Recomendo and Procrastination

Kevin Kelly is a super-interesting guy, and I've been enjoying his Recomendo Substack thingee (I'm preoccupied with Substack right now - I mentioned it yesterday, too - because I'm thinking of establishing a presence there to document my Portugal chowhounding adventures).

Every week, Recommendo sends you an email with just a few super-choice finds which most people would deem interesting/useful. Only the cream!

This week, Recommendo, uh, recommendos a thingee called "The Right Now List". While you could click the link for more info, the value of Recommendo is in its savvy boil-down. Which, in this case, is as follows:

How to Trick Your Inner Procrastinator

The Right Now List is a ridiculously simple approach to tricking your inner procrastinator. David Cain recommends grabbing a sticky note and writing down 2-3 things that you need to do right now to get started on your project. These tasks need to be absurdly easy for this to work. For example: 1) Open Microsoft Word 2) Find the document I was working on yesterday 3) Scroll down to where I left off. The trivialness of these tiny tasks is what prevents your inner procrastinator from objecting. It gets your foot in the door and before you know it, you’re making headway.

First, a musical break from a great early-80's trombone-heavy punk-funk band composed (mostly) of downtown avant musicians, performing the best song ever written about Procrastination: 

   

Stick around long enough and eventually someone will independently come up with anything you once came up with. And reading this approach to procrastination gave me yet another "Didn't I Slog that at same point?" flash. After digging around, I found, first, this interesting posting about Procrastination, which was not the one I was looking for, and, finally, the horribly titled "Wagon Hitching, Credit Taking, and Reframing,” which notes:

You can't execute an abstract proposition. The reason it's hard to lose weight is because losing weight is an abstract proposition, not a doable thing. Try it! Reader: LOSE WEIGHT! Go!

Nothing, right?

Trying to pursue an abstract proposition makes us a little nutty, prompting shame and confusion rather than pragmatic action. You can persuade yourself (or others) to take a walk, or do a push-up, or eat a healthy egg-white omelet. Those things are eminently do-able, and will eventually, if repeated, lead to weight loss. But a person cannot be persuaded to LOSE WEIGHT, because that's beyond the human ken.

You can take a single step toward a larger process, but it will feel like a measly step, not a grand process. The grander you frame it, the less doable it becomes.

So here's how you hitch your wagon. Identify a single nugget of pragmatic action. Preferably one that's reasonably pleasant, and somewhat intriguing. Start thinking, playfully, about this nugget, just as an isolated thing, without any reference to the over-arching goal. Coax yourself into absorption. And, before you know it, you'll be up and doing it. Just don't let yourself pull back the framing to a painful long view. If you do, look past it. Guide yourself gently but persistently into the finite task at hand. Reframe it, in other words, in close-up, rather than a long shot.

Here's where I question whether my ponderous and nuanced style of explaining certain things is inferior. Should I stop that? Am I indulging myself?

Perhaps. But I honestly believe a thicker pudding can offer greater nutrition. That said, the world also benefits from nice clean crispy bullet points. Vive la différence - or, to quote that beautiful hippy child, Mao Tse-Tung, "Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom!" (or was it a hundred?).

I figure there's got to be room in the world for at least one wordy guy thoughtfully plumbing blind spots and straining to tie it all together the way it was done a couple hundred years ago (though hopefully my prose is way less stuffy). I never convolute self-indulgently. I really do try to state things as accessibly as possible without losing too much of the juice. Here’s the surprising thing: some of my more impenetrable stuff is actually extremely accessible compared to previous efforts to express similar points. My whole “reframing” shtick, for example, explains a faculty previous writers have despaired of ever expressing via words. And you kind of mostly grok it, no? 

Most ideas can be dried, compressed, and reduced into familiar epithets that swallow easily, but that doesn't mean the epithet always suffices.

"The epithet doesn't always suffice." That should be my epitaph!

Wagon Hitching, Credit Taking, and Reframing

In my posting on Devas, I wrote that I have

...an unusually lithe ability to shift perspective; to reframe. Sometimes I can induce such a shift in others (though I often fail miserably). Oddly, when it works, I'm never recognized as having had anything to do with it. That's how devas roll. When it's clean like that, you're doing it right.

I thought of a relatable example. It will take me a few minutes to work up to it, though. But, to reward your patience, it will include a fix for procrastination. 

Say there's a task someone's procrastinated. Not because they hate the task. It just slipped away from them, launching a vicious circle of shame and aversion. The symptoms are familiar (if you're someone who can watch your mind work): whenever you try to tackle the task, you suddenly get REALLY HUNGRY....or think of someone you need to call...or remember you haven't picked up the mail or marinated the chicken. You have a sudden need to drink a glass of water or lie down because CAN'T YOU GET A GODDAMNED MINUTE OF PEACE AND RELAXATION??? Your brain helpfully fires off a creative blitz of enticements and distractions. That’s how procrastination works.

