How has procrastination impacted you? When did you first realize it was an issue/what led to it becoming one? What makes it hard to not procrastinate?
1. How has procrastination impacted me? Procrastination has contributed to me flunking out of : 1st: my first undergrad at Olin college of Engineering and 2nd: my Ph.D at University of Delaware. I did not get very good grades at Columbia either, and procrastination definitely contributed to all three of these experiences.
2. When did I first realize it was an issue? I guess it mostly started being a serious problem in my senior year at LASA (Liberal Arts and Science Academy) high school in Austin, Texas. This was a public magnet school I had applied to get into, passed the IQ test or whatever it technically was, to get into, and did fairly well at, although there were many high achievers in that crowd who "beat" me. For the most part, though, I consider that part of my career a success; I think I ended up in like the 11th or 12th percentile GPA-wise and got into pretty much every undergrad college I applied to. While I didn't apply to Harvard or Columbia or wherever, again, I would say that was basically a success.
All that work did take a lot out of me, though. I still remember crying over a "B" I got in a biology class my freshman year, I pushed myself perhaps a bit too hard junior year and got shittier grades, and overall didn't really have much of a life outside of doing my work. My relaxation was on the weekends; I went to ... I decided here that while some of this narrative background info is helpful for you to feel like you know me better, it also isn't very future-focused or sensation-focused;
2b. I think the real question I should face is 4. "what does procrastination feel like?", 5. "what other external feelings / events lead to my being more likely to procrastinate?" and 6. "when you feel like procrastinating, how can we make decisions that we feel like are more the 'real nathan' or 'best version of Nathan' making those decisions?"
3. What makes it hard to not procrastinate? Similar to the questions 4 and especially 5, a little of 6, too
4. What does procrastination feel like? I guess the best one word to describe procrastination is an urge, or maybe sometimes even a "need" . When I expect that something will be painful, stressful, or even if my mind just kind of categorizes the thing as "work," the procrastination urge sometimes overwhelms me, just kind of feels like it comes from my whole body at once as soon as I realize there is some work I'm thinking about doing, or some external stimulus reminds me of work (ie. my Google Calendar), guilt trips me (a person).
4b. Sometimes it's not even really a moment of overwhelm; today, for example, I went for some dinner at like 4:30 P.M. and my default choice was, instead of working through the meal as I do when I'm busiest, "let me just go mess around on the computer while I'm eating my dinner" and I started to read some essays from one of my favorite essayists, a Mr. Paul Graham, who also founded the world's most successful (and I think first) software startup incubator. Paul has a lot of essays which are pretty well known on the internet, and I think he was famous for those before he got famous for funding Dropbox, stopping AirBnB from going bankrupt, and also other software companies you've probably heard of like Twitch.tv and Door Dash.
4b. cont. Anyway, in that instant today, the process of "unprocrastinating" looked more like "conscious Nathan's attention realizes he is not doing what would be best for future Nathan's bank account and/or career and/or worldwide fame, so conscious Nathan ought to steer automatic, impulsively-acting, habitual Nathan back towards the activities that would be best for future Nathan's bank account, career, and/or worldwide fame. So I guess the most helpful practice here is to continue to meditate nightly, maybe also start doing it during the morning, and to make that mindfulness such an intrinsic habit that I notice these split-second-decision moments more consciously and can consciously ask myself "alrighty Nate-o, are we gonna keep having fun right now or is it in future-Nathan's best interest to get back to work or even just take a walk outside, get something to eat, exercise, talk to a friend, etc?" I feel like I do this to an extent, but I'd like to make these decisions more consciously, even if that means walking outside or ducking into a bathroom and talking myself through the decision more sensibly
5. What other external feelings / events lead to my being more likely to procrastinate?"
Specific stimuli like walking into my bedroom at night lead to the "bad things I do" (as mentioned in question 7, vegging out with YouTube/Netflix/whatever, video games, porn, reading old fiction books, playing sudoku, etc.). Other events that lead to my procrastinating / relaxing: lunch, dinner, some discouraging thing at work like being ignored by all the AirBnB hosts I cold-message, getting my account blocked by AirBnB, losing a lot of money all at once, flunking out of school, getting an F (or even a B, depending on when in my life we're talking about) in a class, etc.
