There have been a lot of articles lately about procrastination. This means that people have comprehended this ailment, some have coped with it and share their experience. And a little more than half a year ago, there was a massive "transition to a remote location". Coincidence? (c) No, not a coincidence. Let's look at this issue through the prism of the basic principles of brain functioning and the motives for making decisions, understand how distance affects motivation and figure out what to do with all this.
On the path from procrastination to mindfulness, you will embrace three ideas.
Consciousness is subordinate to the brain, not vice versa
The first idea is very important, you need to disassemble it properly: realize that the brain is an organ, and consciousness is a product of the work of this organ. The brain's job is to perceive external stimuli and develop a response to them. Irritants are not necessarily hot / cold, soft / hard. Irritants can be quite complex concepts such as insult / gratitude, friendship / enmity, etc. Reaction to stimuli is, again, not necessarily trivial things like pulling your hand back or blinking an eye. Anger, fear, friendship, lust are also brain responses to external stimuli.
Indifference and (not) desire to act are also reactions of the brain as an organ. In this sense, the emotion “I’m bored, I don’t want to work” is no different from the emotion of anger or joy, and it is very important to realize: the brain, for some reason known only to it (but in fact, due to the appropriate structure of neural connections) decided, that he reacts to the current set of stimuli just like this.
Consciousness in this case (and we associate "ourselves" and our "personality" in most cases with consciousness), forgive the hussar humor, only holds a candle. You have never deliberately made the decision “now I need to get angry and curse that idiot who cut me off”? No! It somehow "by itself" happens, it is the reaction of the brain as an organ. The idea that consciousness is in control of something is just an illusion and this has been shown by many experiments and scientific works.
Humans are not as far away from gorillas as they would like
The second idea will run counter to the generally accepted concept of anthropocentricity. It is worth realizing and coming to terms with the fact that we are all higher primates. Yes, there are some differences between people and gorillas, but if you understand them in detail, they are not as great as, for example, the differences between the same gorillas and monkeys. And, as you know, all primates on this planet want three things:
- there is
- sex
- authorities
Everything else is derivatives. All that rich inner world, enjoying Mozart and Bach, digging into arthouse cinema and so on and so forth is not an end in itself. This is either a way to show your superiority among other people, or to win the favor of a sexual partner, or to get food.
This should not be taken too literally when I say "food" - I mean any aspect of survival: a roof over your head, the absence of disease, the presence of food, etc. By "power" is meant not only the unconditional desire to climb "to the top of the mountain." Power, to put it more strictly, the hierarchical instinct is both the desire to subdue the one whom the brain deems it necessary to subdue, and the willingness to obey the one whom the brain considers worthy of it.
It is clear that the average programmer hardly has a question of how to make money for food. And the females do not really bite at how you quickly and gracefully closed the task. The last thing remains - we show off in front of each other. Who knows more technologies, who will show the best knowledge of the issue in the review, and so on. But they took it away from us: there is no longer that group, the position in which must be shared with other primates. There is a monitor with some pictures. The brain may suspect some kind of connection between the pictures in the zoom and real people, but, obviously, this is not so strongly expressed instinct as in live communication. It turns out that the brain simply does not see the point of “wanting to work”: there are no problems with food, there will be no less sex, no one to show off in front of anyone.
: ? ? ? - ? ? - : , , . ! , . — .
: , – . ( , ) — - . , , , , , — , .
—
The third idea is obvious to the programmer. If you need to change the output reactions of some thing, you need to change the signals at the input. The brain makes decisions in context, it takes into account the amount of information it has to make a decision. And the brain itself is located inside the cranium and cannot go to the Internet from there without assistance. It means that we will slip him - then he will take into account when he will decide whether to take on the next task.
You can observe yourself somehow: choose a frequently repeated action that causes some kind of emotion in you. For example, someone cuts you off and you get angry. And try to reflect this emotion in several contexts: in one case, everything is as usual, in another you have a headache, in the third you are going to an interview, in the fourth you won some kind of victory, in the fifth it happens in front of your sexual partner. It is also worth paying attention to the "coolness" of the abuser's car and the distance from your home. You will see that the brain's reactions to seemingly identical situations will be different: it will either react more restrainedly if now is not the right moment for a showdown, or, on the contrary, more violently, if it thinks that now is the time to figure out “why on earth is this the idiot doesn't respect me. "
In this sense, the emotion "I'm bored, I don't want to work" is no different from the emotion of anger in the described situation. But simply ordering the brain directly, as I hope it is already clear, will not work. Any "efforts of will", "from Monday" and so on and so forth do not work. Try to make an effort of will and not get angry in the situation that you have chosen for reflection. Yes, you may be able to not show it outwardly, but you will still feel anger, because the brain decided that in this situation it is appropriate. It's the same with procrastination. He decided. Basta. And your task is not to blame the problem, but to create such conditions so that the brain itself decides that such behavior is not beneficial in this context, and the solution of work tasks, on the contrary, promises a lot of goodies. But how? You won't give everyone any specific advice at once,but in general terms, all steps can be divided into two groups: change the context and influence the basic instincts of the brain.
In terms of context, these could be the following steps:
- change a job in which everything is already known to another, where dangers will lie in wait around every corner
- read articles about how a whole development team was put out the door in one day without severance pay, and not about how difficult it is to fire an employee according to the law and how much salary you have to pay.
- not to allow ideas like "there are only idiots around", because the only logical conclusion from this is that I have nothing to prove to them and I don't need to try for the sake of this command
- pay attention to a long list of requirements in vacancies, and not to statistics, which say that there are 5 people willing to hire him for one programmer.
- look on YouTube channels about development, not about cats / cars / Dudya
Also, you can kick the brain with its basic needs:
- more actively participate in working group chats, even in a simple flood, in order to increase interest in the group that is there. So yes, teambuildings were not invented by fools.
- to look at the pictures of testers in the cart, to think that it would not be cool to face them in the mud
- think what a shame it would be if June could figure out a bug in an hour that you can't tackle the second day
- present explanations with your loved ones about the fact that you were fired from work. Especially with children, if any.
- as a last resort, take a mortgage so that there is a real threat of lack of money. Joke. Although...
Change the conditions around your brain and it will change how it responds to these conditions. And yes, it may have been the longest way to say "get out of your comfort zone," but you won't be able to change the brain's reactions without changing stimuli.