Today, it’s 18 degrees in New York City, 4 degrees in Chicago, and 13 degrees in Boston. It’s damn cold, especially for the homeless.
Keep this in mind as you watch Rob Bliss’ short video above. In a poignant video, he points out how services offering the immediate delivery of products and services could easily help the homeless. While he uses Amazon Prime as an example, the same idea could be extended to services like DoorDash, GrubHub, and UberEats (which is apparently now outgrowing the taxi business in some cities).
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I don’t know about you, but my tendency to procrastinate feels like a character flaw. And yet, no amount of moralizing with myself makes any difference. Feeling bad, in fact, only makes things worse. Perhaps that’s because—as Tim Pychyl, Associate Professor in Psychology at Carleton University argues—procrastination is not a moral failing so much as a coping mechanism for painful feelings, a psychological avoidance of tasks we fear for some reason: because we fear rejection or failure, or even the burdens of success.
Pychyl should know. He’s made studying procrastination the basis of his career and runs the 20-year-old Procrastination Research Group. Procrastination is a “puzzle,” he theorizes (the title of one of his books is Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change). Solving it involves understanding how its pieces work, including our beliefs about how it operates. Pychyl’s lecture above addresses graduate students charged with helping undergraduates who procrastinate, but its lessons apply to all of us. In his first slide, Pychyl outlines four typical beliefs about procrastination:
It’s me
It’s the task
It’s the way I think
It’s my lack of willpower
Pychyl wants to debunk these notions, but he also argues that procrastination is “something we seem to understand very well” in popular parlance. One of his slides shows a typical “successories”-type poster that reads, “Procrastination: hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now.” While Pychyl doesn’t use judgmental language like “laziness,” he does acknowledge that procrastination results from ideas about short- versus long-term gain. We want to feel good, right now, a drive common to everyone.
The next poster reads “if the job’s worth doing, it will still be worth doing tomorrow.” The notion of the “future self” plays a role—the you of tomorrow who still has to face the work your present self puts off. “What are we doing to ‘future self?’” Pychyl asks. “If we can just bring future self into clearer vision, lots of times the procrastination may go away.” This has been demonstrated in research studies, Ana Swanson notes at The Washington Post, in which people made better decisions after viewing digitally-aged photographs of themselves. But in general, we tend not to have much consideration for “future self.”
A final successories slide reads, “Procrastination: by not doing what you should be doing, you could be having this much fun.” This is one of the most pervasive forms of self-delusion. We may convince ourselves that putting difficult things off for tomorrow means more fun today. But the amount of guilt we feel ensures a different experience. “Guilt is a paralyzing emotion,” Pychyl says. When we put off an important task, we feel terrible. And often, instead of enjoying life, we create more work for ourselves that makes us feel purposeful, like cooking or cleaning. This “task management” game temporarily relieves guilt, but it does not address the central problem. We simply “manage our emotions by managing our tasks.”
The word procrastination comes directly from classical Latin and translates to “put forward” that which “belongs to tomorrow.” This sounds benign, given that many a task does indeed belong to tomorrow. But prudent planning is one thing, procrastination is another. When we put off what we can or should accomplish today, we invoke tomorrow as “a mystical land where 98% of all human productivity, motivation, and achievement are stored.” The distinction between planning or unavoidable delay and procrastination is important. When delays are either intentional or the consequence of unpredictable life events, we need not consider them a problem. “All procrastination is delay, but not all delay is procrastination.”
So, to sum up Pychyl’s research on our attitudes about procrastination: “we think we’re having more fun, but we’re not”; “we think we’re not affecting future self, but we are”; and “it’s all about giving in to feel good,” which—see point number one—doesn’t actually work that well.
While we might minimize procrastination as a minor issue, its personal costs tell us otherwise, including severe impacts to “performance, well-being, health, relationships, regrets & bereavement.” Procrastinators get sick more often, report higher rates of depression, and suffer the somatic and psychological effects of elevated stress. Procrastination doesn’t only affect our personal well-being and integrity, but it has an ethical dimension, affecting those around us who suffer “second-hand,” either because of the time we take away from them when we rush off to finish things last-minute, or because the stress we put ourselves under negatively affects the health of our relationships.
