Self-analysis
Bookworm on May 13 2009 at 2:43 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
Question for you: Is it worse to be aware of your psychological flaws and still be unable to overcome them, or is it worse to lack any self-insight? I ask because my major failure in terms of life management is my tendency to procrastinate. I know precisely why I procrastinate, but even armed with that self-knowledge I can’t seem to stop myself.
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18 Responses to “Self-analysis”
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I think you’re better off with the self-knowledge, even if you don’t always act on it. Because someday, you’re likely to face a situation in which procrastination is extremely harmful or dangerous, and knowing that you have this tendency may help you to realize what’s going on.
The Procol Harum has some relevant lines:
For the sin of self-indulgence
When the truth was made quite clear
I must spend my life among the dead
Who spend their lives in fear
I’ve got an insightful reply that I’ll post, I guess, when I get around to it.
Zhombre, LOL!
I’m with David. Ignorance isn’t bliss when your flaw could be fatal.
Book, I tend of procrastinate, too. It would interesting to compare notes someday.
Yes, I too agree with David, it is better to know. If you don’t know and it is annoying others in your life that is not good.
And speaking of procrastination I picked up a book that you had briefly mentioned in one of your previous posts – A town like Alice – I enjoyed it very much! So, here I am finally getting around to thanking you for mentioning it.
Some procrastination is simple: I want to do something more pleasant. I’d rather eat ice cream than fold laundry.
The dangerous procrastination in my life (the procrastination that doesn’t simply involve dirty socks or dishes in the sink) revolves around my legal work projects, and, incidentally, is simply the grown-up version of my school work procrastination when I was younger. I know the root cause of this procrastination too. I’m afraid of making mistakes or, even worse, finding errors in my own legal work. If I don’t do anything, I neither make new mistakes nor do I discover old ones. Of course, when I finally do work, with a time gun aimed at my head, I know I’m most likely to make mistakes but, by that time, I’ve got enough adrenalin rushing through me (Deadline! Deadline! Deadline!) that I’m able to power past my fears.
I’m also glad you enjoyed A Town Like Alice. It is one of my favorite, favorite books, and I think it continues to be a timely book with regard to many of its messages.
And you know why? I don’t. I have a feeling it’s linked to passive resistance, but I can’t say I really know why…
I procrastinate. It always seems easier when there’s a deadline and I have to get it done by x time. Of course, I could always get it done around Q, R, S, or T time, but somehow, there’s just always manana (please imagine that little squiggle line that makes that word into manyana), so I don’t get it done until just before the deadline. I can’t even make a fake deadline, because I know it’s a fake deadline.
My sister told me once that my Dad frequently told her that self-discipline was extremely important. She should set a time in her mind when she should get up in the morning, for example, and then get up at that time. It didn’t matter if the time was 6 o’clock or 10 o’clock – the important thing was that she should get up at that time. I don’t recall that he ever said the same thing to me. Maybe because I was younger and by that time he was wiser? Maybe I was hopeless? who knows!
It’s OK, Book. Me too! Whenever I get bored with whatever it is I really need to do, I get on the web and go to some place called Bookworm Room, or something, to see what’s happening. Oh well.
At least when you are aware of why you procrastinate, you are less likely to beat yourself over the head about it. A procrastination story: I had a school project mostly finished and stored on my computer at work ( I took myself off the clock when I did school work). Due to some computer snafu by the new IT person, I did not have access to my computer at work. Which meant I had to do a rush job on the project for the 6 p.m. class, starting from scratch. I put myself off the clock, and worked all day on the project, finishing in time. Because there was no time to spare, I could not worry about perfection. I just cranked it out.
One problem with procrastination is that there are times when you HAVE to get it done, there is little time left, and the muse has left you. THEN you see the advantage of doing a little at a time.
As a lifelong procrastinator, I know why I am and I accept that I am. One way to combat that is for me to set aside a small block of time each day, realizing I am not going to get it all done that day.
