Procrastination is a type of behavior which is characterized by deferment of actions or tasks to a later time. Psychologists often cite procrastination as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. [1] For an individual, procrastination may result in stress, a sense of guilt, the loss of personal productivity, the creation of crisis and the disapproval of others for not fulfilling one's responsibilities or commitments. These combined feelings can promote further procrastination.
I also seem to have found an actual piece of mathematics regarding procrastination.
I'm not really sure if that's considered a real law, but it's something studied in psychology. In case you were too lazy to read that, the Matching Law basically says that people tend to do things more, when they it's psychologically reinforcing. It's really not that different(after being boiled down to really simple terms) from a chemical addiction. People pretty much become addicted to their own brain chemicals.
Procrastination is a strange thing. Generally, in order to procrastinate from something, you need to do something else. However, when you try to do that other thing, you might end up procrastinating from that too. That happens to me a lot.
I've realised something new. I can procrastinate by simply not doing anything useful. This is basically when my procrastination activity is a very passive activity, and invokes emotions often identical to that of being bored. There was a time when procrastination actually helped me to get other things done. This was good, because I was usually supposed to do those things anyway. It seems now, though, that I seem to be running out of useful things that I can put in the "other things" category.
... I suppose I could um, rearrange my 1 piece of furniture.
But really, why would I want to reshape my room, when I could just get on the computer and go typety typety, and "explain" the dynamics of procrastination to people? Yes, this is in fact a form of procrastination.
Procrastination is usually linked to having either a very interesting "other thing" to do, or when the "thing" that you're supposed to do is just really unappealing. This type of thing is usually of little to no point to a person, or has something about it that is just unpleasant to deal with. They're usually those things for which the "ah, the hell with that" philosophy just doesn't work for. Really unfortunate.
Of course, these things, however obscure, usually have some kind of a point. Okay, not really, but I... Think that doing what appear to be useless and menial activities may be beneficial anyway.
This would certainly not be true for people who have actual, useful "other things" to do. For people like me, however, who do not really have that many useful "other things" that they'd like to do, and end up doing nothing as their procrastination activity, these sorts of situations are just productivity killers.
It's like there's a flowchart in my brain. You have pointless chemistry homework! Do you want to do them? Y/N
N
Do nothing! Cool/whatever
Cool
*leaves rustling*
Yeah, so basically, I end up doing nothing way too much. I would blame my environment, but that just isn't really wise.
As quoted from Wikipedia:
Procrastinators are also thought to have a higher-than-normal level of conscientiousness, more based on the "dreams and wishes" of perfection or achievement in contrast to a realistic appreciation of their obligations and potential.
...Maybe. I haven't been doing all that much thinking recently. Or maybe I have, but I've just been forgetting it all.
I suspect that the source of my procrastination is really that Wikipedia is just that much more informative than school. And I suspect that my procrastination from using Wikipedia has to do with that playing Hedgehog Launch is really that entertaining.
Does playing puzzle games count as a useful activity? Does solving puzzles really train the mind? Does it increase brainpower? Cubing certainly doesn't count. The only advantages that can be derived from that are stronger, nimbler fingers, and slightly better colour recognition. But what about puzzles that don't have any particular methods and rely on sheer intellect?
I'd conduct an experiment on myself, but I suspect that it would end up in similar ways to my other experiments. I procrastinated from them and switched to a new experiment.
Ugh. I've been drawing cartoon personas of myself lately.
And thus ends this rather meaningless post. I'm not even sure how I started it. I've forgotten.
In Soviet Russia, post makes YOU!!!
-Joe