PROCRASTINATION AND COMPANY

Procrastination means doing something that feels more pleasant or less important, in order to avoid performing other things considered more relevant or harder to reach. Procrastination happens only when some kind of failure hits (because of the distraction). I think procrastination is linked to prohibitions, fears, conflicts or insecurities, all of them running in the unconscious mind. I guess the most difficult task is not necessarily the one being postponed, but that considered as more dangerous, forbidden, risky or conflictive. Perhaps the fear to expose ourselves to society and not succeed is a trigger. Performing activities or reaching objectives could fail if they are in conflict with some plan of life, which was abandoned on the road and unconsciously claims its place. But even chasing after your dreams could lead to procrastination if relatives are a very strong counter-influence. Then you end up unconsciously sabotaging all plans to get to your chosen destination. I think there exists some kind of broader social syndrome comprising the abandonment of projects, school failure, multitasking as a way not to focus on a particular chore, even self-destructive behaviors such as drug abuse or overworking. In fact all procrastination is harmful, because it leads to some kind of failure and the personal discomfort for not making what is owed. Taking time to rest when tired or pausing for creative thinking are not procrastination but could be when degrading the process.

Negative effects of procrastination

Guilt, anxiety, uncertainty, accumulation of pending work, loss of opportunity, missing the chance to learn, decreased self-steem, possible failure in achieving the goal, time loss, social failure, vice as a way of escape or compensation, vicious cycle of guilt and more procrastination, existential or personal failure, vulnerability.

Positive effects

Doing pleasurable things as substitutes, doing necessary things for substitution, personal growth in other areas as a compensation.

There are other causes for procrastination such as depression, anxiety, brain chemical imbalances that induce inactivity, mental illness not manifested, the adverse effects of drug use and even the side-effects of medications, especially psychiatric ones.

I think if one is constantly avoiding certain activities, abandoning projects or evading responsibilities, it is better to ask about one's general view of life or even either family or social relationships to determine possible motivations. Writing down the procrastination issues, even when they do not cause major problems, could help clarify ideas, clear doubts and define priorities.

Writing a to-do list with priorities and thinking constantly about the outcomes (good or bad) of procrastination could help push oneself into work. Once failure has hit, it is better not to burden oneself with guilt but making an evaluation so one can prevent repetitions.
I hope the procrastination taken to read this document is helpful.

Links

On procrastination

http://goo.gl/s9Da0
http://goo.gl/M4HT2

http://goo.gl/L6Mu4
http://goo.gl/Ly359

Tips
http://goo.gl/6vFk9
http://goo.gl/cXlm8
http://goo.gl/Wb9Fy
http://goo.gl/YEUt5

http://goo.gl/Ebdx3

http://goo.gl/g3O2z

http://goo.gl/RnVTk

Mental issues
http://goo.gl/mxMZK

ABOUT ADDICTIONS

Note: this is not a scientific material. If you need help, seek professional assistance. Translated from Spanish.

Document written long ago. Maybe there will be some change.

THE BACKGROUND

An addiction is anything you can not fail to do that hurts you. I heard this on Dr. Nancy Alvarez’s show. I think the concept should include alcoholism, for simplicity. Otherwise, there is a long list of definitions for alcoholism. A trap of addictions is that if you manage to leave one, you start another one. Some even have their positive side. The workaholic may achieve their fortune. But almost certainly they will die early from heart attack, cirrhosis or some other illness. An addiction is a manifestation of an underlying problem, an unresolved internal struggle. I almost dare say the addict to one thing, is to other ones too. Thus, as described above, the super worker also is an alcoholic, drug consumer, seeks sex without control or has a reckless behavior. What characterizes an addiction is that it is self-destructive.

The trick to a solution lies in finding the underlying problem, the inner battle. It might be some abuse in childhood, or a situation too traumatic at any stage of life. My bet is that generally it is a conflict between what parents demand from you and what you do or want to do with your life. I get the impression that this is a failure that comes from the beginnings of mankind.

