Here's Why We Really Procrastinate

[southflorida]

If anyone ever wondered why they don't take the important actions that they know they should take, this article points at what seems to be the root of procrastination:

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/10/27/procrastination/

...and here's a quote from that article for those that are ready to procrastinate by telling themselves that they will read it later

...and for the super-lazy folks like me, below this quote you can watch a video on YouTube

Procrastination is an impulse; it’s buying candy at the checkout. Procrastination is also hyperbolic discounting, taking the sure thing in the present over the caliginous prospect some day far away.

You must be adept at thinking about thinking to defeat yourself at procrastination.

You must realize there is the you who sits there now reading this, and there is a you sometime in the future who will be influenced by a different set of ideas and desires, a you in a different setting where an alternate palette of brain functions will be available for painting reality.

The now-you may see the costs and rewards at stake when it comes time to choose studying for the test instead of going to the club, eating the salad instead of the cupcake, writing the article instead of playing the video game.

The trick is to accept that the now-you will not be the person facing those choices, it will be the future-you.....a person who can’t be trusted.

The future-you will give in, and then you’ll go back to being now-you and feel weak and ashamed.

Now-you must trick future-you into doing what is right for both parties.

This is why food plans like Nutrisystem work for many people. Now-you commits to spending a lot of money on a giant box of food which future-you will have to deal with. People who get this concept use programs like Freedom, which disables Internet access on a computer for up to eight hours, a tool allowing now-you to make it impossible for future-you to sabotage your work.

Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more will power, more drive, but because they know productivity is a game of cat and mouse versus a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty which can never be excised from the soul. Your effort is better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push ups.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ2T4-rUUcs&feature=player_embedded

 

[teemu shalanie]

good quotes , I feel procrastinating has to do with being too comfortable in the now , to get hustle on...... If your now is hard livin, procrastinating not an option,...cause future you will be hurtin 2
get your hustle on ,
TS

 

[BlueBlazer]

You must realize there is the you who sits there now reading this, and there is a you sometime in the future who will be influenced by a different set of ideas and desires, a you in a different setting where an alternate palette of brain functions will be available for painting reality.

I usually say, "Screw that guy, he can fend for himself. Let him do the heavy lifting. . . . Where'd I put that pipe? . . . "

 

[Sat X RB]

Quoting from the above post:

"..don't take the important actions ... hyperbolic discounting ... caliginous prospect ... defeat yourself ... You must realize ... there is a you sometime in the future ... palette of brain functions ... painting reality ... accept the now you will not be ... you will give in ... feel weak and ashamed ... childish primal human predilection ... outsmarting yourself ... "

whomever wrote this thinks s/he is superior to YOU. his/her language is the language of hopelessness.

seems to me whomever wrote this is so far up her or his own arse s/he must be a Nazi.

 

[dasher65]

Gee...I thought my procrastination was from being stoned!!!

 

[frito bandito]

ill tell you exactly why we procrastinate: because of the disconnect between what our conscious mind is saying is important, and what our subconscious mind is telling us is really important. the subconscious mind is the boss. if you conscious mind is the engineer then your unconscious is the bean counter. if the cost benefit analysis of what you are trying to force yourself to do just doesnt really add up, deep down inside in your heart, then it will be difficult to find motivation no matter how much your conscious mind tries to rationalize and trick itself.

what i have learned by paying attention to my own mind and how it thinks, is that when we are finding it difficult to accomplish a task that we "know" consciously "should" be accomplished.......there is usually a damn good reason for our hesitation, hidden beneath the surface. if we make a habit of soul searching for what that reason is, we can eventually start seeing flashes of insight into why we feel a certain way. maybe its that theres something more important to be done and what you are pressuring yourself to do is actually not that important. maybe your task is dependent upon and being held up by other things it would be more logical to accomplish first. maybe you have doubts and uncertainties about certain parts of it, and you need to do a little research first, but there is some other thing which is itself holding up that research.

The now you may see the costs and rewards at stake when it comes time to choose studying for the test instead of going to the club

or maybe society has sold you on the "benefits" of studying for a test that dont actually exist, in a real world where college graduates are working at mcdonalds and you need a phd and $100k in debt anymore to even think about getting a "real" job. maybe its better to learn to become an amazing dancer at the club, and live your life doing what you really enjoy instead of what society says you "should" be doing. maybe your unconscious mind sees through all the bullshit and understands this, even if "you" don't.

i knew it in my gut long before my conscious mind was ever smart enough to understand: college is a sham. i remember thinking it in elementary school, how it was a sham that we were being railroaded into college with talk of "permanent records" and "getting a good solid job" and "in the real world blah blah blah." nowadays its starkly apparent our system has failed and i can explain to you in detail exactly how the education system has failed us. back then it was only a gut feeling, a feeling of "something's not right" that my teachers tried unsuccessfully to beat and propagandize out of me. (they failed.) my gut was right, they were wrong.

i think if we spent more time trying to understand ourselves and why we think a certain way, and then make our plans based on that, we will go through less pain in trying to force ourselves into a mold we don't necessarily fit, and in the end make ourselves much more effective as people.

 

[420somewhere]

I am a front loader ...