But procrastination begins first and foremost with our relationship to ourselves. Again, we put things off not because we are morally deficient, or “lazy,” but because our emotional brains are trying to cope. We feel some significant degree of fear or anxiety about the task at hand. The guilt and shame that comes with not accomplishing the task compounds the problem, and leads to further procrastination. “The behavior,” writes Swanson, turns into “a vicious, self-defeating cycle.”
How do we get out of the self-made loop of procrastination? Just as in the failure of the “Just say No” campaign, simply shaking ourselves by the metaphorical shoulders and telling ourselves to get to work isn’t enough. We have to deal with the emotions that set things in motion, and in this case, that means going easy on ourselves. “Research suggests that one of the most effective things that procrastinators can do is to forgive themselves for procrastinating,” Swanson reports.
Once we reduce the guilt, we can weaken the proclivity to procrastinate. Then, paradoxically, we need to ignore our emotions. “Most of us seem to tacitly believe,” Pychyl says, “that our emotional state has to match the task at hand.” For writers and artists, this belief has a lofty pedigree in romantic ideas about inspiration and muses. Irrelevant, the procrastination expert says. When approaching something difficult, “I have to recognize that I’m rarely going to feel like it, and it doesn’t matter if I don’t feel like it.” Feelings of motivation and creative inspiration often strike us in the midst of a task, not before. Breaking down daunting activities into smaller tasks, and approaching these one at a time, gives us a practical roadmap for conquering procrastination. For more insights and research findings, watch Pychyl’s full lecture, and listen to him discuss his research on the Healthy Family podcast just above.
It’s a cautionary tale about what happens when the world you prepared yourself for changes and leaves you behind. Coldly, and sometimes without warning.
Above, watch Steve Cutts’ 2014 animated mockumentary, “Where Are They Now?”. Starring Roger and Jessica Rabbit, and featuring cameos by Garfield and The Smurfs, the short film revisits cartoon characters who had it all in the 1980s. Then hit the skids in the early 90s. Hard. “We had done our jobs,” says an aged Jessica Rabbit. “Now we were forgotten about. Obsolete.” It’s a bleak picture that Cutts paints. But, it’s not all bad. He-Man became a wealthy lingerie designer. We could all use a well-thought-out Plan B.
The calendar date may be arbitrary, a quirk of history that could have been otherwise—but it’s no coincidence, I think, that New Year’s produces a reflective mood, a time of looking both backward and forward, especially in those parts of the world currently held in winter’s chill and dark, awaiting the thaw of spring. The turn of the Gregorian calendar seems to beg us to produce some sober wisdom amidst the revelry of the holidays: to account for what we’ve learned, ruminate on intentions, take general stock of our personal stores.
It’s also a time when we connect with our younger selves (many of us having just spent a few days visiting parents, hometowns, and childhood bedrooms). Those younger selves can seem callow and naïve in hindsight, and though it’s hardly any use living with regret, we might wish with some degree of rue that we could have handled some things better—and applied the hard-won realizations of the present much earlier. It’s a common enough sentiment, handled perfectly in The Faces’ “Ooh La La.”
I wish, for example, that I had learned how to meditate years before I did. It might have saved my young, moody, impulsive self a world a grief. (But then again, without that grief, would I have ever learned to meditate?) Recently, a MetaFilter user revisited a post from 2013 that asked the question (“What is a life changing realization that you wish you’d had sooner?”) to the internet community at large. The responses ranged from the fairly generic (“it’s okay if you don’t want to be friends with your exes”) to the personal, specific, and colorful. See a sampling of the answers below from both the original 2013 thread and the recent 2017 repost:
Love leaves scars. And that’s a good thing. We want to be permanently affected by the ones that we love. Otherwise, it’s not really love. And like any other scar, it begins as a painful wound, goes through the period of laudable pus during which you drain out all the bad stuff, and then, eventually, heals to a painless but visible scar.
This seems kinda silly, but a couple of years ago I realized that I am under no obligation to finish a book that I don’t like. As a reader, that was such an epiphany!
The most important and dangerous tool in the lives of average people is compound interest.
Behaviour is driven by emotion, not rational thought: instead of trying to force myself to do things by berating myself, I get my emotions in order first by synthesising the feeling of having already done it. My procrastination has been radically reduced, and I’m freer to get on and do the things I need to do.
