Procrastination.

I see that lack of patience plays a key role in procrastination.

 

I’m curious on what you mean by this, as i haven’t heard this before. Is it the lack of patience in setting aside time to complete work, or is it something else?

Because my mates and I always joked around that procrastination was patiently waiting until the last minute, and since patience is a virtue, procrastination is also a virtue.

But, your point, if I’m understanding correctly, does make sense. I can’t recall ever thinking of patience in that way before, so this is quite interesting.

 

i have big, big problems with this. always, always giving myself tasks and the sidetracked with videos, games, porn... before i know it, days, even weeks have gone by, and the same tasks are left undone!

cant say i have any answers, but i feel that just by being on this forum and trying to deal with pmo, thats a step towards improving our willpower and patience.

id be interested to know what youve tried so far? my current strategies are 'pomodoro'-ing - setting a 25 minute timer to do part of a task, then taking a 10 minute break. always easier to get big tasks done if you break them down into chunks.

currently struggling to motivate myself with a bunch of course work ive been doing for months. my brain seems to want to do anything else!

 

hey man this is very common. procrastination is a huge problem to our life beacuse it is get us to stay stack where we are and we don't movie in the right direction.
its is a lack of desicion acctually . there is alot more about why we behave in such ways in life that we know that dosen't get us to where we want to be.
like you said you know what you have to do and you know that it will help you to get where you want so "Why I am still don't do it?".
We are programmed to do what we do even when we aware what to do instead!
if you are intrensted in this subject and you should beacuse it can change your life! search Bob Proctor on youtube and whatch some videos it is very good

 

i have this habit ........maybe because of laziness and social anxiety

 

I think statistically tracking how you're doing has a lot to do with it, otherwise how would you know? I tracked my gym progress until I became really good at soccer and then reached a semi final losing out to the eventual winners. If you track your progress and keep yourself happy nothing can stop you.

 

Practice doing things even when you don't feel like it. Do things even if you aren't ready. Even if it's scary, uncomfortable, difficult, and uncertain. Courageously challenge things that are currently beyond your current competence and confidence. Practice doing things without much thought. Do things without guarantees.

Because that is basically what reality and life is.

Something like porn has conditioned people to seek easy, comfortable, and certain instant gratification. To escape and numb the difficult and uncomfortable reality. So reality has always stayed around the same difficulty level, but you've conditioned yourself to be weak in terms of facing pain, problems, and negative experiences. To get to the higher quality pleasure, solutions, and positive experiences, you have to learn and be strong enough to handle the higher quality pain, problems, and negative experiences.

Procrastination is basically being out of touch with the way reality works. Being unable to handle it because you've let yourself become weak by escaping it for lower quality experiences where you don't experience a lot of negative and the development of your reality suffers because of it.

Now the thing to make this work is you need to place more importance on the person you want to become and the life that you want to have more than placing importance on avoiding pain, problems, and negative experiences. This allows you to do the scary, difficult, uncertain, delayed gratification, and no guarantees thing that you need to be doing.

The problem with a lot of people is they wait until they FEEL like doing it. Until they're pumped up and motivated. Until they're super inspired and energetic... but the moment to act is usually something that you don't want to do.... because it's hard to change who you are and develop your reality. Especially when you've conditioned yourself to be weak when facing the hardships of reality.

If you continue to act only when you FEEL good / motivated / inspired / energetic, well that's pretty much how porn makes you feel right? That leads to getting weaker and your reality suffering. So it's not always a good thing to act on how you feel. You have to be driven by something more than your own desire for easy, comfortable, and good feelings. There are other things that are more important than how you feel in the moment. Because porn and escaping the hardships of reality will always feel better than doing the scary and difficult thing you know you should be doing to become the person you want to be and to have the life that you want.

The longer you've conditioned yourself to escape and numb reality, the harder it will be to change who you are and develop your reality. What's comfortable now becomes uncomfortable later on (feeling good in the moment that led to porn addiction). What's uncomfortable now becomes comfortable later on (facing pain, problems, and negative experiences that leads to higher quality pleasure, solutions, and positive experiences).

 

This is also how you should be self generating your own feelings.

This is how you can self validate, gain self respect / esteem, and be aroused by your own actions.

Rather than seeking validation / approval, allowing others to determine your self worth, and over reacting to what happens externally.

Example = If I start interacting with someone and it went absolutely terrible for whatever reason. My self worth isn't affected by the result. It's actually improved by the fact that I did something scary, difficult, and without guarantees. Because I did something aligned to the person that I want to become.

So not only did I condition myself to act without being a slave to the fear of pain, problems, and negative experiences, but I also put myself in a situation where things could've happened. In this example it was negative (from an external point of view), but the possibility of it being positive was also there and I curiously went to find out rather than escaping the negative which would've also erased the possibility of something positive happening. Doing this enough times will eventually lead to positive experiences and those experiences reinforce my competence, confidence, and even more courage to face the uncertainties and hardships of life. I placed more importance on the person I wanted to become and the life that I wanted to have rather than any one specific outcome.

