Understanding Procrastination

There's this thing where, if you're conflicted between two wants, your brain will pick a third, unrelated  thing to do instead. It's a trick most of us have developed to avoid the potential stress involved in our internal conflicts. We do it with all sorts of stuff, but when we do it with work, we call it 'procrastination'.

This is why this bizarre thing happens when you procrastinate. You don't work on the project that you should be, nor on the project that you'd be working on if you were free to do whatever you want. Instead, you end up doing the kind of stuff that ranks somewhere like four or five on your preference list. This is the time when you watch an entire box-set of a television series you like, or you alphabetise your DVDs. Stuff you enjoy, but you wouldn't usually do. 

But in understanding this, you can actually do something about it. 

First I should say, of course there are other things 'procrastination' can mean. Sometimes a person genuinely prefers going on facebook, or watching the DVD box-set, and it's other people, not the individual, who have decided that they're not doing what they should be. But I'm not talking about this kind of thing. The solution is too easy: ignore them.

The kind I'm talking about is most pecular to people, because they actually love the things involved. On the one hand they have X, a project they love and do regularly. On the other hand they have Y. Y is the kind of thing that you would enjoy doing, maybe even quite similar to X, but you don't yet feel motivated to do it for its own sake. Unfortunately, you have to do it, because there's a deadline looming or it's important for some other external reason. You love X, and you will love Y, so you'd think picking one of them would be easy. But it's not, you pick Z instead, something you kinda like but never normally pick. Why? Because of self-coercion. 

We so readily accept guilt and worry as legitimate ways of motivating ourselves. I personally think it's a hand-me-down from how many times (particularly growing up) other people used guilt and so forth to coerce us. But the consequence of this is that we don't do X, as we normally would, because doing X would remind us that we're not doing Y. And we of course don't do Y, because guilt isn't actually a very persuasive reason to find Y enjoyable. So we pick Z, specifically because it's different enough from Y and X that we can forget all about them.

The solution, as bizarre as it might sound to people, is to not try to force yourself to do Y, especially by means of guilt or shame or anything else like this. Just embrace that you really want to do X, and be happy about that. 

Now, at this point, you might say: but what about the looming deadline?! But doing X instead, IS the solution for how to start doing Y.

It's true that you might actually be better off doing Y, but you're not going to be motivated to do Y unless you allow time for yourself to be positively inspired to do it. Say X is write a play, and Y is write your university review on someone else's play. In doing X, you give yourself chance to be inspired to do Y, either instead, first or afterwards because X will be similar enough to Y to allow for this. (Remember, this follows logically that they're similar enough, from the fact that you have to pick Z, not X, to not think about Y). 

Once guilt is out the picture, this positive inspiration can take hold quite quickly. I've known it take minuets even. On the other hand, of course, this doesn't happen when you pick Z (say, facebook) because Z has been specifically picked because it lets you forget all about X and Y, so there'll be little or nothing to remind you of why Y is good/fun/interesting. 

So in summary: If you want to get rid of this kind of procrastination 1) let go of guilt and be OK with doing what you really want, and 2) do what you actually want and let that be the inspiration for doing other stuff, too. 

Life without Drama

Personal dramas are created when the parties involved feel so sure that they're entitled to their negative interpretation of one another that actions such as cutting people off, breaking up, or being disrespectful, harsh or maybe even cruel, are warranted.

What is surprising though is that not much is actually needed to convince people they are entitled to their negative interpretation. People always feel they are, of course. But that's the point, they *feel* they are. Emotions become part of the decision. Frustration, anger, confusion, sadness, pride--it's not always an obvious emotion. But an emotion and a few bits of evidence are not sufficient to make an informed decision.

What the emotion does is fit with a particular interpretation of the evidence, and THEN cause that interpretation to become rigid (because emotions are hard to overturn). One is stopped from easily seeing *different* perspective (including more true perspectives)

Actually almost nothing warrants a negative interpretation. It's always good to err because you'll learn more being open to positive interpretations than the other way around. Negative interpretations are a bit of a full stop.

On maybe an implicit level the idea behind this process is that we sometimes should cut people off, break up, or be disrespectful, and being entitled to a negative interpretation tells us when to do this. So if we never let ourselves have negative interpretations we might end up 'being walked on' or harmed in some ways. But this way of thinking ignores how easy it is to get along with people if you try to. One can take up ideas like 'not taking things personally'.

