Sit until it disappears syndrome

Ok, i couldn't help but blog about this after Living Timorously mentioned Jam Karet and the Amananha attitudes that have been inherited by the Timorese and practised to perfection. I love my Timorese friends and many of them extremely bright, but in my 1.5 years here, i have noticed that some are afflicted with the "sit until it disappears" syndrome. What are the symptoms?

1) The person nods 'yes' to all your requests - there is little clarification
2) The person busies him/herself with other smaller, easier tasks and your request gets buried into the back of the mind
3) The person then tries not to remind you of your requests - this is the 'sitting on it hoping it will disappear' part
4) The job never gets done for weeks
5) When you rememeber your request and hunts down the responsible person, he/she says 'oh, i wasn't quite clear what you meant then' or 'i'll do it this afternoon' then the cycle goes back to (2). To stop the endless cycle of procrastination, i've found that i literally have to be in their face several times a day, until they finally beat the inertia to get off the starting block.

This extreme procrastination happens even for those who are highly educated and are definitely capable of performing the tasks. It seems to be a mental block or fear of inability or simply knowledge that it's an unpleasant task that stops them, and they have picked up the idea that if they sit on it long enough, the task will peter away into nothingness. I've had serious confrontations with close Timorese friends about this bad bad habit because it really paralyses them into inaction. It's getting them to realise that the worst monsters melt away when you face up to them, and they do grow larger and larger when you run away.

I guess, maybe it's not just the Timorese who are afflicted with this syndrome. Plenty of people around the globe try to run away from their fears without realising it breeds their monsters. I've had serious procrastination issues before when i was freelancing but i grew so tired of the mental stress of undone work bearing on me (no matter how i tried to sit on it it wouldn't disappear!) that i finally decided to hack, slash and slaughter the 5-headed monster with my sabre. So far, it's worked quite well. Just hope that those of my friends afflicted with the syndrome will eventually pick up the courage to battle their fears too.

Perhaps then, this country will move faster along in decision-making, and the homeless and displaced and the poor don't have to wait much longer for the powers above to make their critical and sometimes hard decisions.