structured procrastination
“structured procrastination [is] 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.” – John Perry
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~john/procrastination.html
“As the joke goes, I was going to start a procrastinators' club but never got around to it. In the meantime, I seem to be getting stuff done, but not necessarily the stuff I ought to be getting done.”
http://quandyfactory.com/blog/1/productivity_and_procrastination
“The insightful observation that procrastinators fill their time with effort, not staring at the walls, gives rise to this form of akrasia aikido, where the urge to not do something is cleverly redirected into productivity. If you can “waste time” by doing useful things, while feeling like you are avoiding doing the “real work”, then you avoid depleting your limited supply of willpower (which happens when you force yourself to do something).”
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1fe/antiakrasia_technique_structured_procrastination/
…and the blog http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/blog/