Student SGH's latest blog post has prompted me to respond. And so (at last!) I'm publishing a post that I've been putting off writing for several days – a post about procrastination and attention deficit.
It occurred to me that one reason I find completing tasks difficult – particularly when I'm not facing any external deadline – is that my mind tends to wander off to something more interesting, more curious, more affecting. Then off I go, at a tangent. [Since starting to write this I've been distracted by a dozen small tasks, each getting in my way.]
It's this trait that I wanted to write about, in particular when combined with certain traits found along the autism spectrum, namely nerdish RRBI (repetitive and restricted behaviours and interests).
As I've written before, I believe that most of us live our lives affected to a certain degree by one psychiatric spectrum or another, whether it's autism/Asperger's, ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, narcissism, schizophrenia etc – in most cases well below the threshold for diagnosis. And these traits can co-exist – two or more, at low levels, low enough not to be picked up by the casual observer - or indeed, even by the subject. [This case shows how difficult it is even for healthcare specialists to spot the symptoms in themselves.]
Looking at my life, my education, my career, my personal life, I can now look back and identify how my inability to focus has held me back from reaching my own internally-set goals and ambitions. However, having said that, to balance it out, the RRBI has been helpful in narrowing down fields of interest.
And here I return to the great question I've often asked, regarding specialists vs. generalists, the former being more likely to be on the autism spectrum, the latter having a degree of attention deficit. My father used to tell me off as a child for trzymanie zbyt wielu srok za ogon – literally, holding too many magpies by the tail – rather than focusing on, and completing, one task.
So the two tendencies - one being the pursuit of specific and narrow areas of interest, the other being a tendency to lose focus and wander off – lead to my main characteristic – inconsistency. Straying between "That was really good!" and "That was crap."
Because my mind does indeed wander, it takes me longer to get things done; it takes me longer to learn. I now realise, aged 66, why it's taken me so long to acquire a deep understanding of those things I deeply understand – and how to communicate my understanding of them. But then again, this returns me to my threads about longevity. A long life of life-long learning will allow you to gain deeper knowledge of individual topics (if you are a scatter-shot generalist), or broader knowledge across a wider range of topics (if you are a focused specialist).
Masking one's behavioural failings requires good self-knowledge, emotional intelligence, and the ability to read how people see you. [One set of autism-spectrum traits that I lack is the inability to empathise or socialise. So just the RRBI. And the ADHD trait that I lack is the hyperactivity. Just the attention deficit.] During my socialisation period (age 10-50), the RRBI was kept in check, so that I'd fit in. Don't talk to girls about trains. Now, I'm less bothered to mask. I am as I am.
But then there's another trait - and I'd argue a character-neutral one – that keeps (lost focus again, time to make some breakfast)... [Two conference calls and some office work later, I finally get round to finishing this post, and realise I forgot how I intended to finish this sentence.]
So – what do I consider to be the worst human trait?
Psychopathic/sociopathic behaviour, especially when presented in conjunction with narcissism.
Which human beings are doing most damage to humanity right now, in the past, and – unless restrained by societies – in the future? Egotistical psychopaths, megalomaniacs using murderous force to get their way. If only Putin and Xi had been hamstrung in life by chronic procrastination! [But then some other evil bastard would have got to run those two systems; I'd have to move on from psychology to political science...]
I have worked with and for psychopaths – ultra-competitive, heartless, ruthless bastards, trampling over human lives, over the people who find themselves working for them, who have to endure stress, humiliation, job loss – and all because one man (and it's nearly always a man) has personal wealth-and-power goals to meet. And most psychopaths are highly skilled at masking these traits. Fortunately, such people are far fewer in number than procrastinators. Unfortunately, the psychopaths tend to gravitate toward (or rather push themselves into) positions of power, using power to enrich themselves, and using those riches to buy more power. This is the worst human trait. Until we fully understand the ladder of authority, and turn the hierarchy that's innate in mammalian societies into networks built upon consensus, we will have to live with psychopaths ruling over us.
Procrastinators won't push the nuclear button.
About procrastinators, I worry not.
This time last year:
Sunny Sunday meditations
To Dawidy Bankowe, Łady, Zamienie and back
Town planning and the Sublime Aesthetic
This time 13 years ago:
On the long road from Zero to One
This time 14 years ago:
Łódź Rising
Posts
2 comments:
And here is me thinking Tim Urban had the last word on Procrastination on Ted Talk! I myself was “late” to procrastination- probably learnt the word some time in the 90s and always confused it with prevarication, my point being that if you don’t know the name you don’t suffer from the affliction. And in my infantile days, it had never occurred to me to confess sloth to one father or another.
@ Anonymous -
Tim Urban is excellent on Procrastination. The Instant Gratification Monkey is not my problem - rather it is a whole troop of Distraction Monkeys whispering to me to look over there or think about this for a while or you forgot to do the online payment for rubbish collection, all of them nattering away at me incessantly.
Good point about procrastination/prevarication!
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