One of the worst things about procrastination is that it leads to putting off living. At the end, you didn’t get much work done, nor did you have fun.
He distinguishes between “peak performers” and workaholics. The former take more vacations, are healthier, and accomplish more impactful work. The latter perhaps accomplish more busy work.
Both workaholics and procrastinators tend to:
- Think their lives are on hold.
- Use negative self talk and threats as motivation. Workaholics focus on being busy, and procrastinators focus on being anxious.
Having guilt-free play is a critical component in warding off procrastination. You need to internalize that work will not deprive you of fun - it then makes it easier to tackle large tasks.
He worked with graduate students having trouble writing their dissertation, and a key insight is that those who had no trouble were not more intelligent, nor did the procrastinators have deep emotional problems. The difference was the procrastinators merely suffered more. They kept putting off having fun and felt guilty when they socialized.
Those that finished quickly committed to their leisure time and gave it a high priority. They were living now, not putting it off for the future.
Adults, unfortunately, separate play from work. Kids don’t, and adults shouldn’t. Kids actually do much of their learning while in play. Most of their breakthroughs are an outcome of playing.
Note: 3 year olds love to do chores. They want to help out. How does it became a pain as they get older? It’s mostly because they’re taught to conform to social conventions, and feel they have to do it not because it’s fun but because of some kind of duty. There also is a punishment attached to non-conformance.
People who approach a difficult project by breaking it up into large chunks that they have to work in solitary, kept away from friends and games, suffer the same effects as prisoners in solitary confinement, or subjects of deprivation studies.
However, those who reward themselves with play and know a reward is forthcoming have no trouble doing those tasks in solitary. They don’t suffer the ill effects.
Push vs pull: The push approach works under the assumption that humans are inherently lazy and need to be scared into action.
He gives an example of push: A teacher pointing to a shelf of books saying they will have read them all by the end of the semester. The “pull” approach is to imagine that after you read each chapter, you add it to the shelf and eventually the shelf will be full.
(Contrast with brother’s fear when looking at all the equations later in the textbook, vs my “Cool! I’ll know all that!”)
With the pull method, it is recognized that uncertain rewards in the future (“perhaps I’ll get a ML job”) are not sufficient motivators. It prioritizes immediate rewards (hang out with friends, play video game, hike, etc).
It really helps to make your bursts of work shorter, so you can intersperse play in between. How short depends on you.