What is procrastination? Does the mind have inertia? Could it require momentum?
Motivation from Latin "movere" - to move. Why do we use terms derived from physical qualities of mechanics and motion to describe to mind. Could it be possibly that the physics of our biochemistry creates a mental momentum or inertia that lends itself to motivation and procrastination. Is there something more material about these concepts or are they simply linguistic devices, poetic metaphors for states of mind that cannot be linked to physics
Comments (4)
Take a look at the Latin root pro / cras / crastinus / procrastinare / procrastinat and in the late 1500s, voila, English procrastinate. It means "deferred until the morning, or deferred until tomorrow".
Why do we defer tasks until tomorrow, and tomorrow, and...? Is it not usually avoidance behavior? I procrastinate cleaning up the basement because it is boring, tedious, carries few intrinsic rewards (few? More like zero.). Tomorrow, maybe. It's not "inertia", it's strategy--avoiding or delaying unpleasantness.
We use computer metaphors for the functioning of the brain. It's a computer. There are circuits. There is programming, deprograming, and reprogramming. There are viral thoughts. There are inputs, and so on. We use mechanical metaphors too: power, drive, bandwidth, overload, etc.
Also, wasn't it the other way round, to some extent? Weren't Newton & co. rather cheekily re-purposing psychological words like force ("courage, fortitude"), inertia ("unskillfulness, ignorance"), moment ("importance")? (Cherry-picked from Online Etymology Dictionary.)