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2020


Digitaler Salon

- in: ideas moderation

Pausengespräche auf der openmind 2015.
Foto: CC0 by @insideX

Mit Pandemie und Social Distancing, fehlen mir Gespräche. Mir fehlen Anlässe Menschen zu treffen, die nicht im engsten Freundeskreis sind und an die ich keine konkrete Anfrage habe. Mir fehlt der Anlass, sie “casual” zu treffen und in entspannter Atmosphäre vom einem Thema aufs nächste zu kommen.
Mir fehlen Konferenzen, denn Konferenzen sind nicht in erster Linie für Vorträge oder Workshops da - sondern für Pausengespräche. Vorträge und Workshops sind oft eher der Vorwand, um zu einer Konferenz zu gehen - und der Ausgangspunkt für interessante Gespräche. Es werden Bekannte wieder getroffen und neue Menschen kennengelernt.

Bei Online-Konferenzen und Vorträgen funktionieren Pausengespräche allenfalls mäßig gut. Nur Textchat ist ziemlich formal und in Zoom-Meetings mit 50 Leuten, kann sich niemand sinnig unterhalten. Die Gruppen müssen kleiner sein, um tatsächlich ein spannendes Gespräch zu ermöglichen. In meiner Erfahrung gibt es selten Gespräche, an denen mehr als 5 Personen zeitgleich aktiv beteiligt sind. Wenn mehr Menschen sich versuchen daran zu beteiligen, braucht es eine Redeleitung und Moderation, da auch in einem Zoom-Meeting mit 50 Menschen nur einem Menschen zugehört werden kann. In klassischen Pausengesprächen, sind die Runden deutlich kleiner - und trennen sich auf, sobald sie zu groß werden um mehrere Gespräche zeitgleich zu ermöglichen.

Ich glaube, das kann online durchaus funktionieren und möchte das gerne austesten.

Am Freitag, 27.11.2020 um 19.00 Uhr via Big Blue Button

Ausgangspunkt zum gemeinsamen Abschweifen ist die Frage “Schafft Sprache Realität?”.
Ich werde anfangs ein bisschen darüber reden, was ich zu dem Thema gelesen habe und dann gucken, wo sich das Gespräch hin entwickelt.

Es wird nur den kurzen Impulsvortrag, keine Folien und weder Aufzeichnung noch Protokoll geben. Es gibt an Teilnehmende keine Ansprüche zur Vorbereitung. Schön wäre eine Bereitschaft, sich an dem Gespräch aktiv zu beteiligen, Fragen zu stellen und eigene Ideen und Assoziationen beizutragen, sowie im Ton des Gesprächs auch bei unterschiedlicher Meinung freundlich zu bleiben.

Die Veranstaltung soll ein Safe Space für Frauen, LGBTIQ und BIPoC sein. Rassismus, Sexismus, Ableismus und LGBTIQ-Feindlichkeit führen zum Ausschluss. An dieser Stelle sei erwähnt, dass es primär um Respekt und die Intention geht, sich inklusiv zu verhalten, nicht um eine angebliche “Sprachpolizei”. (Ob es sowas wie eine Sprachpolizei überhaupt gibt/geben kann, darf gerne Teil des Gesprächs werden.)

Ich bin sehr gespannt, ob und wie gut das funktionieren wird. Und ob es eine Fortsetzung geben wird - und wenn ja, in welchem Rahmen. Aber das wird sich zeigen.

Freundliche Menschen dürfen gerne mitgebracht werden.

update 2020-12-01

Am Freitag haben wir beschlossen, dass wir den digitalen Salon bis auf weiteres wöchentlich veranstalten - immer freitags, 19.00 Uhr. Beim nächsten mal wird es einen kurzen Input zu “Häusern” geben - und dann wieder abgeschweift, wo immer uns die Assoziationen hintreiben.


Social Media Flat Rate

- reviewed by dkr - in: ideas sex tech

What if social media were paid on a flat rate model?

The idea itself is somewhat old. When Twitter started ads years ago I occasionally heard people suggest to pay for an ad free version. Maybe 5€/month or something. There were porjects like app.net that charged their users … and ultimately failed.
Though they charged all users for the service they provided - not for the service other users provided. That was always seen as a free gift.

Over the years influencers became quite a thing. Patreon and fundraisers like GoFundMe got pretty popular too.

