If we limit 'free action' to mean 'ability to charge your credit card' then you are pretty much described beeminder.com (a company I highly recommend and of which I am a very happy user).
Thanks so much for saying so! Maybe I'll also take this excuse to highlight the footnote in the article:
> Thanks to my friends at Beeminder for some of the ideas I mention here. You can see their full article [http://blog.beeminder.com/akrasia] on commitment devices to overcome akrasia for more ideas.
I remember looking at Beeminder, probably around the time that article was written unless you promoted/were promoted on LW before then. How much would you say you've improved the service since then? It definitely looks better than I remember... I think I'll test it out this weekend since I can see it being pretty helpful for those long term yet easily measurable goals, two of which I have under "lose x lbs" and "read y books this year". I'm not so sure it would be that helpful for the smaller goals, though, especially ones that require more subjective measurement ("you've been on your cell phone too much today") or ones that require frequent measurement updates from the individual ("out of this list of whitelisted sites that are directly work related your fraction of time spent on other sites over the last time period is x%, which happens to be too much"). Anyway I wanted to ask if you're familiar with any research on akrasia correlated with childhood. I have no idea if or how much things like divorce, loose parenting, strict parenting, or a change in style as the child transitions into teenage years affects anything. It was just an idea I had this morning when I realized my above comment is really just asking for a strict parent who in the process of looking out for my own best interests (that as an adult I can now agree with are such, or at least rationally argue otherwise and be taken seriously) can do such a wide variety of things like taking away my phone for a set period (while still letting me answer any important calls that might come in), or periodically poking me with a stick if I'm staring at my screen seemingly frozen and there isn't a code editor open.
OMG yes, that article is from before we actually launched. We've made, let's see, 1789 user-visible improvements since then -- http://beeminder.com/meta/uvi
It's still confusing and nerd-centric and we're working on making it more intelligible to newbees. Would especially love to hear your thoughts, having looked it years ago and now coming back to it.
As for beeminding things like time spent on your phone, you'd be surprised what's possible if you're willing to nerd out a bit. For iPhone I think Apple makes this impossible but on Android you can connect RescueTime and Tasker to Beeminder to automatically measure and report time spent. Or you could just have Tasker count the number of times you turn on your phone's display and beemind that. I'd love the excuse to better document such things so email me, dreeves@beeminder.com, if that sounds intriguing.
Akrasia and childhood: I don't know of research other than the Stanford Marshmallow experiment which I used to cite as supportive of Beeminder's philosophy (kids who employed tricks to distract themselves from the temptation did better) but later research makes it much less clear what's really going on there (maybe kids from unstable homes just don't trust the researcher to keep their promise which makes it rational, in expectation, to grab the marshmallow while the grabbing's good).
I do, personally, view the holy grail of Beeminder to be a nannybot that tells you minute by minute what the optimal thing for you to be doing is. Actually we just made a Beeminder Slack bot -- http://slackminder.com -- that may point us in that direction, though still very primitive now.
I also recommend them to everyone, but between all the praise they're getting, I think I should also give a fair word of warning - while great, it may not work for everyone.
I used the service once; I tried to discipline myself out of a poor financial situation using Beeminder - very quickly I found myself consistently slipping, had to pay the money, and I ended up in a worse financial situation and stressed to the point I could barely function.
Now don't treat it as a negative - instead, like a warning on the razor box: this thing is sharp, do not use when your hands are shaking. It's great as a motivator, but be sure you're in a good enough mental shape to handle both your commitments and the eventual slip-ups.
That said, I also have to praise Beeminder for having a great tool with lots of little nice features (I'm particularly fond of the graph aesthetics), amazing and responsive support (and proactive - I screwed something up once, they fixed it for me pretty much immediately and sent tips on how to avoid this happening again), and wrote a lot of interesting things on akrasia.
EDIT:
To 'dreeves - long time ago I shared this experience over at SlateStarCodex, and I missed your reply then. Referring to it, and that you're "extremely averse to people paying money to Beeminder that they don’t feel was worth it" - no, I feel it was totally worth it, even if it contributed a bit to one of my biggest stress episodes in my lifetime. I'm not scared of Beeminder, I'm scared of myself. I treat it as a combat scar in battle against akrasia :). So thanks for your kind refund offer, but a) you're totally entitled to the money, and b) it was long time ago :).
