If you'll look to your left, you'll see an entry under "vices": procrastination. It's a big problem of mine.
But finally...finally...I've made some kind of headway into figuring out why I have such a procrastinator's habituae (which may or may not be a pretend word). Basically, if you wait long enough, the impetus to do anything will pass. It's almost like a behavioral inertia -- eventually, if you wait long enough, everything settles into the rest state.
So no matter how many times I say, okay, just 10 more minutes, once I've even started saying that, I've lost the fight. You've got to ride impetus and momentum while they're there and not a second later. If I have a task to do and I feel even the slightest bit of push towards doing that task...just go and DO it. If I give myself even a minute or two to think about it, I'll inevitably realize it's much easier to NOT do that thing and it's much easier to keep playing World of Warcraft. It's not that I particularly want to do the task, but if I wait to think about it, the desire to do that is weighed against the desire to not do that, and we all know which one loses.
The problem until now, perhaps, was continually wondering how to make myself want to do whatever it is I'm avoiding. I don't think I'll ever really want to clean my bathroom, wash my car, go for a run, or whatever. So you start questioning why your priorities are screwed, and you wonder why everybody else seems to have everything so nicely figured out, and so on. It's far simpler than that: people do things they don't want to do all the time. Some people do it constantly. And it's all about inertia...but in this case, it's riding the motion instead of languishing at rest.
Thusly, over my spring break week last week, I managed to get more practicing done than I had in any week previous, I think. The secret was, as soon as I got home from work, I grabbed my keys, got in my car, and went to school and practiced. If I'd sat down with the pretense of checking my email, or surfing for just 5 minutes, or whatever, I likely wouldn't have gone at all. And practicing isn't even onerous; most of the time, I enjoy myself. It's just that there's a certain amount of work required to get myself to my practice space, open the books, and go.
So, as for now, I should go to bed.
But finally...finally...I've made some kind of headway into figuring out why I have such a procrastinator's habituae (which may or may not be a pretend word). Basically, if you wait long enough, the impetus to do anything will pass. It's almost like a behavioral inertia -- eventually, if you wait long enough, everything settles into the rest state.
So no matter how many times I say, okay, just 10 more minutes, once I've even started saying that, I've lost the fight. You've got to ride impetus and momentum while they're there and not a second later. If I have a task to do and I feel even the slightest bit of push towards doing that task...just go and DO it. If I give myself even a minute or two to think about it, I'll inevitably realize it's much easier to NOT do that thing and it's much easier to keep playing World of Warcraft. It's not that I particularly want to do the task, but if I wait to think about it, the desire to do that is weighed against the desire to not do that, and we all know which one loses.
The problem until now, perhaps, was continually wondering how to make myself want to do whatever it is I'm avoiding. I don't think I'll ever really want to clean my bathroom, wash my car, go for a run, or whatever. So you start questioning why your priorities are screwed, and you wonder why everybody else seems to have everything so nicely figured out, and so on. It's far simpler than that: people do things they don't want to do all the time. Some people do it constantly. And it's all about inertia...but in this case, it's riding the motion instead of languishing at rest.
Thusly, over my spring break week last week, I managed to get more practicing done than I had in any week previous, I think. The secret was, as soon as I got home from work, I grabbed my keys, got in my car, and went to school and practiced. If I'd sat down with the pretense of checking my email, or surfing for just 5 minutes, or whatever, I likely wouldn't have gone at all. And practicing isn't even onerous; most of the time, I enjoy myself. It's just that there's a certain amount of work required to get myself to my practice space, open the books, and go.
So, as for now, I should go to bed.
apostrophenow:
...like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives!