Procrastination, Packing and The Perverse.
It is 11:13 PM as I start to write this.
I have so far kept up with my commitment to update every Thursday, although I'll be the first to bring up how bad some of my posts are.
I am REALLY bad with procrastination. It's kind of the big boss of my life, and the dream is that I could one day defeat it and just be a normal person who is able to finish things in a moderate way.
This guy has written better things on it than me, so I'm not going to try and do any kind of in depth analysis of the phenomenon.
Edgar Allen Poe had a story called "The Imp of the Perverse". The imp of the perverse is the idea of people doing the absolute worst thing for themselves at any moment. Those nasty thoughts that jump into your head "maybe I could just punt that dog" or something like that. I think that there's some aspect of that which comes into procrastination.
The thing about the imp of the perverse is that it's all about the perverse impulses which could be acted on. So most of the time, it doesn't really hurt you. "I could do something really evil. but I won't".
Procrastination is the same kind of perverse impulses. The problem is, procrastination acts through passivity. Not acting can get to the point where it completely ruins you, but doesn't require any actual action.
Once again this is another unfinished thought. I don't know.
Basically, there is something to be said about the problem of activation energy. I find what will often lead to my longest procrastination sprees is getting ~stuck~. I'll start watching youtube or netflix or goddamned eSports, and almost everything else imaginable will require more action to do than continuing to watch. I'm pretty sure this is a measurable psych thing that advertiser's rely on.
So in conclusion, procrastination is like, the easiest way to ruin your life. Instead of actually having to break a mental barrier to do something awful, you just have to repeatedly fail to break a barrier that makes you do anything else.
And that sucks.
I have so far kept up with my commitment to update every Thursday, although I'll be the first to bring up how bad some of my posts are.
I am REALLY bad with procrastination. It's kind of the big boss of my life, and the dream is that I could one day defeat it and just be a normal person who is able to finish things in a moderate way.
This guy has written better things on it than me, so I'm not going to try and do any kind of in depth analysis of the phenomenon.
Edgar Allen Poe had a story called "The Imp of the Perverse". The imp of the perverse is the idea of people doing the absolute worst thing for themselves at any moment. Those nasty thoughts that jump into your head "maybe I could just punt that dog" or something like that. I think that there's some aspect of that which comes into procrastination.
The thing about the imp of the perverse is that it's all about the perverse impulses which could be acted on. So most of the time, it doesn't really hurt you. "I could do something really evil. but I won't".
Procrastination is the same kind of perverse impulses. The problem is, procrastination acts through passivity. Not acting can get to the point where it completely ruins you, but doesn't require any actual action.
Once again this is another unfinished thought. I don't know.
Basically, there is something to be said about the problem of activation energy. I find what will often lead to my longest procrastination sprees is getting ~stuck~. I'll start watching youtube or netflix or goddamned eSports, and almost everything else imaginable will require more action to do than continuing to watch. I'm pretty sure this is a measurable psych thing that advertiser's rely on.
So in conclusion, procrastination is like, the easiest way to ruin your life. Instead of actually having to break a mental barrier to do something awful, you just have to repeatedly fail to break a barrier that makes you do anything else.
And that sucks.
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