Oh, and thanks for supporting SSC :).
And, to everyone else - did I tell you already that Beeminder people are really great, friendly and radiate honesty in a way that's pretty much unseen in this industry? I do very much recommend the service despite the fact that, by my own fault, I managed to cut myself with it.
Holy cow, you made my day! <blush> Thank you! Fascinating what you said in another comment about the catch 22 of remembering and sticking to plans when you're feeling good. Actually, I'm realizing I'm confused about this. I'm so everything-looks-like-a-nail that it sounds eminently beemindable so it would probably be good for me to keep trying to understand what I'm missing there. dreeves@beeminder.com if an email thread seems easier.
There's actually some excellent points in this for designing products, especially onboarding and default experiences. Too much effort to get to the actual work/core experience will tend to result in lack of use.
Flip it around: Akrasia is the state of having flawed judgment about one's values. Of course the part of the brain that can speak always speaks highly of itself to the detriment of all the other bits of brain. The important thing is to convince all of yourself that something is worth doing. Telling yourself that you should do something is as persuasive as someone else chiding you to do it. Yes, the verbal, "planning" part of your brain has convinced itself, but it is also self-absorbed and treats the rest of the brain like its footstool.
For an example, "I should lose weight" is a ridiculously abstract concept to most of your brain. Your talky bit thinks it's saying something concrete: "Get that number on the scale down", but it hasn't actually said enough. It's a half-baked aspiration, not an activity. "I should exercise" is better: It prescribes an abstract activity that would accomplish the goal. It's still terrible though because it's still abstract. What is the value of exercise in the abstract? You don't experience exercise in the abstract: how could you possibly judge whether it is rewarding or not? How can you decide to "exercise" when exercise isn't even a real thing?
"I should run" is even better: You know how running feels. You can feel good running, and you can feel bad running. There are actual experiences and knowledge to draw upon to determine the value of running. Still: Not enough. Should you be running all the time? Verbal brain is being awfully sloppy, and has the gall to blame the rest of the brain for its mistakes. "I should run tomorrow in the morning for 30 minutes when I wake up." And we have arrived at remedy #3 which is called implementation intention. Honestly, what other intentions are actually intentions? If you're not planning concrete actions but abstract classes of actions, you're daydreaming, not planning. Verbal brain likes to talk about how important obligations and commitments are, but avoids doing the work of translating its precious thoughts into something intelligible to the rest of the brain.
The verbal part of your brain is easily convinced: By its own words. It doesn't even know what it has convinced itself of but it is awfully satisfied with itself. You, the ensemble of brain bits, are obviously skeptical of such a gullible entity. When you experience satisfaction or gratification for doing something, that is real knowledge to your brain; you learn what is good and what is bad. Of course you're going to prefer real knowledge over the ravings of an imbecile about the great rewards of not-even-a-real-thing.
I agree, and I have an anecdote to share. A few years back I wanted to lose weight and get fit. I tried many things, but I inevitably fell back into old patterns. Then I read a book by a bodybuilder in which basically 1/3 of it was a pep talk -- it was so persuasive that by the end of reading it I knew, and not just hoped, that I would get fit.
I lost 35 lbs and got in the best shape of my life through the constant work of 1.5 years-- I became so dedicated to this pursuit that I would constantly refuse short - term benefits to achieve my long term ones -- something that I a lot of trouble with.
In other words, it was easy once I convinced myself of what my values were.
"The kind of people who train alongside you in a gym makes a difference. If you are surrounded by people who are serious and train with a lot of intensity, it's easier for you to do the same thing. But it can be pretty hard to really blast your muscles while the people around you are just going through the motions. That is why good bodybuilders tend to congregate in certain gyms. By having the example of other serious bodybuilders constantly in front of you, you will train that much harder.
That is what made Joe Gold's original gym in Venice, California such a great place—a small gym with just enough equipment, but where you would constantly be rubbing shoulders with the great bodybuilders against whom I had the privilege of competing-like Franco Columbu, Ed Corney, Dave Draper, Robby Robinson, Frank Zane, Sergio Oliva, and Ken Waller. Nowadays, it's rare to find that many champions in the same place, but if you aren't sharing the gym floor with great bodybuilders like Flex Wheeler, Shawn Ray, Nasser El Sonbaty, or Dorian Yates, it can be very motivating if there are pictures or posters of these individuals on the walls or championship trophies displayed.
