Procrastination and the priority of short-term mood regulation

ADHD isn't simply a lack of dopamine, but a dysfunction in dopamine (and noradrenaline) regulation. It can involve too much dopamine (like with hyperfocus), and not enough dopamine in different loci. This isn't even mentioning the non-dopamine/noradrenaline understandings of the pathophysiology that are still arising with further study.

If you find a better way, let me know. This is the best one I found, and it doesn't depend on me having a good day and everything being hunky dory.

> I can't seem to find the switch in the mirror

Tidy your room. Start small. Grow from there. Plan, iterate, improve. Whatever you add to the routine, have it stick by sheer force of will and repetition.

Fuck your feelings. I mean that. Whatever your feelings tell you, tell them to fuck off. You have something to do and you're going to do it. Period.

If you lack exercise, sunlight, or proper nutrition, lack of focus is the last of your problems to solve and more of an obvious consequence.

I find it weird how all those things are usually overlooked and everyone jumps to ADHD or something like that.

If we look at, shall we say, the traditional definitions of perseverance, effeminacy, and delicacy[0], we find that someone who perseveres is someone who "does not forsake a good on account of long endurance of difficulties and toils". Effeminacy is the inability to undertake what is not pleasurable, whereas delicacy is the inability to endure displeasure ("properly speaking effeminacy regards lack of pleasures, while delicacy regards the cause that hinders pleasure, for instance toil or the like").

We "moderns" are certainly a soft people. We cannot help but indulge ourselves, we cannot bear what we do not like, and we refuse to embrace the yoke. We are slaves to our appetites and desires. FOMO, which is opportunism, and a culture of instant gratification, are the result and the encouragement of the inability to forsake lower goods for the sake of higher goods, and so we undergo dissipation. And what is dissipation but a lack of focus? And what is the procrastinator avoiding if not discomfort, if not displeasure?

Naturally, this becomes the default mode of operation when life is perceived to have no end. If there is no highest pleasure, no highest good, then all we have left are lower pleasures. Perhaps paradoxically, even the lower pleasures lose their proper flavor and become denatured in the absence of the highest. Thus despair is consummated.

[0] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3138.htm

You can call it moving definitions around, but at the end of the day if we don’t ultimately do what we ultimately desire, then what really is meant by the word desire?

Linguistic has a better track record to understand words and their definition than psychology.

So, discipline is not the same as motivation. Discipline is doing things even if you think you don't have enough energy or motivation at the moment.

  discipline
  dis· ci· pline ˈdi-sə-plən 

  1 a: control gained by enforcing obedience or order
    b: orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior
    c: self-control
  2: punishment
  3: training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character
  [..]


  motivation
  noun [ C/U ]
  us
  /ˌmoʊ·t̬əˈveɪ·ʃən/
  willingness to do something, or something that causes such willingness:
  [ C ] One motivation for reducing the staff was the need to cut costs.
  [ U ] You need a lot of motivation to succeed.

And yet this conversation here doesn't provide any actionable conclusion, doesn't provide example of how motivation beats discipline and just jumps into a debate of abstract idea(ls).

Is the word discipline the problem ? Would regularity feel better ?

> You may disagree with arguments, but then present the counterarguments.

The original argument is here:

> Discipline, by contrast, separates outwards functioning from moods and feelings and thereby ironically circumvents the problem by consistently improving them.

Redefining words is not a counter argument.

It's always the same dynamic in this debate, it's like people don't want to hear the world discipline and want motivation to just be enough to act on ?

Anyhow, thanks for posting your perspective, it's nice to know there are other people in similar situations to my own. Have a nice day!

But if you actually believe it isn't worth the effort or that you don't actually want to do well on the test, then it's also unlikely to be a stressful or unpleasant experience, right? Procrastination is pretty universally unpleasant.

If it was really what you believed, you'd just not spend extra effort on it, and shrug when the expected result occurs, and you'd probably be right!

My experience has been that is just not giving a shit, which isn't procrastination, per-se, and often necessary and healthy in at least some parts of our lives.

Procrastination is the cycle of avoidance/anxiety/shame where one is trying to convince themselves of the above state, despite them not really believing it, as a way to attempt to regulate themselves. Reality almost always intervenes eventually though.

One of the more common types of stress (in my experience) is when ones actions don't match what they know they should do to produce the outcome they want or need.

And it's generally a dysfunction if it gets in the way of doing what they want, and can do, if they were better regulating. Anyone with ADHD is quite familiar with it and the analogy of 'the wall of awful'.

The big issue with true procrastination, in my experience, is that the worse it gets, the worse it gets, and if someone gets to a certain point, it can become life destroying (ex: Hoarders, folks who avoid Dental issues until their teeth fall out, avoid going to the Doctor for that twinge in their chest until they die of a heart attack, etc.).

Procrastination almost never happens when someone is confident in their ability to actually do something, and is in a place where they are actually healthy/feeling ok.

So procrastinating to the point someone gets super anxious even if they eventually succeed, or fails at something really important, builds up 'the wall of awful'. Success at something, or feeling good when something is accomplished, tears it down.

So for instance:

If an investor gets the twinge of 'Do I really want this, is this worth the time and energy investment';

- A good investor will generally notice and figure out - is this a self limiting belief on their side (and if so, can they resolve their personal issue healthily and then re-evaluate), or a legitimate red flag that it's not worth it.

If they are so attentive and able to see what is going on with them and self-regulate well enough, they'll tend to pick more successful options in general, and avoid scams more often. That leads to more confidence in those decisions and in my experience higher overall returns. They won't be bogged down in failures they (kind of) saw coming, and will be able to capitalize on good opportunities when they present themselves instead of avoiding them or saying No.

- A bad investor will not do so (and will resort to either dismissing the concern outright, or trusting it outright), and either force themselves to invest regardless (and hence be scammed more often), or not invest and miss out on good investments (and hence miss out on opportunities). This leads to more self limiting beliefs and real problems and they often work themselves into a deeper hole, or go bankrupt.

As individuals, executive function is that same type of behavior but for our own actions.

It can be, and is, exhaustible for everyone. ADHD, for instance, is the name we give to folks who have a harder time keeping it and not exhausting it. But everyone is on a spectrum.