2020 Procrastination, Courage, and Resilience.
Read: 5 mins.
2020 has been wild.
Coming into the latter half of the year has got me thinking a lot, reflecting. Something I should be doing more often, but don’t. Instead, I’ve just been ruminating on forgotten plans, ruined schedules, and lost routines. I’ll be honest, my life is quite the mess right now. As for The Gamified Life, aiming for a goal too high, falling into an endless loop of self criticism, and dulling it with procrastination. I’ve learnt a few things.
Procrastination
– Procrastination is a coping mechanism. An emotional regulator. –
It has little to do with time management, but a lot more to do with emotions. It could be understood as “the primacy of short-term mood repair… over the longer-term pursuit of intended actions”(Dr. Pychyl & Dr. Sirois 2013 study). An emergency response towards negative moods.
With 2020 as it is, emotions are at an all time low for many people, and as emotions create havoc within, stimulants are consumed in great proportions. Drowning within social media webs and getting drunk off the bombardment of content. Funny cute cat videos, to watching Biden slur against Trump ingesting disinfectants. Politics aside, nothing quite beats out the negativity like a good dose of internet.
– Procrastination is an amplifier. The longer you put it off for, the bigger it becomes. –
Life is like a series of tasks, so are projects, and so are daily life schedules. Let’s use a project for example, perhaps writing a book, or creating a video for The Gamified Life. When you choose to stop doing the next task for whatever reason, and take a break.. thinking, “it’s hard, troublesome, I’m laziness, today… I just don’t feel like doing anything,” the task when approached tomorrow, will seem a little harder. You notice, that there are some things you can’t remember about the task, you need to read over the details again, and re-organize your thoughts in order to reach the same point you stopped. 2 important factors: Time and Energy, wasted to catch up to where you were. Now imagine, holding off for a few days, weeks, months.
Getting back to the point you were at requires an exponential amount of effort compared to working continuously. Now granted, a fresh mind is always important in terms of productivity, but countering it can be the atrocious power of procrastination.
Key Stats to power through life: Courage & Resilience.
Courage: empowers us to take on difficult tasks, jump into the unknown at the potential for growth and betterment.
Resilience: empowers us to keep going, through the difficult times, enjoy the journey, and embrace the challenges.
Recently, someone very close and dear to me has demonstrated great courage and resilience in these uncertain times. It really opened my eyes, and gave me a harsh look at where my grit has gone. Where was the Jeff that challenged the unknown with determination, optimism, and unwavering intention?
It’s been inside me all along, just a little dusty from being stashed away for the time being.
2020 is already more than halfway through. The next video is a couple days away from completion. Thank you for being so patient and sticking with me. There aren’t a lot of you on my mailing list, but I figured if you’re here, then you might be a little more curious to how things are going. Feel free to reach out and let me know if you like these short…ish email updates where I share some thoughts every now and then! Perhaps I’ll write some more as time goes along as a side thing along with my videos which take a much longer time to make. Something a little more relatable, something with a slightly deeper connection to me! As for the rest of you, you can find me these blogs on my website.
The controller is in your hands,
Jeff
Hi from Italy! And sorry for my english.
Just letting You know, as You asked: I like these short-ish thoughts sharing!
And now, things You didn’t ask! I didn’t follow The Minimalists’ pithy advice “Don’t let you crastination turn pro” in various aspect of my life and now I deal with some of the consequences. Since I mentioned The Mins, I’m also wondering if there is some sweet spot – like the intersection in a Wenn diagram – between a simple, almost minimalist thinking and the fun of gamification… the problem is I quite enjoy the technical aspects of building charts and schemes – like You did with the Char. Life Stat Graph ver. 1, or RPG characters’ development maps, and I also appreciate the fact they can be complex, because an oversimplified scheme rarely represents reality in a decent way. On the other hand, after spending few hours having fun with my brain I find myself overwhelmed, with schemes which already are too complex to handle like a useful daily tool to check how my life’s going, and at the same time not enough complete for the obsessive crazy nerd creative part of my mind. So I leave the product there and I open a zen book or a minimalist website to look for simplicity…
All this just to let You know: we may struggle for different things but we can look each other and pat on each other shoulders. With a stick. You know, social distancing.
Carlo
Awesome 🙂 Glad to have you on board all the way from Italy! I’ll keep making these in between bigger projects and stuff then 😀
Yea, I totally get that too, there are so many different little nuances in everything, and every situation calls for it’s own set of considerations. But because of that, I find it fascinating to think about things, and attempt to organize them in a more consumable way! 🙂 Although I have to admit, my brain gets fried quite often as well when things get too complicated :’)