Procrastinators Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from chronic procrastination.
To everyone in the PA - lets form teams and compete
Hi members of the PA,
I am one of you and similar to you, looking to remove the mess in my life. I came here and just like everyone else started looking for work buddies and posting in forums and all that...
Then just as I was reading a post by a new comer requesting here for a work buddy , I had this wave. Why don't we form team of work buddies and compete with each other ? Each team can consist of 3 work buddies, we have a name for our team, we set goals and start working on it. We have a healthy competition with other teams.
What do you all say ? ??
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(Titan)
Maybe this would be a good spot to brainstorm. I got an idea from reading your post. I thought, maybe someone who had sucess in one area (Like the peson at your job who got to work on time) would be willing to work with someone who needed support in that area. Not sure if that is a good plan. Maybe some other ideas? The team idea "may" work for some people like "weight loss" competition, but not for everyone.
(vic)
I have just realized that for a group of people to work together on a plan, everyone needs to know where they stand as well as where others stand. This is very important in order to know whether the people would be able to work together with each other or not.
I have tried to create a method to do this here.
http://procrastinators-anonymous.org/node/3210#comment-44383
Please read this and let me know what you think.
(titan)
Your method below sounds interesting. Do you know any monks? How would you define "the pinnacle" or "fully recovered"?I don't know any monks. What happens if the monk falls?or quits? is the team then disqualified? Where would you find the monks? Are the monks responsible for their team?What happens if what the monk did does not work for someone else?
(Vic)
By monk I mean a person who is in advanced stage of recovery/progress. I was just suggesting that a monk can guide a group of persons.
is the team then disqualified?
I think I need to make it clear again that I am no longer supporting the competition idea. Rather I am just suggesting how people can form groups for working together on goals. It is my experience that when people work together on common goals, there has to be a kind of compatibility between them just like you need compatibility in marriage otherwise things don't work out.
Where would you find the monks? Are the monks responsible for their
team?What happens if what the monk did does not work for someone else?
I was just suggesting a monk can be a sponsor/guide. However a group can work without monks. If anyone needs guidance, they can consult monks in the chatbox or in meetings or via email (if the monk is OK with that). Monk is just a metaphor I have used for someone who is in advanced stage of progress.
Franky speaking what I have suggested is just an idea. It would be great if everyone could be involved so that we can get something out of this.
(titan)
What would you think of a telephone group?What CLA did this past weenkend was have a "action telephone marathon", they checked in on the top and bottom of the hours, they had a "round robin" format for people checking the people reporting actions. They had it 10-8pm, and no one was required to stay the whole time. It worked quite well. I would be willing to run a "work" check in on the phone, you are right, it does help when there is greater involvement. I guess like a chat line but more a phone thing.
I like to keep an open mind. and also have eveyone on an "equal" basis, the person with the most recovery is the person who got up the earliest this morning. We have a daily reprive
Titan have you seen this other buddy/team idea thread?
This was just posted:
http://procrastinators-anonymous.org/node/3234
And the new idea is....
Well, when I look at myself and others here, I realize there are mainly four types of people in the PA on their way. The monk, the horse, the donkey and the snail. The name of animals are just used to explain and not intended to denigrate anyone.
The monk is the one who has reached the pinnacle or fully recovered. The monk now lives a grateful and full life, helping those who are on the path. They are the ones who can take on whatever life gives.
The horse is the one who keeps progressing ( or recovering) at a steady pace. The horse just needs a little encouragement sometimes. The horse is now clear about his/her goal and you can rest assured it will keep the pace.
The donkey keeps walking for some time and then slows down. It then needs a kick in the ass to get going again and keep up. (The analogy of donkey is with respect to walking and not any other quality as generally done)
In terms of progress, the snail is crawling but the good thing is it atleast keeps moving even if at a crawling pace. The snail requires lots of patience.
Eventually some donkeys will graduate into horses. Some snails will graduate into donkeys. And horses may graduate into monks or into race horses. So what difference does it make if I am a monk, a horse, a donkey or a snail ?
It has to do with how we set up a goal and do check-in. esp. 'The special projects and...' Like if we have a group which commits to daily check-ins towards a goal. A group will have any of the horse, the donkey or the snail. So obviously there will be different combinations of people working towards a goal.
