(2012-01-05) Rao Squeakastination

Venkatesh Rao on *our tendency to prioritize certain unpleasant tasks (Time Management) too much. This tendency has no commonly accepted name, so I’ve decided to call it squeakastination. It is the opposite of Procrastination, and in my opinion, far more dangerous.

If you classify behaviors based on whether they relate to unpleasant or pleasant tasks, and based on whether we delay doing them or over-prioritize them, you get four classes of prioritization behaviors... The behaviors in the 2×2 are not subconscious behaviors. We are usually aware when we are prioritizing or delaying a task based on aversion or attraction rather than rational justification. We usually have some idea of a different optimal time/priority for the task. But we succumb anyway.

These are tasks that are not particularly important or urgent. Tasks that can wait. Yet we do them as soon as we can, the moment they cross our radars. I suspect this is the fastest-growing category. Possibly because we don’t have a name for it.

The cost of squeakastination is really high for a simple reason: squeaky-wheel tasks are often small, easy and plentiful. Which means that if you keep prioritizing them, you may never get to the important things.

Wayne W Dyer has a neat little visual demonstration of this idea. If you have balls of different sizes and a large container, and you put in the little balls first, they will pack the container leaving no room for the big ones. But if you put the big ones in first, there will still be room in the nooks and crannies for the little ones.

The hardest squeakastination situations are one-way adversarial ones. Babies and pets are great examples: they want to take advantage of you, and you want to be kind to them. You don’t want to actually hurt them or deny them what they need. But you cannot really shut them up.* (The Family)