先延ばし癖を考えてみる

こんにちは。そばかすです。
1ヶ月程前に面白い英文読んだから自分に何回も読ませるために書きます。先延ばし癖（procrastination）についての話です。出典は三省堂のCROWN Lesson5からです。著作権とか知りません。
最後に日本語要約とお気持ち書いてます。
筆者のアーバン氏がTEDでも同じこと話してました。⤵

Inside the mind of a master procrastinator

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Tim Urban, one of the Internet's most popular writers, shares his thoughts on a variety of topics from everyday psychology to artificial intelligence on his blog, Wait But Why. Here he writes a post on his own bad habit一procrastination.

　I'm just a lifelong procrastinator who thinks about this topic all the time. I'm still in a total battle with my own habits, but I have made some progress in the last few years, and I'm drawing my thoughts from what's worked for me.
　To understand why procrastinators procrastinate so much, let's start by comparing the non-procrastinator's brain with the procrastinator's brain:

　Do you notice anything different? It seems the Rational Decision Maker in the procrastinator's brain is coexisting with a pet一the Instant Gratification Monkey. This would
be fine if only the Rational Decision-Maker knew how to own a monkey. But unfortunately, it wasn't a part of his training and he's left completely helpless as the monkey makes it
impossible for him to do his job.
　The fact is, the monkey is the last creature that should be in charge of decisions. He
thinks only about the present, trying to maximize the pleasure of the current moment. The monkey doesn't understand the Rational Decision Maker; the Rational Decision-Maker doesn't understand the monkey either. Why would we continue jogging, the monkey thinks, when we could stop, which would feel better? Why would we practice that instrument when it's not fun? He thinks humans are insane. In the monkey world, he eats when he is hungry, sleeps when he is tired, and doesn't do anything difficult.

　There's one thing that scares the monkey. It is called the Panic Monster. The monster is inactive most of the time, but he suddenly wakes up when a deadline gets too close, or when there's danger of public embarrassment or some other scary consequence. It freaks the
monkey out of the wheel and the Rational Decision Maker regains control to finish the task in the last minute. However, some procrastinators don't even respond to the monster. In the most desperate moments, they run up the tree with the monkey, entering a state of shutdown.

　Now, let's examine the diagram which represents the challenge at hand anytime you take on a task. The Critical Entrance is where you go when you start the task; the Dark Woods is where you're actually doing the work; and once you finish, you're rewarded by ending up in the Happy Playground一a place where you feel satisfaction because you got something done. You occasionally even enter a state of Flow, where you're so immersed in the task that you lose track of time. Sounds pretty simple, right?

　Unfortunately, procrastinators tend to miss out on both the Happy Playground and Flow. For example, consider a procrastinator who couldn't bring himself to get started. He spent hours in the Dark Playground, one of the monkey's favorite places, knowing the deadline was drawing near. He was only making his life harder by not starting. Eventually, the deadline got so close, the Panic Monster suddenly came roaring into the room, causing him to fly through the task to hit the deadline. After he finishes, he feels decent because he accomplished something, but he's not that pleased because he knows he rushed to do it. He also feels he wasted most of his day procrastinating. This lands him in Mixed Feelings Park.

　What should you do to keep this from happening? First, you must make it through the
Critical Entrance. This means stopping whatever you're doing when it's time to begin the task. You put away all distractions and get started. This is the hardest part, because this is
where the monkey puts up his fiercest resistance. He absolutely hates stopping something fun to start something hard. You need to be the strongest. If you can get started and force the monkey into the Dark Woods, you've broken a bit of his will.
　The Dark Woods is where you're working. It's not a fun place to be, and the monkey
wants nothing to do with it. To make things harder, the Dark Woods is surrounded by the
Dark Playground. And the monkey will try as hard as he can to leave the Dark Woods.

