This whole thing about character flaws and self control reminded me of the following passage from Raymond Smullyan's "This Book Needs No Title":
I know one woman who smokes. She says: “It’s not that I have to smoke; I choose to. I could easily give it up any time I wish to, but I see no reason why I should. But I can assure you, I could if I wanted to.” Her husband says to her: “That's only a rationalization! You couldn’t give up smoking even if you wanted to. You are not strong enough to give it up; you have to smoke. So to make yourself feel better, and to avoid having to confess your own weakness of character, you fool yourself into believing that you choose to. But it’s only a rationalization!” I know another woman who smokes. She says: “It’s not that I want to smoke; I can’t help myself! I have tried several times giving it up, but I have failed! I'm afraid I just don’t have a very strong character. I would love to stop, but I simply can’t.” Her husband says to her: “That's only a rationalization! You certainly could stop immediately, if you really wanted to. No, you choose to smoke (after all, nobody is making you) and you feel ashamed and guilty for doing that which you know to be harmful. So to avoid any moral responsibility for your acts, you fool yourself into believing that you ‘can’t help it. But this is only a rationalization.”
My only question about all this is: “Why are people so incredibly stupid?”
Pity he didn't expand on the last line, but I think deep introspection is required to understand what is really under our control
(1) if someone says "I want to do X" we can take them at face value. We don't have to argue that "they secretly don't and only say it because they can't quit". That's BS.
(2) if someone says "I want to quit X, but can't", we also take them at face value. Sure, they might enjoy X, but there's nothing to make us believe they are lying when they say they want to quit X or only say it because they feel ashamed.
Now, what we want to do as a rational plan (e.g. quit smoking) and what we want to do as an impulse (e.g. smoke another cigarette now) is not the same thing.
And the impulse can be far more powerful than the rational plan.
So, no need to second guess anyone. We can both taking them at face value (when they say they want to quit for example) AND understand that there might be impulses in them beyond what they rationally want.
An impulse is just a "want" over a shorter timescale. When someone says "I want to quite X, but can't", what they usually mean is that most of the time they want to quit, but for short periods of time they want X more than they want to quit.
Self-control is an important part of short-term vs long-term thinking. Perhaps a more important point is whether (during the times when you want to quit X) you change things so that the times when you want X are less frequent.
If you say you want to quit X, but you choose not to do the things that make it easier for you to quit X (for example, for someone wanting to quit eating between meals, not buying and keeping snacks in their house, so that giving in to their impulses is more effort) then it's reasonable to doubt your intention to quit X.
People do lie, especially about their reasons for doing things, and taking them at their word would be negligent if you're a doctor who needs the truth to do your job, or even if they're just someone you want to help.
>An impulse is just a "want" over a shorter timescale.
I don't think so. There's a qualitative difference. The "want over larger timescale" is a conscious decision. The impulse can be felt even at a gut level (and can even be tied to addiction mechanisms).
Compared to "I want to quit cocaine", "I want a hit" is not the same thing in a "shorter timescale" at all.
It's not just that "most of the time they want to quit, but for short periods of time they want X more than they want to quit". The impulse at those "short periods" is of a different kind too.
And even for much less addictive issues, smoking, obesity, procrastination, exercise, etc, the two are different, and even involve different parts of the brain.
I think this intuition generalizes to almost everything in life, and to discussions on the Internet in particular. That is, I don't think I've ever seen anything productive coming from not taking what people say at face value.
I agree with you that there are at least 2 classes of "wants," but I would say the distinction is way more subtle than you think. For one thing, when it comes to my own motivations it's usually completely unreasonable to take myself at face value, so why would I take others at face value? Of course you should take care not to treat people like children, but that doesn't mean they understand themselves.
The best explanation I've seen of this, at least psychologically, is from The Mind Illuminated by John Yates. He says we are in control of our intentions, and nothing else. (Although I would say that language is also misleading, because people are sometimes not very good at distinguishing false intentions that are generated unconsciously.) The right intention, perhaps repeated persistently enough, is what leads not only to action but also to internal expressions of "willpower" or effort. Right intentions are not "good intentions," where you mean for good things to happen. A right intention is directing your focus to the thing that helps you most in whatever you're trying to do.
It's certainly possible to never notice any of this, especially if you don't take up activities that make the process more obvious. If you lift weights, for example, it's easy to notice all the effort that a set takes and think "I did that." In reality most of your control over the set was exerted before you even started. I think this explains the utility of many spiritual practices like meditation and prayer.
I really wanted to quit, but I couldnt "chose to quit" - so I went a different route that worked well for me, but with an odd cost:
I convinced myself that "smoking will make you nauseous" -- and then, when I attempted to smoke, I would feel sick to my stomach, and I would gag a lot.
This worked for me - and I was able to quit nearly cold turkey.
The cost, is that now, any time I smell cigarette smoke, I begin to gag and I cant control it. Further, now my gag reflex is so strong that brushing my teeth makes me gag heavily....
Interestingly, I use the same method to stick to my diet. I repeat to myself and others how gross fast food is and just say things like yuck, eww, etc when I think of eating it. It took a short time before I just naturally avoid it and have no desire or cravings anymore. And this is from someone that once consumed at least 1, most times 2, meals a day from fast food places.
My problem with dieting was different, I eat normal food, I just eat a lot of it, even if I'm not hungry. I realized this was because the long-term gain of not eating is just too long-term, so I set up a points system where I reward myself with points any time I eat less than maintenance, and I lose points whenever I eat more. It's been working quite well so far!
I've done something in the same vein, but not so detailed. Say I'm out for dinner and they offer desert. I have a sweet tooth, so I look at the menu. If it sounds absolutely great, I'll give in. But if it appears to be just OK, I say to myself "I'll save those calories for something better another day."
Likewise, if potato chips are served with a meal -- if I ate them I'd get some marginal pleasure from it, but I can think of 20 ways to get more pleasure from the same number of calories.
Mentally, I'm not denying myself pleasure; I'm banking it for future pleasure. The overall effect is I have fewer low-yield calories and fewer calories overall.
Well you basically made up reverse weight watchers. They assign points based on calorie counts (and I think healthiness factors as well but I could be wrong there). You have a set number of points per day.
My system is simpler in that you don't have to count calories or anything, you just ballpark the amount of points you gain/lose based on how you ate. It's not about the points anyway, the points are just there for motivation, so they just need to be accurate enough to keep you from thinking it's a sham.
Conditioning oneself to feel shame when purchasing or being seen eating unhealthy food works too. In fact I'm pretty sure it's a key component of the general food culture of most places that are slimmer than the US—which is almost all the places that there are.
I think this self-programming things work a lot better than people expect.
The best way to avoid the temptation to each junk food is just not to buy it, or the best way to avoid defaulting to something is making it impractical.
That worked really well for me when I was single. But once you have a family with small children, keeping all snacks and junk foods out of the house is a different challenge.
I really had to drastically up my game because my old strategy of not eating what wasn't there didn't cut it anymore.
I don't know if you have kids but I was shocked how much junk food appears in the house EVEN if you don't buy any, especially as they get older.
It would be helpful if my spouse was as strict as I am but that's not always possible. Not to mention step parents and grandparents who are purposely sabotaging to the healthy food plan.
