It's just that that other person is your "future self". You're disconnected from that person because you're not "them" right now. You, who's unconscious in the future and only aware in the present, say stuff like "the me 5 minutes from now who's listened to this song will be better suited to doing this task", or "the me of tomorrow will wake up fresh and be able to do the dishes first thing in the morning" or "the me who's watched this very video will be better equipped to tackle my procrastination habits". That's why there's always that kind of post on these types of videos.
The problem is that that "you" isn't any better suited to making yourself do it than you are right now. It's an illusion, a lie, an excuse, an escape. What eventually happens that gets you up, is that the consequence of not doing it, in a certain present moment, has grown to a point that gives you the activation energy required to start the task.
I use self-love to combat this. I've been procrastinating with a lot of Ted Talks lately and one of them said, "to know your life purpose you must know who you are, what you do, who you do it for, what they need from you and your doing of it and how it changes them"
My answers were "my name, nothing, myself, a life and I'm entropy as a result of my actions or failure to act."
Like many others who answered with this kind of depressing shit, I didn't know how to turn it into motivation at first but then I changed the answer "myself" to my "future self" and I realised how much I cared about my future self's happiness. More than anything, really. More than I feel right now. My future self's happiness that is brought about by my present self's actions is experience-able before it occurs. The same way that you feel happy imagining how someone you care about is going to feel when you give them the gift you're currently shopping for.
I want to speak perfect Japanese, wonderful fluent, native sounding Japanese. It's very difficult to achieve and it requires me to go right now and spend time in the present moment trying to do something using that language. atm I'm supposed to go and read some manga.
But I won't, or I wasn't going to, because I didn't want to do any hard work in the present moment. Instead I decided to leave it up to a later "me" who will feel like doing it. He never will. The more detached, in time, your future self from your current self is, the less of a shit you give about him or her. Except, he or she is you and you should care, you must care.
Chronic procrastinators like me, I think we care way too much about our immediate gratification, our present selves, and have a strong disconnection to our futures.
I believe the most wonderful aspect of humankind is our gift-giving and charitable nature. It is perhaps what has stimulated our evolution so effectively. We share knowledge, wealth, information; we teach, we save. We're the kind of creature that can stop out of pure mercy and help another wounded animal. We can be so kind and so good and yet not to ourselves, our future selves.
When you're next procrastinating a task, stop and imagine your poor future self. The you ten minutes from now who'll have to start, feeling no better after that smoke or song, the you days, a month or a year from now who'll feel regret and sorrow over wasting his/her time. Why do you want to make him/her, you, yourself suffer like that?
If someone were to beg you the way you beg yourself (the way I beg myself) to get in shape, wouldn't you give it to them out of mercy or just to see them smile? Give that smile to yourself a year from now, when you're looking into the mirror and like what you see.
You're an adult (not all of you, I know, but you will be), and your own parent now. It is hard, but everyday can be Christmas <3.
I'm going to open some manga.
- I'm NOT going to think about my immediate self and how I feel in this moment. 2. I'm NOT going to focus on the difficulty it takes to produce activation energy.
- I AM going to imagine myself at the point of reward, which will be when I've finished this manga, I've done all kinds of other study in the meantime and I'm reading the first page of my new manga and it's SO much easier than the first page of my current one.
- I AM going to imagine thanking myself at that moment, for the effort I put it in in the past for that moment in the future.
- Then I START, flowing with joy and mercy at giving something as wonderful as happiness to someone, that someone being myself.
Now go get started on something: https://www.fiverr.com/s2/81cb9b4636