The porn scene is shifiting to OnlyFans and JustFor.Fans.

Creation needs financing

What that tells me: it’s not just the servers that need payment. It’s also the content creators. Creation is a job and needs to be paid somehow. Social media became an advertising platform not just the tech companies but also for the creators. They use their social media to sell things too - may it be the product they are paid for to advertise, patreon, gofundme or their onlyfans.

What if social media would be a flatrate model not just for paying the tech and servers, but also the creators?

OnlyFans pays 80% of their income to their creators and keeps 20% for their own operating costs. On OnlyFans, there’s a “per channel subscription” with highly varying prices. So, before subscribing to a new channel one does have to think about whether one channel alone is worth it. If you want to support several artists, it easily gets expensive. It’s quite similar on Patreon. Often, there are different pledge tiers offering different perks. Those who pay more get more “behind the scenes” stuff, early access to content, or access to restricted chat platforms. How about not having “big spenders” but rather many supporters?

Buying content online isn’t new. One of the biggest content-creating companies these days does not sell any content. It streams it. On a flat rate model. Streaming services became so incredible successful because they are easy to use. If you want to watch a movie, you don’t have to buy it. You don’t have to burden of handling a credit card every time you want to watch something.
And semi-legal streaming sites that were very popular 10 years ago didn’t (only) disappear because of harsh copyright enforecement, but because they are annoying. Ads are annoying. Netflix is less annoying. There is neither a wall of ads to fight, nor does it make one find their credit card every time one wants to watch something. It is a reasonable priced streaming service, with a wide range of things one can watch and quite easy to use.

What if social media became similar to that? What if the internet people we like would be just supported by us following them? Not just in some emotional way but actually substantially so they are able to pay their bills with just the money they make by us enjoying their content?

Follow and pay people you like

Between all the ads social media - particularely Twitter - became a toxic shithole. There’s a huge political fight on the whole platform.
There are many opinions regarding whether the platform itself should take a stronger stand or whether it’s freedom of speech.

Twitter and Facebook value debate more that support. Comments rank higher than likes or shares/retweets. The common explanation is, that comments make people stay longer on the platform and the longer people stay on the platform the more ads the platform can sell. So, social media these days are meant to create debates. They are meant to create fights. The toxic shithole it became is wanted as it creates revenue.

“Enemy observation” is a thing. Observe what the people you hate do, so you can react faster to whatever wrongdoing they commit.

Now, what would happen if we were to pay the people we follow? All of them?
Would you still follow your enemies knowing you would have to pay them?

I guess it would mean the “enemy observation” would disappear. No one would give money to people they see as their enemies.
It sure does not solve all political debates. But maybe it would make social media less toxic by removing “enemy observation”, as well as ads. (Ads are, after all, annoying and annoyance easily becomes aggression that will influence the platform itself.)

Public sphere needs to be owned by the public

Social media is however quite the public sphere these days. There are many debates about companies like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube being gatekeepers to the public sphere. Particularely in a pandemic world where human gatherings have become health risks, we are even more dependant on some kind of social media to conntect and to keep the public debate alive. So, pushing them more into another for-profit model doesn’t seen reasonable to me.

So, what if that social media flatrate wouldn’t be platform-specific but rather protocol-specific?
What if there wouldn’t be one company collection the 20% for server costs and development but instead we would have a community run these servers themselves?
What if the social media flatrate would be part of the fediverse?

Mastodon was quite a hype a few years ago and yet, outside of the nerd bubble, it didn’t really catch on. Nowadays servers are even closing - a common occurance in the some “host it yourself!” nerd approach. As long as it’s new and novel, it’s fun to play around with one’s own server. But after some time, maintaining a server just becomes work.
So what, if that social media flatrate would be part of mastodon? What if running a server would actually bring some income, depending on how many people use your server?