One problem with perfectionism is that when you DO finish on time, you will keep going back, wanting to add something else. Time management. Good enough is best…
I have a T-shirt: “Ten top reasons why I procrastinate…1..”
Interesting story, Gringo. One of the reasons I procrastinate is because, although it makes me miserable, I’ve always gotten away with it. The adrenalin rush, combined with my native intelligence (augmented by a good fund of knowledge from being a bookworm), allows me to churn out decent stuff in anything that’s legal or liberal arts. Like a musician who misplaces his music, I can just vamp. Of course, music, foreign languages, and math don’t allow that, so I simply told myself I wasn’t good at them and gave up.
I’ve got enough adrenalin rushing through me (Deadline! Deadline! Deadline!) that I’m able to power past my fears.
I share this problem, Book, so I I can say I know exactly how it is.
Simply because you know something to be true does not mean you have the power or the correct solution to it. For example, human nature and human behavior are indelibly imprinted upon our genes, our instincts, our nerves, and our conscious and unconscious minds through years of life experience and aeons of evolution.
To this you are pitting your force of will and your personal motivations and your own good habits or good intentions.
A bad habit earned becomes stronger the longer it persists and is reinforced. This is basic psychological conditioning and it is why enhanced interrogation and refined interrogation works. It doesn’t matter if a subject wants to lie or thinks he can fool us or thinks we can’t break him. It only matters is that he gets used to our way of doing things, and he will have no choice but to get used to it because we will have days, months, even years to work on the subject.
And that’s the power of introspection, Book. Because you may not have the will or the motivation or the need to change your own personal weaknesses. But in war, you had better be aware of those weaknesses or the enemy will crush you, and you will be able to crush them because you cannot see weaknesses in the enemy without first acknowledging your own.
and you will be able to crush
and you will not be able to.
As a lifelong procrastinator, I know why I am and I accept that I am. One way to combat that is for me to set aside a small block of time each day, realizing I am not going to get it all done that day.
Bad habits take a life time to resolve, because it took a life time to learn and reinforce.
American culture took generations to be fortified, secured, and made prosperous for the progeny of America. And it will take generations for it to be destroyed, looted, demolished, and betrayed.
As we see it is so in today’s time. All that came before, helped bring us about to where we now are: the good, the bad, the ugly.
I’ve always gotten away with it.
People do what they are rewarded for doing and avoid doing what they are punished for doing. This is as true for physical pain as the minor inconvenience of chores vs play vs fun vs hard work vs a sense of accomplishment via successful work.
The real threat here, to a society, is the ignorant fools who believe this is not true, because they never learned to see inside of themselves to acquire true wisdom. They believe that human nature can be malleable. That they can make people do what they tell them to do, irrespective of what those people’s basic innate behavior or personalities or interests are.
Obama has gotten away with the affirmative action parasitism, and so he believes the rest of the nation would benefit from the same thing. Except with him as the Sugar Daddy, instead of rich and guilty whites who had pushed Obama to the top. The new old boy’s network, the new rich white man’s club. The new Panthers.
People believe that things can be “shared” without understanding the critical security functions that must be built into any community service for the community to truly benefit. The Obama supporters, the Leftists, and those who would prefer ignorance to enlightenment believe that because they are powerless or less powerful than the higher ups, that it doesn’t matter whether they know they are smart or not or wise or not. All it matters to Democrats is that they support “smart” candidates that “know how to lead”. This in some sort of fashion displaces the competency, the imagined competency, of Democrat supporters to the Democrats themselves. Thus, the Democrats don’t need to improve themselves or take responsibility for their own actions and mistakes. No, all they need to do is to support “Smart Power” and they will be “smart” too because, after all, they were insightful enough to back Obama, so des neh? Obama is smart and only smart people would be able to see that, unlike the dumb hicks in Alaska and the Bible Belt, so des neh?