We simply don't need to ever be disrespectful to people to not be victimised. We can not be victimised by our positive attitudes. And as for breaking up and cutting people off, this is something we should rarely ever do. People should be able to drift apart mutually if they so wish. But in general, relationships have a lot of knowledge to them, and we should only ever put a stop to them if absolutely necessary. Where 'absolutely necessary' here means 'when the other person has destroyed the relationship' and there is now nothing that could be done'. And where 'absolutely necessary' DOES NOT mean 'my negative interpretation tell me to end the relationship.'

A Life Without Deadlines

Deadlines serve a pretty important function: Some times, things need to be done by a certain time. But there is a dark side to deadlines, and that is self-coercion.

We all know that deadlines can be pressuring, stressful, boring, and even upsetting, but what all these problems come down to is that you are forcing yourself to do something. And not only is self-coercion unpleasant in the short term, but it's bad for you in the long run. There are two reasons for this. 

Firstly, if you don't want to do something, you might be right not to. You're rejection of doing something indicates you have a criticism of it, and you'll probably agree with the criticism if you understood it, after all, it's *your* criticism. But the self-coercer speaks to themselves in just the same way a coercive person speaks to their victim. 'You're just being lazy,' 'you're just being stupid', 'you're just weak'--anything but actually taking their wishes seriously. So the criticism gets pushed down and repressed. And it's not good to ignore a problem, because doing so also ignores the solutions that will help you!

The second reason is self-coercion breeds doubtle-think. You might want to meet the deadline in some regards--you want the promotion, you want the degree, you want the hot body by bikini season--but you also have problems with it that mean you don't want to do it. You're left with double-think. Worse still, your double-think can breed if you live a life of self-coercion. 

Maybe you want to meet this deadline because you want the promotion, but maybe you only want the promotion because of another instance of double-think. For example, say, you want a job that pays well to prove you're a worthy person, but you had also wanted to be a circus clown because it's nice to entertain people. 

Deadlines are one of the ways, along with all other kinds of self-coercion, to keep yourself tied up in knots, confused and distressed about the things you think you want, if you want them at all. 

THE SOLUTION 

Life without deadlines isn't really about throwing out egg timers and never satisfying a client. You can still do things by a certain time. The trick is, to do it by a certain time just because you want to. No coercion. No pain. And to get to that state, you need to do the opposite of what was said above. You need to do things you don't have criticisms of. And you need to get rid of double-think. Both of these things really come down to the same thing: you need to do what's fun for you. 

It's contrary to all the advice out there. People like to say about deadlines 'ah, well it's just life.' They advocate force as a means of being productive. But it's not really true. Ultimately, the most productive person is one who loves what they're doing. Such a person gets a thing done *before* the deadline. So however contrary it is to common advice, it's not exactly unintuitive. We know it works. The question is are you willing to do what you want, to get what you want?

ignorance is bliss, but the unexamined life is not worth living

Ignorance can be bliss. If you're seriously ill but don't know it, then you have all the bliss that comes with not being ill. The same is true if you're about to get fired but think you're being called in for a promotion. Or if you think you're a charming person but everyone hates you.

And indeed, if you're anything like me, you've once or twice avoided going to the doctors because you don't want to hear bad news. Or you've avoided exposing yourself to tough criticism because you don't want to know if you're doing something wrong. Or you've held a concerning looking letter in your hands a few moments longer than necessary because if you don't open it, it's a bit like there's been no bad news... right?

To will ignorance for the sake of bliss is a common enough thing. But what kind of person would choose that as their default? For most of us, these are some of our more shameful moments. We'd much prefer to be calm and pragmatic in the face of bad news. Why? For the very obvious reason that we have the problem even if we don't know we do, and the best thing to do with a problem is solve it. Simple.

OK, but it's hard to solve problems, and I like bliss.

Ignorance can be bliss, but being completely and desperately stumped on a troubling problem can be bliss. This is why you end up with people who devote their whole lives to science, maths, philosophy and so on--it's not because they're easy.

What makes you happy is reprogrammable. It depends on what ideas you have. So if ignorance can make you happy, and problem solving can make you happy, then there's nothing in it except what's better for you.

I think this would be a nice way to interpret 'the unexamined life is not worth living,' it's not worth living because there's no reason to prefer it to the examined one.

Why we Promise

A business man puts his reputation on the line when he promises a client that his product will be of X quality at T time. It's a completely different thing than if he merely said in passing that he thinks it will be X good. When a person promises it means they are assuring you that you can hold them to their word on this matter.

It's the same sort of thing with personal relationships, too. It's not exactly 'reputation' on the line, but no one would want to put their friend off being their friend because they aren't reliable to their word.