A social media flat rate might create 3 solutions at once

  1. Not having one central company controlling everything but lots instances with their own policies. So it would be suiteable for porn people as well as for “no adult content”-people - other servers having other policies. If you don’t want any porn content, use a server that doesn’t allow any porn and blocks it.
  2. Some people are really great at creating content, so they have lots of followers and get paid that way. Other people may be not that great in creating content but are very competent in managing servers, so their server runs very smooth and has lots of users. And they get paid that way - so they have an incentive to host that server not just for a few months but permanently.
  3. It would make a platform possible without ads and without “enemy oberservation”, so maybe also a way less toxic one. And it wouldn’t create one big gatekeeper but instead lots of servers and people may choose the policy that fits them best. Sure, it does not solve the big political conflicts. It will probably not eradicate white suprimacy, racism or sexism. But it might create another perspective on things when not the most controversial one is pushed the hardest but the one with the most support.

Now, that all may sound very nice. And I’d love to have the resources to make this happen. Sadly I currently don’t have them. Not the time, not energy and also not the money to buy me the time it might need to setup something like this.
I have lots of ideas where to start to work on a social media flat rate - e.g. talk with eyeo - the company owning Flattr. I’m not sure if Flattr is the right point to start such a thing but at least talking with them would make that clear. And Flattr is already quite similar to what I have in mind.
Or with Patreon. I could imagine there could be a lot of common ground and they might be interested in developing some test case. Or maybe with the Mastodon Community (Or their main developper).
Maybe it is also something one should just start developing themself. Generally I’m not convinced with creating big projects all by yourself… and my programming skills are not up for such a big thing.

I have been thinking about all of this for the past few months, but currently I need to focus on my degree (If I’m not done by next summer, I will have to invest another year on it, or never get any degree). And also need to earn money. Which lately became a bit of a hustle.
So I’m putting it out here and hope someone will find it and work on it. I’d be happy to help to assist with it too but, for now, I can’t realize the idea myself.

What do you think?

It could also be that the very idea of a social media flatrate is completely bogus. If so I’d be happy to hear proper arguments why the very idea is bad. Or what I missed thinking about it.

I did talk about it with a few people and one thing came always up, so I address it here already: free in freedom does not mean free as in free beer. Yes, paying for a service a quite a burden. Payment might be a very visible barrier but is by for not the only one. Not standing the toxic culture of twitter these days is a high barrier too. People not having the energy to withstand that much toxic are practically banned from the platform. In Germany we have a public broadcaster that need to be paid by all citizens in Germany too, as creating good content is expensive.
There is no world without barriers. The question is what barriers we pick.

I am curious to see, what people may think about my idea, so please email me or tweet at me.
Or talk about it wherever you usually talk about these things :)


Wie wird das neue Normal aussehen?

- in: politics ideas society

Klimawandel, Massenbrände (Amazonas, Russland, Australien), Dürren, Urwaldrodungen, Heuschreckenplagen. Wankende Weltmacht USA, weltweit erstarkende Demokratiefeinde, Internationale Organisationen sind schwach. (UNESCO und WHO bricht Finanzierung weg), EU praktisch unsichtbar.
FakeNews und Verschwörungstheorien überall, Social Bots und Klickarmeen in den sozialen Netzwerken, Journalismus ohne Geschäftsmodell.
Global agierende Weltkonzerne umgehen Steuern und scheffeln Milliarden.
Pandemie.

Notstandsgesetze, Versammlungsfreiheit ausgesetzt, Rausgehen nur mit triftigem Grund, Reisen aller Art bis auf weiteres Gestrichen. Sozialleben auf online begrenzt, aber Schulen, Arbeitsplätze und Shopping Malls sollen öffnen. Kassen mit Plexiglas abgetrennt, Bargeld verpönt, Prostitution und Obdachlosigkeit verboten.

Ausnahmezustand. Überall Ausnahmezustand. Dabei scheint die Sonne so schön. Wollen wir in den Park?

Der Ausnahmezustand wird bleiben. Es wird sich hier und da was ändern, angepasst, korrigiert, aber grundsätzlich wird der Ausnahmezustand bleiben. Er wird normal werden.
Wie wird es aussehen, die neue Normal?

Was wird “wie früher” und was nicht? Die Plexiglasscheiben vor den Kassen werden bleiben. Die Dürren auch. Werden wir unsere Versammlungsfreiheit wiederbekommen? Wenn ja, wann?
Einer Regierung Merkel traue ich es zu, dass wir die möglichst bald wieder bekommen … aber wann wird es wieder Festivals geben?
Geben die Deutsche ihre Zuneigung zu Bargeld auf? Wird Prostitution wieder erlaubt werden?

