*The Art of Procrastination*

The most boring way to read this book is to read it as a self-help guide; the better way to procrastinate, to put off something more important at hand; the still better way, is to read it as an interesting account, of the academia, into the bigger picture of working-writing life.

What John Perry did, with the analytic skill of a modern philosopher, the insight of Francis Bacon or Jane Austin, was in fact quite simple: to take an over-generalization of human-kind, dismantle it, counter it with smaller pieces of generalization, offer concrete examples, shed new light to our understanding of the subject-matter.

Below are some examples:
See the difference between “Procrastination is THE reason why any work is left undone”, and “Procrastination is relational so that a structured procrastinator could actually procrastinate over a bigger task to get many things else done.”
Compare also the Dostoevsky style analysis, the spirit of procrastination being the “self-harmful behavior to prove that one is not a machine”, or “above all regulations” with a simple reply from Perry, that 1. such behavior does not have to be harmful rather than inconvenient, not only to oneself but especially to others. 2.a true human-being of arrogance ( who thinks oneself above all the regulations and demands) typically does not see oneself as a procrastinator.

The reply, of course, is not a negation of the original proposal, based on theoretical on empirical reasons. Rather, it is a statement related, of several new facts revealed, undercutting the persuasive power as well as the empirical significance of the original proposal. This might exemplify the role and mechanism of an interesting argument, in a normative discourse of one’s modern life, which one believes can be changed through the power of words.