It took about 4 years of "discipline lag" but if you keep trying eventually you can serve the kids cake and pizza at a birthday party, without being distressed you aren't having any.
I don't have a good specific strategy but if you keep focused eventually willpower gets stronger.
Or the other way around. Something that helps a long way picking up a good habit is to make it easy to do, by removing all possible obstacles/annoyances to just doing it.
There is a known method for stopping people from drinking that involves the patient taking a drug which prevents any pleasure-able feelings from alcohol and then letting the person drink as much as they want. After the third or fourth time, the person naturally avoids it.
That's how I stopped drinking liquor! When I was around 20, I drank way, way too much and was in bed for more than 3 days. It's been 30 years since and I still can't smell or drink anything stronger than wine without getting repulsed.
Had a very similar experience unintentionally. A coworker was making mixed drinks with Everclear, which was 190 proof (95% alcohol). I badly misjudged how much I was drinking, and it was one of three times in my life I threw up from drinking (probably saved me from alcohol poisoning). Took me a few days to recover fully. Before that incident, my preferred drink was whiskey neat and I could drink it like water. Ever since, any hard spirits make me nauseous immediately if they aren't mixed and diluted heavily. I figure it's my body's defense mechanism telling me not to drink poison anymore.
That kind of self-teaching worked for me for junk food (for which I have told myself since childhood would make me nauseous) but not coffee (for which I have mostly been telling myself it would make me warm and happy, which it does). Now I have been low-key trying to, if not quit coffee, at least make myself able to stop after a while.
I've tried telling myself coffee would make my heart hurt/race uncomfortably (as an added bonus, it actually does after a while). But mostly thinking about coffee makes me want more coffee, even if it's negative.
I've tried redirecting my good feelings to something else by telling myself exercise would make me feel warm, good and alert. It works. Now I exercise AND drink too much coffee. OTOH I've never had problems motivating myself to exercise (which I do daily) so I guess... partial win?
I "stopped" frequently, sometimes for months at a time, and planned to quit "someday". Finally, the first time I tried to actually "quit" I started again in less than 24 hours.
I was so disgusted with myself that I quit in disgust...successfully. Not sure how I tricked my brain this way, and the previous successful "stop but not quit" experience surely helped, but essentially successfully quit within 36 hours of my first attempt.
I wonder how much of the complexity is "semantic." Ie, our language concepts just break down when trying to describe willpower addiction and their interaction... addiction is wanting something even though you really don't want to want it.
I'd go one step further. There are two models vying against each other here; Free Will and Materialist Determinism. We often try to believe in both at the same time, and it causes all sorts of dissonance in comprehension and expression.
You don't have to be a materialist to be a determinist. Nor do you have to be a determinist if you're a materialist. The beliefs are completely orthogonal.
Indeed not, hence why I named them separately. I'm alluding specifically to the combination here, where the mind is a purely mechanical thing that is a function of its inputs. Which makes a concept like "self-control", as a moral construct, difficult to model, at least in any meaningful way.
Too theoretical imo, to see if something is within your locus of control try to stop doing it for a month - you'll see whether you are smoking cigarettes or if the cigarettes are smoking you.
The same is true of quitting, of course. Aside from rare situations such as a beheading it is hard to lose consciousness while being reasonably sure that you won't regain it, if only briefly, and even the guillotined could wake up post-singularity and start smoking again!
I have a challenge to anyone here: stop reacting to notifications on your phone for a week. You hear the sound, ignore it. Just ignore it. Get to it when you need to.
Notifications are the reason we are addicted to our phones. Checking whether something that arrived is important is like a slot machine. Notice that there is no way to put a different sound for "urgent" notifications. That's because apps and companies are all competing for a limited resource - your attention. It's the tragedy of the commons!
I’m a step ahead of your experiment: I just use my phone in Do Not Disturb mode 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Problem solved. While the screen is off I get no notifications. No texts popping up. All calls silenced. I control when I use my phone, not other people, not app developers, not some “growth hacker’s” machine learning algorithm. It’s been a total game changer and improved my quality of life immensely—almost more than when I quit Facebook years ago. I can’t imagine ever going back to my phone lighting up and dinging like a casino every 10 seconds.
I have a similar setup to ryandrake (GP) where I just keep my phone on silent 24/7 (not DND, not sure what the difference is, maybe DND also stops some notifs from coming through at all).
I like this better than turning off all notifications. The difference is that like GP said, I control when to look at my phone (which admittedly I still do often), but also I don't lose track of the occasional actually-important notif (granted this is rare outside of messaging).
It's also nice for messaging apps -- I can see who messaged me without even unlocking my phone and then I can decide whether to unlock my phone to respond if it's something/someone more urgent or important.
A couple of years ago I would worry about missing calls, but the nice thing about the text-era is that all my friends message me now and no one actually calls, and when services and stuff actually calls you, they leave a voice mail. So this is a natural way to solve spam calls for me -- I just don't hear them at all and they become missed calls.
By turning off most notifications I've put another step between looking at my phone and viewing notifications. Namely: I have to open each app to check notifications inside the app.
I've found this reduces the incidents of me opening any particular app.
At work I already have people stopping by my cube. There is the phone. There is email. Recently they also made it mandatory that we have slack installed. I'm in my mid-50s and I don't like text, I don't tweet, and I hate slack. It seems to be younger people who would rather send 10 single line messages than one well-composed email.
My productivity takes a hit every time I get a slack message because that insistent clacking notification noise and the little red visual indication of pending messages distract me from my immediate task. Worse yet, the message often starts "Hey". So I reply, "I'm here". Then I set there for 40 seconds with "<other person> is typing" while I wait for their real question to arrive, as there is no way I can go back to my flow for 40 seconds and get anything done.
>Worse yet, the message often starts "Hey". So I reply, "I'm here". Then I set there for 40 seconds with "<other person> is typing" while I wait for their real question to arrive, as there is no way I can go back to my flow for 40 seconds and get anything done.
Even people who prefer text communication are annoyed by this.
Also in my 50s. I can relate :-). The first thing I do with messaging clients is turn off the notifications. On the web client in slack there is an indicator in the browser tab when messages have been sent and when there are messages directly for you (I haven't actually tried the desktop client...)
Next, I have a set routine where I check the visual notification. Generally speaking, when I am running my tests, I'll glance at the notifier. I TDD most of the time, so usually that means glancing at the notifier every 2-5 minutes. If I need to put my head down, I start a pomodoro timer (25 minutes) and I'll check the notifier when that goes off.
I don't always check the message when my notification goes. I keep it as a choice. If I need to keep my head down, then I just mentally make a note that I should check the notification when I get the chance. I don't know if it makes sense, but I use the same part of my mental process that I use for making notes of anything -- oh, I should fix that test, I should refactor that function, etc, etc. It's the stuff in the back of my mind that I've chosen to do later. If I get overloaded (as I tend to do now that I'm older) I put it in my TODO list (check slack). Then I can forget about it.
Basically that gives me a response time 2-3 minutes on average if I'm just cranking out code TDD style or on average about 15 minutes if I'm doing something more deep. Since I work remotely, having that "presence" is really important. Not disappearing for hours on end makes people feel more comfortable that you are actually there.