Take other people’s head injuries seriously. Someone who’s just had a blow to the brain is not qualified to judge whether it is “no big deal.”
Honor the parts of yourself that are elusive and mysterious and maybe unintelligible to other people. Whether that means embracing an identity like “queer nonbinary trans woman” or becoming more comfortable with crying and not knowing why or not having opinions and answers at hand… Practice not knowing.
I’m partial to these offerings because I find them moving, funny, or conversant with whatever meager wisdom I like to think I’ve acquired after much trial and error. But what about you? As 2017 winds to a close—a year fraught with more stress and anxiety than most—which answers leap out to you? Or, if you’re brave and feel like sharing, what would you like to pass on to your younger, more bumbling self if you could go back and have a sit-down with him or her? Please pass along your thoughts and wisdom in the comments below.
’Tis the season to break out the family recipes of beloved relatives, though often their provenance is not quite what we think.
(Imagine the cognitive dissonance upon discovering that Mother swiped “her” Italian Zucchini Crescent Pie from Pillsbury Bake-Off winner, Millicent Nathan of Boca Raton, Florida…)
When it came to crediting the eggnog she dubbed “the taste of Christmas Day,” above, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eudora Welty shared it out equally between her mother and author Charles Dickens:
In our house while I was growing up, I don’t remember that hard liquor was served at all except on one day in the year. Early on Christmas morning, we woke up to the sound of the eggbeater: Mother in the kitchen was whipping up eggnog. All in our bathrobes, we began our Christmas before breakfast. Throughout the day Mother made batches afresh. All our callers expected her eggnog.
It was ladled from the punch bowl into punch cups and silver goblets, and had to be eaten with a spoon. It stood up in peaks. It was rich, creamy and strong. Mother gave full credit for the recipe to Charles Dickens.
Nice, but perhaps Dickens is undeserving of this honor? The contents of his punchbowl bore little resemblance to Mother Welty’s, as evidenced by an 1847 letter to his childhood friend, Amelia Filloneau, in which he shared a recipe he promised would make her “a beautiful Punchmaker in more senses than one”:
Peel into a very strong common basin (which may be broken, in case of accident, without damage to the owner’s peace or pocket) the rinds of three lemons, cut very thin, and with as little as possible of the white coating between the peel and the fruit, attached. Add a double-handfull of lump sugar (good measure), a pint of good old rum, and a large wine-glass full of brandy — if it not be a large claret-glass, say two. Set this on fire, by filling a warm silver spoon with the spirit, lighting the contents at a wax taper, and pouring them gently in. Let it burn for three or four minutes at least, stirring it from time to Time. Then extinguish it by covering the basin with a tray, which will immediately put out the flame. Then squeeze in the juice of the three lemons, and add a quart of boiling water. Stir the whole well, cover it up for five minutes, and stir again.
This sounds very like the “seething bowls of punch” the jolly Ghost of Christmas Present shows Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, dimming the chamber with their delicious steam.
It’s also vegan, in contrast to what you might have been served in the Welty ladies’ home.
Why not serve both? In the words of Tiny Tim, “Here’s to us all!”
Eudora Welty’s Mother’s Eggnog (Attributed, Perhaps Erroneously, to Charles Dickens)
6 egg yolks, well beaten
Add 3 tbsp. powdered sugar
Add 1 cup whiskey, added slowly, beating all the while
Fold in 1 pint whipped cream
Whip 6 whipped egg whites and add to the mixture above.
Illustrator Steve Cutts sets his latest animation, “Happiness,” in a teeming urban environment, with hundreds of near identical cartoon rats standing in for human drudges in an unfulfilling, and not unfamiliar race.
Packed subway cars, a bombardment of advertising, soul-deadening office jobs, and Black Friday sales are just a few of the indignities Cutts’ rodents are subjected to, to the tune of Bizet’s “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle.”
Rampant over-consumption—a major preoccupation for this artist—offers illusory relief, and a great deal of fun for viewers with the time to hit pause, to better savor the grim details.
They may also serve as an antidote to the sort of messaging we’re constantly on the receiving end of, whether we live in city, country or somewhere in-between. Check out the scene as Cutts pans up from the subway platform, 52 seconds in:
The panty-clad female model for Blah cologne’s fashionably black and white ad is emaciated nearly to the point of death.
