tldr: what appears as procrastination is actually a broad label for seeming mismatch or contradiction of internal desires, and the solution is to do more actions that seem default
A student approaches the master for his guidance.
Student: I want to become the best martial artist in the world, and also tend to the farm and do my chores so that I can support that endeavor. However, I am able to do none of it. I wake up, half-groggy, unsure on how the day will go, and at night I go to sleep disappointed in myself. Then I somehow grudgingly do my chores, all the while feeling bad that I’m not practicing my art, and then I’m usually tired to do anything else. Sometimes I do practice my art, but it feels incomplete and I feel burdened. Why am I procrastinating, and how do I solve it?
Master: The usual question is “I want X, how do I get X?” which can be solved, but you ask “I want to want X, how do I get the want?” which is somewhat non-sensical. You either want it or not. You say you’re “procrastinating”. Procrastination is the broad fuzzy description of a phenomena where a person says he wants to do X, but does not do X. However, it is the description of this mis-match, not its cause or explanation. It’s similar to this article about phlogiston, which was the earlier explanation for why stuff burns. To quote
Phlogiston escaped from burning substances as visible fire. As the phlogiston escaped, the burning substances lost phlogiston and so became ash … one didn’t use phlogiston theory to predict the outcome of a chemical transformation. You looked at the result first, then you used phlogiston theory to explain it.
You couldn’t even use phlogiston theory to say what you ought not to see; it could explain everything.
If you saw a person who said he wants to do X, and also seems mostly convincing about it—but was not doing X at the end, you will probably think the person is lying. It should increase your suspicion that the thing the person claims he wants to do is something socially desirable or appropriate to do, thus even if he did not want X, he is motivated to say he wants to do it. If we as the modern society did not have the baggage word of “procrastination” to explain this, we would go with the more straight-forward explanation that the person is lying. Him being seemingly unaware of his own deception is possibly a strategy, similar to how actors “stay in the character”.
A simple explanation for you situation could be—you are not being truthful when you say you want to become the best martial artist. Maybe you think that goal will make you look very cool in front of your peers or in terms of your traditional values. Maybe it helps give you an excuse when people ask why your farm isn’t trimmed of weeds. You say you want to do your chores, but given you don’t really care for them beyond your subsistence, why will you want to do it willingly, and not do the most optimal bare minimum? So given you don’t really want to become a martial artist, and given that you don’t want to do your chores, why is it a surprise that your life is empty and meaningless?
Student: Okay fair enough, I am nothing if not sincere—so I will agree with your rational argument. You’re right, I don’t really care about being a great martial artist, and chores are literally (by definition) a means to an end. I care about none of it, and just want to live my days by the lake, throwing stones at it. However, is that a life worth living? I want to become a martial artist, in theory, to be stronger and defend my village against the villain Moe Lock. If I don’t do it, someone else probably will, but also possibly not. Moreover, even if Moe Lock does win, it’s not a huge issue because I will die either way. So nothing in my bones, using rationality, is enough to convince me of doing anything.
Master: You’re right. Desires are axioms in our epistemic framework, so there is no logical way to arrive at them, except by having some desires to begin with. If your base desires are met, you may not have anything “practical” to strive for on a daily basis. You’re also right in wondering what should be done instead. Have you tried doing nothing?
Student: Nothing? But if I don’t tend the farms I will starve.
Master: Then starve. Then it will become practical for you to tend your farm.
Student: If I don’t make my deliveries daily, the merchants will stop buying from me. It will be hard to build up my reputation again. I can’t wait for it to become practical again by messing things up so badly.
Master: You’re now being practical about it. If you don’t tend your farm, and you know in your bones that it is practical to tend it, you will do it either way. The issue is that because you are learned and wise, and have strong dependence on your logical systems—you want to choose your axioms to suit your profit, and are trying to figure out a way to get them your current axioms to align with such axioms that seem ideal to you—and thus fighting against yourself, your “practical desires” versus your “ideal desires”. By relying on a long-term strategy of applying conscious force on your unconscious, you waste energy. If you fight against yourself, you may win or lose, but you’ll be battered by the end of it either way. Go ahead and do nothing, be free.