MY APPROACH

It might exist a causing trauma to an addiction. Although they are usually a manifestation of the subconscious struggle between what your parents (or whoever raised you) decided should be your life, and what you're doing with it or want to do. In part this happens because they longed for a certain type of child. But parents drag their internal battles from the clash with their own parents too. And this non resolved conflict, parents channel it on you in the form of possessiveness, control, contradiction, penalty, claim, hardness, cruelty, and sometimes indifference. It is an endless chain. Perhaps you will do it with your children, or you are doing it already. Up to this point I have not considered the possibility of a mental illness like schizophrenia or some other unmanifested. The ways of conflict are many. It may be that your parents live in a power struggle and you became a disaster as an outcome. Or they have migrated and left you behind, or went into a separation.

SOME TRICKS

I learned this from a television show so long ago that I forgot about it. To face an addiction you have to think about the immediate negative effects. For example, if you smoke, as was my case, you have to remind you rself again and again that it leaves your clothes stinky, ruin your breath, makes you nervous, causes headaches, gets you tired when walking, the smell bothers most women, it's something that makes you look like someone problematic, etc. Do not torment yourself with guilt. This will lead the internal struggle to maintain and increase the problem. If you think about the long-term effects of an addiction, such as cancer, it can even raise the addiction. It sounds absurd, but that is the result. An addiction is a self-destructive behavior rooted in the subconscious. And if you think of the worst effects, it will increase. Another trick I guess I discovered myself, is not to finish the issue at once. This means, not to think you are never going to re-do or are going to stop it permanently. The idea is not to put much pressure on the decision, to prevent the desire for what your leaving from growing. In my case it worked. I do not know if it is useful to others. I sometimes smoke a cigarette (tobacco), only to end up with nausea, headache, dizziness and nervousness. You must resolve the mess inside from the very bottom. Otherwise, you will leave a vice to start another one.

You will solve your problem within yourself and not fighting against your parents or complaining about them.

From wikipedia:

Addictions

THE MEANING OF DREAMS

Warning: This document has no scientific or counseling purpose. If you have any problems seek professional help. Translated from Spanish, so it is not the best English style I could try.

When you remember what you dream, it means that you had a bad sleep, or you did by the day. Dreams can be fun because they have very little structure and seem too real. I usually enjoy recalling a nightmare. What makes them something terrible is the emotional dark aspect in which they operate. Sometimes I dream of dangerous things and I have seen them as an adventure film. The emotional side of the dream is what determines whether or not it is a nightmare. It's like the background music of movies. I've seen entire television series that teach you how to interpret dreams. I have tried to follow those ideas. And I got a bit unstable. I believe that dreams are the most common way the subconscious thinks. It's a fairly chaotic and disorganized thought process. I guess it helps you find creative and unexpected solutions to everyday problems. This thinking is hidden while you're awake to avoid being confused. I imagine that the preconscious is some kind of evaluator of the subconscious processes, which compares these with your daily activity. And when it finds something interesting, throws it in the form of spark or intuition: Finally got it! How I had not noticed that before?! The fact is that dreams should not be remembered. And when that occurs, you must be alert because it means that something important is happening in your world. I think the preconscious sends you the whole video of the dream or nightmare, raw and unedited, to warn you that there is something requiring urgent attention. And that the preconscious is overwhelmed and cannot find a way to solve it. It can be a health problem or conflict at work, maybe you are about to get fired and you're missing signals. It might be many things. The key is to take the dream or nightmare as a warning to check what is going on around or inside you. But the dream itself should never be interpreted. Why? Well, once the dream is installed in your aware mind, the subconscious registers it as an event that happened in reality. When analyzed consciously, it is reinforced. The subconscious puts it back into its blender of disordered processing. And creating chaos in something that was already chaotic, does not produce good results. Maybe you'll just get emotional instability or disconnection from reality. Besides, putting yourself to interpret dreams, you can reach tons of different conclusions. And end up more confused than if you did not attempt to analyze them. If you want an objective interpretation of a dream, you should find a psychologist who specializes in this area. If not, you'd better check around you and within you, to see how things are changing.