However, the last thing I do is if I really need time to myself, I'll send a quick message on slack saying, "I need to wrestle with X. I'll be away from slack for about 1-2 hours. Is there anything anybody needs before I do that?"
I guess one last thing. At one point in my career, I quit my programming job, moved to Japan and taught English for 5 years. Then I went back to programming. During the 5 years I taught English, I still did my own side projects, however at that time I didn't have any free time to really devote to programming. It had to be 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there. I worked hard at developing a technique where I could get in and out of the zone very quickly.
The 2 main pieces of advice I can give is, if you have tests, to always leave yourself a failing test when you switch contexts. If you have good test coverage, this is relatively easily done by simply sketching in some functionality and leaving the tests broken. When you come back, you can see all the broken tests and it will show you what your sketch was doing. Normally it takes me about 2-3 minutes to get back into the flow.
Second, make TODO lists. I use org mode in emacs (and actually moved from vim to emacs with evil mode simply to have a better org mode client!) However, you can use anything, really (markdown is fine too). Just get into the habit of dumping your though process into an editing buffer (I need to do X and then Y and then Z). I tend to try to break up my programming where I'll do 5-10 minutes of coding followed by 1-2 minutes of reflection -- so I force myself to stop and take stock of what I'm doing. This is where I tend to write my TODOs. If I'm doing pomodoros, then usually I'll write TODOs during the 5 minute "rest" period. Not only does it help me get into the flow faster, but I've found that the enforced reflection period helps me jump out of local maxima and save time (i.e. if you get going in one direction and miss a better opportunity). Since I'm 9 timezones away from my colleagues if I'm working while they are sleeping, I can often hand over my work to my colleague and they can finish it off while I sleep. It takes some practice communicating, but if you have a willing partner it's pretty fun tag team like that.
> I have a challenge to anyone here: stop reacting to notifications on your phone for a week. You hear the sound, ignore it. Just ignore it. Get to it when you need to.
Deal! I will report back in a week. This will be an interesting experiment.
I think a lot of people underappreciate that they are a chemical computer and that therefore their feelings and decisions are chemical reactions.
So if a behavior changes the chemicals, it can change what you want, and now both these statements become equivalent: "I could quit if I wanted to, but I don't want to" = "I can't quit smoking."
A more accurate description of addiction is probably something like "I can't want to quit smoking."
Let's put it this way: we know for a fact that what you feel and think can be influenced through electrical, chemical and mechanical interventions to the brain. Given the extent of the "circuit bending" capability that medical science has observed, it's hard to think of a mind as something other than just the runtime state of the brain that hosts it.
There’s a deep flaw in your reasoning, in that it implicitly relies on its own conclusion. To see why, consider an analogy:
Tampering with a radio produces artifacts in the music playing, and can even cause it to change between a number of different signals, but the source of the music signal, the composition of it, is largely remote to the radio.
Your analogy is missing the fact that a brain is a bidirectional device. It has both outputs and inputs, and the two are visibly correlated.
To fix the analogy, consider circuit-bending a handheld transceiver. Assuming the "thinking" / "free will" part represents the conversational partner on the other side of the radio link, modifying my transceiver can alter not just how I hear my partner's transmission, but what my partner receives from me as well. Being able to modify the input, I can influence what my partner will say next.
The brain has a lot of inputs (a very important sense group is the so-called "interoception" - the sense of your internal body state), all of which send telemetry completely under the radar of the conscious mind. Only few of those signals surface explicitly for a mind to introspect, but the rest still influences how the mind thinks. For instance, it may take many minutes before you realize your suddenly irrational behaviour is just a sign of hunger.
My conclusion is this: even if you believe (against Occam's razor) in the mind being a separate, remote phenomenon, and the brain being just a transceiver of some information carrier we have no first clue how to detect - the brain still seems to be the single point that collects the inputs and outputs of that communication. Essentially, it could be seen as an electrochemical I/O module, connected to the mind via Magic waves. There is zero functional difference between this model and (simplified, Occam-friendly) the model in which there is no remote mind, and the brain is just the whole computer.
(And, unless you can show that "remote mind" vs. "brain mind" have different testable predictions, there's zero basis to believe in the "remote mind" version, no matter how much more philosophically comfortable it seems.)
The equivalence between those two statements seems to fall apart in the case of a remote “you”, because we can meaningfully distinguish between your abstract intent and various physical impulses I’m not sure we can in the locally physical model — eg, mixing of your “true” signal with a secondary one because the addiction structure adjusts your tuning; addiction would then be your body no longer accurately carrying out your will, which is distinct from you wanting them.
This isn't a disproof. Just as the radio is an instrument that plays music from the outside environment, a brain is an instrument that behaves in response to the outside environment.
The existence of radios shows that being able to interfere with a signal locally via one mechanism (interfering with the radio electronics) doesn’t entail it’s generated locally by that process — the local process can merely be translating between media, eg light and sound.
Unfortunately, this pokes a hole into the logic that thinking is necessarily local, because it was depending on clinicians interfering locally to show that brains are a local phenomena — but that reasoning doesn’t apply generally, eg, in the case of radios.
You’re correct that we know the brain is going to be doing some kind of transducing, but that doesn’t mean it’s doing the thinking — it could merely be a relaying device between whatever generates thought and the body, like a radio translating between EM and sound.
People underestimate the rigidity of how the human system operates. We imagine alternative futures and believe we have the power to create them, without considering that we have to operate our emotional, mental and physical systems differently to achieve what we desire.
People are like 20-year-old ERP software. We try to use it to do Extreme Programming in a modern language to ship new product updates in less than a week, and when we can't do that we wonder why our ERP system is so stupid.
We're not stupid, we're just an incredibly complicated legacy system, so doing things we weren't designed for is painful.
> We try to use it to do Extreme Programming in a modern language to ship new product updates in less than a week
I always find these kinds of comments interesting (and I realise that you were not suggesting trying to do this is a good idea). XP has sprints. I have never found a way to make sprints less than 2 weeks and actually have them work well. Whenever anyone has wandered onto my team and assured me that they can do 1 week sprints, I've found that they don't actually do everything that is required for XP to be successful (like planning game, prioritisation meetings, understanding the acceptance criteria for a story before you put it in a sprint, etc, etc, etc). For me 1 week XP sprints are the holy grail: something you covet, but which is unattainable and leads you on a bloody journey of despair if you try to get it ;-)
My own personal opinion is that XP and continuous deployment don't even work particularly well because you can't do true continuous integration (i.e. trunk based development where you are integrating everybody's changes every 5-20 minutes) and maintain a completely sound development structure. That's one of the reasons for sprints: to allow yourself to break stuff for a while and then ensure that it's all working by the end of the sprint.
It's not just XP where I find this. Most of the time, I find that the most popular variant of anything just doesn't work at all: because the "30 minute meal" is full of compromise. It doesn't matter how many times Jamie Oliver says that it's "lovely" and "rustic" -- it's soggy lettuce with completely random salad dressing that you whirred up in your blender.
Ha ha... so many nonsequitors. I hope that made some sense... Time for coffee...
