a.nihil

procrastination

on procrastination

Staring at an empty screen when having to finish something has it's own poetic quality, making the passage of time a physical feeling to embrace and experience. Procrastination has to do with purpose. On an elemental level do any of the acts we choose to do have any greater purpose? If I choose not to make any music, the world wouldn't end and even if it did, what is the point? Being a cynic goes hand-in-hand with procrastination because the pointlessness of existence makes the human endeavor to survive and find meaning, meaningless.

Such a view does put oneself in the dregs of society, as the majoritarian view is to add value and accumulate as opposed to the rejection of participation and a free dissemination of choice. If this dispossessive nature were to be the norm of society then much of the pleasures of the modern world would not be accessible or even imaginable, as curiosity and being unable to sit still are essential human qualities. Procrastination signals a different problem, the repetitive performance of an act which one doesn't necessarily want to perform and where there's always a greater temptation than the work on hand. A shorter-term predictable high always trumps over the long-term unpredictable win, unless a mind is tricked or trained. Our lives are also filled with endless distractions that play whack-a-mole with our attention spans, with each direction our senses take having a million other possibilities to elevate a moment.

A salve to these situations could be elementary. In knowing that the cynic has an eventual victory and yet choosing to fit in and fake a purpose as we go forward. The temptations with their endless rewards have always existed but if we look at them close, have any of our temptations have any real rewards than the ones on offer from the tasks that we're actively procrastinating from? Does this essay serve any better purpose than the tasks it keeps me away from? This is as much a question to you dear reader, as it is to me.

#procrastination #boredom #philosophy