On motivation, procrastination, time management and other fashionable, but useless things

Good day, Habr.

In recent years, personally, I have observed a very dubious tendency to preach a “successful” lifestyle. Success stories, like their refutations, are pouring at us like a horn of plenty: the Internet is replete with articles and books on motivation, advertising for trainings “how to become a successful spherical person in a vacuum,” “how to start your startup correctly and become the second Gates \ Jobs \ Zukenberg "(Underline the necessary), TV channels are trumpeting about the next appearance of another company based in a garage or an Internet cafe, an IPO and a rapid rise in stocks on the very first day of trading.
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People consciously strive to achieve each their goals. Someone is studying the literature, others prefer to use web services such as SmartProgress and independently determine how, what and when to do, while watching other people along the way. Everyone wants to become rich, "successful", famous. This is called happiness.

Happiness is subjective

In the modern world, the main measure of happiness is money, at least in the young, active and “progressive” part of society. Tons of useless waste paper about "how to calm down and start earning," and others pour shelves on bookstores, forcing out worthy works, beat all sorts of sales ratings. "It is a masterpiece! This is a bestseller! Oh, ten out of ten! ” Shout newspaper headlines and other media, making a review of the next“ hit ”. Actually, in modern society, when the act of consumption equates to achievement, like this, I am not ashamed of this word, “hysteria” is quite understandable. However, I propose to stop and think for a second, but why is this all? Why money, things, fame? Really only a few, achieving thundering success, are happy, and the rest are only trudging along in the wake of their glory with varying success, without any hope of achieving anything in life? It is safe to say that this is not so (Captain Obviousness would be proud of me now).

Thinking about what happiness is and why we are so persistently imposing a cult of consumption , I remembered one old song from an old underground group TT34 - Bum :


And it seems strange is the pride, to go from the factory with a pay in your pocket. However, specifically for this person, this is his Success, and he is absolutely parallel to the motivation, time management and IPO. Because a person has a goal, even if it is unworthy that after 20 years he, like Richard Branson, wrote a “millions-motivating” autobiography, but a goal. And a person quietly and systematically performs it, he has no painful doubts about who he is, what will happen to him in the future and how he will live, he does not think about it. He is happy. With his wife plain, a beer at bedtime and a couple of kids.

Unfortunately, you, the reader, treat people who think and, most likely, the ghosts of the questions mentioned above, instead of a hypothetical locksmith of the sixth category, torment you, slowly, and sometimes imperceptibly poison your life, especially if you are still young and alone, which is not uncommon in the IT field. And so many people are unhappy.

It is necessary to clearly understand the following: happiness is subjective and is achieved through the fulfillment of individual, personal goals , in which the SmartProgress service can help you, in whose blog this publication is placed, if you still adhere to the principles of “write” and not “keep in mind”.
But we go further.

So how to measure this very "ephemeral" happiness and what is needed for this?

At one time, the author followed populist slogans in the style of “Faster! Above! Stronger! ”However, after half a year of full return and working“ for wear, ”this only led to a nervous breakdown and moral burnout. No, I do not say that everyone who works all day long without noticing anything around will come to the same end. I know people who have lived for years in a similar rhythm and inaction for them like death. But I was able to extract extremely curious information for myself from this situation. When I realized that my work was disgusting to me, and panic attacks and attacks of “paralysis of the will” became annoying suspiciously often, I had to get acquainted with the rates of psychotherapists and the basics of Gestalt therapy, which was confessed by a specialist who helps me. He spent about two sessions to tell me exactly what he would do with me and why. If you omit the lyrics, it all came down to one. Happiness is an inner calm , and calm is achieved through completed work . Yes, a person becomes happy after he finishes some work, and not specifically in his process, although his beloved work can also bring pleasure, and not only its results. If I explain in “worker-peasant”, the essence of the method, which I was “ruled by brains” is that everything is in Gestalt life, everything has its logical beginning, development and end . So, if a person’s contact with something, no matter if it’s a task, doing things around the house or interfering with another person without achieving the expected logical conclusion, it causes internal discomfort. With the accumulation of "unfinished business", or the great importance for a person of any one interrupted gestalt, a serious obstacle to finding peace of mind can arise, which is one of the main conditions for a happy life . Yes, yes, not only ghosts have tormenting their unfinished business. Someone may object, “Why do I need a state of rest? It relaxes and reduces the tone! ". This is not true. Psychological resource is an extremely strange thing, but one thing is certain: when you are satisfied with yourself and life, it is easier for you to undertake any activity than when you hate the whole world around you. Irritability and dissatisfaction have not particularly helped anyone in moving forward and developing, this is a fact. In general, the theme of “satisfied with myself” with a red thread went through all my classes on “brain restoration” and it actually works, just until it is focused on this, this fact is taken for granted.