There is a cure. You simply need to hitch your wagon. I'll explain.

You can't execute an abstract proposition. The reason it's hard to lose weight is because losing weight is an abstract proposition, not a doable thing. Try it! Reader: LOSE WEIGHT! Go!

Nothing, right?

Trying to pursue an abstract proposition makes us a little nutty, prompting shame and confusion rather than pragmatic action. You can persuade yourself (or others) to take a walk, or do a push-up, or eat a healthy egg-white omelet. Those things are eminently do-able, and will eventually, if repeated, lead to weight loss. But a person cannot be persuaded to LOSE WEIGHT, because that's beyond the human ken.

You can take a single step toward a larger process, but it will feel like a measly step, not a grand process. The grander you frame it, the less doable it becomes.

So here's how you hitch your wagon. Identify a single nugget of pragmatic action. Preferably one that's reasonably pleasant, and somewhat intriguing. Start thinking, playfully, about this nugget, just as an isolated thing, without any reference to the over-arching goal. Coax yourself into absorption. And, before you know it, you'll be up and doing it. Just don't let yourself pull back the framing to a painful long view. If you do, look past it. Guide yourself gently but persistently into the finite task at hand. Reframe it, in other words, in close-up, rather than a long shot.

Say someone's procrastinated listing his household clutter on eBay. It's the bane of his existence, but he can't seem to get to it. How could you help? By guiding him away from the monumental storyline (which is enticingly familiar; he's visited it 10,000 times in his head) of pain and futility. Frame him down to one manageable task:

"Is there anything really valuable?

"I have one book that might be worth something!"

"Geez, I wonder what it's worth! Enough for, like, a steak dinner?"

"Let me fish it out of the box and check, just to satisfy my curiosity!"

"I'm curious, too!"

"[Pausing, body suddenly freezing in mid-action] I really need to organize all that stuff. [Scowl, stress, moan]."

"Well, don't sweat that for now. Let's just check price for this book!"

"Ok, ok. Let's see....here it is, and I see on eBay it's worth....$150!"

"Wow! Y'now, if you hit that link "Sell One Like This", your listing publishes instantly!"

"[Freezing again] I wasn't planning to get involved in this big project right now...."

"No, of course not! But if you list this book, you'll break the ice! You'll prove you can do it!”

You creep quietly away, leaving him to it. His wagon's been hitched. Four hours later, he reappears, proudly proclaiming  serious progress.

Nothing momentous was said. It was entirely mundane. I'm assuming lightning bolts didn't shoot from the page as you read that. So, upon reflection, I have to concede that the commentor here made a fair point. If there's no "there" there, what's the difference between powerful slippery guidance and just sayin' some shit? The difference is art, which I define as "any human creation devised to induce a reframing of perspective".

Jackson Pollack's work looks, superficially, like mundane paint splatterings. Great art works on a deep, subconscious level, inducing a shift of perspective (leaving one moved, inspired, transported, etc.), often with little indication at the surface level. And a deva works at the extreme end of the indication curve...ideally to the point of invisibility/cleanness. That's who a deva, ultimately, is. But I digress.

Now here's the question I've been building up to: Would your friend notice what you'd done? Would he call you after this productive afternoon to say anything like the following?

"I want to thank you for the way you shifted my perspective from a painful monumental task into a more manageable finite task, enabling me to finally tackle this project. You ignited my curiosity and I tore through it like a champ! Thank you so MUCH for reframing this situation for me and allowing me to get going! What a brilliant and generous bit of persuasion that was!"

No. Nobody says that. Nobody even sees it. When perspective shifts (not just to some new tangent of thought, I mean a fundamental shift of perspective), we don't register a cause. That's because, unlike thought, we don’t view perspective from a higher vantage point. The world seems to shift, because we project our perspective, and you’re a whole different person and it's a whole new day. Born again!

No one ever goes back and fishes through the weeds for an impetus. That would require the converse shift, which is hardly enticing. And it would also require facility with a framing function everyone steadfastly ignores. We figure the world shifts externally; we don’t see it (frame it!) as arising from an adjustment of internal perspective.


Imagine opening a door for a bored golden retriever who runs exuberantly out into the meadow. House? What house? No house! No door! No person-who-opened-door! Just glorious MEADOW, everywhere! What individual could possibly trigger GLORIOUS MEADOW EVERYWHERE? “GLORIOUS MEADOW EVERYWHERE” is a universe. How could such enormity possibly stem from some stupid arm opening some stupid door?

No, this was God’s work, conjuring GLORIOUS MEADOW EVERYWHERE via command, ala Genesis. And so long as we posit a Supreme Being upon whom we project our framing faculty, we will remain oblivious to stupid arms opening stupid doors, much less to rediscovering our innate freedom to shift at will.

