Hmmm...

I've lived with being pushed on by people with power over me my whole life. My parents were far more determined to see me graduate from college than I was, and they succeeded in ensuring that I did so, by supervising me to the extent that I was supervised in high school. And, to be honest, if they hadn't insisted that I do my homework and literally driven me to classes, I probably wouldn't have graduated.

In general, unless someone pushes me, all I do is waste time. I play video games, or Magic, or surf the Internet and write comments. Everything else, I have to be forced to do by someone. I've never learned how to force myself to work hard on something that isn't purely mechanical and that I don't feel like doing at the moment, because whenever I tried to fail, my parents just kept pushing harder and harder until I succeeded. Willpower? What a horrible, terrible concept! Why would any sane person want to do something they don't feel like doing, if they weren't being coerced into doing it? I don't need willpower. I have parents!

I have a tendency to divide activities into "things I want to do" and "things I do because other people make me do them", and I try to optimize the former at the expense of the latter. As Paul Graham put it:

When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing.

I definitely have this mindset. If you have to pay someone to get something done, "obviously" it's not worth doing for its own sake; otherwise, people would get day jobs and pay you for the opportunity to do it in their spare time. As a side effect, if I suddenly found myself being paid to play video games, I'd start procrastinating over them, too.

Although I am currently 26 years old, I have no source of income and am still being supported by my parents. I am definitely at the mercy of my parents right now, but I accept this, because my parents just don't demand that much from me. (I put up with college coursework because it seemed better than getting a job - but I'll jump in front of a speeding car before I let myself get sent to graduate school.) If I were to get a job, I'd only end up increasing the amount of time spent doing things because other people are forcing me to, so I don't want a job. This, however, does not exactly make me a person of high social status...