Ismail P's Blog

This is the official fourth issue of The Smile Newsletter

On Procrastination; An essay from my book

“You are where you are right now because of the actions you've taken, or maybe, the inaction you've taken.”
- Steve Maraboli -

I was closely acquainted with a man who slacked off when getting his work done. If it were 9:04, he’d say he’ll work at 9:10. Why? 9:04 is such a very peculiar time to begin working. And then he’d skimp on this very proposition by way of his usual procrastination. When he comes to the conscious state of the present and realizes he must begin his work, he starts by checking the time. 9:47? Why such an odd time 9:47 is! 10:00 is a good, round, and even time to start; let me begin then, he exclaims. And so the cycle repeats itself as he eventually says he will do it the next day, but that never comes. He might even say that he’ll begin after one more video, one more episode, or 15 more minutes of rest; soon enough, he’s fatigued into a deep slumber, having never truly rested.

Does that sound familiar to you? Inaction in all its artifice begins with delay. Seconds turn into minutes, which soon become hours, and before long, the opportunity for action has passed. Delay is the expiry date of opportunity. Just like milk spoils, opportunity disappears, so do not let your fruit over-ripen.

A prominent phenomenon that appears in decision-making is defensive avoidance. This occurs when maintaining a status quo contains risks, but alternative and better decisions are seemingly uncomfortable. Defensive avoidance manifests itself through a variety of different techniques: evasive, in which the decision maker avoids the decision entirely; buck passing, wherein responsibility for the decision is passed on to another; and bolstering, in which reasons to support a preferred course of action is sought in a biased manner. 1

When deciding whether to do something or not, people tend to recognize already the choice they will make, defending this decision by avoiding dissonant and conflicting information. The decision maker will often ignore a potential decision, pass on the responsibility of avoiding that decision, and support an alternative decision which he has already silently supported. The act of defensively avoiding decisions is highly associated with the status quo and omission bias. Humans tend to avoid disturbing the flow of their ordinary and systematically designed lives. A good explanation of the status-quo bias is “ that changing the status quo requires an act while keeping the status quo requires only an omission, a failure to act.” 2 The failure to change one’s inferior ways seems to be the norm today; people seem to live with the motto “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it” and continue to perpetuate a degrading status quo. The precipitating quality of life and happiness among young adults today seems to sprout from a sort of acceptance that the surefire negative consequences of taking no action are better than the potential negative consequences of changing for the better.

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A prime illustration of defensive avoidance is observed through 6 techniques (I will speak about 5), discerned by Janis, I. and Maan, L. in their book Decision making: a psychological analysis of conflict, choice, and commitment. The decision maker will commonly:

● Exaggerate the benefits.

● Minimize the consequences.

● Deny aversive feelings.

● Postpone the delivery of his commitment.

● Minimize personal responsibility. 3

To analyze the use of these tactics, I will illustrate the thought process of someone deciding to go or not go to the gym. The person in question does not want to go to the gym, so he’ll begin a pointless contemplation. He might begin by saying I don’t have the time for such a pointless endeavour and might as well focus on my career, where a real benefit is seen. It’s not like I’m being left behind in any way; more than 80% of the world’s adolescent population is insufficiently physically active. He continues. Besides, it’s not like I need to exercise, I’m only 200 lbs, and that’s the average weight of today’s American. If, by some stroke of luck, he manages to buy a gym membership, he will enthusiastically proclaim, I’ll begin as soon as my schedule frees up, or I’ll go tomorrow. ‘Tomorrow’ sadly does not come, and he passes the responsibility for his lack of commitment onto someone else or something else. The weather does not look so good, and besides, my friend wanted to catch up later today. I’ll go another time. The decision maker never intended to go to the gym, maybe a tiny seed of desire to go was planted, but never meeting the sun and never being watered, it inevitably withered. The 5 tactics to escape taking action were suggested in this short monologue—the artifice of dodging decisions that can qualitatively change one’s life for the better is so insidious and has disguised itself as reasonable. As such, how can one even complain and propose the idea that he is actively running away from decisions and creating palisades that not only prevent him from reforming in the present but fortify his bias and reasons to chase an inferior pursuit for years to come? Delaying work and, similarly, skimping on work leads to a rabbit hole of persistent stagnation; delay is a compounding curse.; In his book, The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy writes, “WAKE UP and realize that the habits you indulge in could be compounding your life into a repeated disaster.”