It's been a good while since I read any of Smullyan's work, but I kinda want to say that the entirety of This Book Needs No Title, along with at least one of his other philosophy books (and maybe some parts of his logic puzzle books) does a pretty good job of expanding on that last line.
The only things that appear to be under our control is what we say and do (or perhaps choose, as 'saying' is a form of 'doing', e.g. in a courtroom) in any given circumstance. Since that too can be reliably predicted for most people, e.g. I know how my daughter will act if I leave her alone with candy in the room... or how an ethical officer of the law would act if he discovered a million in cash buried in an offender's backyard under the dog house.... which are voluntary acts, but almost always predictable, then the question isn't really what is under "our" control, but more like, who is really running the show? Is cause/effect real, is libertarian free will real? I'd say so. What I have trouble believing is that free will is absolute, meaning, that one does not necessarily do X just because he can do X, and almost always does Y instead (e.g. what is right versus what is perceived as a possible choice, which may or may not be 'right' in the given context), Y being the almost always predictable choice of how a person would react in a given set of circumstances.
The title says that procrastination has "nothing to do with self-control", which is obviously an appealing sentiment.
However, the first paper that they reference says that "...if we have a great deal of self-discipline and dutifulness... we may exert the self-control necessary to engage in the task in a timely manner despite the lack of immediate reward or the negative mood that the task elicits. Procrastination, however, is the lack of this self-control, whether as a state or trait. Procrastination is the self-regulatory failure of not exerting the self-control necessary for task engagement... this failure at self-control may be the direct result of a focus on regulating moods and feeling states in the short term."
Overall, a better argument would be that a lack of self-control isn't the driving force behind our decision to procrastinate. Rather, what causes us to procrastinate are things such as anxiety or fear of failure, and a high degree of self-control is what allows us to overcome these issues.
If anyone is interested in learning more about the factors that can cause us to procrastinate, such as anxiety, perfectionism, and reliance on abstract goals, check out this article: https://solvingprocrastination.com/why-people-procrastinate/
> Overall, a better argument would be that a lack of self-control isn't the driving force behind our decision to procrastinate. Rather, what causes us to procrastinate are things such as anxiety or fear of failure, and a high degree of self-control is what allows us to overcome these issues.
Hmm, I don't think so. I would say:
What causes us to procrastinate is that we are using it as a _coping mechanism_ for our anxiety (which is related to our fear of failure). But it is an ultimately unsuccesful coping mechanism -- it has short-term alleviation of the negative emotions we wanted to avoid, but in the long-term can make them worse (as well as interfering with accomplishing what we want to accomplish, which can itself trigger anxiety and fear of failure).
Thinking a "high degree of self-control" is what will help us overcome procrastination does not actually help us overcome procrastination -- in fact, it can also trigger anxiety and fear of failure (as we are failing to have enough self-control).
You don't overcome it with "high degree of self-control", you overcome it by recognizing the role it is playing, finding other ways to approach your anxiety (not trying to avoid it by procrastination), and by _self-compassion_, not self-blame for your lack of self-control.
What is in the article matches my experience and observation. It also matches Buddhist philosophy/psychology.
You can _disagree_ with the arguments of the article -- is that what you mean by "finding it a bit misleading"? But they are considered and to some extent evidence-based arguments, that really are intentionally saying it's _not_ about "self-control", and thinking it's about "self-control" and you just need to "try harder" won't get you out of it. That is what they are intentionally saying, it's not misleading if the title makes one think they are going to say that.
What I agree with: actively overcoming your procrastination has more to do with dealing with the obstacles that cause you to procrastinate in the first place. For example, if you’re procrastinating because of your anxiety, dealing with your anxiety is generally going to be a much more effective approach than trying to increase your self-control.
What I disagree with: self-control is without a doubt one of the psychological mechanisms that play a role in our procrastination. That doesn’t mean that we should focus on it when we’re trying to help people stop procrastinating, but it does mean that it's important to understand the role that it plays.
If you look at the research papers that this article mentions, this is something that the researchers themselves are saying. For instance, in the first paper, Sirois and Pychyl say that: “if we have a great deal of self-discipline and dutifulness, commonly associated with the Big Five trait of Conscientiousness… we may exert the self-control necessary to engage in the task in a timely manner despite the lack of immediate reward or the negative mood that the task elicits.”
As such, while I think it’s reasonable for the article to conclude that when it comes to dealing with procrastination, your focus shouldn’t necessarily be on your self-control, I believe that it’s misleading for the title to claim that procrastination has “nothing to do with self-control”, when self-control clearly does play a role in this process.
I see what you are saying. That's in their literature review part.
Other people in this thread have recommended reading other stuff from Pychyl, which I plan to, to get a fuller picture of his framework.
While it has "something" to do with "self-control", the important point being made, including in that paper, is that "just trying harder" is not an effective strategy. I think that's what people think of when they think "it's a matter of self-control", and what the headline/article is meaning to disabuse (which Pychyl I believe would agree should be disabused).
You say "it does mean that it's important to understand the role [self-control] plays" in anxiety -- I'm not sure. I think the thrust here (of Pychyl's research reported in the article, and after skimming that paper) is that it is much more important to understand the role "attempt at emotional self-regulation" plays, in that procrastination is one.
That is, becoming comfortable with experiencing "negative mood" may be a useful direction; trying to increase one's "self-control" is unlikely to be.
At any rate, I don't think the article mischaracterized Pychyl's writing, although you can take issue with Pychyl's arguments or conclusions.
"what causes us to procrastinate are things such as anxiety or fear of failure, and a high degree of self-control is what allows us to overcome these issues"
Self-control seems to be a behavior rather than a characteristic, quality, or a skill. When one has controlled oneself, one has exhibited self-controlling behavior by definition. But what causes someone to exert that self-control?
Right. "Self-control" is a process, a system of habits and procedures for handling various situations.
But our language of self-control is about morality, and "lack of self-control" is seen as a character flaw, not a problem that can be solved with repeatable processes.
In other words, "lack of self control" is a failing of society, not a failing of individuals.
Sleeping has a huge impact in procrastination. The lack of sleep translates into an hyperactive amygdala (which has a big influence in processing emotions and impulses) and an under-active frontal cortex (which influences our rational thinking, etc) [1]
According to my experience, a good night of sleep is the best cure for procrastination, sadly, our current society don't optimize for sleeping well.
I'm not so sure. I think poor quality sleep and proscrastination are a symptom of not wanting to do something.
Poor quality sleep never got in the way of me doing the things I wanted to do. Whether it is prepping for a field trip I was excited about or waking up in the middle of the night to watch a livestream of esports game or anything I was interested it. It's only chores, jobs or studying for something I wasn't interested in that I always put off til tomorrow. And things like meetings at works I wasn't looking forward to always contributed to poor quality sleep.
Rather than being the cause, I suspect poor quality sleep is a symptom.
Hm. Not convinced of the link between the two. The article is arguing that procrastination is the proactive delay of making a hard decision to the detriment of our mental wellbeing. A good night's sleep isn't necessarily going to make you want to confront that decision.