Welche Firmen wird es geben? Welche Fluggesellschaften? Wird es zukünftig Billigflieger geben? Bahnreisen?
Werden die Europäischen Grenzen wieder geöffnet? Oder wird es überall Pass- und Fieberkontrollen geben?
Was sind die Wirtschaftszweige der post-Corona-Zeit?
Wird es überhaupt eine post-Corona-Zeit geben oder wird Corona bleiben? Werden andere Pandemien kommen?
Welche Lebensmittel werden wir essen, wenn Dürren und Heuschrecken die Ernten vernichten?
Werden die Wetterkatastrophen noch schlimmer werden? Die Brände?

Welche Städte werden in den Fluten versinken? Welche werden mit massiven Dämmen geschützt?
Wie lange werden wir noch Öl verbrennen um uns fortzubewegen oder zu heizen?

Wann wird China die USA als größte Wirtschaftsmacht, wann als Weltpolizei abgelöst haben? Werden wir dann als zweite Sprache Mandarin statt Englisch lernen?

Welche Medien wird es geben? Auf welche wird sich wer verlassen? Fox News wird bleiben, aber wer auf der anderen Seite?
Wie werden Menschen wissen können, was von Fox News kommt und was mit Journalistischer Sorgfalt geprüft? Wie wird Journalismus finanziert werden? Wo wird die Grenze zwischen Journalismus und (politischer) Werbung liegen?

Ist das die Postmoderne? Alle Werte, alles bisherige hinfällig und alles wird Egoismus, Kapitalismus und postfaktisch?
Was für Fähigkeiten werden gebraucht werden in dieser Welt? Programmieren? BWL? Kartoffelanbau? Jagen und Sammeln? Selbstdarstellung und Schauspielerei? Rhetorik und Netzwerken? Sprachkenntnisse? Russisch, Mandarin, Spanisch?
Werden Dokumente mehr oder weniger wert sein? Wird der Reisepass oder das Social Media Profil wichtiger sein? Welche Abschlüsse werden wichtig sein? Philosophie oder Medizin? Oder der Jagd- oder Führerschein?
Wird es Ausweise geben für “Fox News Anhänger”? Oder Google Mitarbeiter*in?
Wo und wie lange wird der Rechtsstaat sich halten? Wer wird ihn garantieren?

Die Institutionen werden nicht verschwinden, aber werden sie noch entscheiden? Können? Wenn ja, was?

Wir leben in ungewöhnlichen Zeiten. Wie früher wird es nicht wieder werden. Aber wie wird das neue “Normal” aussehen?


Who am I?

- in: personal politics sex

I’m a queer sex worker. So, there is it. I’m out. Can I go now?

No, I can’t, because that is not, how outings works.

I learned that already years ago, when I outed myself as gay. It’s not a one-time thing. You may come out to your parents or friends … but that does not make your colleagues know about it. Or your distant relatives. Or your neighbours. Or the parents of your kids friends. Outing is a continuing process. And a painful one.

I hate the need of outing myself. But apparently whatever society might see as abnormal, as strange, as queer, is something people have to publicly admit. To stand up for. To explain.

I hate it. I hate that I have to explain myself for being. That I have to explain my existence.

Every time you’re outing yourself to a friend, a family member, a neighbour, a colleague, you’re risking rejection. It creates a shitload of questions in your mind to work through. When do you out yourself? To whom? How? What reaction may you get? How to deal with whatever reaction it might create?
Who to not out to because you do not want to get the imagined reaction?

Everything sexual is still a topic that many people feel very uncomfortable talking about. So when you finally take your guts and out yourself to someone, it might be that the fact that your LGBTIQ+ or a sex worker is no reason for rejection but the very fact that you’re “pushing that topic” onto them might cause rejection.

So it is not only the question if how someone might react to the outing itself but also to the urge of talking about it at all. The “we don’t talk about that topic” reaction is quite common.

I kinda get it. Everything sexual is still a big topic to never talk about in society. (Similar to mental health issues. Admitting mental health issues is actually quite an outing too.)
And I’m kinda okay with it. If someone does not want to talk about a topic I don’t want to force it onto them.