SOME IDEAS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

I did not make any web search around intelligence. I chose to go the naive way and then maybe discover the theory. Perhaps what I am writing is outdated or discarded but I am having fun with this. My point of view is that intelligence is not an abstract skill based only upon logic, math or some other human theoretical creation. Logic (maybe algorithms) seem necessary for any thought or emotional process but maybe conventional logic is not enough to grasp the whole mind's dynamics.

THE GUESSING PROCESS OF THOUGHT

Uncertainty is at the core of any thinking process. We will never be able to know everything, so we guess. Religion is a very useful tool to give meaning to the unknown; but science or philosophy give more accurate explanations. Science is an excellent tool yet there is always a limit to it. There are some questions that science does not approach; philosophy fills that space and then religion or even fantasy. Us humans organize things according to categories, similarities or convenience. Then we assign names to those categories and things. We link a thing to a category and both get a new meaning. Emotions are present at any thought process of course. So there's an emotional side for any connection or idea.

WANDERING ME

To my knowledge artificial intelligence aims to emulate the human conscious mind or solve problems based on rigid logic. Human brain runs on unexpected paths even when fully aware. You can amaze yourself playing an automatic video of stabbing some coworker on the back just because they raised the voice at you; then you come back to reality and try figure out why they did so. Psychology has determined that we have a parallel mind labeled as unconscious self that flows chaotically and apparently not following any ethical rule. This unconscious mind devises strange worlds in which the known rules of reality are barely followed and events do not happen in a linear-time way. This strange form of thinking affects our decisions however it seems artificial intelligence theorists and developers do not consider it at all.

CURIOSITY

Artificial intelligence can be whatever we humans decide it should be. We are its creator so we define how it functions. Until now, AI serves the purpose of helping us do tasks that are impossible for our natural brains. But we want artificial brains to behave as our minds work. It seems technology is not currently capable of this kind of feat. I think for a machine to cogitate like humans do, it takes perceiving reality same way as we do. This means eyes, skin, a sense of smell, ears and instinctive reactions such as our own. A full nervous system that current electronics cannot achieve. Maybe nanotechnology will solve it. Animals focus on things that start moving before them. This is an instinct for self defense and maybe for hunting. A little child is fascinated with the light of a candle, he tries to grab it and then he feels the hurt that warns him of the danger and quickly retreats. So there is a process of watching, guessing, comparing with other already known things, and when realising it is something new, beginning to explore. We learn from others too. This little kid might be warned of not touching the flame. Maybe he will obey.

PENDING: INSTINCT, EMOTIONS, TACT, MEMORIES...

Originally wrote phylosophy but there was a bell ringing until I checked the spelling.

HAPPINESS, A QUICK REFERENCE

Some hints to live an easier life

• People who perceive the divine as something we flow in, tend to be happier than those who see God as a distant and hard to access judge. I guess it is due to guilt and the fear on the outcome of death
• Accept yourself as you are
• Taking good health care
• Feeling or being loved by your surrounding people (relatives, neighbors, etc.)
• Not tormenting yourself with the past. There is no way to change it after all
• Not keeping grudges
• Being thankful for the learned lesson from who harmed you
• Have a lifeproject and keep on pursuing it
• Enjoying the present moment such as is
• Not distressing with a never coming future
• Experiencing the flow, which means getting lost in some activity one enjoys
• Not burdening the soul with guilt
• Not causing harm to others
• Seeing the funny side on everything
• Telling your problems to someone (you trust) so you can release pressure
• Having a secure financial life. Money isn't happiness but an uncertain future or present leads to worry, which leads to unhappiness
• Not worrying too much on what others think about you
• Help somebody solve their problems (and expect backfire not gratitude)
• Don't deny your negative emotions, just try to understand where they come from
• Never mask your problems but face them constructively
• Getting off the routine from time to time
• Avoid self-defeating inner talk (e.g. thinking how stupid I am)
• Take a risk, try new things
• Share the joy of your relatives or friends success
   

 Links:

Happiness I

Happiness II

Tricks
Eudaimonic happiness