Flakes: acquired trait or personal choice?

[Jesus Pimp]

Do people become flakes on purpose or is it an aquired trait? Being a dependable person, it just blows my mind how people can be or become like this. How are they able to function in society especially in the working world? Do flakes rub off on other people?

[lurkette]

I think part of it is temperamentally hard-wired - things like memory ability, capacity for attention, etc. - but beyond that it's all choice. I'll give you a classic example: my dad has memory loss from drug use and a bad car accident. He could do many, many things to compensate for this - things as simple as carrying around a notebook. But he chooses not to, for whatever reason. The memory loss is definitely hardwired: there's a piece of his brain that just doesn't work. But his choice not to do anything about that (and there are lots of things that could be done, from therapy to the notebook) makes him flaky.

I have another friend who is just chronically flaky. Come to think of it, several friends. They're intelligent, well-intentioned, otherwise perfectly functional, but they are slobs who lose things, can't find important documents, their keys, or their heads if they weren't attached. Again, they could do things differently but for whatever reason they choose not to. Being late is often a way to assert passive control over people. Being chronically disorganized gives you an excuse when you fail at something. And flakes can rub off on people - since I started hanging around with my flaky friends I've gotten a bit more lax at certain things, like balancing my checkbook, organizing my bills, etc. I'm still dependable but there are levels of messiness that I tolerate now that I never did before, and that's not always a bad thing.