In 1980, training at World Gym for my final Mr. Olympia competition, I showed up at the gym at seven o'clock one morning to work out and stepped out on the sundeck for a moment. Suddenly the sun came through the clouds. It was so beautiful I lost all my motivation to train. I thought maybe I would go to the beach instead. I came up with every excuse in the book-the most persuasive being that I had trained hard the day before with the powerful German bodybuilder Jusup Wilkosz, so I could lay back today—but then I heard weights being clanged together inside the gym and I saw Wilkosz working his abs, Ken Waller doing shoulders, veins standing out all over his upper body, Franco Columbu blasting away, benching more than 400 pounts, Samir Bannout punishing his biceps with heavy Curls.
Everywhere I looked there was some kind of hard, sweaty training going on, and I knew that I couldn't afford not to train if I was going to compete against these champions. Their example sucked me in, and now I was looking forward to working, anticipating the pleasure of pitting my muscles against heavy iron. By the end of that session I had the best pump I could imagine, and an almost wasted morning had turned into one of the best workouts of my life. If I hadn't been there at World Gym, with those other bodybuilders to inspire and motivate me, I doubt that day would have ended up being so productive.
Even today, when I'm training for other reason, such as getting into top shape for a movie role, or just trying to stay in shape, I absorb energy from people working out around me. That's why I still like to go to gyms where bodybuilders are training for competition. Even today, after all this time, it still inspires me."
p. 87 in the 1999 edition of /The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding/, by Schwarzenegger and Bill Dobbins. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0684857219/ Great book, and actually quite pgesque, because to a large extent it's an indirect discussion of how the world works and what it's like to effectively pursue excellence.
I unintentionally began reading the quote in Arnolds voice, noticed what I was doing and attempted to keep doing it but found it too tiring imitating his voice to be able to finish reading the quote. Serious question, is there an audio book version of this book read by Arnold himself? That'd be neat.
The central example of the article supports your point (and undermines the authors).
If "Akrasia is the state of acting against your better judgment" and Victor Hugo led a wonderful life and compressed all his work into the absolute minimum amount of time and produced a masterpiece, where was he acting against his better judgement?
He got to have his cake and eat it too! If you look back on your own procrastination with some honesty, you'll probably see the same thing. You had fun, then you sweated through the work and everything turned out fine.
Except when it doesn't turn out fine because of something you didn't anticipate or something outside of your control. Had you afforded yourself the proper amount of time you would have been able to deal with those issues. If you're a procrastinator don't delude yourself into thinking it's somehow a positive attribute.
In my previous job we had metal chairs and synthethic carpet that charged you with even a few moves. Every single time I stood up and wanted to move my chair out of the way - I was electrocuted.
I worked there for 10 months, yet few years later I'm still subconsciously avoiding touching metal parts of my chair when I'm standing up to go to toilet or make a tea.
I''m thinking it could be made into an app (with some usb device to punish you) :)
I feel that many people, including myself, tend to value future gains in the expense of present self.
These days, I'm not sure if that's such a great strategy. Why shouldn't we satisfy our present self's needs? Why should we feel guilty for doing what we want to do?
Of course, if you satisfy your present self in the expense of your future self, that's self-destructive, and you'll eventually regret.
Personally, I find myself most motivated when I manage to find something that satisfies both my present self and future self.
I've been growing tired of the many articles about "Never Procrastinate Again!", "Top 8 ways to be productive" and "Do These 10 Morning Boosters every day". But I gained some new insights in this article, and I appreciate the context it was laced with. Thanks for sharing.
"Akrasia": This word also means "incontinence" or "intemperance" [1]. In other words, unable to contain, unable to withhold, and hence mastered by personal appetites (urges). It is used by both Jesus and Paul in the New Testament.
Aristotle introduced akrasia to explain why we make bad decisions in a moment of weakness even though we know better. The point though is not to just stick to commitments (and thereby have enkrateia, self-control), but to be virtuous (arete) and not worry about out-of-control desires in the first place.
I honestly find that the difficulty is maintaining good thought patterns. For instance, on Mondays, I'm often hungover and on a comedown. Life feels terrible, I'm unproductive at work, my self-esteem is shot, I basically hate myself. I vow to change everything, go to the gym, to give up drugs and cut down on booze. Awesome. By Wednesday I'm starting to feel positive - I feel better in myself, things are going well, I'm productive again and my self-esteem is returning.
