于“开始工作”有每天和每个项目两层意思，拖延也存在每天和每个项目两种形式。与每天拖延相比，项目拖延影响更大。你会因时机未到而将雄心勃勃的项目从一年拖到下一年。当拖延的时间跨度达到年级时，你将无法完成许多事情。

项目拖延之所以极为危险，是因为它常常伪装成工作的一种形式。你并不是闲着无所事事，而是勤奋地进行其他事务来掩饰拖延。因此，项目拖延不像每天拖延那样引起警觉。你太忙碌了，以至于没有意识到拖延的存在。

对付它的方法是时常自问：“我正在做最想做的事情吗？”当你还年轻时，答案是“否”也无妨，但随着年龄增长，这会变得越来越危险。