The worst combination will a horse-snail. The snail will not be able to keep pace with the horse while the horse will be starved of the pint of encouragement it sometimes needs.
The snail-snail combination is OK but may sometimes may hit a dead-end. This group requires a monk as a sponsor to avoid this.
The snail-donkey, donkey-donkey, donkey-horse and horse-horse are good combinations. The snail will get 'pulled' by the donkey, the donkey by the horse. The horse-horse is the best combination. You can bet they will pull off big things.
In any combination, the monk is very much needed, not as a participant but as an anchor and a mentor. The monk can provide valuable guidance and inspiration that will help any group to keep moving.
Now, you all may think I am little nuts but I can't help it. My mind constantly keeps coming up with things and dreams and ........
I like the sound of it...
I think it'd be nice to have someone who's ahead of me and can give good advice(a monk). Though, I'd also like a little kick when I'm not improving...The right kind of kick may perk me up...
And also the thing about the snail-horse sounds true...
Dropping the competition idea!
Hi,
I had a very hearty discussion in the chatbox with ian and chickadee. Afer that I realized what the PA is really about. I realized that PA is about people who are recovering from absolute hopelessness and despair, some even suicidal at a point.
The PA is really about monks in the making, discovering yourself, knowing who you are and overcoming your PA, and my idea was more of like being Rocky Balboa; "Get up you son of a bitch! Coz Mickey loves ya."(Rocky 5).
I think being pumped up is not the correct way to go. So I dump off the competition idea. But wait I got an another idea.............
To everyone in the PA - why competing can be useful
Hi,
After reading all the comments to my idea, I think I have not been able to explain it properly. I think I should have explained it in the full context, which now I will. This will a long post. Please bear with me. Here goes...
As I have said, I was damn frustrated and stuck in my life when I came to PA. I had been left far behind my peers due to my procrastination habits. And this only led to more procrastination since I did not have the courage to face the reality. I was living a aimless life. In one line, my life was in a mess.
One of the mess in my life is reaching late to work. I stay relatively far from my work place compared to rest of the people at my work place. So I always justified my not able to reach on time. Then a new guy joined who also stayed almost as far but somehow always manages to reach on time. Then I had this feeling 'if he can reach on time why can't I'. I asked him how he did it and he was kind enough to let me know his secret. He told me he always made himself believe the office time to be 10 mins earlier than the actual office time. So if the time is 10 AM, for him it would be 9.50 AM. I was inspired by this idea and I decided to try it out. So everyday after reaching my office, I would compare my time with him. I made it up to reach at the same time as him. And week by week, my 'on-time' days kept improving. Of course, I may not be perfect but atleast I have made progress.
So here I was doing what at one time I thought I could not do. This got me thinking. What was it that due to which I could do this ? Then enlightment came to me. I realized that all this time I did not have a drive to reach on time. I realized that in order to do something, no matter how small or insignificant, you need to have a drive. And what was the drive in my case ? It was kind of competition with my colleague to reach on time. And the important thing was he is almost as average as me. So I believed I could compete. So the second thing that came to me was that competition can be the drive. Of course, if you ask me to compete with someone regarding my work or some big thing, I would go and hide under my bed. But I think competition can be used as a drive for small or minor things on which we are stuck, things on which even if we get 'strikeout ' on some occassions doesn't matter, things like getting up early, making bed, getting ready.... And also the competition would be between people who are more or less like you and same almost on same level or appear to be on same level.
This is how I got the idea and then when I was reading a post in the PA, the whole idea got shape and I put it here. If you think of it, we all members of the PA are more or less similar and are on same level (That why we are here in the first place). We could have a kind of sport, a light weight competition on small tasks that bug us and we keep procrastinating. In this way, we all make progress. Of course, in such competition there are no losers, only winners, some ahead of others. The one who gets the most ahead becomes an inspiration for others to follow.
That which seems and that which is....
Titan, when I read your tag line, I was game. The same reflection of energy that I sometimes have when I'm feeling good, I saw in your idea. I wanted to jump right in and say "I'm going to win!".
Then I read what the others said; see how many teams had come in and when will we "meet"...
And I read MD's & Rexroth's posts. And it made sense...I would be going down the same spiral of sadness that I feel now at work, that I felt in college, when I see(saw) my peers getting ahead of me.
