Work, Fun, Procrastination

I am lucky to have fulfilling work to make my energy for living, also known as money.

Particularly being a seven on the Enneagram, means I really just want to have fun.  http://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/02/just-stranger-in-strange-land-part-4.html

I resist doing the twice monthly finances, reconciling checking, paying the bills.  In fact, that is why I am writing right now. 

I procrastinate with anything that looks like work, doing the yearly taxes, doing daily or weekly chores.  When it seems like work, which I define as an activity that is dull, or boring, everything else seems like more fun.

Do you notice how clean your apartment or house can get when you are avoiding some other chore?

How do we turn this around?

How do we motivate ourselves for the little chores?  How do we motivate ourselves for the bigger chores?

How do we put off small little pleasures, for the larger pleasures that might come from investing our time, energy, or money, for a distant future self?

How do we motivate ourselves to study and go to school?  Perhaps, to get a degree so we might be able to earn more money energy, or even more importantly, to have more fulfilling work?

Sometimes we do this from the point of view of fear.  Sometimes we do this for the love of our future selves.  Sometimes for both fear and love of our future selves. 

I went from a PhD program to medical school in part because I wanted to make sure I could pay for my potential kids to go to college, that was fear.  I also went to medical school because I needed “more input” (see the movie “Short Circuit”).  I was always a reader of books, with an insatiable appetite for knowledge.  I still am so inclined.  That is love, love of knowing more about what is. 

Motivational interviewing tells us that we need to find what motivates us.  Having money itself can motivate some people, but it is an empty motivation for Idealists or Rationals.  Work itself can be a motivator for Guardians, but this doesn’t do so well for the hedonistic Artisans.

http://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/02/just-stranger-in-strange-land-part-3.html

I didn’t do very well in high school.  I was not motivated, and I smoked a lot of dope.  An interesting side effect of smoking Mary J is an increase in apathy.   But a short stint of factory work showed me that school seemed a better choice.  I got into our local 2-year college, did well enough that didn't stop until I was ready to be an Assistant Professor of Medicine.  I calculated I graduated from the 31^st grade by then. 

http://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/02/introduction-and-confessions.html

Sometimes I use something else I want to avoid, to motivate me for what is good for me anyway.  Perhaps I am procrastinating about reviewing a manuscript, or getting the finances done, so I go and get some exercise.  Usually that helps give me energy to get the less desirable work done afterward. 

Sometimes I go sit in meditation.  Sometimes I try to write about why I lack the motivation.  Usually that is Shadow work.   I’ll write more on Shadow work in the future. 

http://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/02/taming-monsters-and-dragons.html

When I think about our current political and corporate system, I find it depressing and very demotivating.  What is wrong is work that tries to wring the last bit of energy out of you.  This corporate nature of work is really robbing us of our energy, in order to put our energy into the hands of those who waste it on frivolous luxuries.  CEO’s salaries are outrageous. 

Let us rebel as we can.  Nonviolently, please.  I like the saying that babies’ diapers and politicians need to be changed on a regular basis, and for the same reason. 

Well enough of this Blog, I gotta go do finances.