Another stimulus: a friend / my sister coming into my life; normally in friendship situations I just blab about whatever comes to mind (very rarely something constructive or structured about work), hang out and get food or drink alcohol or play some video games or watch a movie. At least in these situations I feel better because I'm bonding with people and really getting to know them, whereas when I'm alone and veg out I usually feel like that's just because that was the lowest energy state (it was easier to read 30 minutes of Paul Graham today rather than go back to spamming AirBnB hosts) or I'm escaping something
Times that I tend to procrastinate: again, right after lunch or after dinner. Right before bed. Weekends when I'm alone in the iSuite and no one else is there working with me, when I'm out of town visiting my mom or dad or whoever.
Feelings that lead to procrastination / are related to work: fear / anxiety is probably the number one. if I'm afraid I "can't" get the work done, I will avoid that thought and the work. Even if I just know the process of working will be a bit painful, make me feel stupid / slow / unfocused, I avoid the work. It's weird because sometimes usually my anticipation of how bad a situation will be is that I anticipate it being much worse than it actually is. There are exceptions, like when I flunked out at Olin I actually managed to fail every single class, which I definitely didn't anticipate. And I think the same could be said for my first attempts at my startup, trying to understand nuclear fusion at Columbia before I switched my major to Computer Science, the two most serious breakups I've had, etc., but besides those extremely bad events in my life, usually my brain, in an attempt to keep me safe, actually really fuckin makes me feel unsafe and anxious, and most days when I actually start the work I've been avoiding, that catastrophizing just goes "poof" as I get a reality check and am like "oh wait, duh, I just had to keep moving keyboard keys with my fingers like I've been doing for decades. And actually, hey, at least this one part of writing this massive wall of text is pretty fun, and I'm pretty smart and have fun ideas and I can get this done and hey while we're at it, it's probably more pleasant to smile through this situation rather than focusing on how boring it is to just keep writing in a silent room when I could be petting a cat or watching Andy Samberg's and Melissa Fumero's characters fall in love
So anyway, I guess a solution to the anxiety is cognitive and/or the practice of mindfulness. Just taking a deep breath, forcing a smile onto your face, etc., all of these things can help the guilt, shame, and/or spiraling thoughts surrounding taking a short break or even avoiding the things future Nathan really wants present Nathan to be doing today
And I think even more importantly, the first few times I actively have to take a deep breath, get away from a group and talk myself through something, or even just silently become mindful and make a better decision will take conscious effort, but if I make it a habit for 21 days, it's unlikely the habit will just vanish, and will probably make it easier to take that action in the future
6. "when you feel like procrastinating, how can we make decisions that we feel like are more the 'real Nathan' or 'best version of Nathan' making those decisions?"
I think it's just about moderation, right? Obviously I will relax at some point in my future. And some of that relaxation is probably necessary, or at least good for me. But as I mention in question 7, doing too many hours of any one thing puts my brain in a funky place, and if there's no spiritual purpose or external purpose or benefit to a task, it's really not worth doing it for hours
So that's where that priority list I wrote out in #7 comes into play; the best version of myself takes a more active role in my daily proceedings, at least until those more active, good decisions become habitual
The things mentioned in my answer to my own question 6 (a solution to procrastination is cognitive and/or the practice of mindfulness. Just taking a deep breath, forcing a smile onto your face, etc. can help the guilt, shame, and/or spiraling thoughts surrounding taking a short break or even avoiding the things future Nathan really wants present Nathan to be doing today)
7. What relationship do I WANT to have to procrastination?
I think procrastination is just a part of life. The aforementioned essayist Paul Graham says "you're always putting off something; make sure you're putting of the 'wrong' things for the 'right' things." So in my case, the priority list the "best Nathan" would put together is something like: A. Startup work B. Day Job / funding the startup work C. Quality time with deep friendships / family relationships / dates D. Exercise E. Eating at least enough to survive, +a little healthy eating too F. Meditation G. Other emotional self-care, like making music, making a new friend, or reflecting in a bunch of words like I'm doing right now H. vegging out with YouTube/Netflix/whatever, video games, porn, reading old fiction books, playing sudoku, etc. and
Perhaps more importantly, an hour of the veg out is probably fine here or there, but once it starts getting to like, hour 3 or 4 or whatever, it starts becoming this weird self-loathing / apathetic thing where I just kind of zone out and keep doing the veg out task without appreciating it as much
And now that was all good for me to work through the impulses of procrastination, how to solve it, (i didn't cover feelings as much in this little essay / exploration, but i know there are feelings of pleasure, guilt, shame, anxiety, fear, even anger, ego, perfectionism, etc. associated with procrastinating), etc. But there's also plenty we can learn from others, and writing all this made me remember a great talk I'd heard on procrastination from someone who actually did academic research on it, got data, got peer-reviewed, etc. Dr. Tim Pychyl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhFQA998WiA
