[minikites]

I agree with you. I've been listening to Merlin Mann's podcast Back To Work and he talks a lot about things like this and things like "distraction-free writing environments". His philosophy (that I tend to agree with) is that if these tools work for you - great. But you might be solving the wrong problem. Procrastination might be your brain telling you something about the task you're putting off doing.

http://www.43folders.com/2010/02/05/first-care

[yoasif_]

I expected something interesting or insightful from your link, but it just completely seems to sidestep the idea that procrastination exists.

The Wikipedia definition is "act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of lower priority, or doing something from which one derives enjoyment, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time".

This clearly exists, and completely disavowing it with some (semi)feel good idea about how you aren't caring enough, implicitly linking it to low willpower is way too simplistic - and totally not insightful.

My own experience has been that even when I know that the task needs to get done, even when it is enjoyable, it can be hard to get started.

Once started, everything flows as you might expect, as the author says "How many things do I need to shed ... with extreme prejudice in order to singlemindedly focus on this one thing that I love?"

The post also neatly sidesteps the idea that even if you do not care, you may need to get things done.

The attitude probably appeals to some libertarian philosophy/Protestant work ethic, but even those people will freely admit that doing beats wanting to do something -- it's the doing that counts.

If people cannot get themselves to do something, even if they want and care to do it, telling people to care more isn't very helpful, especially when pooh-poohing the very things that work for some people to do what they want to do!

"If that sounds fancy and oversimplified, then you "care" about too many things. Period."

What if you really do not "care" about the things that you are doing while procrastinating? What if you are simply avoiding the anxiety of starting to do what you care about?

There are serious psychological questions here, and this blog post just ignores them all.

[minikites]

Part of it might be a confusion of terms. I would argue that if you really wanted to do something you'd be doing it or it would already be done (by definition of the word "want"). Same with "care". The very first episode of the podcast I listened to was Merlin and his co-host discussing the word "priority". He was giving a talk at a company and someone in the crowd claimed to have "27 high-priority items" which Merlin thought was completely insane. He says you can tell something is a priority in one of two ways: you're doing it or it's done. Calling something a priority when it's not obscures the real problem. I think it's the same here. Calling something a thing you care about but never do doesn't solve anything.

I wrote down Merlin's definition of procrastination: procrastination is what happens when you temporarily forget who you are, what you should pay attention to, and what your options are for doing something about it.

Do you need an alarm to remind yourself to play video games? Do you need a "distraction-free gaming environment"?

[yoasif_]

>Do you need an alarm to remind yourself to play video games? Do you need a "distraction-free gaming environment"?

I rarely play video games, so that isn't the greatest example for me.

I'll present an analogy, though.

One of the long standing examples given of whether knowledge actually applies to actions is smoking. I think we all know that smoking can cause cancer, reduces lifespan, and causes various diseases.

Except that you can invariably see doctors smoking outside of hospitals, even oncologists!

Just saying that outcomes are the only thing that matters to make an evaluation of whether you care about something, or consider something a priority doesn't explain why we can have cognitive dissonance about them.

Your (and the author's) assertions are almost laughably behaviorist, completely neglecting any idea that people have minds and you are effectively arguing that people are reducible solely to action-machines.

We know better than that, unless you really think that the mind has no meaning, or that we are somehow rational machines - in which case, why the obsession with "caring" (which is clearly more emotional than rational)?

Basically, if the only way we can judge that we "care" about something is exhibiting behaviors that show we care, using these tools will exhibit that same behavior -- in which case, what does caring have to do with it?

Really, there is even more wrong with this post than I thought at first blush, and further analysis seems to reveal even more flaws with the thinking.