Light on motivation

To be honest, the author himself is not sinless in terms of using similar techniques to himself and others, but with an understanding of the ways to gain even a short-term mental balance, I return to these methods less and less.

Very often, to motivate themselves, people choose one of its two types, the definitions of which we introduce:

• Constructive
• Destructive

The effectiveness of each of them depends solely on the nature of the person’s own character.

An example of constructive (positive) motivation - if I make %% taskname %% I will be fine .
Respectively destructive (negative) - if I don't do %% taskname %% it will be bad for me.

Everyone chooses the type of motivation that is closer to him, however, it is necessary to warn against abuse of the second. Its effectiveness decreases with time, and the internal psychological pressure increases proportionally. Take care of yourself.

There is also a life position very much loved by many people, or rather a word or phrase: “I want” / “I want”. And if not strange, people are trying to pass it off as a motivating argument. For me personally, “I want” is not a particularly weighty argument, because it usually does not affect in any way the ability to do unpleasant things for you that stand between you and the object of your “desire”. Most often, people who preach “I want” talk a lot about their Wishlist, but at times they do little. On the other hand, there is a magic word hated by millions, which often puzzles a person and pushes it into a stupor, because absolutely does not fit into his picture of the world, where everything is done to fulfill his own desires. This word "must" .

What is “necessary” and how to live with it

In my opinion, “must” is an ideal motivating tool. Capacious and comprehensive, it replaces tons of logical conclusions, excuses, explanations and, by nature, more like a kind of order to himself. It is much easier to do things that are unpleasant for yourself through “must”. If you really want to ask the question “why” and the answer “because” you are not satisfied (although its effectiveness tends to 100%), then the word “must” has a very short logical chain, in any case, the male one “needs”.

What for? -> It is necessary.
Why is it necessary? -> Because nobody will do it for you.

Everything. Any further reasoning will loop back and return to the starting point. One could argue that “it is necessary” does not bring satisfaction, however, if you go back a little and recall the principle of gestalts, then it becomes clear that any completed business brings its +1 into the performer’s peace of mind, even though “it is necessary”.

Actually, motivational literature also constantly operates with this tool. For success, you need to do ... and then the %% actionname %% list. The problem is that the “necessary” imposed on us in smart books are external, alien, and not internal tasks, so they are often subconsciously and rejected.
Speaking about the literature on motivation, it is worth noting that you must be a weakly susceptible person with critical thinking, because there are no universal recipes for success, and many of the tips, specifically for you, are harmful.

Procrastination

Not so long ago, such a word as Procrastination (from English procrastination - delaying, postponing; from Lat. Crastinus - tomorrow and lat. Pro - on) - in psychology, putting things off until later, which leads to some painful psychological effects , such an overseas analogue of the native word “laziness” to us, because let's face it, this is it, no matter how much we want to see the opposite. Particularly clever comrades even manage to call themselves attention, “prostrasticating perfectionists,” which, in my opinion, generally balances on the verge of good and evil. One way or another, as laziness in terms such as “procrastination” do not wrap, it will remain laziness. How to deal with it is already a philosophical question, but one thing is for sure, we need to use the previously mentioned “necessary”. Arguments, internal disputes, discussions in the head are ineffective, since it is impossible to defeat with logic that there is no logic (laziness), there is no rationalization in laziness, only facts and excuses that are far-fetched, no more. “It is necessary,” for its part, as it has iron logic, so it can be used without any rationale. But laziness is not our main opponent, far from it. Our main enemy in setting and achieving goals is someone else's schedule.

