Thank you for your thoughtful response. As it happens, I disagree with your premise that the negative emotion of the incomplete assignment is almost certainly what makes me procrastinate. Yes, that’s a potential factor, but only one of many. For example, there’s the difference between anticipated and actual difficulty of performing a procrastinated task progress.
But in the the spirit of rationality, I will give your suggestions a fair trial. You are absolutely correct that the most effective way to figure out what works is to use the scientific approach—design an experiment to test the hypothesis, test, assess the results, and go from there.
You are absolutely correct that the most effective way to figure out what works is to use the scientific approach—design an experiment to test the hypothesis, test, assess the results, and go from there.
In this case, the hypothesis I bet on is:
You will identify a specific set of physical behaviors (muscle tension changes, viscera sensations, etc.) that accompany the thought
These behaviors are preceded by some mental representation (however brief) of some expected result—such as being yelled at for not finishing the task, or some other social status-impacting event that could come about as a result of failing to complete it successfully or failing to complete it at all
Identifying and changing the thought process that led to creating and caching the expected outcome, will result in the cached thought going away, and possibly taking the somatic marker with it, or at least diminishing it in intensity. If the somatic marker remains or is replaced by a new one, there will be a new cached thought that goes with it.
There are exceptions to this pattern; some somatic markers are straight-up conditioning (i.e., there’s no cached predictive thought in play—the marker is directly tied to the initial thought), and some are rooted in what I call “holes in the soul”—a compulsion to fulfill an emotional need that’s not being otherwise met. But most chronic procrastination in my experience follows the “main sequence” I’ve outlined above.
I used to waste a LOT of time helping people get over the “effort” they perceived associated with doing things… only to find out that it was 99% anosognosia—misdirected explanations of the pain.
If we don’t feel pushed to do something in the first place, then we don’t usually experience the time spent as being effortful. So nowadays, I get results a lot faster by focusing on eliminating a handful of feelings associated with NOT doing the task, than the seemingly infinite number of new complaints people can generate about DOING the task.
I really like pbjeby’s advice and I think it applies to many types of procrastinating where we have negative feelings associated with the future task (which we can make worse through classical conditioning); the only part of his post I disagree with is his reduction of Mike’s problem to negative emotion about the incomplete task. I agree with Mike that pleasure in our current activity can also be a part of procrastination, not just displeasure about the future task.
For instance, I often have trouble stopping reading in order to do incomplete work, but I also have trouble stopping reading to make myself go to bed, even when I’m tired. Now, I enjoy sleeping, and I don’t feel negative emotion about it: I just take even more pleasure in reading. Yet, my goal was to go to bed on time.
I agree with Mike that pleasure in our current activity can also be a part of procrastination, not just displeasure about the future task.
It can be… but rarely is in people who suffer from chronic procrastination. Usually, they don’t enjoy the thing they’re using as an escape. And I’m not aware of anybody who goes out of their way to do something they REALLY enjoy when they’re procrastinating. Usually, they go for mind-numbing distraction rather than true involvement or enjoyment.
For the most part, this is one of those areas where trusting your rational mind will lead you astray, because it’s just telling you rational lies. It doesn’t know what’s actually going on, and so just makes up believable stories—“that terrible LessWrong.com site tempted me and made me avoid my work...”
And this is especially likely to be the case if you’re also ashamed of the bad feelings you have about the task...
For instance, I often have trouble stopping reading in order to do incomplete work, but I also have trouble stopping reading to make myself go to bed, even when I’m tired. Now, I enjoy sleeping, and I don’t feel negative emotion about it: I just take even more pleasure in reading. Yet, my goal was to go to bed on time.
Quite so… but that’s not something I think of as procrastination. It might be akrasia, but if you told that story to a “real” procrastinator, they might find it insulting.
One reason I’m a bit passionate about this, is that while the things you’re saying may be true for you, they are not true for chronic procrastination, and not what a procrastinator needs to hear in order to get better. It’s akin to telling an alcoholic that lots of people can handle their liquor. It might be possible to teach the alcoholic to handle their liquor, but that’s definitely not the first order of business: detoxification is.
Negative emotions (and “seriousness” in most forms) are to a procrastinator what alcohol is to an alcoholic: a drug addiction with serious real-life impact.
(Really, it’s only been in the last few weeks that it’s even occurred to me myself that negative emotions and seriousness have some practical uses, once you’re no longer addicted to them. And I’m still trying to get used to the idea, because I’ve spent the last year and a half or so trying to eradicate them from my life.)
Here’s my current interpretation of where pleasure in the current activity comes into it for me: I would play a computer game, which I think should be pleasurable, and used to be, but feel guilty about procrastinating about something else, so I didn’t enjoy it as much, or perhaps at all.