“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.”—Basho
Student: But what if I internalize your advice and I become more lazy, and lose my earnings, and ruin my life?
Master: And what if you don’t internalize my advice and spend the rest of your life in conflict with yourself, captive of a prison you so carefully maintain?
On hearing these words, the student became enlightened.
Ugh. This massively oversimplifies human desire or self-knowledge.
Right. Or that parts of him want to do X, but other parts don’t want to do the elements that make X maximally likely. Or that he doesn’t want ONLY X. Or that X is the thing that is emotionally salient at the moment, but that won’t last. Or that X is what they want to be seen as wanting, but they don’t actually want it.
This feels a lot like the weight loss debate—Calories in < calories out is true, but useless. Defining “want” as “what you pursue wholeheartedly and consistently” is also fine, but useless.
Agreed, and that is real and difficult to deal with for most people. The solution (of integrating this self-knowledge and identifying/creating more consistent wants) is only ever achieved by a small subset of humans, and often takes decades of practice.
> Procrastination is the broad fuzzy description of a phenomena where a person says he wants to do X, but does not do X.
By “person says” I mean “person signals” (internally or externally)
> Or that parts of him want to do X, but other parts don’t want to do the elements that make X maximally likely.
Sure, and that multi-agent behavior will have negotiations and save outward behavior. It can be reluctant signaling—but the fact that there are signals mean an activation threshold has been reached
This applies to all those descriptions—In-fact the last of them “X is what they want to be seen as wanting, but they don’t actually want it. ” is exactly the point I am making.
> Defining “want” as “what you pursue wholeheartedly and consistently” is also fine, but useless.
I think it can be very useful, specially if you also want to believe and act like “I do whatever I want”
> The solution (of integrating this self-knowledge and identifying/creating more consistent wants) is only ever achieved by a small subset of humans, and often takes decades of practice.
There’s a spectra of skill, so even some practice can give you noob gains. “The solution” is similar to “winning” in rationality—and there’s nothing else to do in life—so it is as good a goal as any.
I enjoyed this as a (roughly) Taoist perspective, but I don’t find it maps that well to my life. Perhaps I’m delusional and would be better off if I let the shackles be released, but mostly I think I’m happier when I strictly enforce (some non maximal number of) habits on myself.
When I do procrastinate, it’s usually downstream of fear or irreducible uncertainty, rather than simply not really wanting the thing (as becomes clear when doing the thing is fine and I’m glad I did). Sometimes I don’t care, but that feels less like procrastination and more like just not doing random stuff I don’t care about.
> rather than simply not really wanting the thing
Consider how an heroin addict will find some way or the other to get heroin, which goes to show that “want” is very strongly linked to getting things done.
So given how you described things, let’s say you (try to) do nothing. Inevitably you will feel the discomfort and urge to work, or a discomfort/in a form of cynicism/awkwardness. This should be “processed” to come to concrete practical reasons why you do X, rather than because you should. I am trying to suggest a method to get at this process.
Hmm. I don’t think I’m disputing the definition of “want”, and in fact am saying I procrastinate on stuff that I do actually for real want to do, but am scared of or uncertain about.
Like, as a prototypical example, imagine a 14 year old who wants to ask their crush out. They really do want this! But often, they lose their nerve and put it off until tomorrow. I don’t think this has much to do with the teen failing to be sufficiently default in their action, and more to do with them being afraid!
Introspecting, much more of my actual procrastination feels like this case than a case where I don’t really want the thing after all.
Interesting example—and this will apply for all dilemmas (a specific want isn’t clear) - such as leaving a job/marriage.