I am a front loader ...

I am a front loader. meaning I attack my tasks to get them done early so I don't have play catch up.

I was a director for a Software corporation and one of my best Managers would always delay getting to work on his projects. We were very good friends. I'd guess he never got tired of me asking him where he was on a project, but he always did excellent work.

Not being a procrastinator myself, I can tell you it bothers everyone else.

Just Ask my Wife I always want to get it done

 

[sso]

if you procrastinate

its because you can.



if you aint got no food but have hope of getting it, you sure aint gonna procrastinate.

 

[krunchbubble]

I am such A procrastinator...

Ill explain why later....

 

[village green]

The Seven Deadly Sins are universal and timeless. Sloth is one of them. Believe me, I know.

 

[sso]

oh i think sloth was invented by some fat fuck sitting on his throne and worrying about not getting enough out of their slaves.




work is rarely enjoyable and the proceeds mostly go into the pocket of someone else.

if you have enough to support yourself and the one´s you need to support, why would you want to spend more time at work than you have to?

enjoying yourself is far more important than anything else.


lets say the atheists are right.

then you are Never going to exist again.

why the fuck would you then want to spend your time at boring pursuits?


even if we live forever, well its the same thing, why the fuck would you want to spend your time pursuing money for no good reason?

unless its your fucking hobby or something.




and you could drop dead at any moment really.

you never know.

 

[yortbogey]

and my momma told me "Son ... U where born a procrastinator"...

 

[village green]

oh i think sloth was invented by some fat fuck sitting on his throne and worrying about not getting enough out of their slaves.




work is rarely enjoyable and the proceeds mostly go into the pocket of someone else.

if you have enough to support yourself and the one´s you need to support, why would you want to spend more time at work than you have to?

enjoying yourself is far more important than anything else.


lets say the atheists are right.

then you are Never going to exist again.

why the fuck would you then want to spend your time at boring pursuits?


even if we live forever, well its the same thing, why the fuck would you want to spend your time pursuing money for no good reason?

unless its your fucking hobby or something.




and you could drop dead at any moment really.

you never know.

Oh I don't know but it seems to me, faith or doubt, rich or poor, slave or master, none are no match for human nature.

 

[sso]

id amend that to, nothing is a match for nature.

meaning all beings.

but then again,

there is nothing else LOL

but yeah , you are right. we can conquer mostly anything.

on that note, wish me luck, im battling a rather uncomfortable flu, one of those fuck my joints are aching.

 

[southflorida]

id amend that to, nothing is a match for nature.

meaning all beings.

but then again,

there is nothing else LOL

but yeah , you are right. we can conquer mostly anything.

on that note, wish me luck, im battling a rather uncomfortable flu, one of those fuck my joints are aching.

get better quickly sso...there is still a lot of stuff that has to be done when you get well that you're never going to do, because the future-you doesn't want to

 

[southflorida]

another really good article about procrastination:

It is focused more on how to accomplish breakthrough results in business, science, etc...and not on how to get yourself to vaccum the floor every Saturday...lol...but, it still has some good insight...imvho...ENJOY!

http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

here's a small quote:

The most dangerous form of procrastination is unacknowledged type-B procrastination, because it doesn't feel like procrastination. You're "getting things done." Just the wrong things.

Any advice about procrastination that concentrates on crossing things off your to-do list is not only incomplete, but positively misleading, if it doesn't consider the possibility that the to-do list is itself a form of type-B procrastination.

In fact, possibility is too weak a word. Nearly everyone's is. Unless you're working on the biggest things you could be working on, you're type-B procrastinating, no matter how much you're getting done.

In his famous essay You and Your Research (which I recommend to anyone ambitious, no matter what they're working on), Richard Hamming suggests that you ask yourself three questions:

What are the most important problems in your field?

Are you working on one of them?

Why not?

 

[sso]

thanks, well, im just bullying the virus out, going well.

woke up feeling like i had been beaten severely by a gang of hoodlums all night. (though upon second thought, id probably be dead, despite my godlike prowess in battle.)

now i just feel like i ran a marathon.

lots of heat and forcing myself to move about.

wait, im thinking i really want a hit of what you are smoking, cause im not sure that makes sense.

there is stuff that has to be done, when i get well, that im never going to do, cause the future me doesnt want to?

i didnt know you were a seer.

im mostly seeing comfortable family life ahead.

curious now though.

but i tell ya, im perfectly fine with someone else doing whatever work you think is ahead.

im retired from heroically trying to change the world single handedly, or even with help.

it can bloody change itself.

(the way i figure, when they are smart enough, they will, till then, its bloody pointless, well, not completely pointless, just such an effort for such little change.)

 

[southflorida]

i was just joking with you in relation to procrastination, and how in that article the writer pointed out that the now-you projects what should get done by the future-you, and when it's time for the future-you to do it, it is again the now-you that projects it once again into the future...and it never gets done...lol

this is the basic structure of procrastination, a game of projecting into the future, where it always seems it will be easier to do then NOW

why put off till tomorrow, what you will never do anyway?

 

[sso]

heh, nicely worded.



i only put off things, i dont want to do.

(usually some crap related to the government or some shit like that.)