This explains why no one ever shares Slog postings. I could publish Jesus Christ's personal cell phone number, and it wouldn't ripple. That's because I offer shifts of perspective - reframings - here. Many readers roll their eyes at what seems like overheated bullshit, or are puzzled by the "weirdness", but those who draw value run out into the meadow without looking back. It’s “clean”.

Thwarted Goals

This is dense, I know. It's not a "read", to be skimmed for a cheap hit of confirmation bias. Like many Slog postings, it's a carefully-constructed lozenge for contemplation, which can spur reframing and reward multiple readings (and deep link dives).


One of the scariest monsters perpetually snarling just below my waterline has been a sense of shame at my growing tragic bundle of stalled and paralyzed plans and schemes. I've felt the weight profoundly. It's instilled a deep-seated conviction that I'm a miserable failure, and made every moment of repose feel like truant self-indulgence.

The snarling has, to my immense relief, diminished sharply with age. I'm old enough now to look back and see that I haven't, in fact, wasted my life. I got a lot done while feeling damnably idle and vagrant. I can finally see that my 15,000 item to-do list (not kidding) and gigabytes of stalled articles, books, and projects (some potentially distressingly amazing) are not a shameful burden, but more like a chef's leftover mis en place. One needn't grieve over stillborn chunks rotting in the fridge. The relevant question is: how did the meal go? 

This comforting late-middle-aged realization is - if you can embrace it when it arrives and reframe yourself to the new perspective - the saving grace of the familiar litany of aging indignities.

Like every stress point, this was, from the beginning, nothing but a simple framing malfunction. Think of it this way (flip along with me!): if you doggedly completed every task, idea, and goal you'd ever brewed up, how wrecked would your life be? How enslaved would you have been to your caprices? If you'd served as fervid henchman to your every passing whim, how scattered and random would the cumulative result have been?

The trick is in the winnowing. But no one is more daunted by that part than me. I'm cursed to know that the most substantial and tectonic ideas can be the least realistic; that the most pleasurable-seeming ones can prove the most tedious to sustain; and that the passion and drive accompanying an inception might be significant, but can later seem inexplicable (I once spent three hours feverishly combing Philadelphia for a "Beer & Cheese Love" t-shirt I felt I couldn't live without, and whenever I chance upon that shirt, abandoned in the bottom of my drawer, I cannot make myself understand what the hell I was thinking).

We don't really choose, though. If we did, we'd all be the perfect weight, tautly muscled, speak twelve languages fluently, live in immaculate homes, and never yell at our kids. If we were the choosers, I wouldn’t buy potato chips, nor ruminate over the horrible thing that girl once said. If you make a study of it, you'll find that thinking and choosing is not done by us. We do get to frame - that's our sole freedom - but thoughts and choices arrive as faits accomplis for which our chattering minds claim credit.

The carcasses of expired tasks and discarded goals are mental relics we keep around to fuel our epic obsession with What's Missing. But despite our best efforts, we don't live in the world of What Isn't. We're here for the meal we have, not for the ones we don't...much less for those plastic-wrapped bits of onion and mushroom liquefying in our "crisper". Such artifacts exert no actual pressure on us, unless we go out of our way to needlessly frame them as oppressors. 

Per here, "when an insight seems fully-baked, even after years of digestion, a greater clarity may appear in the very next microsecond, leaving you aware of how ridiculously incomplete or wrong you'd been. It's not like waiting for batter to become cake. It's all eternally batter."

Same for projects and goals. Another moment may cast these smokey, abstract mental constructions in a different light, and we ought not disregard the fresh clarity, even though sensitive responsiveness to such momentary shifts may make us seem aimless and undisciplined (see my posting about procrastination, which is a companion piece to this one).  

With our sole lever being our freedom to direct attention (a.k.a. to frame), best practice is to come back to your senses, opting out of convoluted mental stories about what you're doing and where you're headed, and focus on duly relishing your placement of attention, with the rapt delight of a child at play. In so doing, you're acting as the prime mover in this reality. 

And then pour yourself entirely into the task at hand (“the meal you have”), however trivial. The results may not ring one of the tinny bells of 21st century culture, but they will be good...and will provide comfort to your elder self (no old person ever regretted heartfelt good work).

Procrastination

The current issue of the New Yorker has a long and interesting article on procrastination. The writer seems to share the assumptions of Samuel Johnson, who in 1751 said (as quoted in the article):

"The folly of allowing ourselves to delay what we know cannot be finally escaped is one of the general weaknesses which, in spite of the instruction of moralists, and the remonstrances of reason, prevail to a greater or lesser degree in every mind; even they who most steadily withstand it find it, if not the most violent, the most pertinacious of their passions, always renewing its attacks, and, though often vanquished, never destroyed.” He concluded that it was “natural,” if not praiseworthy or desirable, “to have particular regard to the time present."