I feel an aspect there could be that of the “social default”. The 14 year old both a) wants to ask out their crush; b) maintain their social standing—and has lots of variables surrounding both. Empathizing with that person—if they scour to find their internal wants, they can realize they just really want peace and asking out the crush isn’t worth it, or that they just want fulfillment and apart from an amorphous blob of fear/social rejection/death, they should ask out their crush.
The crux of my argument is, fear is a negative desire, a positive desire stronger than that (jumping in front of the bullet for a loved one) will still dominate. Dilemmas are situations where a single desire may not dominate, so maybe a discovery of priorities are in order.
The devil is in the details here. The 14 year old wants to date their crush. Maybe even to know if they should move on. The 14 year old wants to avoid a situation where their crush laughs in their face, loudly announcing to the school that they thought they had a chance. If you can guarantee that they get laughed at, and ask them if they want to ask their crush out still, it’s going to be an easy “No thanks”.
But it’s hard to know, in general. Asking means maybe getting what you want, and maybe getting what you don’t want. And therefore you’ll feel drawn towards asking, but also hesitate in fear of what could go wrong. It’s not that you simultaneously “want to ask” and “want to not ask”, or “want to ask” and “fear asking”. It’s that you want to ask [and have it go well] and want to not ask [and have it go poorly]. When you fill in the missing details, the picture gets clearer.
The difficulty in making these decisions is in knowing whether it’s worth the risk—and knowing that it’s not worth learning more about the risk before committing. Once you can say “I want to ask and maybe get laughed at”—which again, is the reality of what “asking” means—then you’ve actually decided whether you want the uncertain outcome of asking. It’s at that point that you can accurately say that you want to ask out your crush, without the hidden “[and have it go well]” qualification.
”Wanting to maybe get laughed at” is a bizarre feeling, because we’re so used to trying to get the good without risking the bad (and for good reason!), but it’s a completely real experience, and a valuable one when the uncertainty is irreducible. The “fear” starts to feel more like “excitement”, and all of a sudden you’re more prepared to smile while being laughed at, because it no longer means you shouldn’t have asked.
I don’t think “do more default” alone is enough to get people there very often, but “don’t try so much to force yourself to do things you’re afraid of” does threaten to take those things that you want, and that does increase the pressure to want the scary things. And doing things that scare you is a lot more fun when you actually want the scary too.
I like your suggestion, gives me the same vibes as the adage of flipping a coin for a difficult decision because you will know what you subconsciously want when the coin’s in the air. Maybe I should have written a longer article instead of slightly aiming for aesthetics—but I will argue that all of such insights—eventually converge to all actions feeling default.
You seem to be playing this game where you redefine “want”, and then use it to prove that people actually don’t want things (according to your non-standard definition).
“A heroin addict wants heroin” is the most straightforward way I can define want.
Yes, but if you narrow “want” to this level, then almost no one other than heroin addicts actually wants anything.
I want a glass of water/I want to write this comment/I want to listen to a song/I don’t want to solve global peace, but I want global peace to be solved.
I’m not addicted to heroin, but I am addicted to other stuff, and I often wouldn’t call it “wanting” the stuff, but “having an urge”. Like doomscrolling. It would be a stretch to say (in ordinary language) I want to doomscroll. I don’t want to doomscroll but I have an urge to doomscroll.
What’s the difference between an urge and a want?
Maybe the want comes from the cortex, while the urge comes from the cerebellum. Or the want comes from the superego, while the urge comes from the id. Though I agree that at other times it doesn’t feel necessary to talk of urges. I distinguished two different explanations here. One with urges vs wants, one with “want” vs “want to want”. Though you already touched on the latter.
There’s a fairly simple and common conflict that I find explains a lot of procrastination:
I want X to have been done.
I do not want to be doing X.
So you struggle to convince yourself to “voluntarily” do X even though it’s unpleasant, or you don’t do X and struggle with worrying about the consequences of not doing X. :/