And so this social practice has helped people make many good stable agreements over the years. You could say, it's helped make relying on people more reliable! If you say you'll do something and you forget, then it's not clear how blameworthy you are. Perhaps you're careless, or perhaps it was a simple mistake. But if you promise someone you'll do something and forget, this is more obviously very neglectful of you and therefore blameworthy. After all, everyone knows the rules of promises.They're serious stuff, you can't just neglect to remember.

But if promises are so great, why don't we use them even more?! Why don't I get my friend S, who's always 5 minutes late, to promise to be on time, and this way he has to make the extra effort that he's not currently making or else he might lose me as a friend? Why not order promises at every single junction?

Well, quite obviously, we don't do that because that'd be horrible. Specifically, it would be horrible because we need to, to get along with each other, be a bit more tolerant of each others mistakes. We also need to be tolerant in other ways that effect promises, like we need to be tolerant that people change their minds. So the question really is, what makes the instances where it's good to make a promise so special that we are less tolerant of our friends making a mistake (like forgetting, or not being able to do it) or having the freedom to change their minds?

The intuitive answer is: when the promisee really needs the promiser to keep their promise. It's a bit annoying that S is always five minuets late, but it's a fairly tolerable quirk as far as quirks go, particularly in an age of smart phones. But if a person is injured at the side of a road, and you promise to come back for them with help, forgetting isn't really OK. Or if a dad promises his son he'll be at his birthday party, it wouldn't really be OK to change his mind in preference of the pub. But wait, now we're in the territory of things you're probably obligated to do regardless of the promising.

So the criteria needs to be that the action is not something you are obligated to do unless you promise to do it, and yet something that you could fairly be not tolerated for not doing. Perhaps our answer lies where we started, with the business man trying to keep your business.

Here's an example: Rebecca asks John, her friend, if he can be around tomorrow night because she needs to go over a very important pitch she'll be giving at work that could get her a promotion. He promises he will.   If he didn't keep this promise, unless he had a very good reason, he wouldn't be a very good person to be friends with. This is actually completely different from my friend S always being 5 mins late, because this kind of thing won't really effect how good a friend that person is (we'll assume the friendship has other assets).

certain relationships come along with certain things you actually have to be reliable for in order for that relationship to last. Good neighbours have to water the plants when you're on holiday and keep the noise down after 10 PM. Friends have to be there for you when you're having a personal problem. Boyfriends and girlfriends have to share an affection. But these are consensual 'have tos' I am using. Without your continued agreement you don't have to be a good neighbour  or a friend, or a boyfriend/girlfriend, or a two people trading, or anything other kind of human relationship. Promises are one of many ways we confirm we want to keep 'doing business together', so to speak, and accept the cost of doing so.

Socrates would hate self-help

At the birth of Western philosophy lies Socrates who preached that, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’ As philosophy has continued to develop from traditions largely put forth by this man—fallibilism, philosophy as a critical dialogue, and a need to understand and question the concepts we take for granted—it has in an important sense moved away from the examined life. This is very unfortunate.

So concerned with fundamental truths about the world and about human nature (and as it should be) philosophy has evolved almost a distaste for the personal. Even ethical and political theories only touch upon what could be considered guidance. They dampen their feet at the pool but don’t dive in.

There will on trend be more talk of what an individual owes society, than what you owe your friend, or your family member, or your lover, or your colleague. Philosophy is more interested in what counts as knowledge, then how one makes discoveries. Whether happiness is a value is of more interest than if there are good or bad ways to be happy and if so what they are.

These questions are less fundamental, but they are still very general and very important question about humans and about reality, and so they are undoubtedly philosophical.

I suppose the assumption for many of these more personal matters is that they belong more to the realm of psychology. Discovery is psychology. Happiness is psychology. Healthy relationships are psychology. Particularly self-help gets given a lot of these questions. But it would be a mistake to think that Socrates examined life lives on in psychology and self-help.

The problem with putting these questions in this domain is that we don’t get deep enough answers.  Self-help is very subjective. The individual isn’t so much searching for truth as identifying their current goals and reorganising a few mistaken methods to arrive at those goal. Socrates would disapprove.

Socrates would want to question our goals and learn about why some of them were in error. Socrates would want to question if we should even have goals. Socrates would want to scan through and examine as close to every thought and assumption motivating every single piece of the puzzle on the table. (at least the spirit of Socrates would, whether the man himself was capable of doing this is a difficult question given we can't even guarantee he ever existed). 

Self help is just too lazy for this end. Self-help mirrors the guru style of Eastern philosophy. Western philosophy can do better. And so I pledge: let us bring the examined life into the world of high standard truth seeking of western philosophy.