What does a teacher like more than answering questions? Answering even more questions, of course!
Reader el asked me some interesting questions that I would like to answer:
1) Laziness and/or procrastination, tendency to leave all work till last day/night. How did you avoid this trap while writing PhD? If it isn’t connected to willpower, to what it is?
As we all know, laziness does not exist. “Laziness” is a code word for a specific set of psychological problems. And so is “willpower.” I prefer to skip the nicety of “willpower” and refer to this phenomenon with its real name: “masochism.” If you routinely try to exercise “willpower” and make yourself do what you don’t want to, that’s masochism, pure and simple. A more productive approach is to figure out the reason why you are compelled to create these situations where you will experience these masochistic joys on a regular basis.
Life is supposed to be enjoyed. It is supposed to be fun, and not just sometimes, but all of the time. Grief, suffering, unpleasantness should be the exceptions. If you don’t feel actively happy 90% of time, then something is not going right and it has to be addressed.
For the longest time, I was in the grip of a phenomenon that I called “laziness” but that was something entirely different. Here is how it worked: every day I would play this strange sort of game where I would passionately want to do something but would somehow never manage to do it. For instance, I would have this great new book in my field of research that I would be dying to read. I would imagine myself lying in bed, a rose-scented candle and a glass of juice next to me, reading this book, and having an amazing time.
All I needed to do to have this enjoyable experience is just start having it. But I couldn’t. I liked imagining it but there was something so terrifying about it that no amount of masochism (=willpower) was enough to break my resistance. And it was the same with writing, publishing, doing research. I was standing in my own way to having fun while doing what I love to do.
It was only after I identified what was so scary about being a successful research scholar and so attractive about the masochism of applying willpower that this problem went away. (In my situation, it was something as simple as every successful research scholar I knew being a horrible person and me not wanting to become like them. It helped to meet somebody who is a successful research scholar and a great person.)
I don’t want to bore people but here is just one more example of how identifying the fear at the core of the laziness/willpower dyad helps defeat it. I now regularly go to the gym which is a place that I used to avoid like the plague for decades. The reason why I hated gyms is that just being inside one placed me in the persona of a scrawny, clumsy 8-year-old who was the worst of the entire class in Physical Training. I didn’t want to be that kid anymore and, for me, slipping into this role was automatic the moment I approached a gym.
All it took to get over that was to realize what was going on and to ensure I had firmly grounded myself in my adult persona before going to the gym. And now I enjoy it. Actually, I’m going there right after I finish this post.
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment