I Will Come Up With a Title Tomorrow
Procrastination is Monkey Business
I don’t know if you follow Yascha Mounk, Persuasion or his podcast, ‘The Good Fight’. You should definitely check it out if you haven’t already. Highly recommend.
I was listening to one of his recent podcasts with Tim Urban. Tim Urban is the author of the famous blog ‘Wait But Why?’ I believe he has also written a couple of books. The recent one is called ‘What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies’. You can think of him as a thoughtful internet guy.
So, he was talking about procrastination. Why people procrastinate, how they procrastinate and about the things that one can do to try to stop procrastinating. He also has multiple blogposts on this - click here. I like them.
I really like his framework on how to look at the problem of procrastination- accessible and fairly representative. Quick summary: there are three characters- the rational decision maker, the instant gratification monkey and the panic monster. The monkey is Accused No. 1- pulls you in multiple directions, jumping from one thing to the other not allowing the rational decision maker to get on with his life. The monkey will do all kinds of things to stop the decision maker (forget rational or irrational) to do the things that the decision maker had planned to do. Until the panic monster enters the room and is forced to control? or placate? the monkey to stay silent until the work is done.
Oh and sometimes the monkey asks the panic monster to go fuck himself and we end up in a situation where 0 posts are published in more than 1 year.
I’m not even joking. Last week, I spent an entire afternoon watching old Pepsi Uma interviews of Krishnamachari Srikanth’s (Cheeka) mother. I had to complete a presentation and take a test for work before the end of the day but my monkey had other ideas. YouTube is indeed a black hole - time slowing but wildly interesting. You check your watch and realise time runs fast for the outside world and it has indeed been 2 hours since you started taking your 2 minutes break.
Hi, I’m back from my 2 minutes break that I took while writing this post. It is the next day today. LHS=RHS, hence proved.
I feel guilt for wasting time but I’m also tired / lazy to do anything that involves me putting any effort. Newton’s first law of motion basically. I will remain in a constant state of rest or motion until an imbalanced force (sometimes the panic monster) is acted upon me.
Fighting procrastination is hard. Especially if the task is not something that you have to do but you want to. I started this newsletter because I wanted to write about stuff that interests me. It is not an obligation- just something that I do for myself and that means that the panic monster has nothing to be panicked about.
And if I trick myself into making the panic monster work overtime and get involved in things that he is not supposed to, then everything becomes a chore.
Tim has a few suggestions on how to overcome this. It involves breaking tasks into smaller non-vague achievable tasks, working towards rewards (delayed gratification) and focussing on processes. All these are great suggestions. I know that, you know that, we all know that. But anyway, give it a read - click here. Sometimes you just need to see it to internalise and follow it.
Where am I going with this post? No, I’m asking myself. I don’t really know. I thought I’ll give a fuck you to my monkey and keep typing till I feel I’m done. I think I’m almost there. Have you listened to Pink Floyd’s Time?
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
Yeah, even I thought I’d have something more to say. Seems not.
Actually, I have something important to close this post. Instead of this being a whine post, I request you dear reader, to acknowledge your monkey everyday. Look at him and ask him to fuck off at least once a day.
Quick Reccos:
2. Fascinating creatures, octopus.
3. Interesting conversation on religion- if its good or bad for society.
PS: Next week, hopefully I will have something actually interesting to share with you, dear reader. Hopefully.
Good one buddy!