I was planning on writing a post about motivation, but procrastinated it into oblivion. Then I thought "Hey, why not write a post about procrastination" and here we are.
There are a lot of things I really want to do but never get around to. Uploading my Chile pictures. Finish my fiction. Update my blog. But I don't. I trade long term satisfaction for the immediate pleasure of surfin' da web. And it really is da web that's my procrastination locus. But not the only one. In Chile I'd not brting my computer home for precisely this reason. I ended up spending all of my time sleeping and reading trashy fantasy.
We are life with a question: why short term over long term? I'd say it's two reasons. Short term satisfaction absorbs the mind, so I don't remember the long term projects. This can be beaten by having constant reminders in always-novel forms. Any sort of daily planer becomes mundane and useless for remembering, after all. My This of course assumes I remember to set this up, which runs back into the procrastination problem.
But why seek short term pleasure at all? It's addictive, of course. Amusement and satisfaction provided in blazing-fast time?! Count me in! And once you start, the inertia keeps you going. Kinda like how you put going to bed off for just five minutes, then five again... How do we beat this? Either make the addiction provide less pleasure or the virtues provide more. I think this can be accomplished by a three-tiered approach.
1) Make slacking off less enjoyable. Install locks and conditions that make it tedious and difficult to reap rewards. This is easy to implement: Only one "addiction tab" can be open at once. I'm going to start this right now.
2) Make the reward more tangible. Give victory a taste. I can do this by encouraging friends to remind me about the benefits of my goals. Then actually improving is part getting what I need and gaining prestige among my friends. This should make putting in the effort a lot more appealing.
3) Make the process of improvement more enjoyable. Turn it into an addicting game. Set and reward milestones. This one is the hardest to figure out and implement, and will have to wait for another post.
Now I'm turning the question to you all. Why do you procrastinate? How do you overcome it?
Hey Hillel!
ReplyDeleteI don't think procrastination is always a bad thing. It's good to read some trashy novels when you need a break from life, sometimes.
That said, as a college student, procrastination is generally shaped as the evil that must be defeated. I know I procrastinate when I feel like I'm losing control of situations, or when I think something is too hard to tackle, or when I think too much of the expected outcome. The last one's always haunting me. As a perfectionist, I often (read: always) want my outcome to be a spotless as possible, but that's just silly. Like Splash! today, I definitely procrastinated on putting together my lecture because I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to make it as good as I wanted it to be. It's strange, because the lecture really wasn't all that great, but I'm still really happy with the outcome. Hmm, thoughts for me to chew on I suppose.
That Halloween dinner party! It's happening!
-Alice
As far as i can tell (at least for me) there are two types of procrastination.
ReplyDeleteOne of them i would say is almost always a bad thing. The other one often times is a good thing(without it I would not be able to make this comment.)
As you pointed out Hillel, you can procrastinate something that leads to long term satisfaction for the short term. But you can also procrastinate one short term for another.
If you ask me, procrastinating long term for short term seems perfectly logical: long term implies the action is needed a future event,when it is done makes no difference as long as it is done before the deadline. The only downside to procrastinating in such a situation is it is often risky. What if by using my time for this short term satisfaction i wont have time to create the desired long term event.
Take the classic college life example: I have two days to complete a problem set. The opportunity arises to have a long awesome conversation with glen about nothing. In such a circumstance i will always procrastinate and opt for the conversation instead of the work. The problem set can be done later, who knows when i will get another chance at such a conversation.
How I overcome long term procrastination? Easy: I gauge the risk. if the risk is worth it i procrastinate, if not i don't. As a result I procrastinate a lot but don't consider it a bad thing.
Now what I call short term procrastination is when there is something you really want to do and know you will enjoy doing, but instead of doing it you twiddle your thumbs or do something you will enjoy infinitely less. This almost sounds impossible, but i assure you it happens all the time. Often when i am back at Miami, I really want to go to the beach only 4 blocks away but instead of going I sit at home, twiddle my thumbs and watch my brother play video games. Terrible. And this is just one example, I do hundreds of such things every day. I am not sure exactly what causes it. could be the thought of doing something difficult. could be over thinking. could be societal pressures. I really have no idea.
How to overcome it? hell if i know. wish i did. I know something that works in some circumstances. Cherish your wants. That way when you realize you want to do something, it is not something to be ignored but something which fills you to the point where you take action.
well, those are most of my thoughts on procrastination.
Ignoring issues like stress and the like, I think we're using different interpretations of 'long term'. To me a long term pleasure isn't a delayed pleasure, where you work now to get a single payoff in the end. Rather, it's a structural one. You get it, and then you keep it. You upgrade it. There are no deadlines or final ends here. Just the process of improvement.
ReplyDeleteA good example of this is exercise. I am under no deadline to hit the gym. It's either a choice of go or not go. I can push it off indefinitely. It's also not something that has a sudden intense reward. If I continue to exercise for weeks and months and years I will slowly but steadily get healthier and more fit. That's the long term pleasure. Something that takes a lot of effort over a long time, but also provides benefits on the same timescale.
Those are the things I'm most afraid of procrastinating. Not the stuff that forces me to get it done in a timely fashion. The stuff that I can choose to ignore, at great cost to my future self.
This is great. honestly one of the things that interests me most is the way different people think and give value. While you think i am using a different interpretation of long term i think you are using a different interpretation of short term. Truth is they are both right, possibly even isomorphic.
ReplyDeleteThe way I interpret it, things like exercise or any process of improvement, is a short term pleasure. I want to be the type of person who exercises. Thus every time I exercise, I achieve that goal and get satisfaction from it. Think of it as wanting to be someone who continually improves as opposed to someone who is better than before.
I completely agree on this being the worst type of procrastination. And sadly I have not found any way to really overcome it. Maybe thinking of it as a long term thing as you do will help? Then again, The more i think of it the more our interpretations seem the same besides the use of one word (short or long), therefore you should probably ignore this whole comment.