From our experience with Paamonim, almost every family has a drawer in some corner that is the “drawer of urgent documents”. What are urgent documents – you ask yourself? Well, not what you thought. That is, it is likely that they also require urgent treatment but that is not the reason for their name. This is the drawer into which all the paperwork that needs to be handled is pushed and secretly we hope that if we push it far enough and ignore it long enough, some hidden force will make it disappear and we won’t really have to fill out forms, pay bills, and coordinate taxes.
In preparation for last month’s recommendation, I decided to do an exercise and postpone writing until next month, so that instead of the stressful writing of a moment – before the deadline – I will finally have a whole month to write leisurely and polish the recommendation to my satisfaction. I can imagine the ironic smile on your face, of course I found myself writing these lines in exactly the same situation, on the eve of the deadline, where did a month go?. As we all know, the night before the exam or project submission is the longest night of the year. And “after the holidays” is synonymous with “never” — so what’s actually going on here? Why is procrastination so common in our lives?
Dr. Pirez Steele has dedicated his life to answering this question, and he treats procrastination with great compassion and guilt-free. In fact, it proves that procrastination is an inevitable product of our brain structure. The earlier areas of the brain – those shared by us and other animals – are designed to meet immediate needs and are devoid of any future planning ability. Thus, foods high in sugar and fats that provide an immediate powerful energy boost, taking advantage of every opportunity to produce offspring, neglecting sneakers in favor of warm cuddling at home, all serve the now and lack the planning dimension. Think, for example, of your pet cat stealing food that is not his own despite his expected stomachache, or howling in complete surprise outside the door slammed behind him. In contrast, the more advanced areas of the brain, especially the frontal cortex, are responsible for integrating thinking and planning for the future, and are able to ignore immediate temptation for greater benefit in the future. But these areas get tired quickly, are subject to distractions and, in general, do not serve as the best cop in the world.
The inherent weakness of the human brain is compounded by the myriad temptations that the modern world offers us to escape future benefits. Huge budgets dedicated to all
All of them make us impulsively buy without careful planning, the endless possibilities of buzzing on TV or the Internet, and of course above all Facebook whose spread has macroeconomic effects on entire countries and societies. But don’t worry, the book doesn’t stop at describing the origins of procrastination, most of the book is devoted
An uncompromising attack on procrastination factors as they emerge from more than 411 studies and 20,000 subjects. While each of us has a different mix of procrastination factors, we are all the same set of traits. Steele lists techniques for each feature that have proven effective for improvement, and even attaches a list of “action points,” easy-to-perform tasks that translate the technique into simple actions. This is first and foremost a working book, and if you have the desire to improve or intend to help others in this difficult task, the book will be a great companion for you.
Happy reading!
