À atenção dos que pedem mais uma semana, mais um mês, mais um ano, mais uma década

"The Problem of Procrastination and Self-Control - Why We Can't Make Ourselves Do What We Want to Do", título do capítulo VI de "Predictably Irrational" de Dan Ariely (BTW, no final do capítulo V o autor discorre sobre a tomada de decisões num estado cool e num estado excitado... Dr. Jekill e Mr Hide, até compara respostas entre agentes num "estado normal" e num "estado de excitação sexual". Excitados, tomamos decisões contrárias ao que defendemos em modo cool. Gastar dinheiro também excita muita gente, sobretudo se for com dinheiro de outros).
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"As a university professor, I'm all too familiar with procrastination. At the beginning of every semester my students make heroic promises to themselves—vowing to read their assignments on time, submit their papers on time, and in general, stay on top of things. And every semester I've watched as temptation takes them out on a date, over to the student union for a meeting, and off on a ski trip in the mountains—while their workload falls farther and farther behind. In the end, they wind up impressing me, not with their punctuality, but with their creativity—inventing stories, excuses, and family tragedies to explain their tardiness.
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After I'd been teaching at MIT for a few years, my colleague Klaus Wertenbroch (a professor at INSEAD, a business school with campuses in France and Singapore) and I decided to work up a few studies that might get to the root of the problem, and just maybe offer a fix for this common human weakness. Our guinea pigs this time would be the delightful students in my class on consumer behavior.
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"Here's the deal," I explained. "By the end of the week, you must commit to a deadline date for each paper. Once you set your deadlines, they can't be changed." Late papers, I added, would be penalized at the rate of one percent off the grade for each day late.
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I went to my other two classes—with markedly different deals. In the second class, I told the students that they would have no deadlines at all during the semester. They merely needed to submit their papers by the end of the last class. They could turn the papers in early, of course, but there was no grade benefit to doing so. I suppose they should have been happy: I had given them complete flexibility and freedom of choice. Not only that, but they also had the lowest risk of being penalized for missing an intermediate deadline. 
The third class received what might be called a dictatorial treatment: I dictated three deadlines for the three papers, set at the fourth, eighth, and twelfth weeks. These were my marching orders, and they left no room for choice or flexibility.
Of these three classes, which do you think achieved the best final grades?
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We found that the students in the class with the three firm deadlines got the best grades; the class in which I set no deadlines at all (except for the final deadline) had the worst grades; and the class in which Gaurav and his classmates were allowed to choose their own three deadlines (but with penalties for failing to meet them) finished in the middle, in terms of their grades for the three papers and their final grade.
What do these results suggest? First, that students do procrastinat (big news); and second, that tightly restricting their freedom (equally spaced deadlines, imposed from above) is the best cure for procrastination."

Não apetece fazer humor?

Ontem à noite vi um bocado da série NCIS, a certa altura o agente DiNozzo estava, como é costume, com o seu repertório de conversa da treta, a fazer pouco de alguém, neste caso um agente da Mossad.
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Tentei contextualizar aquela mania dele com a sua profissão... e lembrei-me do que li recentemente em "Deep Survival" de Laurence Gonzales. Ter medo é bom, entrar em pânico é a morte do artista. Como é que quem tem medo pode combater o sentimento de pânico? ~
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Segundo Gonzales, uma das formas mais eficazes de combater a perda de controlo de uma situação que mete medo é... brincar com ela, é apostar no humor:

"The first lesson is to remain calm, not to panic. Because emotions are called “hot cognitions,” this is known as “being cool.”
…Only 10 to 20 percent of people can stay calm and think in the midst of a survival emergency. They are the ones who can perceive their situation clearly; they can plan and take correct action, all of which are key elements of survival. Confronted with a changing environment, they rapidly adapt.
…The first rule is: Face reality. Good survivors aren’t immune to fear. They know what’s happening, and it does “scare the living shit out of” them. It’s all a question of what you do next. ...Survivors “laugh at threats… playing and laughing go together. Playing keeps the person in contact with what is happening around [him].” To deal with reality you must first recognize it as such. … if you let yourself get too serious, you will get too scared, and once that devil is out of the bottle, you’re on a runaway horse. Fear is good [Fear puts me in my place. It gives me the humility to see things as they are]. Too much fear is not."

É interessante relacionar isto com o discurso de quem olha para a realidade e de como a interpreta:

• "Portugal tem a segunda maior queda da UE no comércio a retalho"
• "Portugal regista segunda maior subida mensal das vendas a retalho em maio

Comparem os títulos... comparem os textos.

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Existe realidade? Parece que sim...

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Existe objectividade? Eheheh

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Não apetece fazer humor?

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Será genuíno ou para evitar que o medo se transforme em pânico?

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Ou, talvez para ilustrar a facilidade com que todos nós tomamos decisões influenciados por informação dita factual mas carregada de subjectividade... ehehehhe 

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Razão tem Dan Ariely em "Predictably Irrational - The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions"

que dedica o primeiro capítulo à relatividade das nossas decisões:

"humans rarely choose things in absolute terms. We don't have an internal value meter that tells us how much things are worth. Rather, we focus on the relative advantage of one thing over another, and estimate value accordingly."