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Incremental Consistency
Aug. 12th, 2022 08:44 pmIt is a simple fact that I usually have several irons in the fire. The past few days I've been feeling a little out of sorts with various projects staring at me, accusingly, of being incomplete. But taking stock, I realised that I had been chipping away: I've made a solid start on my second assignment for developmental psychology, which isn't due for a month, on the juicy topic of defining when a person becomes an adult (biologists, neurologists, lawyers, politicians, and individuals can have a grand fight over that one!). As an RPG advocate I've been working my way through the annual RPGaDay questionnaire . I'm doing a substantial revision of my training workshop on High Performance and Parallel Python (there is much I dislike about Python; mainly on efficiency grounds). In addition, I'm writing an article for the Isocracy Network. All of this plus my usual work tasks (three training workshops next week), another diamond league place pending in Duolingo, and more.
The realisation is that I engage in the art of productive procastination. If my brain isn't in the space to do a task that I want or need to do, I pick another task that I want or need to do. I am sure that everyone does this to an extent, but the real skill is recognising when one is not being productive in the task they are currently working on and then switching to a very different task that their brain is currently much more interested in. Of course, this won't work when deadlines are looming and hyper-focus is required, but properly conducted deadlines won't loom; one will have tasks near completion well before the deadline. The point is, to be productive in different activities that one considers requisite. Incremental action on the desired task with recognised deadlines result in a great deal of productive output, rather than struggling all day on something that a person just doesn't feel up to.
This relates to a comment that a friend made recently; they described one of my virtues as "consistency", a term which I quite warmed to. This doesn't mean, of course, that one doesn't change their tastes or interests, but that the change itself is incremental. It is something that applies across normative and aesthetic dimensions. My politics have sat in a broad libertarian-socialist ideology since my early teenage years. I try my utmost to keep commitments and affective orientations, respect the rights of others (especially when they conflict with my own opinions), and so forth. My aesthetic interests and activities have not changed dramatically over the decades. But it was only the past few days that I really considered this trait in terms of productivity and achievement. It is just a preliminary observation at this point, but inconsistent people tend to (a) want immediate gratification and (b) take up projects with over-enthusiasm and then abandon them, and (c) don't actually achieve a great deal. Perhaps there's a lot more to be said for incremental consistency than just a descriptive. It may actually be a predictor of achievement.
The realisation is that I engage in the art of productive procastination. If my brain isn't in the space to do a task that I want or need to do, I pick another task that I want or need to do. I am sure that everyone does this to an extent, but the real skill is recognising when one is not being productive in the task they are currently working on and then switching to a very different task that their brain is currently much more interested in. Of course, this won't work when deadlines are looming and hyper-focus is required, but properly conducted deadlines won't loom; one will have tasks near completion well before the deadline. The point is, to be productive in different activities that one considers requisite. Incremental action on the desired task with recognised deadlines result in a great deal of productive output, rather than struggling all day on something that a person just doesn't feel up to.
This relates to a comment that a friend made recently; they described one of my virtues as "consistency", a term which I quite warmed to. This doesn't mean, of course, that one doesn't change their tastes or interests, but that the change itself is incremental. It is something that applies across normative and aesthetic dimensions. My politics have sat in a broad libertarian-socialist ideology since my early teenage years. I try my utmost to keep commitments and affective orientations, respect the rights of others (especially when they conflict with my own opinions), and so forth. My aesthetic interests and activities have not changed dramatically over the decades. But it was only the past few days that I really considered this trait in terms of productivity and achievement. It is just a preliminary observation at this point, but inconsistent people tend to (a) want immediate gratification and (b) take up projects with over-enthusiasm and then abandon them, and (c) don't actually achieve a great deal. Perhaps there's a lot more to be said for incremental consistency than just a descriptive. It may actually be a predictor of achievement.