Research has shown that there is absolutely a connection between sleep and procrastination, with low-quality sleep increasing the likelihood that people will procrastinate, particularly among people who are naturally prone to procrastination.
This is attributed to the fact that sleep is crucial when it comes to replenishing the mental resources that you need in order to self-regulate your behavior effectively.
I have the opposite experience. As soon as I started to sleep for more than 8 hours, I basically stopped doing something other than work and sleep. Just do not feel the need.
I've spent at least 11 years working to "take control of [my] impulses" when it comes to sleep and other negative behavioural patterns.
I've explored everything that the mainstream and heterodox medical/psychological bodies of knowledge can offer up, including exercise, diet and a vast assortment of approaches, some of which you can imagine and some of which you can't imagine.
I've had solid success, eventually, but it's taken a huge amount of effort over a long period of time. And I'm in a pretty good position regarding finances, family support and work flexibility.
Others aren't so lucky.
You should tone down the barbed insistence that people should just decide to change. This stuff is hard, and actionable solutions and societal support are very hard to come by for many people.
1. Why assume the person should sleep earlier? I, personally, am better if I sleep at a much later shift than if I sleep earlier. Not just that, but society works differently than my natural body clock. I can fudge some with good sleep hygiene and attention to waking times, but never enough to make 6-7am natural. Simply "check to see if you are sleeping enough" is a bit better than "sleep earlier". (I don't wake early since I don't have to).
2. Diet doesn't really help sleep. A healthy weight can sometimes help one sleep. Not having heartburn can help one sleep. Otherwise, though, it doesn't do much.
3. Exercise. I know this helps some folks, but I do get activity most days. This does not equate into mroe sleep.
4. An entire boatload of other things can affect sleep, only a few of which has to do with impulses. For example, it is spring and the sun wakes me. This is a temporary thing: I'm in Norway, and the sun is starting to come in the bedroom window. It'll shift soon enough. Health problems exist: Everything from aches and pains to chronic diseases of all sorts to sleep disorders. Sure, a few are lifestyle based, but many of those can have multiple causes. Sleep apnea, for example, is often tied to smoking and/or weight, but can be caused by a slew of other things as well (nerve damage, for example, or issues with one's nose and throat).
The OP said society, not a doctor in residency. The average amount of TV consumed in the US per day is somewhere around 5 hours. How much time do people spend on Facebook or Twitter every day?
Yes, people work a lot and some of those people have terrible commutes. But, that is generally not society as a whole. Just because there are exceptions does not invalidate that the simplistic view is the right answer for most.
The way I usually formulate these lines of thought is as follows:
I have the desire to play video games (a waste of time), but I wish that I did not have this desire. I want it, but I do not want to want it.
If we do not have strong enough character to regulate our short term desires, our long term goals suffer. This tradeoff is implicit in how we spend every second of our day. Ultimately, actions reveal preferences.
If your long-term goals are unclear, or if your working conditions/ social circle are not congruent to your long-term goals, you will remain anxious over failing to progress towards these goals.
"For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Paul of Tarsus, circa 57 a.d.)
"if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me"
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that there's more than one "you", or at least more than one part of you. A part that wants one thing, and a part that wants another. Sometimes the one part gets the upper hand, sometimes another. The part that gets the upper hand might even be fully unconscious, so as far as you're aware you fully want only one thing, yet do something completely different that an unconscious part of you wants (or that you want without being aware of it).
It's an Epilogue. Paul of Tarsus is St Paul the author of many letters in the New Testament of the Bible. The text is from Romans 7:15-24. Verse 25 says "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
It's not so much a function of character as a function of habit. Change your habit triggers to change your behavior.
I'm currently going cold turkey on certain social media (Facebook, Twitter). It's hard, because they're so compulsive - designed to be compulsive (I call my phone my "digital crack pipe"). So I'm addressing my habits.
When I come home from work in the evening, I have a habit of going to the kitchen, grabbing a junk food snack, plopping down in my favorite chair, and opening my computer. It's destructive to my eating habits, my productivity, and encourages that nasty social media junkie thing. Even if I'm not on Facebook, I'll be checking Google News, weather, ANYTHING to get my fingers on the keyboard and mouse.
So the habit to change? Sitting in my favorite chair when I get home. If I don't sit down in that spot, I don't have a place to eat junk food. I don't have a computer at hand. I have to go do something else.
When I sit in that spot, I tend to get a snack for it. It doesn't matter whether I'm hungry or not... it's just a thing I do. Eating less snacks is a desirable goal. Eliminating a trigger that causes me to eat snacks is a change of habit.
Now, you might say "I want to eat fewer snacks" is a function of character. But without a mechanism, it's about as relevant as "I want a million dollars", or "I want world peace", and only slightly more realistic.
So I examine circumstances in which I eat unnecessary snacks, and try to change those circumstances. That's a process. That's a change of habit. And it's much more likely to be effective than anything about "character". This is not an act of willpower.
I think this is called conditioned place preference. You've associated dopamine hits (junk food, social media, etc.) with the chair. You've also probably conditioned yourself to timing (after work) -- do you go this routine at other times? Say, on the weekend?
Yeah. Similar routine in the morning, or on the weekend. Sitting there means goofing off, eating junk food and surfing the web. Which is bad when it also gets used for doing actual work on the computer, like coding. So there are conflicting signals.
I'm thinking a lot about triggers as a way to change habits right now.
Not to derail your point, but I do hate when people compare spending time on websites to crack. Its just so far from one another and belittles those who do have a serious drug problem.
It is, but that's why I said "certain social media". Not trying to do it all. If HN started substituting for Facebook, I'd be worried, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
I think of it more in terms of deliberately addictive behavior. HN is fun, but it doesn't have basic functions like infinite scrolling. The closest it has to addictive social media behavior is the upvote/downvote buttons. (See Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism for discussion about that problem.)
This rings true for me, and is how I quit cold turkey and never looked back.
You need to realize that you want or need is not wrong - embrace it. Embrace it and realize there is something you want more; a larger need that subsumes the lesser habit.
No one hates eating cookies and watching tv all day, but there are conflicting desires that lead you to change your behavior - sense of accomplishment, physical health, making money to live, etc.
I brought balance to my life by purchasing an exercise bike and putting it in front of my Xbox.
Now I can play through the entire new Red Dead Redemption game without guilt - 40+ hours over the course of a month or two, as long as I keep the peddles moving while I do it.
Through this pairing I curbed my addiction to video games, and also lost about 10 pounds in the last 3 months. Not only does it cap my session time to about an hour maximum, there are days when I'm just too tired from work to play video games. So I end up going to bed earlier and taking a lot better care of myself than I was previously.
I really enjoy coding. I have a practically infinite list of software projects that I could be working on at any given moment. But, I spend 8 hours a day working as a software engineer. I wish that when I got home each day I could just switch over to working on personal projects. Instead, I find that I'm almost always too mentally tired, so I play video games or browse the most mindless parts of reddit instead.
So for me at least, I play video games and accept that it's an important part of keeping myself healthy and not burning out at work, but I also wish I didn't' need to do it. It's sort of like sleep. I make sure I get at least 8 hours of sleep every night, but only because I need sleep to be healthy. If I could somehow replace sleep with more work (paid or on personal projects) without any adverse effects, I would do it, but of course that's impossible too.