However, because these topics are so deep in the “do not speak about it” land, you cannot really talk about it, without outing yourself. If you want to talk about gay sex as a man, everyone will know, you’re at least questioning your heterosexuality. And it’s quite the same with sex work. If you want to talk about the actual lives of sex workers, everyone around you will believe, you’re either a sex worker or a client. (Or an old-fashioned feminist working in the rescue industry, not giving any agency to sex workers but believe you have to speak for them, as they are all enslaved and brainwashed so they can’t speak for themselves.)

If you out yourself to someone and they are neither rejection you for the thing you’re outing yourself for nor for the fact that you find it okay to talk about it, it mostly results in tons and tons of questions. As much as I love curiosity and the interest in my life, it very easily becomes the sole topic to talk about. When I’m outing myself in a group of people it either makes no-one talking to me any more because they don’t know how to talk about it and feel very uncomfortable talking about it - or (worse) they feel uncomfortable talking to you because you just became a persona non grata.
Or you have all the attention and whatever the topic was before the outing, will be gone because everyone is so much more interested in you. Not actually in you but in your sex life. If the topic in the group was taxes and I had a question about doing taxes as a self employed sex worker, I most likely will not even get an answer to my actual question but will be asked 437 questions about evil, nice, ugly, fat, old, skinny, young, handsome, rich or poor clients; about the legal situation of sex work, how I work, when, where, what sex practices are my favourites, how to have anal sex without shitting the other one and if I want sex without payment. (No, I do not.)

Again: I appreciate curiosity and interest in my work. Society knowing more about sex and sex work would be incredible helpful. But answering the same questions over and over again can become very draining. Sometimes I think about starting to charge for answering these questions. It can provide answers to questions - in many professions that is in itself a business model.
On the other hand, there are people aware of the annoyance of having outed yourself and being asked ALL the questions and therefore avoid asking me about it at all, as they don’t want to annoy me - and then often quietly forming opinions about my work. And at least with friends, that is even worse to me: friends avoiding a topic they have questions about but instead of asking me, they are googling stuff and just assume something. So, if you we are close and you have questions about me doing sex work, please ask me! I’m actually way happier to answer a question I have been asked hundreds of times before, than learning, you assuming stuff about me.

Outing yourself as LGBTIQ will very easily be the one thing that identifies you. “Who are you talking about?” - “The gay guy!” - “Ahh! I see …”
It’s the same with outing yourself as a sex worker. “Who are you talking about?” - “The hooker”

I understand that people identify someone by whatever makes someone singular in a group. If there is only one guy with long hair at a party, that guy will be most likely referred to as the “long haired guy”. That way of identifying people however can become hurtful as it quietly reduces your whole existence to that one thing. You’re the hooker now. Being also a maths genius or artist becomes at best secondary if not completely erased. But if you don’t out yourself, you’re constantly living a double life. You have experiences in one part of your life that you can’t share to the other one. That can create a lot of mental load and stress to keep everything to yourself or have at best a few people to talk about - and always have another story in mind on what to tell people about your life, that makes sense to them but is far enough from their lives so you don’t get trapped in your own stories.

As a sex worker outing is quite bi-directional. It’s not just the question if/how to talk to your friends and family about your sex worker life - but also about what to tell clients about your private life. Most sex workers work under different names. Often for security reasons.
I work under a different name too and notices it’s for me not only about security but also about keeping work and private stuff apart. I have very intimate moments with clients and yet, that is professional for me. Similar to therapists knowing very personal stuff about their clients, they still won’t become friends. Or teachers using different names on their facebook profile so their students won’t find their facebook profiles. Clients can be very nice but they are still clients and I need them to stay out of my private life. I noticed a lot of them are quite interested in my private life and telling something about me makes them often more comfortable to open up about themselves and gives them a better session. So I gave my work persona quite a private life too - but it isn’t really mine. It’s an easier, nicer, less complicated one, so I can make them feel intimate with me and still it on a professional level.

I have some acting experience and noticed it helps me a lot in sex work to switch into my work persona - and leaves my private trouble behind for that time. And after a session I’m switching back to my private me, leaving the session behind. So over time I developed a proper work character.
And to be clear: I’m not doing that, because I don’t like my clients or I have to become someone else to “endure” a session or something. My sessions are okay. My work is quite okay.
It is my way of keeping professional and private stuff seperated and give my clients their fantasies and “boyfriend experience”.