In the 18th century, man was at war with his nature. Hey, that's the Age of Enlightenment! It was all about the supremacy of mind, even though one's world and life play out in utter defiance of mind's earnest insistence. Damn it, I will finish this project tonight! And, yet, I find myself strangely drawn to this goblet of mead....

"Man plans and God laughs," says the Yiddish proverb. Your mental narrator states its intentions, and the universe (including you yourself) pays not the slightest attention. And yet the narrator considers itself omnipotent. It's like a particularly pompous boss who's the only one in the room oblivious to the fact that his plans always backfire.

We haven't learned much since 1751. We still hate ourselves for procrastinating because it reveals the truth about our mental pronouncements. If mind's all you recognize yourself to be, something like procrastination is an existential challenge.

Being naturally suspicious of my own mental narrative pronouncements, I have a very different view of procrastination. First, I recognize that I'm lots of different people. We're all lots of different people, but I take it to an extreme. When I play jazz trombone in a crowded nightclub, I'm not an Internet entrepreneur. When I'm hunting for restaurants, I'm not someone who struggles to make sense of human existence. When I'm practicing yoga, I'm not the guy who digs greedily into lasagna. I have friends who've never heard me discuss food. And I have friends who never hear me discuss anything else. I've had five careers, zillions of hobbies, and perpetually juggle several quests and projects. And I'm a different person in each situation. Shoot, I'm a different person when eating in an Ecuadorian restaurant than Malaysian.

It's not multiple personality syndrome; it's that I'm a chameleon. I like to blend into different scenes (it's how I compensate for growing up in soulless, culture-less suburbs). Also, I commit. So I ride it all the way.

But I don't jump between identities on a schedule. When I feel thoughtful, I write a Slog piece. When I feel tuneful, I go play music. When I crave, I go chowhounding. When I feel driven, I push ahead on projects (as a lifelong freelancer, this has always been feasible). Etc, etc.. In the words of Pete Seeger - and the Bible, which appears to have plagiarized him: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven." How strange that Samuel Johnson, a staunch Anglican, missed this pro tip!

If I try to play when I'm not feeling tuneful, I won't be at my best. Sometimes I must, and I step up when required, but, otherwise, I don't force it. I'm easy with myself. I let other selves prevail.

That's the essence of procrastination. It's the acknowledgement that you're not, in the current moment, the person for a given task. Even while flopped in front of the TV, I don't think about more "important" tasks, because my sloth-ish TV-viewing self deserves expression, too. No guilt's involved. A time to every purpose.

I suppose I've always appeared to be quite a slacker to most people around me. Yet I manage, somehow, to be unusually productive when all's said and done. I'm not sure how that happens, myself, but I'm convinced it's somehow tied up in this. When you don't force, it's all play, and play allows miracles - such as small children learning language and culture within just a few short years (while appearing to be inveterate slackers, themselves!).

My screw-ups best prove the point. Take a look at the previous Slog entry (it's super short). It's sort of blurry, right? I was making an interesting point, but conveyed it in a vague, foggy way. I wasn't really thinking about readers, I was more just jotting down what was in my head, without regard for how it would read. I was not, in other words, being a writer in that moment. And when writers write at moments when they're not writers, they often fail to write like writers. If I'd procrastinated a bit, it'd have been better! In fact, if more people procrastinated more often, there'd be far less mediocrity in the world. We need lots more procrastination, not less!

I have nearly 200 upcoming Slog pieces sitting in various states of construction. Some would be among my best work if I ever finished them. If I were being paid to do this, I'd bang them out, and be professional enough to ensure their competency. But they wouldn't be the best they could be. So each article awaits the arrival of the best possible person to finish it, and the backlog doesn't disturb me in the least.

Is my positive view on procrastination relevant only for freelancers and others who self-schedule? No. No one procrastinates when they can't. Procrastination is something that happens ahead of deadlines, not against them (people who miss deadlines are losers, not procrastinators). Procrastination only happens in situations where there's actually time to waste. But my point is that it's never a waste of time awaiting the right you for the job.

I've missed dinner to write this article. Plus, it's hot here, but I haven't budged from my seat to turn on the air conditioner. And I owe people emails! But writer me is in control, and that's something I honor (again, I commit). So: have I been procrastinating that other stuff? Of course not. There's a time to every purpose. I wrote, a couple of entries ago, about how

...there are so many things to eat, to do, and to enjoy. It takes far more mental energy to obsess over the absent than it does to simply immerse in what's at hand! That's why depressed people feel so worn out; it's tremendously sapping to create, perpetuate, and inhabit a fantasy world built upon What's Missing.

The same is true of weighing yourself down with the things you happen not to be doing in a given moment. Why do we humans find so many ways to obsess over what's not happening, when full immersion in whatever is happening is the source of all happiness and achievement?