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. 

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?