However over time there evolves a grey area in between. What is with political activism or sex work colleagues? If I’m getting interviewed about sex work, am I doing it under my sex work name and try to steer people to my sex work persona as it might bring new clients, or am I doing it under my legal name, not being able to gain new clients for the job that currently pays my bills?

What is with everything publicly? Social media? What about acting or modelling? What name do I want to push publicly and what if someone knowing me by one name now reads learns about the other one?

Can I use pictures I use professionally also on some personal, non sex work social media? (No, I can’t, due to Google images reverse search. It’s gonna become interesting and quite scary when face recognition software becomes available to more people)
Should I eradicate my “private” me on the Internet and only act as my sex work persona on the Internet? (There are very few brothels/studios for male sex workers … so it is necessary to find your clients online. So having your sex work identity only offline does not work - it needs to be online too)

Sometimes I feel like Eli Cohen in “The Spy” - slowly blurring the lines between his two caracters. In the last episode he says: “Those nightmares she’s talking about, they’re not even mine, they are Kamel’s [his spy identity]. Taking off my clothes, it doesn’t work anymore. I can’t put him away. I’m pretending to be me.”

I feel quite the same.

You can become someone else, you can impersonate someone for some time - but you cannot unlearn that person. You cannot unlearn you acting role. You cannot not know your work identity in private. That is how not outing yourself to family or friends, makes you behave professionally even in private. How you’re setting up an act for friends?! Can they still be friends, when you’re setting up an act for them? When you can’t be yourself around your friends?!
I guess that is the reason I’m writing this blog post on my private blog. I want to be out. I want my friends to know about that other life I have. I cannot act professionally in my work and private life. Whatever “private life” actually means on a public blog on the Internet. Maybe I should shut it down. Maybe I should use social media only as my sex work persona … but then, what will my private life still be? What will be left “private” for me with little to no family?

Here I am again thinking over and over and over again what to do. Doubting so much about my life, not knowing what to do. “Zweifeln”. The Identity I gave myself 8 years ago. It seems still a precise description of being me.
I want to be me. The whole me, the queer sex worker me but also the actor, the artist, the moderator, the photographer, the philosophy and culture student, the digital politics and activist me.

There is no comment section here. If you have questions or comments, please write me an e-mail: gero [at] zweifeln.org - or mention me on twitter: @zweifeln.


Selbsthilfegruppe Prokrastination

- in: moderation personal ideas

Ich habe ein Prokrastinationsproblem. Einiges bekomme ich in meinem Leben ganz gut auf die Reihe und ein paar Dinge fallen mir super schwer und ich schiebe sie Monate und Jahre vor mir her. “Einfach machen” funktioniert “einfach” nicht und ich glaube, ich habe verstanden, warum und habe eine Idee, wie die Hilfe/Struktur aussehen könnte/sollte, damit ich die ewig prokrastinierten Projekte doch noch hin bekomme.

Projekte, die ich nicht prokrastiniere, sind Projekte mit mehr sozialer Kontrolle. Egal, ob wirklich feste und externe Deadlines (feste Prüfungstermine) durch Dritte oder das Projekte, die ich nicht alleine, sondern im Team bearbeite.

Ich habe immer wieder versucht die festen Deadlines zu erzwingen, aber wenn ich die Deadlines setze, sind sie nicht fest genug. Ich weiß ja, dass es meine selbstgesetzten Deadlines sind - und es eigentlich nur mich interessiert, ob ich die einhalte, oder nicht.

Zeitweise habe ich Coworking Spaces gearbeitet, in der Hoffnung, dass mir das genug sozialen Kontrolle/Druck gibt, mich um meine eigenen, prokrastinierten Projekte zu kümmern. Coworking Spaces machen mich teils sehr produktiv, aber das vor allem für Projekte, in denen auch andere Menschen involviert sind. Sie verstärken meine Prokrastination gewissermaßen sogar. Noch mehr an anderen Projekten arbeiten, um sich nicht mit den eigenen Projekten auseinandersetzen zu müssen.

Was ich also brauche, ist nicht Menschen um mich herum beim Arbeiten, sondern Menschen, die an meinen Projekten interessiert sind. Ich brauche Menschen, die meinen Fortschritt kontrollieren. Mit denen ich regelmäßig bespreche, wie ich voran komme - oder wenn ich nicht voran komme, warum ich das nicht tue.