Thoughtless time management, or how to destroy your day

Whatever praises may sound in honor of time management, in its essence, it is not the most effective tool for most people, so to speak, which can be divided into several categories:

• Scheduled
• Not living on schedule, but able to take it
• Non-scheduled and unable to accept it

The last thing to do is forget about what time-management is and live on with the gusts with which we lived, with an emphasis on improving efficiency at times of these very gusts and increasing the frequency of their appearance. However, not all the principles of time management are equally useful even for people who are able to accept it.

Scaling and falling into extremes

There are a number of recommendations that should be used as effectively as possible to use every minute of their own “wakefulness,” however, this can have a very negative effect on the overall effectiveness when analyzing a long period of activity. An even more destructive influence has a drastic, violent and cardinal change in one's own biological rhythm, the rhythm of life and work.

Example.

Programmer Peter, waking up one morning, well, as in the morning, around noon, I realized that he was burning his life in the empty and it was time to change something. Petya opens Google and the Almighty returns him a link to a book on time management and self-development from %% starname %%, where it is advised, at least, to get up early, keep records of the time spent on business, play sports and eat right. Separately, these tips are quite harmless, however, all together and immediately they plunged the body and psyche of Petit into shock: Petya loved beer, fatty meat, TV shows up to 3 o'clock in the morning and never ran. His productivity dropped, irritability increased, and Petya himself, in the eyes of his bosses and colleagues, became “not very”, because due to chronic lack of sleep and fatigue, tasks were collected and deadlines were disrupted. As a result, Petya, trying to improve his own quality of life in a conscious impulse, only aggravated his own situation.

Having received a bright negative experience, our invented Petya with a small degree of probability will continue to experiment with such things in the future, although implement and scale it written in parts and consistently, something sensible could turn out from this.
In general, the essence of many books on time management and self-development is that most often you are trying to impose someone else's schedule and someone else's rhythm of life, to make things that are not peculiar to you. Although self-abuse is permissible, it is only in extreme situations when there is simply no other way out, but in this case, consciously going to the “change” of your life, you should understand that someone else’s empirical experience does not take into account your habits, biological rhythm, specificity work and psyche. Poison in small doses can be medicine, and medicine in large doses can be poison, but in any case it is definitely not worth emptying the "vial" of the healing medicine of "time management" / "self-development" in one gulp.

Also, time management implies different setting of goals and tasks for oneself, reducing the schedule of a person to a daily TO DO list. It is safe to say that having tried to radically change your life with the help of the dubious usefulness of literature and methods that may not even suit you as an individual, you only harm yourself. If you still want to resort to mechanisms of control over yourself, choose the right scale.

An example of a good goal is the improvement of some existing skill or the acquisition of a new one in the “basic configuration”. For example, if you do not know how to swim, a good goal will be to learn how to do it, if you can, but slowly, then within the pool you can set a goal to double your speed of passing the distance N. Pay attention to the fact that even if you set a tight timeframe ( for example, they took a week for training in swimming), but by the end of this week the result is not true, it does not mean that you failed the goal, it means that you incorrectly estimated the time needed to achieve the goal. Methods of hard time management and others like them preach life "on schedule", in whole or in part, without the right to force majeure, a sudden business or a banal illness. It should be understood that adhering to the principles of time management also becomes your gestalt, which you need to complete successfully. Therefore, it is very important to realistically form the agenda and choose the correct scaling, do not rush to extremes, writing everything down by the minute and calculating 150 steps forward and sideways.

Instead of conclusions

Personally on my own, I would not recommend “smart” literature at all. Each of us already has a list of our affairs and duties, learn to carry them out quickly and efficiently. As soon as the load is reduced and old things become boring - add new ones yourself, expanding the area of ​​responsibility. Anyway, you know your rhythm of life better and realize what you are ready to go for, and what will only bring you stress and discomfort without any dividends.

Remember, positive feedback is important for us, which we get after completing our next Gestalt goal, whether it is training in swimming or planned delivery of a five-year project. If you interrupt the execution of the gestalt in the process (I didn’t manage to swim for a week, the goal failed, or we didn’t manage to deliver the project in time), instead of using it, it would just fall on you with a heavy load of another failure. You can keep everything in your head or keep records of your unfinished business as part of the SmartProgress web service, you decide. But two points are undeniable:
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1. Their goals should be recorded and monitored.
2. better late completed work than unfinished at all .

Always worth remembering.

With respect.