“You’re better than laces” flatters the latest (laceless) shoe from a swoosh-bedecked footwear manufacturer, while a radiator-colored beverage floats above the motto “Just drink it, morons.”
Krispo Flakes fight depression with “the bits other cereals don’t want.”
Heaven help us all, there’s even a poster for TRUMP The Musical.
This freeze-frame scrutiny could make an excellent activity for any class where middle and high schoolers are encouraged to think critically about their role as consumers.
As Cutts, a one-time employee of the digital marketing agency, Isobar, who contributed to campaigns for such global giants as Coca-Cola, Google, Reebok, and Toyota, told Reverb Press in 2015:
These are things that affect us all on a fundamental level so naturally they’re a main focus for a lot of my work. Humanity has the power to be great in so many ways and yet at the same time we are fundamentally flawed. I think it’s the conflict between these two that fascinates me the most. As a race of beings we’ve made incredible achievements in such a short space, but at the same time we seem so overwhelmingly intent on destroying ourselves and everything around us. It would be very interesting to see where we’ll be in a hundred years. The term insanity is intriguing – it’s almost like we’re encouraged to act in a way that seems genuinely insane when you look at it objectively, but it’s often accepted as normal right now. I think we will have to evolve beyond our current thinking and way of doing things if we want to survive.
See more of Cutts’ animated work here. And while he doesn’t go out of his way to hype his online store, a gallery quality print of The Rat Trap would make a fantastic gift from your cubicle mate’s Secret Santa. (HURRY! TIME IS RUNNING OUT!!!)
English animator Steve Cutts has a knack for satirizing the excesses of modern society. Just watch his 2012 short animation “Man,” and you’ll see what I mean. In three short minutes, Cutts covers a lot of ground, documenting the rise of human civilization and its ever-escalating assault on nature and our natural resources. It’s funny. It’s biting. And it may give you pause as we gear up for Christmas, the apotheosis of American materialism.
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To what writer, besides Ayn Rand, do the business-minded techies and tech-minded businessmen of 21st-century Silicon Valley look for their inspiration? The name of Samuel Beckett may not, at first, strike you as an obvious answer — unless, of course, you know the origin of the phrase “Fail better.” It appears five times in Beckett’s 1983 story “Worstward Ho,” the first of which goes like this: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” The sentiment seems to resonate naturally with the mentality demanded by the world of tech startups, where nearly every venture ends in failure, but failure which may well contain the seeds of future success.
Or rather, the apparent sentiment resonates. “By itself, you can probably understand why this phrase has become a mantra of sorts, especially in the glamorized world of overworked start-up founders hoping against pretty high odds to make it,” writes Books on the Wall’s Andrea Schlottman.
“We think so, too. That is, until you read the rest of it.” The paragraph immediately following those much-quoted lines runs as follows:
First the body. No. First the place. No. First both. Now either. Now the other. Sick of the either try the other. Sick of it back sick of the either. So on. Somehow on. Till sick of both. Throw up and go. Where neither. Till sick of there. Throw up and back. The body again. Where none. The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where neither for good. Good and all.
“Throw up for good” — a rich image, certainly, but perhaps not as likely to get you out there disrupting complacent industries as “Fail better,” which The New Inquiry’s Ned Beauman describes as “experimental literature’s equivalent of that famous Che Guevara photo, flayed completely of meaning and turned into a successful brand with no particular owner. ‘Worstward Ho’may be a difficult work that resists any stable interpretation, but we can at least be pretty sure that Beckett’s message was a bit darker than ‘Just do your best and everything is sure to work out ok in the end.’
But if Beckett’s words don’t provide quite the cause for optimism we thought they did, the story of his life actually might. “Beckett had already experienced plenty of artistic failure by the time he developed it into a poetics,” writes Chris Power in TheGuardian. “No one was willing to publish his first novel, Dream of Fair to Middling Women, and the book of short stories he salvaged from it, More Pricks Than Kicks (1934), sold disastrously.” And yet today, even those who’ve never read a page of his work — indeed, those who’ve never even read the “Fail better” quote in full — acknowledge him as one of the 20th century’s greatest literary masters. Still, we have good cause to believe that Beckett himself probably regarded his own work as, to one degree or another, a failure. Those of us who revere it would do well to remember that, and maybe even to draw some inspiration from it.
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. His projects include the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
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