By Friday, I feel so great, that the emotional memory of how I felt on Monday is all but entirely faded. What was I so worried about? I've had (basically) a great week, and the weekend is upon me - my phone is going off because people want to go do things and get smashed and spend a load of money listening to wicked music in fun, grotty venues and once that starts, I feel lifted and amazing, the party is great! I'm meeting people, chatting shit, I don't want to stop. Afterparty? Hell yes! Afterparties are for the cool kids and going to them makes me a cool kid!
Then all of a sudden it's 11AM on a Sunday. You've either passed out or all of the substances have worn off, you lug yourself back home, having possibly succeeded at what your altered brain set out to achieve, but have frankly forgotten most of it. You either go to bed Sunday, or get pissed with the people who can't face the idea of returning to normality. Either way, in the case of the former you can't sleep, and in the case of the latter you pass out and wake up on Monday feeling so terrible that Monday is a write off. You are full of self-loathing and duck your boss's calls, then the coworkers your boss thinks you might just be able to handle's calls, then you either somehow manage to get into work to be yelled at at 2PM or you just pass out again, wake up at 4, and then have some dazed sort of day and catch some crappy sleep and possibly salvage Tuesday.
So that was an extreme example (the life I'm trying to change, funnily enough), but the point was that it's really really difficult to change in any long term meaningful sense when your mind is so ready to forget the reasons you're trying to do well. I don't think it's something as specific as alcoholism or drug addiction, as it's a much more broad thing - booze and drugs feel more like a symptom of a certain mindset, as opposed to the things that cause it - I can quite happily (and have, many times) say no to drugs, and I've had liquor on my side for months without touching it (and I can also happily have a few beers without going nuts, too). Perhaps it's a symptom of ADHD, perhaps it's a crippling poor impulse control and lack of self-discipline, perhaps I'm a product of my environment (I live in Brighton which is mental as it is, and my main friendship groups tend to hit things hard) I'm not sure.
I'm just going to keep trying. Each time it gets a little better, despite fluctuating, and each time I get a bit more mature. Just have to hope I nail it before I end up homeless or dead.
Perhaps it has to do with a certain expectation of your own behavior in that environment?
From my own experience if I'm drinking with friends at one of our places I have no problem staying 'responsibly inebriated'. I don't even have to try really, it's just how I behave in that setting. However, when I go out to a bar with friends I tend to drink too much. I think the change in setting and context influences my behavior.
I think that part of it is that I have this feeling that I have to make the night 'worth it' in a sense. I don't go out a lot so it's sort of like trying to get all my fun in at once (which ends up being not so fun). It also feels more natural to always have a drink in hand at a bar... or perhaps I feel uncomfortable without a drink a in hand, I'm not sure. Next time I go out I'll try and keep these possible biases in mind and see how my behavior changes.
Environment plays a massive part. FOMO to a degree, too. If you're in a pub having a nice chat, you have a very different mentality to being at an squat rave where everyone's fucked out of their head on mandy and ket, dancing like maniacs, and talking shit and making out. Be mildly tipsy in the latter situation and it's really hard to not feel like you're not really part of things.
I'm dealing with the same issue. It took me many years to narrow it down, but I finally noticed the pattern - when I'm feeling really bad, I figure out a lot of ways to improve things. Then I start to feel better from having some specific things to try, and the very next day I feel good enough I get back into daily tasks and forget to deploy the plans. I literally forget about them, and then end up reinventing them again the next time I feel down.
So my problem is with capturing insights and plans in a way that will make me stick to them when I'm feeling good. I figured out the "capturing" part, but I can't make myself do the sticking - there's always something more important to do or think about. And so the loop continues.
- http://alexvermeer.com/getmotivated/ - has a pretty neat anti-procrastination poster that I'm still procrastinating about printing out and hanging on the wall
Does anyone else not have a problem with procrastination but instead following through and finishing projects ? Like you get 80-90% of the way there but for whatever reason drop off before completing the job?
This seems like the worst problem because you do 80-90% of the work with 0% of the benefit of accomplishing what you set out to do...