Ich bin mir ziemlich sicher, dass ich nicht der einzige Mensch bin, der aus eben jenem Grund prokrastiniert; dem die soziale Kontrolle fehlt.

Wenn es davon aber mehrere gibt … warum tun wir uns dann nicht zusammen und bilden eine Gruppe, die sich gegenseitig - freundlich - kontrolliert? Die sich jede Woche trifft und der restlichen Gruppe erzählt, wie das vormals prokrastinierte Projekt so voran geht? Eine Selbsthilfegruppe für Prokrastinateur*innen.

Genau das möchte ich anbieten. Ein wöchentliches Treffen zur Projektbesprechung - ähnlich einer Teambesprechung. Nur, dass es nicht um ein Projekt geht, dass das gesamte Team gemeinsam angeht, sondern um viele eigene Projekte, die trotzdem besprochen werden können - und vielleicht auch sollten, damit sie voran kommen.

Wenn es einige Leute in Berlin gibt, die daran Interesse haben, lasst uns gerne ein wöchentliches Treffen in Berlin haben, wenn interessierte irgendwo auf der Welt sind, gerne auch per Videokonferenz. Offline Meetings sind oft effizienter als Videokonferenzen, aber auch Videokonferenzen funktionieren ganz okay.

Wer hat Interesse an einer Prokrastinations-Selbsthilfegruppe?

Schreibt mir: gero [at] zweifeln.org

In der Mail wäre eine kurze Vorstellung schön, wer ihr seid und was eurer Projekt ist, dass ihr prokrastiniert - und wann euch ein solches Treffen gut passen würde: eher vormittags, eher nachmittags, eher abends - und wenn es einen präferierten Wochentag gibt, auch gerne den. (Daraus baue ich dann ein Doodle zur genaueren Terminfindung.)

Mein Projekt ist mein Fernstudium … dem seit Jahren ein paar Hausarbeiten und die Bachelorarbeit fehlt. Und wenn das geschafft ist, gibt es noch ein Buchprojekt, eine Politkampagne, ein Filmprojekt und ein Homeserver-Projekt … aber zuerst das Fernstudium beenden.

Update 2020-01-14

Nach einigen Rückmeldungen wurde mir klar, dass ich besser erklären muss, was eigentlich meine Idee dieses wöchentlichen Treffens ist - und vor allem, was es nicht ist.

Ich bin kein Psychotherapeut und traue mir nicht zu, eine Gruppentherapie zu leiten. Ich will auch keine Gruppentherapie. Ich will keine Runde, in der wir über Prokrastination reden. Ich will eine Runde, in der wir über die Projekte reden, die wir prokrastinieren.

Ich will den Fokus auf den Projekten, die wir alle vor uns her schieben. Ich will nicht wöchentlich abstrakte Gespräche über “Prokrastination” und Tipps, wie abstrakt weniger prokrastiniert werden kann, sondern konkret über einzelne Vorhaben reden.

Ich will, dass wir uns gegenseitig Hausaufgaben zu unseren Vorhaben geben - und damit selbst für Struktur sorgen, die wir brauchen, um unsere Vorhaben umzusetzen.

Schema Arbeitsentwicklung von Prokrastination
Ich will von dieser aus der Wikipedia kopierten Darstellung …
Schema Arbeitsentwickling, wie ich sie mir mit dieser Selbsthilfegruppe wünsche
… zu dieser selbstgebauten.

Denn insbesondere bei Vorhaben, die (noch) keinen festen Endtermin haben, fehlt auch die “Oh jetzt wird’s knapp!” Entwicklung … und die Vorhaben dümpeln nur so vor sich hin.

Es geht mir darum, wöchentliche, “kleine Deadlines” zu haben. Und ich lernte, dass die für mich nur funktionieren, wenn es auch Menschen gibt, die kontrollieren, dass ich sie einhalte. Im Gegenzug biete ich an, eben jene “kleine Deadlines” für andere Menschen zu kontrollieren.

Und weil wir dauernd kleine Deadlines brauchen: wer mitmachen möchte, möge bis spätestens Freitag, 17.01.2020, 14.00 Uhr eine Mail an gero [at] zweifeln.org schreiben. Und dann gucke ich, wie viele wir sind und wann/wie wir uns treffen können und wie es weiter geht.