Actions only reveal which preferences prevails. We could still be totally conflicted internally, and wish we did otherwise.
It's not mere theater. Some even go to suicide because of the anxiety of such conflicts between what they wish to be doing and what their pleasure impulses get them to do.
Is it logical that your long term goal of "getting something productive done" is really more important than your short term goal of "having fun with video games now"?
Who knows if you run into a car accident 2 hours later and die? In that case it would've been better to play video games, right? Or maybe it would have been better to call your mom instead and tell her you didn't mean what you said last Thanks Giving?
The thing about life is: It has no meaning besides the meaning you assign to it. It might be okay to prioritize short term goals. It might be okay to suffer for long term goals. It might be more important even to do something completely different. Nobody can tell you.
Therefore I would argue that instead of evaluating things on artificial scales, to simply be aware of the trade-offs, make choices according to the circumstances you encounter and the stuff that you can know (e.g. you can't know if you die in 2 hours in most cases), and be confident due to your awareness that you made the best possible choice for yourself and you might be able to learn something to make an even better choice next time.
I.e. start making sounds by clapping with just one hand.
I once heard an interview to some gamedevs. They were asked
- Your Steam stats show that people have spent <an inordinate amount of hours> playing your game. Doesn't it bother you that they could have employed all that time doing something more useful?
Their answer:
- Well, you know, maybe they were all Hitler. We might be saving the world by destroying their productivity.
I know he's not for everyone but Nassim Taleb's quote is salient - “Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad -- at an existential level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment. It is my soul fighting the Procrustean bed of modernity.”
There are probably more or less two classes of procrastination.
There are tasks that really do need to be done. No magical fairy is going to come along and do your taxes for you or some household task that someone really does need to do.
On the other hand, there are projects that aren't time-critical and that, if you hold off doing them, the need for them may really go away or you may otherwise decide that task isn't actually necessary.
I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect that humans were procrastinating well before the first nail was hammered into the first plank of the Procrustean bed of modernity.
Almost nothing is _always_ bad. But I guess the question, as with everything, is if you believe it is interfering with your ability to do accomplish what is important to you in your life.
And of course, there are always at least two possible paths there -- you can try to change it, or you can decide that you're actually okay with your life-under-procrastination after all.
But sometimes some people are going to find their severe procrasnation is interfering with their ability to do what is important to them, and they want to do something about it. This decision alone does not make it _easy_ though. My observation and experience have matched the articles, that self-blame doesn't help, but that recognizing the relation it has to your anxiety and finding other ways to relate to your anxiety can.
Recommended related: If Self-discipline Feels Difficult, Then You’re Doing It Wrong [1] by author of "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life"
"Cultivate curiosity: If you're feeling tempted to procrastinate, bring your attention to the sensations arising in your mind and body. What feelings are eliciting your temptation? Where do you feel them in your body? What do they remind you of? What happens to the thought of procrastinating as you observe it? Does it intensify? Dissipate? Cause other emotions to arise? How are the sensations in your body shifting as you continue to rest your awareness on them?"
This sounds very much like meditation, and while it may well be beneficial, someone with a serious procrastination problem may have problems following through with their intention to meditate like this as well, and instead just compulsively do whatever makes them feel better.
Moreover, if anhedonic depression is involved, it can exacerbate that - serious anhedonia is a sensation that shares a lot with mindfulness meditation.
> The particular nature of our aversion depends on the given task or situation. It may be due to something inherently unpleasant about the task itself...but it might also result from deeper feelings related to the task, such as self-doubt, low self-esteem, anxiety or insecurity.
That may be what I'm doing with something right now. I have a couple of publishers interested in something I've designed, but I need to update a couple of things first before I submit it, and I keep putting it off, saying I'm too tired, not in the right mindset, I have too much other things going on. Might be because I'm worried they're going to reject me, though, and as long as I haven't submitted it yet they can't reject me.
I do have a lot going on though and it does seem like it's getting in the way. Work is being stupidly demanding of my time, and I had a job interview pop up last week that superceded all other tasks, and I was out of town for half the weekend and needed to pull my weight around the house and bring it back from the sty it got into from the past week of preparing for the interview the other day.
What helps me in those situations is to make a list of arguments for and against doing it now. This seems silly, but view it as communication between your subconscious and your rational self. Your subconscious self feels that its obviously not a good idea to do it now, and your rational self feels that it obviously is a good idea. The arguments against doing it now are actually the most important part. Try to articulate why your subconscious feels that way, even if those arguments are silly. Recognising that they are silly is the point.
I am a terrible procrastinator, and for me procrastination seems to be very much like writer's block. The problem isn't doing something so much as it is starting something. In the case of writer's block, I try to start by free-writing. I start writing with the intention that it's going to be crap and I'm going to throw it away. In fact, I might even start with complete gibberish.
Along with general procrastination and writer's block I also suffer from the closely related coder's block. I address this the same way: instead of free-writing I start "free-coding", where I write code with the intention that it's going to be crap, and I might even start writing gibberish, before I move on to writing code that compiles and maybe runs, but does nothing useful. The goal is just to get started.
In the case of both free writing and free coding, once I start I pretty quickly move on to writing stuff that's decent even if it's not great. That's something I can work with, and once I get in that mode I have much greater resistance to distractions.
To circle back to procrastination, I might use a similar approach. Say I need to clean up my work area, and I just don't want to (even though I also do want to). I need to reduce the scope of the problem to something absurdly simple, or maybe even just absurd. So I decide I'm just going to move all the loose items on my desk to another table so I can dust the desk. But I'm not even going to dust the desk, I'm just going to move the stuff off of it. For the immediate moment that's all I've got to care about it. Just moving stuff around.
But once the desk is cleared, dusting it and wiping it down is easy. It's so easy in that moment that that's all I care about. Then once that's done, I move the stuff back. But as I'm moving the stuff back it's easy to address each item one-by-one. Old papers can go in the trash or recycling, the books can go back to their regular place on the book shelf, the stapler can go back in the desk drawer where it regularly resides, etc. Then I realize now would be a good time to wipe the dust off my monitor, sort through the nearby stack of mail, etc.
Now mind you, I still procrastinate way more than I should, but these techniques work for me and I procrastinate a lot less than I used to.
"Raymond Chandler and I discussed this once, and he admitted to the most bitter reluctance to commit anything to paper. He evolved the following scheme: he had a tape recorder into which he spoke the utmost nonsense – a stream of consciousness which was then transcribed by a secretary and which he then used as a basis for his first rough draft. Very laborious. He strongly advised me to do the same … in fact became so excited that he kept plying me with information for months about the machine that helped him."
I do suffer from a similar condition, being able to get in the mood can be quite challenging.
I found that whenever I need to get started on some brain intensive task, be it writing or designing a piece of software architecture, being out and about in a social space (a coffee shop, a pub) works wonders.
I have both a lack of distractions (mobile on silent and out of sight) and a drive to do something instead of staring at folks awkwardly.