Yes, but I attribute this to my unconscious mind simply using the projects to learn things. Once I get 80-90% done, over the big hurdles, my unconscious is satisfied and no longer has a desire to complete the project.
This. As long as there are still "unknowns", or things that I still need to learn/figure out, I'm good to go. But once I hit that 90-95% mark where the problems are solved and it's just grunt work, I bail out. My last project I was able to overcome this, so hoping it becomes the new norm for me.
Yeah, I'm in that boat for sure. I tend to have dozens of partially completed projects around at any given time. The best thing I've done so far to make some headway on this problem is to stop thinking of things in terms of being "done" but rather think in terms of "I'm going to spend X hours on this today, regardless of how much I get done." At least for me, deciding to just make steady progress instead of trying to finish seems to mostly eliminate the hang-up. If I focus on the process, things get done. If I focus on the goal, things fall apart.
41 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 55.5 ms ] thread> Thanks to my friends at Beeminder for some of the ideas I mention here. You can see their full article [http://blog.beeminder.com/akrasia] on commitment devices to overcome akrasia for more ideas.
(I'm one of the founders of Beeminder.)
It's still confusing and nerd-centric and we're working on making it more intelligible to newbees. Would especially love to hear your thoughts, having looked it years ago and now coming back to it.
As for beeminding things like time spent on your phone, you'd be surprised what's possible if you're willing to nerd out a bit. For iPhone I think Apple makes this impossible but on Android you can connect RescueTime and Tasker to Beeminder to automatically measure and report time spent. Or you could just have Tasker count the number of times you turn on your phone's display and beemind that. I'd love the excuse to better document such things so email me, dreeves@beeminder.com, if that sounds intriguing.
Akrasia and childhood: I don't know of research other than the Stanford Marshmallow experiment which I used to cite as supportive of Beeminder's philosophy (kids who employed tricks to distract themselves from the temptation did better) but later research makes it much less clear what's really going on there (maybe kids from unstable homes just don't trust the researcher to keep their promise which makes it rational, in expectation, to grab the marshmallow while the grabbing's good).
I do, personally, view the holy grail of Beeminder to be a nannybot that tells you minute by minute what the optimal thing for you to be doing is. Actually we just made a Beeminder Slack bot -- http://slackminder.com -- that may point us in that direction, though still very primitive now.
I used the service once; I tried to discipline myself out of a poor financial situation using Beeminder - very quickly I found myself consistently slipping, had to pay the money, and I ended up in a worse financial situation and stressed to the point I could barely function.
Now don't treat it as a negative - instead, like a warning on the razor box: this thing is sharp, do not use when your hands are shaking. It's great as a motivator, but be sure you're in a good enough mental shape to handle both your commitments and the eventual slip-ups.
That said, I also have to praise Beeminder for having a great tool with lots of little nice features (I'm particularly fond of the graph aesthetics), amazing and responsive support (and proactive - I screwed something up once, they fixed it for me pretty much immediately and sent tips on how to avoid this happening again), and wrote a lot of interesting things on akrasia.
EDIT:
To 'dreeves - long time ago I shared this experience over at SlateStarCodex, and I missed your reply then. Referring to it, and that you're "extremely averse to people paying money to Beeminder that they don’t feel was worth it" - no, I feel it was totally worth it, even if it contributed a bit to one of my biggest stress episodes in my lifetime. I'm not scared of Beeminder, I'm scared of myself. I treat it as a combat scar in battle against akrasia :). So thanks for your kind refund offer, but a) you're totally entitled to the money, and b) it was long time ago :).
Oh, and thanks for supporting SSC :).
And, to everyone else - did I tell you already that Beeminder people are really great, friendly and radiate honesty in a way that's pretty much unseen in this industry? I do very much recommend the service despite the fact that, by my own fault, I managed to cut myself with it.
Btw, I collected my replies from that SlateStarCodex comment thread and put them here for posterity: http://forum.beeminder.com/t/slate-star-codex-on-willpower/5...
Thanks again for all the feedback and kind words!
For an example, "I should lose weight" is a ridiculously abstract concept to most of your brain. Your talky bit thinks it's saying something concrete: "Get that number on the scale down", but it hasn't actually said enough. It's a half-baked aspiration, not an activity. "I should exercise" is better: It prescribes an abstract activity that would accomplish the goal. It's still terrible though because it's still abstract. What is the value of exercise in the abstract? You don't experience exercise in the abstract: how could you possibly judge whether it is rewarding or not? How can you decide to "exercise" when exercise isn't even a real thing?