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedCreate urgencyText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedTake ownershipText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedBurn the shipText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedRun past the sea

You are your own beast of burden, captain of the vessel you sail on. Wade through a sea of your choice, with urgency from your own clock, and as you set foot on terra firma, put to flame your carrier and never look back. To really take action, you need to take risks. You need to move forward with no fail safes to fall back onto. That’s where real progress is made. Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, in his conquest of the Aztec Empire, reportedly ordered his men to “Burn the Boats.” Cortés and his army were to battle a foe whose numbers greatly exceeded his own. As the order was delivered, his men also received his message, “We win, or we die trying.” Burning the ship doesn’t mean you won’t have any opportunity for a comeback; it just means you have a whole lot more on the line. Burn your ship. You don’t require it.

You need to acknowledge responsibility for your decisions and make decisions when decisions are required. Always. I envy the man [his patience] who lies in wait for an assumed perfect opportunity, for it seems his patience is immortal. There is a time and place for everything; exempted from this is opportunity, for it is everywhere.

Often, one will procrastinate their decisions only because they think they can. Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands in an effort to cover the time allotted for its completion.” In his book, The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months, Brian P. Moran writes:

We mistakenly believe that there is a lot of time left in the year, and we act accordingly. We lack a sense of urgency, not realizing that every week is important, every day is important, every moment is important. Ultimately, effective execution happens daily and weekly! 4

Would you begin working immediately if you were given three months to complete a school assignment that would take, at most, a couple of hours to complete? Probably not. This act of delaying and procrastinating extends beyond academia; are you perhaps delaying the dishes, laundry, cleaning your room, buying the groceries, or sending an email or text? If I could leave you with one tip that would drastically improve your productivity and, by extension, your life, it would be: “JUST GO AND DO IT,” there is a very high probability that there exists a few problems in your life that you could fix in 5 minutes or less. Set a 5-minute timer, get up, and solve one problem - no, seriously, go and do it. If you think you’re up for the challenge, create a list of problems or nuisances you could eliminate in less than 5 minutes each, and GO get rid of them. Need to clean up your room? 5-minute timer. Need to throw out the garbage? 5-minute timer. The point of this exercise is not for you to rush about in life, but for you to understand that most of the actions you procrastinate could be completed relatively quickly. It’s OK to take an extra minute or two; even an extra hour is fine. The focal point of this activity is to build momentum and continuity that leads you to a calm serenity - free from the stress and worry of having work piled up. Productivity isn’t how long you spend on your goals. It’s about whether or not you even complete them. After that, we can start worrying about speed.

This was an essay from my book. Due to requests from readers for some samples I have posted this. Unfortunately, this will probably be the last free sample as providing excerpts for free inconveniences one who goes out of their way to purchase it. Again you can find my book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5BX94J1/

1

Ritov, I., & Baron, J. (1992). Status-quo and omission biases. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00208786

2

Janis, I. L., & Mann, L. (1979). Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice, and Commitment (8TH ed.). Free Press.

3

Neal, D. T., Wood, W., & Quinn, J. M. (2006). Habits—A Repeat Performance. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15(4), 198–202. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2006.00435.x

4

Moran, Brian. The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks Than Others Do in 12 Months. 1st ed., wILEY, 2013.

Photo by Kevin Andre on Unsplash

This is the official third issue of The Smile Newsletter

On Ego and The Exploitation of Achievement

“I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible… except by getting off his back.”
- Leo Tolstoy -

The distress of the modern man is uniquely concerning. The modern human has, what is a byproduct of our achievement society, an insatiable, yet perpetually exhausted ego. The modern man considers himself  above his peers, above his morals, yet tragically, below himself. Perhaps a consequence of society, he persists in a competition he can not see himself triumphing. 

