Procrastination vs Decisiveness in the Social Imagination...

 

    Psychology Today says that everyone puts things off sometimes, but procrastinators chronically avoid difficult tasks and may deliberately look for distractions. Procrastination tends to reflect a person’s struggles with self-control. For habitual procrastinators, who represent approximately 20 percent of the population, "I don't feel like it" comes to take precedence over their goals or responsibilities, and can set them on a downward spiral of negative emotions that further deter future effort.

    Procrastination also involves a degree of self-deception: At some level, procrastinators are aware of their actions and the consequences, but changing their habits requires even greater effort than completing the task in front of them... [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/procrastination]. 

What do I say? Well, I know as you do that there are four main types of avoidance archetypes, or procrastinators: the performer, the self-deprecator, the overbooker, and the novelty seeker. Interesting is that all four types are intertwined. The performer is an actor, the self-deprecator is one who disapproves of their acting abilities and the overbooker misjudges the crowd/audience and the novelty seeker is one who makes it look like a new act. 

One has to ask is this a problem for the social imagination and why? Yes, it is but it could be strategically useful as it can appear to give way for the decisive personality type in the social imagination. Someone has to be the scale tipper.  Who is the decisiveness type? 

That should be obvious... the decisiveness type is the first responder. The one who goes in headfirst but not headlong... Decisiveness means coming to a firm conclusion quickly and effectively. As simple as that definition is, there is immense power in good decisions. The social imagination needs both and of course there are times when one or the other seems to be outnumbered and out of this come social pitfalls... when things go awry for all people/society... for all of the social imagination.

What's funny about that even when things either appear to or actually go wrong is that those people who are procrastinators feel left out of the decision making. Whether or not they really are does not matter. What matters is that they feel left out. 

Moreover, they are more likely to declare so and so is moving too fast, cheating and or creating a hustle in order to take advantage of them or the situation. Also, they all too often demand that what happened wasn't fair, that there should be more time, or a recount of time and for sure... someone is to blame.  

Politically speaking, I have seen these types on either side of the party fences. What I observe more often is that they, looking at the characteristics of the procrastinator, like to virtual signal... simply because at the end of the day they never had anything to do or say  with the decision (s) made but want to appear as though they did. They like to glam onto others, decision makers, thereby making themselves look good... look like a decision maker when they are anything but. 

The decision maker needs no one to prod or push them but they do need to access information to make decisive decisions. That doesn't mean that all their decisions are good or right. That depends on the information sources they use. We can suppose the same about a procrastinator who eventually makes a decision... it may not be good or right. In fact, they may have missed the chance to make a really good or right choice/ decision because they PROCRASTINATED. 

Procrastinators and decisive decision makers can live together in the social imagination... after all, its about social interaction, agreement reality and its agreed upon outcomes that either sustain a group or cause it to free fall. Me personally, I am decisive. And, I am willing to accept the consequences and even act on those decisively. 

This makes me conservative. Which in principal means that I prefer to have the freedom to make choices to be decisive whereas the other kinds of people, procrastinators like to have all the time in the world and they more easily will hand over their power to someone else if they are led to believe its going to be a good decision for them in the end. Ironically, they never wonder what 'end' that means.

Now, the procrastinator does have a defense... they say it turned out in the end. How would they know? If anything, they just accept the end for what it is. As, for the decisive decision maker they think they are the ones who made it all happen and likely they did. The procrastinator's best defense is that waiting was for the best... but again, how would they know as they weren't motivated from the get go.