"I should run" is even better: You know how running feels. You can feel good running, and you can feel bad running. There are actual experiences and knowledge to draw upon to determine the value of running. Still: Not enough. Should you be running all the time? Verbal brain is being awfully sloppy, and has the gall to blame the rest of the brain for its mistakes. "I should run tomorrow in the morning for 30 minutes when I wake up." And we have arrived at remedy #3 which is called implementation intention. Honestly, what other intentions are actually intentions? If you're not planning concrete actions but abstract classes of actions, you're daydreaming, not planning. Verbal brain likes to talk about how important obligations and commitments are, but avoids doing the work of translating its precious thoughts into something intelligible to the rest of the brain.
The verbal part of your brain is easily convinced: By its own words. It doesn't even know what it has convinced itself of but it is awfully satisfied with itself. You, the ensemble of brain bits, are obviously skeptical of such a gullible entity. When you experience satisfaction or gratification for doing something, that is real knowledge to your brain; you learn what is good and what is bad. Of course you're going to prefer real knowledge over the ravings of an imbecile about the great rewards of not-even-a-real-thing.
I lost 35 lbs and got in the best shape of my life through the constant work of 1.5 years-- I became so dedicated to this pursuit that I would constantly refuse short - term benefits to achieve my long term ones -- something that I a lot of trouble with.
In other words, it was easy once I convinced myself of what my values were.
"The kind of people who train alongside you in a gym makes a difference. If you are surrounded by people who are serious and train with a lot of intensity, it's easier for you to do the same thing. But it can be pretty hard to really blast your muscles while the people around you are just going through the motions. That is why good bodybuilders tend to congregate in certain gyms. By having the example of other serious bodybuilders constantly in front of you, you will train that much harder.
That is what made Joe Gold's original gym in Venice, California such a great place—a small gym with just enough equipment, but where you would constantly be rubbing shoulders with the great bodybuilders against whom I had the privilege of competing-like Franco Columbu, Ed Corney, Dave Draper, Robby Robinson, Frank Zane, Sergio Oliva, and Ken Waller. Nowadays, it's rare to find that many champions in the same place, but if you aren't sharing the gym floor with great bodybuilders like Flex Wheeler, Shawn Ray, Nasser El Sonbaty, or Dorian Yates, it can be very motivating if there are pictures or posters of these individuals on the walls or championship trophies displayed.
In 1980, training at World Gym for my final Mr. Olympia competition, I showed up at the gym at seven o'clock one morning to work out and stepped out on the sundeck for a moment. Suddenly the sun came through the clouds. It was so beautiful I lost all my motivation to train. I thought maybe I would go to the beach instead. I came up with every excuse in the book-the most persuasive being that I had trained hard the day before with the powerful German bodybuilder Jusup Wilkosz, so I could lay back today—but then I heard weights being clanged together inside the gym and I saw Wilkosz working his abs, Ken Waller doing shoulders, veins standing out all over his upper body, Franco Columbu blasting away, benching more than 400 pounts, Samir Bannout punishing his biceps with heavy Curls.
Everywhere I looked there was some kind of hard, sweaty training going on, and I knew that I couldn't afford not to train if I was going to compete against these champions. Their example sucked me in, and now I was looking forward to working, anticipating the pleasure of pitting my muscles against heavy iron. By the end of that session I had the best pump I could imagine, and an almost wasted morning had turned into one of the best workouts of my life. If I hadn't been there at World Gym, with those other bodybuilders to inspire and motivate me, I doubt that day would have ended up being so productive.
Even today, when I'm training for other reason, such as getting into top shape for a movie role, or just trying to stay in shape, I absorb energy from people working out around me. That's why I still like to go to gyms where bodybuilders are training for competition. Even today, after all this time, it still inspires me."
p. 87 in the 1999 edition of /The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding/, by Schwarzenegger and Bill Dobbins. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0684857219/ Great book, and actually quite pgesque, because to a large extent it's an indirect discussion of how the world works and what it's like to effectively pursue excellence.
If "Akrasia is the state of acting against your better judgment" and Victor Hugo led a wonderful life and compressed all his work into the absolute minimum amount of time and produced a masterpiece, where was he acting against his better judgement?