　If you can power through a bit of the Dark Woods, something funny happens. Making progress on a task produces positive feelings of accomplishment and raises your self-esteem. When you feel a jolt of self-satisfaction, the monkey finds a High Self-Esteem Banana in his path. It doesn't suppress his resistance entirely, but it goes a long way toward distracting him for a while; you'll find that the urge to procrastinate has diminished. If you continue along, something magical happens. Once you get two thirds of the way through a task, you start to feel great about things and suddenly, the end is in sight. This is the Tipping Point.

　The Tipping Point is important because it's not just you who can smell the Happy
Playground up ahead一the monkey can smell it too. Once you hit the Tipping Point, the monkey becomes more interested in getting to the Happy Playground than the Dark Playground. When this happens, you lose all impulse to procrastinate, and now both you and the monkey are speeding toward the finish. Before you know it, you're done, and you're in the Happy Playground.
　One last word of caution: what makes procrastination so hard to beat is that the Instant Gratification Monkey has a terribly short-term memory. Even if you succeed on Monday, when you begin a task on Tuesday, he has forgotten everything and will again resist entering the Dark Woods. And that's why persistence is such a critical component of success. Laying each brick yields an inner struggle. But in the end, your ability to lay brick after brick, day after day, is what lies at the core of a procrastinator's struggle to gain control over his world.
　So much of what makes people happy or unhappy一their level of satisfaction, their self-esteem, the regrets they carry with them一is severely affected by procrastination. So the time to start improving is now.

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日本語要約

　ライターのティム・アーバンは、ブログに自分の悪癖について以下のように書いている。「私は終生変わらぬ先延ばし屋だが、ここ数年で改善した。先延ばし屋がなぜ先延ばしをしてしまうのかを理解するために、先延ばし屋ではない人の脳と先延ばし屋の脳とを比較することから始めよう。」

　先延ばし屋の脳内では、「合理的な決断を下す者」が「即座の快感を求めるサル」と共存しており、後者のせいで前者は仕事ができない。サルは現在の快感を最大化するように努める。しかし、恐ろしい結果の危険性があると、「パニックの怪獣」が目を覚まし、「合理的な決断を下す者」は支配権を取り戻してどたん場で仕事を終える。しかし、深刻な状況でも仕事から逃げて、停止状態になる先延ばし屋もいる。

　先延ばし屋は、仕事を始めずに暗い遊び場で何時間も過ごし、急いで締め切りまでに仕事を終えても、あまり満足感を得られない。これを防ぐには、「重要な入口」をうまく通り抜けて仕事をし始める必要がある。サルが激しく抵抗するため、ここが最難関の部分だ。

　「転換点」に達すると、サルも「楽しい遊び場」に行くことに興味を持ち、先延ばしの衝動は失われ、あっという間に仕事を終えられる。しかし、サルが記憶している時間は非常に短いので、先延ばしをやめるのは簡単ではない。そのため、粘り強さが成功の決定的な要素になる。人々の幸不幸は、先延ばしによって深刻な影響を受ける。今こそ改善に取り組むべき時なのだ。

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お気持ち

人が先延ばしする仕組み、面白い。難しい文章だけど、わかるようになると、なるほどと面白い(2回目)。

私もよく先延ばしをする人のうちの1人だ。怠惰なめんどくさがりというひどい性格だから、そうなることは不可避であろう。これにより悪い結果がもたらされることも何度もあった。

となると先延ばしは悪いもので、世間でも悪いものにされていて、筆者も悪いものだとしているが、本当にそうなのだろうか。

どんな人間も多かれ少なかれ先延ばし屋だから、これではみんなが悪になってしまう。ただ、私の場合先延ばしをすることで、追い込まれてどうしようもないときに一時的に気分を良くしたり、新たな発想を生んだり、タスクの非重要性に気づいたりしてきたことも事実だ。

全部言い訳に聞こえるが、みんなが抱いているものならこのようなメリット(と呼べるかは怪しい)を上手く利用している人もいるのだろう。「即座の快感を求めるサル」を排除しようと努力するのではなく、上手く付き合うことを考えるようになれるといいな。

受験生生活、まだまだ工夫する余地がありそう。楽しみ。