 

I believe that most people go about their goals with very little patience and quantum leaps of action. Meaning they don't have the patience it takes to do the consistent everyday tasks it takes to achieve a goal. They want a movie montage of big giant actions that attains their goal in a fast way. It's pretty much fantasizing. They have this perfect goal and an ideal way of getting it. So perfect that they don't want to start it unless they have a guarantee that it will come true. When all they should really be doing is starting to do it on a consistent daily basis. They make the mountain bigger and bigger being paralyzed by the monumental task when all they should be doing is start to climb it in a mundane and non smooth imperfect clumsy way.

Perfectionists are usually procrastinators and procrastinators are usually perfectionists. Procrastinators insist on guarantees before taking action in a world that doesn’t provide any guarantees. They continually end up feeling guilty over their stupidity, and yet they keep emotionally insisting on the guarantees. Because of their obsession with perfectionism, they find it difficult to make a decision or a commitment unless they can be certain it will lead to an “ideal” result. Perfectionism represents a belief system about how life should work— not how life actually does work, but how it should. This is a crucial point. Perfectionists live in an all-encompassing world of “shoulds.” They especially direct this toward themselves. They “should” be this, they “should” have done that, this “shouldn’t” have happened to them. And, in every case, what actually did happen never measures up to their judgment about what should have happened. Perfectionism leads to a perpetual dissatisfaction with the past and pessimism about the future. In both cases, past and future, as well as the present, perfectionists never take ownership of what happens to them.

So instead of little patience and quantum leaps of action... it should be a lot of patience, but focused on doing the small everyday tasks that compounds into reaching the big goals.

Place one brick at a time and soon you'll have a wall.

 

What kind of person would you become and what would your life become like if for 10 years you did all the scary, uncertain, uncomfortable, and difficult things you know you should be doing to become the person you want to be and have the life that you want to have?

Notice that I said 10 years rather than 1 day / week / month / year. It's a long process.

We like the idea of succeeding more than actually doing the process that it takes to succeed. It's fantasizing. It's mentally masturbating. It's a way to experience the feelings of succeeding while escaping the reality that you haven't actually done anything about it.

 

These are all very good points elevate and a big red pill, thank you for sharing your insight. However, I fear that this will be too much for many to swallow. You can lay out the path to the horizon desired, but you still need a means of getting there. What's going to power your feet? Self forgiveness of past actions and the confidence that they can choose to control this aspect of themselves. The power source for undertaking this path is a more subtle one.

Yes, it is easier to feel successful than to be successful, just look at all the online trolls and people with an opinion in the Internet. Bottom line, this society has taught us not to worry about getting your fingers dirty and let someone else take care of that while we ride on their backs. This mentality has led to what you called mental masturbation because we're expecting someone else to take care of those thoughts for us, like a drive through at McDonalds or a car wash or watching television. It is the master/slave mentality in disguise. Since of course this doesn't happen, it turns into masturbation material in order to escape from reality. Success does not have to mean more of the green stuff, it could be succeeding in going for a hike or traveling to a restaurant.

Just to be fair, I have mentally masturbated much of my life, to the point where entire worlds were built to dwell in that could easily fill a series of novels. That's what I am trying to do now: write these worlds down and it has been slow, but so far successful. Even if nothing gets published, it'll show that actually doing the work is not what the mind thinks is success and this is important for all areas of life. There was one time where books were written to help educate man from his condition. These days, novels are made to provide masturbation material for the mind to escape with. This novel won't be written for that purpose, at least.

And of course, porn is simply another escape from reality of having to go through the work to find a partner to have sex with. Why? Fear of rejection and the pain that goes along with it.

 

I think everybody is a procrastinator, just some take it to a new extension.
If nobody has seen this, watch this, it does make you wonder

 

Some times there is the will. What isn't there is the courage to overcome any expectation. Expectations and fear can mess things up.
The answer is: Go for it, do the mistakes, learn from them, keep the mind positive and keep in mind that babe steps counts so much. It is called being driven and acting on the now...

 

I battle this problem so often. I write, I try to write everyday so that I can get better and to expand my mind. I try to get good at it but when I write I feel like my brain turns off or something and it takes a lot of energy to focus and write abstractly. It’s not basic writing, I write in metaphors and double meanings, not straight forward read sentences writing, like I am thinking like painting a picture and it holds many meanings to it. But doing this is very difficult, so difficult to the point that when I do it get frustrated and annoyed and my brain and skin just wants to be ripped off. I think it is because my brain wants easy cheap fun, YouTube and binge watch shows.

I am currently taking a break, it’s been 3 weeks. I work full time, 8.5 hours a day, gym every other morning and meditate every morning. Weekends I do a few extra chores and try to read here and there. Do you guys think this is excuse enough to complain about writing or should I do something else? I like writing, just not when I have to :/. It’s fun to let the mind and heart roam but when you have to do it, everyday, when you’re tired and your brain takes twice the energy to think, it’s verh very tiring :/. Please tell me what you guys think and help me!! I need more brain juice and energy! I also stress a lot at work and in life, my waking hours are filled with anxiety and depression, draining me further