What's more surprising for me is even in a noisy environment, I still maintain my focus. I tend to favour pubs, so maybe it's the alcohol working its magic :)
> Procrastination isn’t a unique character flaw or a mysterious curse on your ability to manage time, but a way of coping with challenging emotions and negative moods induced by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity, frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond.
Yikes. That's a lot of negative emotions. But don't we judge our characters and other's by how we manage despite that ? So it's back to square one and procrastination is a character flaw ?
Keyword being unique. Our tendency to procrastinate is explained by our sensitivity to, or ability to cope with, negative emotions. It's not something separate, like our ability to ride a bike (or lack thereof).
"But don't we judge our characters and other's by how we manage despite that ?"
Some people do judge, but maybe they shouldn't be so judgmental, as it's not clear how much control people have over their own behavior, and without such control one can't be blameworthy.
Because it gets the definition back to procrastination being a consequence of other traits and the sum of these negative traits. If cowardice is character flaw then it follows than cowardice in fighting over the tendency to run from things we are scared to do (aka procrastination) is a character flaw.
Is there more to it than a definition ?
I believe the outlook matters more to deal with it though.
I noticed that my tendencies to procrastinate greatly reduced (though never completely vanished) upon me taking antidepressants, after a very unpleasant conversation with my boss (at the time) telling me that I was underperforming, and it could lead to me being fired.
I remember the feelings I had then; there was this feeling of "I'm not stupid, why am I constantly pushing things off to make it seem like I am?", and it became this vicious cycle of "I do poorly because I'm depressed, and I'm depressed because I do poorly". I could definitely see it as an act of "self-harm", as this article describes.
How many visitors to HN or Twitter are often here because they reached a hard or tedious part of their task and you rationalized "giving yourself a break"?
I know I have. I added the noprocrast setting to HN to interrupt this habit and I often try logging out of Twitter so I would actually need to login to use it. But this article rings true that often I'm using that "break" as a coping mechanism to avoid doing something I assume will be hard.
d.) something else - I didn't read the article because I've wasted enough time in my life figuring out why I procrastinate and it doesn't bother me any more. But I still read most of the comments because I enjoy learning about the range of human experience around procrastination, because I do acknowledge it's something I cared about in the past.
edit) also lurking in comments is my preferred method of wasting time. Though I'm not wasting time to procrastinate at the moment. I'm just waiting for a scheduled event to start which I prepared for already. I think that's different.
This makes me think of the book Atomic Habits, which is all about how to form good habits and break bad ones. Procrastination can be seen in many cases as a lack of habit triggers to start down the path to work.
Keeping a daily to-do list (I use bullet journaling, but other processes can work) has done wonders for my procrastination. I have a habit of writing down everything I need to do that day - even if I've already done it. I have a habit to check at the end of the day to complete what isn't yet done. I have a habit of marking things completed. So my to-do list habit leads to not procrastinating. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than where I was.
I also have a habit of taking my journal and a pen with me everywhere. I'd rather be without my phone than without my journal.
I don't use a phone for my reference calendar or (especially) to-do lists, because a cell phone is full of all sorts of nasty bad-habit triggers, many designed by giant corporations that prey on my attention for money. It's basically a digital crack pipe I carry everywhere. So marking my tasks for the day without also checking email, weather, facebook (removed that app entirely and went cold turkey), etc... it's very difficult.
Paper is how I manage my time. It gives me positive habits and positive reinforcement.
We like to refer to that effort as willpower. But, from the point of view of looking at emotions fighting for dominance inside our brains, willpower is simply the strength and effort of the constructive emotions. The emotions which lead to long term happiness and comfort, even at the expense of short term pleasure. Logical, sober thought is one such constructive emotion, and we call it willpower whenever we are able to make our actions agree with the constructive emotions.
Yet… there is such a thing as “destructive” willpower. You might have seen it under the name of “rationalization”. It is what destructive emotions use to take over our action. If people say and think “I’m gonna be OK to drive with one drink,” that’s their drink addiction emotion convincing them to drink. That’s destructive willpower. It’s not the absence of willpower, but the redirection of willpower towards a destructive emotion.
I mostly associate procrastination with the inability to make myself want to deal with chores that seem alienating and dumb and like impositions from a boring bureaucratic external system that makes fundamental demands on me as a person with no personal connection—bookkeeping, entering long numbers into bank web apps, registering my residential address by filling out a form, going through KYC questionnaires over the phone, writing a report I know nobody will read, etc. And it’s worse the more the task is imbued with some kind of fake urgency by prudish pedantic adults while I also know that the negative consequences of not doing the thing on time are likely to be rather tame like a small fine or just a little bureaucratic slap on the wrist. I procrastinate with the same chores that might make me imagine dropping out of society to live on a homestead or as a monk. Probably I would get through these things easier if I had some “ADHD medicine” as the kids call it these days.
Chronic procrastinator here. Procrastinating feels like an addiction for me because it offers instant pleasure. Right now I am procrastinating instead of trying to fix a dumb JavaScript bug. When it comes to "bad mood," I've noticed a pattern from my self-centered ego: 1). The work is "beneath" me, and/or 2). The work threatens my ego.
> “It’s self-harm,” said Dr. Piers Steel, a professor of motivational psychology
I'm in the unfortunate position of being a layman who disagrees with an expert, but isn't it a bit inaccurate and confusing to call it "self-harm"? Doesn't that term already have a specific meaning?
As I understand it, self-harm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-harm) is a behavior where someone seeks out pain (such as by cutting themselves). It can be because focusing on pain allows temporary escape from other thoughts, or maybe for other reasons, but in any case the pain is something the person seeks out and is an essential part of the process.
It seems like "self-destructive" might be a better term to use when talking about procrastination. If I put off cleaning my bathroom, I'm avoiding something I can't/won't face, and that is going to come with feelings of guilt or shame, but I'm not seeking out that suffering as a tool for dealing with something else. It's just a side-effect of the choice to avoid something.
Or, if it really is (a non-physical form of) self-harm, can someone explain how? Are they saying the feeling of guilt over not cleaning my bathroom alleviates the feelings of unpleasantness associated with having to scrub the shower?
That doesn't seem right, but maybe there are two types of procrastination, a "light" one where the task is just unpleasant and says nothing about you (cleaning the shower) and a "serious" one where the task might reflect on you (learning to do something you don't think you're capable of)? I could imagine how self-harm might fit in with the "serious" form because maybe guilt over not trying could serve a purpose distracting you from the more-unpleasant feeling of doubt over whether you actually can do it.
The presumption here is that the task you are avoiding is - somehow - in your best interests (directly or indirectly, e.g. going to the gym directly makes you healthier while completing that report for your boss might not directly help you but it is certainly in your best interest to have a job and not be fired) or otherwise you wouldn't be doing it.
Not doing something that is good for yourself is doing something bad to yourself, i.e. self harm. If it were phrased as "someone throwing a fit at work and insulting everyone with the intention of getting themselves fired so that they would no longer have a means of income," I think we can both agree that going out of your way to not have a job (not just this job) is definitely self-harm. It's in the same vein.
I'm trying to make a distinction between harmful (or self-destructive) behavior and self-harm. As I understand it, "self-harm" is a term with a very specific meaning that goes beyond making choices that lead to bad consequences.
