The Dark Playground of Procrastination
Apr. 17th, 2014 05:07 pmhttp://www.quora.com/Procrastination/How-do-I-get-over-my-bad-habit-of-procrastinating/answer/Oliver-Emberton
For a while, my favourite cartoon article on procrastination was this quora answer by Oliver Emberton, describing the einstein-rational part of your brain and the impulsive-lizard part of your brain.
http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html
But it was displaced by the wait-but-why article and sequel.
All the wait-but-why articles were funny, but seemed to be trying to be a bit too clever, so I had to come back to them to decide if I liked them or not. I wasn't sure how much this article added over what I already knew. But when I came back to it, I decided it was actually really good.
I think the most valuable thing is having a name for the "dark playground" -- the metaphorical place where you know you need to get something important done, but put it off, but you can't do anything *really* fun while you wait, because you'd feel guilty and because you can't really concentrate, so you do lots of things that used to be a bit fun, but now are just a mess of bad habits and impulsive reward-seeking like checking email again and again and reading websites you don't really like.
I was always aware of that phenomenon, but I didn't realise how fuzzy my concept was until having a name for it brought it into sharp focus. Having a name for it meant firstly that it was immediately easy to describe to anyone else familiar with procrastination -- even if they knew I was wrong, they knew what I was experiencing and what might help a little and what wasn't. And that I could tell other people and myself that I wasn't really enjoying what I was doing -- the problem was literally "putting things off", not "wanting to do something else more".
And secondly, recognising easily that was what I was doing helped me eliminate the lies I told myself. No, I'm not going to check my email "one more time", each time I do that I get more exhausted and get less willpower. Instead, I have to choose between (a) reducing the fear of starting to the point where I can do SOMETHING right now or (b) taking a real break or (c) checking my email HARDER and HARDER until I suddenly snap in panic and force myself to work as hard as I can for about three seconds before I collapse (this doesn't help).
For a while, my favourite cartoon article on procrastination was this quora answer by Oliver Emberton, describing the einstein-rational part of your brain and the impulsive-lizard part of your brain.
http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html
But it was displaced by the wait-but-why article and sequel.
All the wait-but-why articles were funny, but seemed to be trying to be a bit too clever, so I had to come back to them to decide if I liked them or not. I wasn't sure how much this article added over what I already knew. But when I came back to it, I decided it was actually really good.
I think the most valuable thing is having a name for the "dark playground" -- the metaphorical place where you know you need to get something important done, but put it off, but you can't do anything *really* fun while you wait, because you'd feel guilty and because you can't really concentrate, so you do lots of things that used to be a bit fun, but now are just a mess of bad habits and impulsive reward-seeking like checking email again and again and reading websites you don't really like.
I was always aware of that phenomenon, but I didn't realise how fuzzy my concept was until having a name for it brought it into sharp focus. Having a name for it meant firstly that it was immediately easy to describe to anyone else familiar with procrastination -- even if they knew I was wrong, they knew what I was experiencing and what might help a little and what wasn't. And that I could tell other people and myself that I wasn't really enjoying what I was doing -- the problem was literally "putting things off", not "wanting to do something else more".
And secondly, recognising easily that was what I was doing helped me eliminate the lies I told myself. No, I'm not going to check my email "one more time", each time I do that I get more exhausted and get less willpower. Instead, I have to choose between (a) reducing the fear of starting to the point where I can do SOMETHING right now or (b) taking a real break or (c) checking my email HARDER and HARDER until I suddenly snap in panic and force myself to work as hard as I can for about three seconds before I collapse (this doesn't help).