Let you in on something...I stopped posting in the daily forums and chatboxes because I saw people doing so much more than I did...I told myself that we are all different individuals, have different problems, have been at PA for different periods - active & inactive.
But it didn't help, did it? The shame of failing everyday and the heart-break of seeing others get ahead...I left PA for months, deleted the bookmark from my browser and also all the motivational sayings that I had picked up from PA
Sounds like an extreme case?
I didn't do this in an instant or a day...I gradually procrastinated posting at PA. Then, I stopped logging in...Then I stopped visiting....Then one day, many days after this first started, I deleted the bookmark to keep it from popping up in my address bar when I typed... In between, I cleared all the motivational sayings from my desktop and put them in a folder on the desktop.Then the folder was moved away from sight, in another drive, where it lay for quite some time....Then, one day, when I was browsing thru my files and folders, I came across the folder, and deleted it...
All this time, I hadn't realized why I had done so. I'd never even thought about it...Something good came out of this idea of yours, at least for me. I realized all this as I started replying, after reading your's, MD's and Rexroth's posts.
Thank you, all of you, for this insight into my behavior. I guess that's why talking helps. It brings out the sub-conscious thoughts, our perceptions, that are responsible for the way we react to stuff (I think there are very few times wherein what we do is not a response to something else, however subtle and understated the stimulus may be...I Think.)
Good Luck, my friends.
Warm regards,
Valimd
(Titan)
My thought's : My hat goes off to you" if you could remove the mess in your life with such a plan.For me , I am truely powerless and if I could participate, I would not be "showing up" here daily. Good luck, hope it works.
((just my thoughts--Titan))
I honestly very much applaud your drive and initiative...keep that up in other and most things in your life, and soon you may happily find you won't need PA as much. My 'naysing' here will imply that my compliment to you is not genuine. But it is. Here goes:
Though I am not a committed 12 stepper (but I fully applaud and humbly accept their discipline/commitment), I agree w/ Rexroth on anonymity being potentially compromised unless handled extremely carefully.
We each came here in frustration, crisis, lack of hope, dejection...duplicating the normal foils of the private/job/financial/academic sectors could exacerbate some folks' delicate psychological situation--not everyone's, but perhaps some (and that's enough to be ULTRA cautious.)
Teams need arbiters, referrees, and rules -- and need to be somewhat matched. The Tennesse Titans aint playing ball with my 7 yr old's team. Doing so would be unfair and inconsequential -- for both.
What would be the consequences of falling short as a team? Just generating food for thought, Titan -- happy to listen to constructive rhetorts -- but it must be ironed out.
Yes, some great innovation has happened with corporate innovation/incentive -- and plenty of companies have 'gone under' too.......we want recovery for EVERY ONE of us in our own individual unique progress.
Having come from a very competitive lifetime career (a very NON P.A. field) myself, I know the value of competition; if we were meeting face to face regulary, it is an idea worth merit, but knowing and trusting fully all comrades on the playing field is not practical through just a keyboard and with differing tasks, I'm afraid. Can one really liken an unopened phone bill and its tensions to dirty dishes and a doctoral thesis?
Plus there is an option to not be forthcoming on tasks due to save face. We've done that too much.
Perhaps you can come to our daily phone bridge meetings sometime and discuss this more. It needs elaboration and clarification.
THANKS FOR LISTENING & SOLICITING.
Why don't we?
'Why don't we form team of work buddies and compete with each other ?'
The general experience of anonymous fellowships is that people support each other rather than compete with each other, so that might answer your question.
Yours in recovery
Rexroth
Rexroth, Why do you think
Rexroth,
Why do you think we cannot compete while supporting each other at the same time ? That is what I mean by healthy competition where we share with our 'competitors'. Also, team members will support each other.
Just think how competition among businesses has led to major inventions and innovations in the world and also made improved quality of products. Why can't we do the same thing ?
Why I think etc
The general experience has been that this approach does not work. Might I suggest refering to the 12x12 and the Big Book of AA.
That said any 12 step fellowship offers suggestions, no one is entitled to say 'this is the way to do it'.
I suppose competition amongst businesses has also weeded out the inefficient and ones that did not get things right. 12 step programmes are about something different where everyone is welcomed and supported and the weak have nothing to fear from the strong.
Wishing you well
Rexroth