Psychologist explains where the habit of putting things off "for Monday" comes from and how to overcome it

Putting things off until Monday is a common phenomenon in the world. It turns out that our ancestors have been following this "concept" for centuries, but it was slightly modified. The human brain is designed to develop, so it's easy to find an ideal for yourself and strive for it as long as you have a sense of purpose and motivation.

In fact, it is not difficult to overcome this type of procrastination: it is important that plans and desires are not too far from real events. Ukrainian psychologist Nariman Darvishov spoke about the phenomenon and what pleasure has to do with it in an interview with Emma Antoniuk on No One Will Watch This.

According to the psychologist, first of all, you need to understand whether it is your own desire or imposed by society and has nothing to do with the person. Most of the time, advertising influences the creation of one's own dreams. It is advertising that "dictates" the trends of an ideal life.

"The key question is whether it is my desire or a very good desire. But it has nothing to do with me. We all have a tendency to actualize, to develop. We all have this driver inside us, but the problem is that we also have problems with self-esteem. This is when we are not satisfied with the "real me", nothing can be done about it, and there is an "ideal me", which is mostly a beautiful advertising image: one day, on Monday, I wake up, my bedroom is pleasantly lit, "I" is no longer quite "I", "I" is more beautiful, more happy. And I really want to get into this ideal image," Nariman explained.

It is the distance between desire and real life that plays a crucial role. If it is too great, there is a high risk of postponing the matter "until Monday" or abandoning it altogether. That's why the psychologist advises going to your goal step by step.

"It's good when the ideal self is a few steps ahead of the real self. Then we know where to go, we can trust what we want. If a person does not accept himself or herself very much, he or she also does not trust his or her desires, his or her motivation. Of course, the more dissatisfied we are with ourselves, the more we need this rocket to take off from the planet "I am real" and get to "I am ideal," the psychologist says.

Moreover, the biggest driver for achieving a goal is the pleasure of the process. After all, even if you have the strength to start working, you can easily give up after making a few mistakes. According to the psychologist, if you associate work with some kind of difficult rite of passage that has to prove your courage and responsibility, every mistake will bring despair and abandonment of the goal. The meaning of things is lost.

"If there is no point, relatively speaking, if there is no order from above, then we will do nothing. We will be distracted, we will procrastinate, we will look out the window. Meaning is literally an explanation to the brain why it should do this activity and not do another," Nariman said.

It turns out that the tendency to procrastinate "until Monday" has existed for centuries, but it was somewhat different. Usually, cultural rituals had the same concept as postponed plans.

"We are very attached to symbols. Anthropologists have studied people in different cultures, on different continents, before the rite of passage. There was an anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep who described that the rite of passage is characteristic of every culture, and every culture is characterized by a moment of separation from the old life, a moment of transition when nothing new has appeared yet but the old is no longer relevant, and a moment of reintegration into something new. This is how we seem to develop. The psyche of people, which is tied to symbols, requires this cycle of transitional stages," the psychologist explained.

Nariman gave the example of spending the night in the forest, embroidering towels, and hunting animals, which is typical of various cultures where this stage of "rebirth" can be traced. That is probably why people today think "from now on I will be different" to fulfill their desires.

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