If I think about stopping before I’ve gotten the expected enjoyment, that is unpleasant, so I would avoid stopping or thinking about stopping. I would stop eventually and feel bad about having wasted so much time.
It’s not so much that that I picked a game was inherently mind-numbing or unenjoyable, but that I turned it into something mind-numbing because I was avoiding these unpleasant thoughts.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. As it happens, I disagree with your premise that the negative emotion of the incomplete assignment is almost certainly what makes me procrastinate. Yes, that’s a potential factor, but only one of many. For example, there’s the difference between anticipated and actual difficulty of performing a procrastinated task progress.
But in the the spirit of rationality, I will give your suggestions a fair trial. You are absolutely correct that the most effective way to figure out what works is to use the scientific approach—design an experiment to test the hypothesis, test, assess the results, and go from there.
In this case, the hypothesis I bet on is:
You will identify a specific set of physical behaviors (muscle tension changes, viscera sensations, etc.) that accompany the thought
These behaviors are preceded by some mental representation (however brief) of some expected result—such as being yelled at for not finishing the task, or some other social status-impacting event that could come about as a result of failing to complete it successfully or failing to complete it at all
Identifying and changing the thought process that led to creating and caching the expected outcome, will result in the cached thought going away, and possibly taking the somatic marker with it, or at least diminishing it in intensity. If the somatic marker remains or is replaced by a new one, there will be a new cached thought that goes with it.
There are exceptions to this pattern; some somatic markers are straight-up conditioning (i.e., there’s no cached predictive thought in play—the marker is directly tied to the initial thought), and some are rooted in what I call “holes in the soul”—a compulsion to fulfill an emotional need that’s not being otherwise met. But most chronic procrastination in my experience follows the “main sequence” I’ve outlined above.
I used to waste a LOT of time helping people get over the “effort” they perceived associated with doing things… only to find out that it was 99% anosognosia—misdirected explanations of the pain.
If we don’t feel pushed to do something in the first place, then we don’t usually experience the time spent as being effortful. So nowadays, I get results a lot faster by focusing on eliminating a handful of feelings associated with NOT doing the task, than the seemingly infinite number of new complaints people can generate about DOING the task.
I really like pbjeby’s advice and I think it applies to many types of procrastinating where we have negative feelings associated with the future task (which we can make worse through classical conditioning); the only part of his post I disagree with is his reduction of Mike’s problem to negative emotion about the incomplete task. I agree with Mike that pleasure in our current activity can also be a part of procrastination, not just displeasure about the future task.
For instance, I often have trouble stopping reading in order to do incomplete work, but I also have trouble stopping reading to make myself go to bed, even when I’m tired. Now, I enjoy sleeping, and I don’t feel negative emotion about it: I just take even more pleasure in reading. Yet, my goal was to go to bed on time.
It can be… but rarely is in people who suffer from chronic procrastination. Usually, they don’t enjoy the thing they’re using as an escape. And I’m not aware of anybody who goes out of their way to do something they REALLY enjoy when they’re procrastinating. Usually, they go for mind-numbing distraction rather than true involvement or enjoyment.
For the most part, this is one of those areas where trusting your rational mind will lead you astray, because it’s just telling you rational lies. It doesn’t know what’s actually going on, and so just makes up believable stories—“that terrible LessWrong.com site tempted me and made me avoid my work...”
And this is especially likely to be the case if you’re also ashamed of the bad feelings you have about the task...
Quite so… but that’s not something I think of as procrastination. It might be akrasia, but if you told that story to a “real” procrastinator, they might find it insulting.
One reason I’m a bit passionate about this, is that while the things you’re saying may be true for you, they are not true for chronic procrastination, and not what a procrastinator needs to hear in order to get better. It’s akin to telling an alcoholic that lots of people can handle their liquor. It might be possible to teach the alcoholic to handle their liquor, but that’s definitely not the first order of business: detoxification is.
Negative emotions (and “seriousness” in most forms) are to a procrastinator what alcohol is to an alcoholic: a drug addiction with serious real-life impact.
(Really, it’s only been in the last few weeks that it’s even occurred to me myself that negative emotions and seriousness have some practical uses, once you’re no longer addicted to them. And I’m still trying to get used to the idea, because I’ve spent the last year and a half or so trying to eradicate them from my life.)
Here’s my current interpretation of where pleasure in the current activity comes into it for me: I would play a computer game, which I think should be pleasurable, and used to be, but feel guilty about procrastinating about something else, so I didn’t enjoy it as much, or perhaps at all.
If I think about stopping before I’ve gotten the expected enjoyment, that is unpleasant, so I would avoid stopping or thinking about stopping. I would stop eventually and feel bad about having wasted so much time.
It’s not so much that that I picked a game was inherently mind-numbing or unenjoyable, but that I turned it into something mind-numbing because I was avoiding these unpleasant thoughts.