I guess I wasn't clear. I understand that, "self-harm" is a very specific psychological term that encompasses activities like cutting and attempted suicide.
I meant that certain non-physical, indirectly harmful activities could be interpreted as falling under the category of self-harm while not meeting the classical definition. As I mentioned, if someone with the intention of hurting themselves or causing theirself pain (and not with that just being a side-effect/result) instigated a fight at work to get themselves fired and out of a job, you don't have to squint too hard to see it in that light.
e.g. classic self-harm: someone feels like they don't deserve to be happy or need to feel some physical pain to wake up or what have you, and engages in cutting, directly bringing that harm to themselves.
Someone feels like a fraud (without having engaged in any deception or the equivalent that would objectively result in others labeling them as such) and decides that they don't deserve the job they have with its pay and benefits, and so takes measures to make sure they are out of a job and a livelihood, and end up homeless and eating out of trash bins. Self-harm, no?
Someone gets angry at a boss/colleague and can't restrain themselves from starting a physical altercation and gets fired/loses their livelihood.. not so much self-harm.
Admit that our lifestyles are designed to drive the consumption based economy, rather than to actually make life more enjoyable.
The Australian Aborigines has a stable, sustainable civilisation for tens of thousands of years. European “civilisation” is set to make the world uninhabitable within two thousand years of inventing the steam engine.
1- It says we procrastinate against our better judgement. But isn't the science gearing toward the fact that it is not the conscious brain that is controlling our behavior and actions? In that case, you can't solve procrastination by simply being aware of it.
2- Quoting from the article
> We really weren’t designed to think ahead into the further future because we needed to focus on providing for ourselves in the here and now.
Yet, every night I go to bed and I'm dreaming about a better future. Obviously the scenarios I'm dreaming about can't be for tomorrow and are quite distant in the future (better country, top job/career, traveling but mostly a hotter girl with big/nice house).
To point one: What's the objection here? You do something (like say, posting on HN instead of driving home from work) instead of doing the thing that you feel would be better for you. If you hadn't felt the 2nd option was better, either in the moment or in retrospect, then you wouldn't feel you procrastinated. You just did something. And the article isn't suggesting that being aware of it fixes it, it's saying that it has more to do with anxiety or other causes than simply not wanting to do something. It's trying to say WHY you're on HN instead of driving home.
2- What does your example prove here? The human mind almost always prioritizes immediate needs over future needs and has poor understanding of how to achieve long term goals. This is very well understood by psychologists and sociologists. It's part of why people find game theory so interesting. It's why people act against their own self interests. Saying "I want things in the future" doesn't GET you those things, so you haven't really proven that you're great at planning a future.
rather unsurprising that a psychologist describes procrastination as a mismanagement of 'emotion' rather than a dysfunction of the dopaminergic reward systems. as someone taking ADHD medication, i can tell you that procrastination is fundamentally just a failure of dopamine management.
For some unlike me perhaps it is true that there is a 'one little trick' to make your brain act rationally. I don't know, maybe it's possible via the brain's sheer neuroplasticity to evolve a dopaminergic flaw from a psychological failure or trauma.
But at the end of the day, procrastination is very much neurological, with a fairly clear pathway and a chemical which is objectively known to drive it.
More people absolutely need to know procrastination has nothing to do with self control, but psychological research like this will always appear to show the issue stemming from a psychological issue when this is known to be virtually always untrue. Treatment of ADHD with psychological approaches like CBT have a nearly non statistically significant effect, but ADHD medication has a 70%+ success rate.
Is "treatment of ADHD" the same thing as "treatment of procrastination"? Are you suggesting anyone who is displeased with a regular procrastination habit has ADHD?
Are you recommending medication for anyone who is displeased with their procrastination?
I don't think the OP is suggesting there is "one little trick", but if, alternately, medication is in fact "one little trick" that worked for everyone, that would probably be welcome news to everyone!
>Is "treatment of ADHD" the same thing as "treatment of procrastination"?
Not exactly, but excessive procrastination is a symptom of ADHD. Managing ADHD requires managing excessive procrastination and medication, so far, is the most effective treatment for ADHD.
ADHD is a diagnosis based on a group of issues primarily owing to dopamine management. ADHD at the end of the day, is just a word.
The way I see it, there's a spectrum of procrastination issues and those that are explosive enough to be diagnosable get the ADHD label and medication. If you have ADHD symptoms but they're not bad enough to warrant a diagnosis you get nothing.
It's well known that ADHD medication is incredible for procrastination -- statistically speaking any student should be able to tell you that.
So you are in fact recommending that anyone with procrastination problems take medications prescribed for ADHD, if they can? (And that they should be able to?) Any downsides in your opinion?
I've often found myself procrastinating when working on a project where I've been thrown in not knowing enough and thought I could figure it all out. Often the solution is to step back and learn the technology/library/tool first, then I dont procrastinate any more and get the job done. I haven't seen this explanation, but I suspect it occurs often.
I think this is definitely valid and real, but there also is a danger of pretending you're in this situation when you're not.
For example, suppose you have some electronic item you want to repair but you're horrible at soldering, so you put it off because you don't want to face the negative feelings of failing at soldering again or the negative feelings of destroying that item you think you should have been able to repair. You could get past this by watching some videos on soldering, getting some better equipment, or practicing with a friend who's actually good at soldering. Once you don't suck at soldering, the negative feelings around fixing your electronic item are gone, and you can stop procrastinating. (And you can do it faster and better.)
On the other hand, maybe you need to write a complicated and annoying SQL query that is going to be tricky to get right, and you already know SQL, but you go off on a huge tangent reading SQL documentation looking for a function or trick that will make it easier when there really isn't one. Pretty soon you're just learning about esoteric SQL functions that don't have anything to do with your problem. But maybe one of them could if you read long enough, so you keep reading and reading.
Self-harm in the sense that is causes you pain, but it is really just not doing what others want even though you know that they will hurt you. It is intellectually dishonest to to portray people not doing something that they don't REALLY want to do as an issue with their brains and leave out the brains causing the harm. Not self-harm, just not protecting the self.
I know one woman who smokes. She says: “It’s not that I have to smoke; I choose to. I could easily give it up any time I wish to, but I see no reason why I should. But I can assure you, I could if I wanted to.” Her husband says to her: “That's only a rationalization! You couldn’t give up smoking even if you wanted to. You are not strong enough to give it up; you have to smoke. So to make yourself feel better, and to avoid having to confess your own weakness of character, you fool yourself into believing that you choose to. But it’s only a rationalization!” I know another woman who smokes. She says: “It’s not that I want to smoke; I can’t help myself! I have tried several times giving it up, but I have failed! I'm afraid I just don’t have a very strong character. I would love to stop, but I simply can’t.” Her husband says to her: “That's only a rationalization! You certainly could stop immediately, if you really wanted to. No, you choose to smoke (after all, nobody is making you) and you feel ashamed and guilty for doing that which you know to be harmful. So to avoid any moral responsibility for your acts, you fool yourself into believing that you ‘can’t help it. But this is only a rationalization.” My only question about all this is: “Why are people so incredibly stupid?”
Pity he didn't expand on the last line, but I think deep introspection is required to understand what is really under our control