Let’s take a “break” shall we.
I clean my table, clear up the clutter, set everything in place and once done, promptly take a break. There is no reason for me to do so, I am not tired, nor have I actually accomplished anything, it’s just the thought of actually doing something gets me exhausted.
My brain cycles through everything it has to do and decides to automatically clear my schedule by deleting everything. I then lay awake in the middle of the night, dreading the morning. This is a cycle that repeats even though the consequences are not worth it.
The elaborate steps that my mind manages to go through in this process is unbelievable, I believe if it had put all that effort in helping me complete my task, I would have accomplished world peace by now.
I have a couple of meetings lined up, so obviously my brain decided to frolic in another direction, hence this article. I decided to type this out, in order to understand all the different ways, the mind fools us.
There are many labels that exist for this condition; procrastination, pure lazy, delaying, dawdling etc., you get the point.
But how does this work?
Alright, I understand we keep putting things off, hence we procrastinate, but eventually we do end up doing them, so are we really procrastinating? This was the theory that managed to keep me afloat through college.
“Oh, I am not procrastinating, I’ll just do it later.”
Then my mind tried to Thesaurus me, “It’s not procrastination if we delay things a little.”
I learned the hard way to not go down this rabbit hole, it does not end well.
I mostly just call it avoidance.
Avoiding work, avoiding laundry, avoiding saying hello to the nosy neighbor and so on. I soon noticed that it’s not just the work things that I avoid, but also the things that I like to do.
Now why was that? It’s not like I hate to do them or that they are a task. This is where I noticed that my mind liked to do the pick and choose method. The way this worked was, imagine I have to pick between reading and work, I’d pick reading, but if I had to choose between reading and a nap, I’d nap.
I like to read, a lot, so this gave me a pause. Why would my mind pick that?
I then worked through the intricacies of my own mind. I noticed the steps it followed. First, I would remember some or the other work that I have, and there would begin the first interruption, my brain would automatically recall some other more interesting tasks and I would float towards it.
But if there’s a deadline then it would automatically shut the doors on any and all distractions and force me to get the work done or annoy me with horrible and embarrassing scenarios until I got it done.
Then I noticed there were secret ways I could get my brain to kickstart and get the work done; fool it.
I know, how can we fool our own mind? But it works, when we sit down and start working in small doses, eventually we become invested, if only to get it done and move on. I never understood the whole reward yourself system, whenever I did this my brain decided to claim the reward as well as the break within the first 5 minutes.
For me moving past the work is what kickstarts the mind. Forcing ourselves sounds wrong, because we’ll lose interest but narrowing down the focus and at least starting the task is one step closer to completing it.
Imagine if the early humans procrastinated, I believe there would be no current humans.
Procrastination is a current trend, where we can afford to wait. Mostly because there are no life-threatening consequences. Right now, our greatest concerns are getting through the week. I feel in a way our brain realizes that there are so many more distractions now than before. Our interests have also expanded considering this factor. This lets our brain frolic in all sorts of directions such as giving water to a virtual plant takes precedence over having clean clothes to wear tomorrow.
So how do we handle it?
We don’t. We give ourselves all sorts of nifty tips and tricks, but it never works that way. It might work for a while, mostly because we want it to work but problems aren’t known for disappearing easily. What we avoid mostly is dealing with ourselves, listening to someone else’s advice works for only so long. This is because their experience is different from ours, we need to figure out what works for us.
For me getting started works, sitting down, pushing forward and focusing works. Also threatening my brain with the alternative embarrassment works. Figure out what works for you.