That is not true introspection. That is not even a fake arse attempt at introspection. It is self-deception and one of the dangers of self-deception is self-destruction. Another danger is that you tend to start stringing up strangers on the premise that they are to blame for your problems. Why? Because if you don’t know what caused you to fail, how easy is it for you to use your bad habits and blame it on someone else, someone you don’t know, don’t care about, and more importantly, doesn’t have any allies that can defend him?
As Obama has done, leave them to die in dumpsters or on metal counters. Expose the child, as the Spartans did, in order to avoid the “guilt” of having killed the children. Let the child die or be saved by…. fate or chance. It is no responsibility of the Left. They will claim that their hands are clean.
This is not only morally reprehensible and ethically evil, but it is also incredibly weak. The level of manipulation that can be exercised on those that would deceive themselves first and foremost, are incredible. You have no idea.
Cults have mass suicided using such methods. But the full potential is only a speck compared to something ike Jonestown. Hitler and Stalin comes to mind, but they are only a symptom, not the cause. They were not the original cause of mass delusion. They simply used it. No, self-deception created the fertile grounds for such and all. If Islam hadn’t existed in Arabia given Jew hatred, then the Arabs would have had to create an Islamic religion to justify their hate. Their self-deceptive need to tell themselves that they are pure and others are evil, while they take no personal responsibility for their atrocities and cruelty.
Hell, look at the Left’s Green Movement, for example. They had a need to justify their rampant destruction of people and the environment, so they created a religion to suit them. Was environmentalism the cause or was people’s own need to deceive themselves the cause? I believe it can be safely said that the latter is more important and more primal than the former.
Self-deception creates people like Al Gore, and those people then create mass delusional movements, because they know that there are a hell of a lot of people just like them. Except easier to manipulate and be told what to do.
Book,
Accept who you are. As you can see by the comments, a lot of us share the same affliction (yep. Me too!). The good thing about leaving things to the last minute is that then they only take a minute to do. A built-in timesaver!
Before I retired, I used to put off things like returning phone calls, writing up issue responses that I didn’t agree with and setting up coordination meetings. I always and finally got around to all of these things and typically (though not always) I was more focused and often more creative about them when I finally did.
You are obviously a creative person. Maybe it’s your brain telling you it needs a little more time to wrap itself around the problem. Or maybe you just need an occassional adrenilin rush. Or maybe both.
Or, as Homer Simpson says, “It doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes stuff just happens.”
Or, as Homer Simpson says, “It doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes stuff just happens.”
As he was glancing at the meltdown alerts at the nuke plant ; )
>>The good thing about leaving things to the last minute is that then they only take a minute to do.>>
You know…I think this is a real factor. “Work expands to the time allotted” (which is right up there with “budget expands to the money available” and probably lots of other applicable goodies). Maybe looking forward, we anticipate that a job is going to take xxx time – if we really do it right. And then it descends into the category of “This is the house that Jack built…” which means…first I have to clear the desk. That means I have to sort through the stuff on the desk. That means I have to clear out some old files and reorganize them. That means I need to … well, whatever. If you leave the job until the last minute, there just isn’t time for that. You push aside the stuff on the desk, and go to work. Instead of requiring xxx time, it only takes x time. You just saved xx time to do something you enjoy! Or something else you had to do, anyway.
I’m personally against self-insight, since it leads to self-criticism, self-doubt and eventually a paralyzed self-consciousness.
Isn’t the quality that separates ourselves from other animals self-awareness (except Koko, of course)?
I’ve been meaning to post for some time now, but just kept putting it off.
It wasn’t procrastination though, it was depression.
I do procrastinate. Just ask my wife. I think it’s a defense mechanism to my perfectionism. I used to think about it a lot, but it’s become such a habit it rarely crosses my mind now.
Brian
I read the post the other day and am just now getting around to replying! Procrastination is my most inveterate and more-than-inconvenient character flaw. I have made progress on most of the others, but this one is burrowed in.
I have not always gotten away with it and it has cost me. Yet, when I attempt to address it, it’s almost as if my brain shuts down.
I’ll have more to say… after I think about it. Later on…..