jadis

My day job involves teaching young people. When I started out, I wanted to be the cool TA, who doesn't care too much about deadlines and other such formalities. With time, I saw the drawbacks of this: I was enabling those students who were inclined toward procrastination.

In the digital era, most of us face some issues with procrastination, but it doesn't mean we let it derail our lives. There's usually one type that's more inclined to it than others: male, opinionated, outspoken, filled with resentment, often overweight. When you see a pattern repeating year after year and causing failure and self-loathing, you want to help.

Except I don't know how (the fact that since the pandemic I haven't been exactly immune to it myself aside... hence this forum). I hate the aspirational language of the self-help industry and can't sit through a YT video of one of those life coaches, so I'm in no position to draw on it or recommend any of it to others.

What can you say to people who you see are being eaten inside by the self-loathing laziness causes, whether they admit it or not? "Clean your room, bucko, because Jungian archetypes" is apparently one option. Is there something else, perhaps less painfully stupid?