以下の文章は
Perry, John. Structured Procrastination April 25 1995, retrieved on February 10, 2007.
の訳です。
だれもがたくさんの仕事をなすことができる。それが今やるべきことでないのであれば。 -- Robert Benchley, in Chips off the Old Benchley, 1949
私はこのエッセイを何ヶ月もの間書こうと思ってきました。なぜついに書くことになったのでしょう？私がすべてを片付けて自由時間を手に入れたからでしょうか？違います。点数をつけないといけないレポートががあります。授業で使う教科書の注文をしないといけません。審査しないといけないNSFの申請書があります。読まないといけないD論があります。
I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.