Comment on the master procrastinator*

I hope you enjoyed the talk and blog post on the master procrastinator.  Tim Urban brilliantly explains how the brain of a procrastinator works, but we are NOT all procrastinators. Actually, the so-called rational decision-maker may not even exist. If you are not a procrastinator, you may be an anxiety master, or still something else!

This is how the brain of an anxiety master would work:

In the brain of an anxiety master, it is the panic monster (instead of the monkey) who has taken the wheel.  The master procrastinator is all about easy and fun and instant gratification. That’s great except for the fact that they cannot get things done and underachievement leads ultimately to lack of satisfaction. The anxiety master spends a lot of time in hard work, solving problems that should not exist in the first place while the monkey is pushed to hide on a tree. A anxiety master is not always efficient, but may eventually achieve something in life. But, even if anxiety masters can actually achieve a lot, what is the point of success if they do not know how to enjoy life?

Brief, some need to learn to put limits to the self-gratification monkey (with deadlines, agendas, etc.) while others may need just to relax, and take some time to have fun with the instant gratification monkey wherever she/he is hidden. What about your brain?

*this is part of an entry of my teacher journal that I shared with my students

Disappointment. That’s the difficult emotion that I had to confront during the first meeting of the course ‘Emotions in Policy-making’ in spring semester 2017 . Most teachers (or so I imagine) dream of having a class full with students enthusiastic about the topic being taught. When both instructor and students are enjoying the class, it is so easy to have good quality teaching!

In the first meeting of this course, many students were unfortunately not very enthusiastic.

I call disappointment a ‘difficult emotion’ because it is not pleasant to feel, but who knows, it may play a relevant function (or so neuroscientists would say). Is this so? I decided to explore disappointment to see what it is. After a quick google search I learnt that disappointment can led to some automatic reactions such as withdrawal and blaming.

Maybe there is here a possible interesting emotional pattern between teachers and students. If students come to a specific class a bit disappointed (for example because they are obliged to learn a topic they do not really like or care about) and the instructor is also disappointed because students are not very enthusiastic and do not to participate very much, this can lead to a vicious emotional pattern in which both students and instructors withdraw (or even worst, blame each other) which may lead to a boring  and low quality class.

Knowing this possibility makes me less likely to withdraw myself or become less invested in my courses because I understand the pattern. I also found some interesting information about the positive side of disappointment. Looks like a disappointed person is someone that cares and is passionate about what she is doing. Sounds a bit cheesy but this made me feel a bit less disappointed somehow. About the time I was writing this, I also read the news of this actor guy that was acting for an empty theatre and I thought, well, that’s maybe the best reaction (with passion and courage!).

If I do not enter in a negative emotional pattern, a few things can happen:

With the help of students that may be more enthusiastic about the course we might be able to transform the general meetings making them more interesting, dynamic and fun.

If there is little interest in participating actively, I will have to think about a way to organize the meetings in which there is not much participation and it is still fun. That’s quite challenging!    In the first meeting I could use a few videos about important topics such as emotions and the scientific method. I will try to find out what to do next!

More generally, disappointment in a teaching context seems to come from a gap between what teaching and learning should be (from an ideal perspective) and what actually is. While high expectations often led to disappointment, they may also have a positive side. An instructor with very low standards would not be disappointed but there would be little room for improvement and change.    Teaching and learning in a non-ideal environment may to be fun at first, but if things turn well in the end, who knows? it may be far more satisfying.

Let’s give it a try!

*This teacher journal entry was written to show my students how talking about emotions could be useful in their learning process