Procrastination : the art of pushing back to later a task that should be done right now. Or my favorite definition : How to self ruin your life for no apparent reason.
This behavior doesn't affect everyone, some say it's most often found with clever people. Is that true? I don't know. What I do know quite well is I'm a huge procrastinator, so that I can write about it. It's a daily battle for me. It is for you as well? Great. Let's try to understand what is happening.
Basically everytime before you do an action, you make a choice between another action. A normal person is perfectly able to make the choice that is better long term and actually perform that action. It could be an activity that will make you happy once started or simply a work that needs to be done. A procrastinator will struggle to make such choice, because he's not alone in making a choice. He lives with a pet.
The most popular representation of this pet is a monkey. The monkey only wants immediate satisfaction and amusement. He doesn't care about long term. A procrastinator is weaker than his pet. He isn't the master of his choices, and in the end he will always make the wrong choices and his whole life will suck.
This is funny because it does sound a little like our society. Every decision is made short term, resulting in global dark and sad future.
A procrastinator will struggle to learn an instrument, read books, start projects and NOT quit after a few weeks ( Do you remember the game maidsvsdemons.com? I promise to get back at it ;) ), basically stay focus on a task and do his best. He will always tend to do it last minute and rush the work. Does that ring a bell for you? Every time you went scrolling Facebook endlessly, or watch useless Youtube videos, or wasted your time doing something completely unproductive, that was the monkey's choice, that makes him happy, but not you. You're just waiting for the monkey to leave you alone, but you know that will never happen. You HAVE to live with him.
It's important to know why we procrastinate, before even thinking about how to deal with it. Which I'll try to answer in the next posts.
From my blog http://cyatophilum.com/