He can not possibly triumph over his incorporeal enemy, he can not fly past what is ahead of him with his meager bit of fuel—his past potential which dictates his future accomplishments. He runs in an erroneous circle, slowly, and repeatedly outlining and carving himself out of this dimension—his ego falls into a chasm of unknown depth. Byung-Chul Han, in his The Burnout Society writes: 

Depression—which often culminates in burnout—follows from overexcited, overdriven, excessive self-reference that has assumed destructive traits. The exhausted, depressive achievement-subject grinds itself down, so to speak. It is tired, exhausted by itself, and at war with itself. Entirely incapable of stepping outward, of standing outside itself, of relying on the Other, on the world, it locks its jaws on itself; paradoxically, this leads the self to hollow and empty out. It wears out in a rat race it runs against itself (Han 42).

The cook who keeps eating his own food—and similarly the diner of such produce—may eventually find it tasteless. To satisfy his taste buds, he must consume a new cuisine. He must take a break from his familiar sustenance. He must distance himself from his own depression. He must travel outward from himself and become something else, an other. 

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The modern man is miserable in that what he chases, he similarly allows to leave his grasp. As a result of pursuing superiority over his peers, he dictates himself to one great work. This work becomes the core of his every other endeavor. He exploits it. He squeezes whatever juice he might be fortunate enough to extract out of it. And then, at once, when his fuel combusts, he rests upon the burning fumes he so much so desired to triumph. The modern man does not endeavor to uplift himself. No, the modern man seeks asylum from himself. He is wary of himself. He is tired, sick, and exhausted. Richard Sennett writes:

As a character disorder, narcissism is the very opposite of strong self-love. Self-absorption does not produce gratification, it produces injury to the self; erasing the line between self and other means that nothing new, nothing “other,” ever enters the self; it is devoured and transformed until one thinks one can see oneself in the other—and then it becomes meaningless. . . . The narcissist is not hungry for experiences, he is hungry for Experience. Looking always for an expression or reflection of [oneself]. . . . one drowns in the self (Sennett 324).

He has basked in his own glory for such an extent to which his own body deprives himself of  his rightful hydration. He has been labored so unjustly by himself, that his own body, he can not consider even his. Drawing from Kafka’s tale Prometheus, Byung-Chul Han writes, “The eagle that consumes an ever-regrowing liver can be interpreted as the subject’s alter ego. Viewed in this way, the relation between Prometheus and the eagle represents a relation of self-exploitation. Pain of the liver, an organ that cannot actually experience pain, is said to be tiredness. Prometheus, the subject of self-exploitation, has been seized by overwhelming fatigue” (Han 35).

The modern man must be open to other opinions. He must not be so one-dimensional as to shade himself from the sun with the non-existent shelter the tree he just planted might provide. If he seeks cover, he must attend himself to the trees planted before him. He must not labor himself for today, but for tomorrow. For, perhaps, a century later, a young man like him might come visit in hopes of finding coolness. He must not shelter his own ego.

Photo by mariel reiser on Unsplash

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This is the official second issue of The Smile Newsletter

On The Significance of Self-reflection

“How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.”
-  Marcus Aurelius -

There is this saying going around, it goes something like this: Look at the people around you, the people you don’t want to be like and don’t do what they do. I think it’s a great piece of advice; you would not want to go up to a prisoner, ask him how and why he is incarcerated, and then, voluntarily, follow in his footsteps.  This prisoner example isn’t the best and doesn’t universally encompass this idea, but I hope the point I’m trying to make has reached you. There are people whom you should stray far from and never seek to imitate.  

What I don’t like about this particular piece of advice is that it produces in you sentiments of foreignness; an estrangement from the problems possibly corroding and pervading your very being. This act of considering yourself above problems is both arrogant and ignorant. When we do this, we associate the problems with someone else and not with ourselves. We say, ‘I don't want to be like him,’ when we have the same problems as him. It’s likened to a twin calling his or her twin ugly (whilst thinking himself handsome) when the two can not be told apart from one another. In pursuit of finding examples of wasted lives—people we seek never to replicate—we forget to look in the mirror.

