-
-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 12
Commit
This commit does not belong to any branch on this repository, and may belong to a fork outside of the repository.
- Loading branch information
Showing
1 changed file
with
138 additions
and
0 deletions.
There are no files selected for viewing
This file contains bidirectional Unicode text that may be interpreted or compiled differently than what appears below. To review, open the file in an editor that reveals hidden Unicode characters.
Learn more about bidirectional Unicode characters
| Original file line number | Diff line number | Diff line change |
|---|---|---|
| @@ -0,0 +1,138 @@ | ||
| # Why Procrastinators Procrastinate | ||
|
|
||
| Source: | ||
|
|
||
| - <https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html> | ||
| - <https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.html> | ||
|
|
||
| _Procrastination isn't optional - it's something they don't know how to not do_ | ||
|
|
||
| To understand why procrastinators procrastinate so much, let’s start by understanding a _non_-procrastinator’s brain: | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| Pretty normal, right? Now, let’s look at a procrastinator’s brain: | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| Notice anything different? | ||
|
|
||
| It seems the Rational Decision-Maker in the procrastinator’s brain is coexisting with a pet—the Instant Gratification Monkey. | ||
|
|
||
| This would be fine—cute, even—if the Rational Decision-Maker knew the first thing about how to own a monkey. But unfortunately, it wasn’t a part of his training and he’s left completely helpless as the monkey makes it impossible for him to do his job. | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| The fact is, the Instant Gratification Monkey is the last creature who should be in charge of decisions—he thinks only about the present, ignoring lessons from the past and disregarding the future altogether, and he concerns himself entirely with maximizing the ease and pleasure of the current moment. | ||
|
|
||
| And with the monkey in charge, the procrastinator finds himself spending a lot of time in a place called the Dark Playground. | ||
|
|
||
| The Dark Playground is a place every procrastinator knows well. It’s a place where leisure activities happen at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening. The fun you have in the Dark Playground isn’t actually fun because it’s completely unearned and the air is filled with guilt, anxiety, self-hatred, and dread. | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| Given this predicament, how does the procrastinator ever manage to accomplish anything? | ||
|
|
||
| As it turns out, there’s one thing that scares the shit out of the Instant Gratification Monkey: | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| The Panic Monster is dormant most of the time, but he suddenly wakes up when a deadline gets too close or when there’s danger of public embarrassment, a career disaster, or some other scary consequence. | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| The Instant Gratification Monkey, normally unshakable, is terrified of the Panic Monster. | ||
|
|
||
| Even for the procrastinator who does manage to eventually get things done and remain a competent member of society, something has to change. Here are the main reasons why: | ||
|
|
||
| 1) It’s unpleasant. | ||
| 2) The procrastinator ultimately sells himself short. | ||
| 3) The Have-To-Dos may happen, but not the Want-To-Dos. | ||
|
|
||
| # How to Beat Procrastination | ||
|
|
||
| What do the right habits even look like, and where exactly will the procrastinator run into trouble? There are two components of being able to achieve things in a healthy and effective manner—planning and doing. | ||
|
|
||
| ## Planning | ||
|
|
||
| Procrastinators love planning, quite simply because planning does not involve doing, and doing is the procrastinator’s Kryptonite. But when procrastinators plan, they like to do it in a vague way that doesn’t consider details or reality too closely, and their planning leaves them perfectly set up to not actually accomplish anything. | ||
|
|
||
| **A big list of icky, daunting tasks and undertakings.** | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| Effective planning sets you up for success. Its purpose is to do the exact opposite of everything in that sentence: | ||
| - Effective planning takes a big list and selects a winner: planning must end with rigorous prioritizing and one item that emerges as the winner—the item you’re going to make your first priority. | ||
| - Effective planning makes an icky item un-icky: An icky item is vague and murky, and you're not really sure where you'd start, how you'd go about doing it, or where you'd get answers to your questions about it. For example, you have an item "Learn how to code", to un-icky the item, you need to read, research, and ask questions to find out exactly how one learns how to code, the specific means necessary for each step along the way, and how long each one should take. Un-ickying a list item turns it from this: | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| Into this: | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| - Effective planning turns a daunting item into a series of small, clear, manageable tasks. | ||
