Thought and Action
"Men of thought" and "men of action" are sometimes contrasted--which is hardly fair to either, since the great man of action must have the imagination to conceive a plan, and must know exactly what he is aiming to accomplish, while the great thinker must be persistent in thinking and must get into action by way of writing or somehow making his thoughts count in the world. But we do find men who are impatient of thought and want to get into action at once, even without knowing just what they are about, and other men who seem quite contented to think and plan, without any definite intention of ever putting their plans into execution. The former type, the impulsive individual, is not difficult to understand, his behavior fits in so well with the primitive trial-and-error sort of activity; but the mere thinker seems an anomaly, in view of the general psychological principle that thought tends toward motor action.
In accounting for the inactive thinker, we have to remember, first, that some inhibition of immediate action is often necessary, in order to have time to think the matter over; this prudent attitude becomes a habit with some individuals. Besides, there are the negative motives of fear, shyness and laziness that tend to deter from the actual execution of a plan. Hamlet's "conscience" that makes "cowards of us all", so that "the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment . . . lose the name of action" turns out, if we look a few lines further back, to be the "dread of something" unknown, that "puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of". [{540}] Fear--fear of unforeseen consequences, fear of committing ourselves, fear of ridicule--is one great inhibiter of action, and inertia is another, since it is much less strenuous to sit in the armchair and plan than to get out and put the plan into effect. Besides this, some people who are good at planning come to take so much pride and satisfaction in the thinking part of an enterprise that they do not feel the need for action. Moreover, you can "plan" in a large way, without bothering about details, but once you start to execute your plan you encounter details and preliminaries which are apt to rob the enterprise of its zest. Here is where persistence and effort are needed.
Abulia--"no will"--is an abnormal degree of lack of zest for action. Along with it go timidity and lack of social force, proneness to rumination and daydreaming, and often a feeling of being compelled to perform useless acts, such as doing everything three times or continual washing of the hands. Abulia is not just a comfortable laziness, but is attended by a sense of humiliation and inferiority. It shows itself in excessive hesitation and vacillation and in failure to accomplish anything of consequence. Sometimes the subject expends much effort, but fails to direct the effort towards the execution of his purposes. Some authorities have ascribed abulia to inertia or "low mental tension", some to an overdose of fear and caution, some to the paralyzing effect of suppressed desires still living in the "unconscious". Mild degrees of it, such as are not uncommon, seem sometimes to be due to the hiatus that is bound to exist between the end one has in view and the means one must take to start towards that end. One has zest for reaching the goal, but not for the preliminaries.
An author, whose case was studied because he was accomplishing so little, was found to follow a daily program about as follows. He would get up in the morning full of [{541}] confidence that this was going to be a good day, with much progress made in his book. Before starting to write, however, he must first have his breakfast, and then a little fresh air, just to prepare himself for energetic work. On returning from his walk, he thought it best to rest for a few moments, and then one or two other little matters seemed to demand attention; by the time these were done, the morning was so far gone that there was no time for a really good effort, so he optimistically postponed the writing till the afternoon, when the same sort of thing happened, and the great performance had to be put over till the next day. This man did better under a regime prescribed by his medical adviser, who commanded him to write for two hours immediately after rising, and make this his day's work--no more and no less than two hours. The definiteness of this task prevented dawdling.
Other writers have noted a curious tendency to "fight shy" of the passage actually being written and let the thoughts move ahead and plan out the later passages. Sometimes it is necessary to trick yourself if you are to get anything done; you say, "I can't write this properly just now; I'll just sketch out a preliminary draft"--on which understanding you may be able to write, whereas you could not if you thought you were writing "for keeps"; but when you have got well started and warmed to the task, you may find your work good enough to keep, after all. Judging by these mild cases, abulia may be due partly to distaste for the details of actual performance, and partly to a dread of committing oneself to anything that has the stamp of finality.