He got to have his cake and eat it too! If you look back on your own procrastination with some honesty, you'll probably see the same thing. You had fun, then you sweated through the work and everything turned out fine.
I worked there for 10 months, yet few years later I'm still subconsciously avoiding touching metal parts of my chair when I'm standing up to go to toilet or make a tea.
I''m thinking it could be made into an app (with some usb device to punish you) :)
These days, I'm not sure if that's such a great strategy. Why shouldn't we satisfy our present self's needs? Why should we feel guilty for doing what we want to do?
Of course, if you satisfy your present self in the expense of your future self, that's self-destructive, and you'll eventually regret.
Personally, I find myself most motivated when I manage to find something that satisfies both my present self and future self.
I've been doing Pomodoro w/ a timer and finding it helpful. Found a lot of the stuff here related to that process for me.
The first one of the day is still the hardest though. Nothing harder than starting.
[1] http://biblehub.com/greek/192.htm
By Friday, I feel so great, that the emotional memory of how I felt on Monday is all but entirely faded. What was I so worried about? I've had (basically) a great week, and the weekend is upon me - my phone is going off because people want to go do things and get smashed and spend a load of money listening to wicked music in fun, grotty venues and once that starts, I feel lifted and amazing, the party is great! I'm meeting people, chatting shit, I don't want to stop. Afterparty? Hell yes! Afterparties are for the cool kids and going to them makes me a cool kid!
Then all of a sudden it's 11AM on a Sunday. You've either passed out or all of the substances have worn off, you lug yourself back home, having possibly succeeded at what your altered brain set out to achieve, but have frankly forgotten most of it. You either go to bed Sunday, or get pissed with the people who can't face the idea of returning to normality. Either way, in the case of the former you can't sleep, and in the case of the latter you pass out and wake up on Monday feeling so terrible that Monday is a write off. You are full of self-loathing and duck your boss's calls, then the coworkers your boss thinks you might just be able to handle's calls, then you either somehow manage to get into work to be yelled at at 2PM or you just pass out again, wake up at 4, and then have some dazed sort of day and catch some crappy sleep and possibly salvage Tuesday.
So that was an extreme example (the life I'm trying to change, funnily enough), but the point was that it's really really difficult to change in any long term meaningful sense when your mind is so ready to forget the reasons you're trying to do well. I don't think it's something as specific as alcoholism or drug addiction, as it's a much more broad thing - booze and drugs feel more like a symptom of a certain mindset, as opposed to the things that cause it - I can quite happily (and have, many times) say no to drugs, and I've had liquor on my side for months without touching it (and I can also happily have a few beers without going nuts, too). Perhaps it's a symptom of ADHD, perhaps it's a crippling poor impulse control and lack of self-discipline, perhaps I'm a product of my environment (I live in Brighton which is mental as it is, and my main friendship groups tend to hit things hard) I'm not sure.
I'm just going to keep trying. Each time it gets a little better, despite fluctuating, and each time I get a bit more mature. Just have to hope I nail it before I end up homeless or dead.
From my own experience if I'm drinking with friends at one of our places I have no problem staying 'responsibly inebriated'. I don't even have to try really, it's just how I behave in that setting. However, when I go out to a bar with friends I tend to drink too much. I think the change in setting and context influences my behavior.
I think that part of it is that I have this feeling that I have to make the night 'worth it' in a sense. I don't go out a lot so it's sort of like trying to get all my fun in at once (which ends up being not so fun). It also feels more natural to always have a drink in hand at a bar... or perhaps I feel uncomfortable without a drink a in hand, I'm not sure. Next time I go out I'll try and keep these possible biases in mind and see how my behavior changes.
So my problem is with capturing insights and plans in a way that will make me stick to them when I'm feeling good. I figured out the "capturing" part, but I can't make myself do the sticking - there's always something more important to do or think about. And so the loop continues.
- lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/
- lesswrong.com/lw/9wr/my_algorithm_for_beating_procrastination/
- http://alexvermeer.com/getmotivated/ - has a pretty neat anti-procrastination poster that I'm still procrastinating about printing out and hanging on the wall
- https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Akrasia
This seems like the worst problem because you do 80-90% of the work with 0% of the benefit of accomplishing what you set out to do...