|
|
||
| ## Doing | ||
|
|
||
| Procrastinators’ visions of future scenarios never seem to include the monkey. But when the actual moment arrives to begin that scheduled brick-laying, the procrastinator does what the procrastinator does best—he lets the monkey take over and ruin everything. | ||
|
|
||
| Let’s examine this specific challenge of laying a single brick: | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| - **Critical Entrance**: where you go to officially start work on the task. | ||
| - **Dark Woods**: the process of actually doing the work, and once you finish, you're rewarded by ending up in **The Happy Playground** - a place where you feel satisfaction and where leisure time is pleasant and rewarding because you got something hard done. | ||
| - You occasionally even end up super-engaged with what you’re working on and enter a state of **Flow**, where you’re so blissfully immersed in the task that you lose track of time. | ||
|
|
||
| Those paths look something like this: | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| Sounds pretty simple, right? | ||
|
|
||
| Well unfortunately for procrastinators, they tend to miss out on both The Happy Playground and Flow. | ||
|
|
||
| For example, here’s a procrastinator that never even gets started on the task he’s supposed to do, because he never makes it through the Critical Entrance. Instead, he spends hours wallowing in The Dark Playground, hating himself: | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| Here’s a procrastinator who gets started on the task, but she can’t stay focused, and she keeps taking long breaks to play on the internet and make food. She doesn’t end up finishing the task: | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| Here’s a procrastinator who couldn’t bring himself to get started, even though a work deadline was approaching, and he spent hours in The Dark Playground, knowing the looming deadline was drawing near and he was only making his life harder by not starting. Eventually, the deadline got so close, the Panic Monster suddenly came roaring into the room, freaking him out and causing him to fly through the task to hit the deadline. | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| After he finishes, he feels decent because he accomplished something, but he’s also not that pleased because he knows he did an underwhelming job on the project because he had to rush so much, and he feels like he wasted most of his day procrastinating for no reason. This lands him in Mixed Feelings Park. | ||
|
|
||
| So if you’re a procrastinator, let’s look at what you need to do to get on the right path, one that will leave you much happier. | ||
|
|
||
| **The first thing you must do is make it through the Critical Entrance**. The monkey absolutely hates stopping something fun to start something hard, and this is where you need to be the strongest. If you can get started and force the monkey into the Dark Woods, you’ve broken a bit of his will. | ||
|
|
||
| Of course, he’s not going to give up anytime soon. | ||
|
|
||
| The Dark Woods is where you are when you’re working. It’s not a fun place to be, and the Instant Gratification Monkey wants nothing to do with it. To make things harder, the Dark Woods is surrounded by the Dark Playground, one of the monkey’s favorite places, and since he can see how close it is, he’ll try as hard as he can to leave the Dark Woods. | ||
|
|
||
| It makes no sense to leave the Dark Woods in favor of the Dark Playground—they’re both dark. They both suck to be in, but the big difference is the Dark Woods leads to happiness and the Dark Playground leads only to more misery. But the Instant Gratification Monkey isn’t logical and to him, the Dark Playground seems like much more fun. | ||
|
|
||
| The good news is, if you can power through a bit of the Dark Woods, something funny happens. Then, if you continue along, something magical happens. Once you get 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through a task, especially if it’s going well, you start to feel great about things and suddenly, the end is in sight. This is a key tipping point. | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| The Tipping Point is important because it’s not just you who can smell the Happy Playground up ahead—the monkey can smell it too. Once you hit the Tipping Point, the monkey becomes more interested in getting to the Happy Playground than the Dark Playground. When this happens, you lose all impulse to procrastinate and now both you and the monkey are speeding toward the finish. | ||
|
|
||
|  | ||
|
|
||
| Before you know it, you’re done, and you’re in the Happy Playground. Now, for the first time in a while, you and the monkey are a team. You both want to have fun, and it feels great because it’s earned. When you and the monkey are on a team, you’re almost always happy. |