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So what can we do? Must we only look up and chase those above us? Well, there is no harm in doing that, but I believe one must first stare into himself. I write in my book  A Modern Problem: A Collection of Poetry and Essays :

When you look inward, you begin to appreciate your faults; what reflects therein is the alterity that is a reality. There, one can not lie, culpability is recognized, and excuses are not demanded; why must one lie to the one aware of the truth?

In self-reflection, one becomes intimate with his inferior self—that which he had previously divorced and proclaimed betrothed to that which he does not associate i.e. that which he buried within himself and thought he was above.

Now you could do one of three things whenever you are dissatisfied with life: Run away from your problems and strive to leave them in the dust; bury your problems and consider them someone else's; or destroy your problems, knowing that they will otherwise forever exist.

“We feel the thing we ought to be beating beneath the thing we are.” writes Phillips Brooks. It is in you, the power to be great, but it is buried under the chicanery of posing as great. Opaque is his reality, who blurs his present situation with ideas of a grandiose future.

Photo by Tony Detroit on Unsplash

Thank you for reading Smile Newsletter. I’d appreciate it if you could do me a small favour and share this with just one friend (If you think it could help anyone in any way). Thanks again!

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This is the official first issue of The Smile Newsletter

On Escaping The Status Quo

“Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself, if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying, and human existence is indistinguishable from an absurd vegetation.”
—Simone de Beauvoir

The status quo is its own realm. It is a quagmire composed of an infinitely perpetuating, yet silent desperation. It is a world of mediocrity: populated by the mediocre, for the mediocre, to fashion more mediocre. Residing there costs one their very future, a currency of infinite possibility. 

The status quo is a plain of no growth. Its soil is so infertile that any seed planted there remains as such—merely a seed. It can never hope to flourish.

What I have come to understand, or more precisely, what I have observed regarding the status quo is that it does not feel dangerous. It feels good, safe, secure. How can it not, when the majority of our population reside there? 

The status quo is the elephant in the room. It is a slow, potent poison that slowly trickles and wears you down. You seek refuge in it, not from it. It is salvation to some—a permanent resting place—who have embarked on the long journey of transcending just above his fellow man. Those who live beneath this standard seek to elevate towards this mediocrity, and upon accomplishing such, stop. What then occurs? Well, what do you get when every human is superman? You’re merely left with man.  The lump of men who reside there, often come from below—stopping their advance when witnessing the mass of men who populate this realm. And what of those who seek to further elevate? In the words of José Ortega y Gasset: “The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated.”

A city that lies atop the ocean is bound to sink. What else could possibly occur to a dreaming man who, in an environment populated by the mediocre, seeks to escape it? Eric Hoffer writes, “It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.” Men who seek to realize their ever-infinite potential are envied, consequently, they face the loneliness brought about by the stigmatization of the average man who seeks to see the world burn: If I can not have it, I will destroy it. What can a man do to save himself from this cancer that pervades his very being?

I write in my book A Modern Problem: A Collection of Poetry and Essays, “The precipitating quality of life and happiness among young adults today seems to sprout from a sort of acceptance that the surefire negative consequences of taking no action are better than the potential negative consequences of changing for the better.” I have observed, in my own life, at times, the subconscious thought that the cure for all my problems is more costly than the consequences of my ailment and so, in my comfort, I do not take the necessary measures to protect myself from the pervasive and sickening entity that the status quo is. It is a societal imperative to recognize that merely sustaining one’s way of life invariably leads to a degradation in its quality.

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You ultimately have 2 choices: walk down that same road you’ve been gliding through all your life or trudge through the weed-ridden paths that only a few have seen the end of. In the words of Robert Frost:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedTwo roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stoodAnd looked down one as far as I couldTo where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fair,And having perhaps the better claim,Because it was grassy and wanted wear;Though as for that the passing thereHad worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally layIn leaves no step had trodden black.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sighSomewhere ages and ages hence:Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.— The Road Not Taken Photo by Austin Chan on UnsplashText within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Thank you for reading Smile Newsletter. I’d appreciate it if you could do me a small favour and share this with just one friend (If you think it could help anyone in any way). Thanks again!

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Find my book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Problem...