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What I have found is that the subconscious will resist taking action on something perceived to be important until it's worked out an appropriate approach. As a

What I have found is that the subconscious will resist taking action on something perceived to be important until it's worked out an appropriate approach. As a result one can avoid doing things like planning and preparing and simply query the subconscious as to whether you're ready to work on something. Yes has me start on it and either complete it or hit a snag. If it's a snag, then I'll analyze it briefly and then go back to procrastinating until the subconscious has worked out another approach. No is perceived this as a feeling of "Nope." I've attuned myself to this feeling and have learned to listen carefully to it. Many, many times, especially with work tasks the reason for doing that particular task will have evaporated by the time I'm ready to do it. Other times I find I needed to clear my mind before the subconscious can present to me the right way to go about it. So I'll read articles so as to purge my mind of the attachment (in the Buddhist sense) I'm feeling to the task. Sometimes it takes days / weeks / months for this attachment to clear up. I have a task I've been wanting to do sit in my reminders for 2 months now. It will stay until I'm either comfortable removing it or actually doing it.

manigandham 11y ago
Your first sentence was really motivational for some reason. Or maybe I'm just rationalizing my procrastination by making it sound like some kind of cool async hyperthreading approach.
xlm1717 11y ago
Honestly, this sounds like justification to go days/weeks/months just reading articles to me. "Don't worry boss, maybe next week my subconscious will come up with a brilliant solution that will sink our competitors. You'll see." A little planning goes a long way. You can avoid doing things like planning and wait days/weeks/months for your attachment to the task to clear up. You can also plan out what you'll need to accomplish a task and once you're done, your mind can essentially go on autopilot till you either hit a snag (in which case back to the drawing board you go for more planning), or finish the task. You can trust your subconscious to show you the right way and hope it's correct, or you can plan the right way and have more of a guarantee that it's correct.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  A matter of scale. Your subconscious isn't going to make big plans; but it can solve knotty problems. Its tactical. And of course once you come up with something, you can do all that planning-review stuff on the brilliant idea, confirm its really a good idea.
- w0rd-driven 11y ago
  If you only have a single task to complete, then yes that's precisely justification to sit there and do nothing but collect a paycheck. Hopefully your boss is putting multiple things in front of you that can be juggled so that as you put something in the background something can take its place. I've solved some of the most challenging problems I've ever faced in my professional life this way. By focusing on something else, usually another task in an entirely different project or section or even just looking at Youtube I'll often have an epiphany about something in a completely unrelated task. I'll go to prove my assumptions and sure enough, problem solved. Much more efficiently I might add. When I only have one major thing to accomplish this looks like I'm doing nothing because on the surface I'm not. I'm often here on HN reading articles or on other websites filling my brain with useless trivia but it doesn't mean my mind isn't churning through the plates I have spinning. I'll also often pull a task out of background, make more assumptions, prove them incorrect, then put the task back in background mode until that efficient answer comes. This is not every task mind you, some things I can solve immediately. For the things I can't, this model absolutely does work for me 100% of the time.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  > A little planning goes a long way. Planning can be accomplished like any other task in exactly the same way. "I need to plan the Xyzzy presentation, am I ready to do this?" <consult gut feeling> "Yes, let's give it a go. What sorts of information am I going to need?" And go about your plan. "Planning" can be just the thing your subconscious has decided a particular task needs. At this point it's no longer a task, but rather a project, and gets 'filed' differently in my mind. For each project, the first thing I do is decide what constitutes "done" for that project. I may be ready for the task of making that decision or my subconscious might decide I'm not ready for even that step yet. From the conception of done I can then create a road map from here to done. Road maps have tasks, each task gets accomplished individually in the same subconscious-driven fashion. The road map isn't typically written down, it exists in my mind 'somewhere'. A lot of times, subconscious 'nopes' alert me to the fact that there's something wrong with the road map or the approach. One of the keys to making this work is to prioritize learning. Every nope contains a lesson, one of the reasons I let things go as long as they need to is so that I can give the subconscious space to bring these lessons to awareness. I consider the lessons to be more important than task completion in all but truly urgent and pressing issues.
nxb 11y ago
> What I have found is that the subconscious will resist taking action on something perceived to be important until it's worked out an appropriate approach. Yup, that's why whenever I get stuck on the high-level design, I'll often start doing some of the small sub-tasks for which I'm highly-confident will be a part of the end-solution, and for which I'm highly confident that I know the interface they'll need, no matter what high-level approach is taken. That extra domain work on the sub-tasks often feeds back to helping with the high-level planning too. This, combined with abstract non-functional high-level prototypes will attack the problem from both the top and bottom. Hopefully you eventually complete the task when you meet somewhere in the middle.
blazespin 11y ago
Agreed procrastination is just your brain telling you are not ready to start or that something may happen which makes the work not relevant. Procrastinating is always a very good idea. The trick is picking the right alternative tasks that are either higher value or will help you get ready. I find meditation works great. Just envisioning myself doing the task. It will often reveal the key parts my subconscious is worried about.

manigandham 11y ago

Your first sentence was really motivational for some reason. Or maybe I'm just rationalizing my procrastination by making it sound like some kind of cool async hyperthreading approach.

xlm1717 11y ago

Honestly, this sounds like justification to go days/weeks/months just reading articles to me. "Don't worry boss, maybe next week my subconscious will come up with a brilliant solution that will sink our competitors. You'll see." A little planning goes a long way. You can avoid doing things like planning and wait days/weeks/months for your attachment to the task to clear up. You can also plan out what you'll need to accomplish a task and once you're done, your mind can essentially go on autopilot till you either hit a snag (in which case back to the drawing board you go for more planning), or finish the task. You can trust your subconscious to show you the right way and hope it's correct, or you can plan the right way and have more of a guarantee that it's correct.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
A matter of scale. Your subconscious isn't going to make big plans; but it can solve knotty problems. Its tactical. And of course once you come up with something, you can do all that planning-review stuff on the brilliant idea, confirm its really a good idea.
w0rd-driven 11y ago
If you only have a single task to complete, then yes that's precisely justification to sit there and do nothing but collect a paycheck. Hopefully your boss is putting multiple things in front of you that can be juggled so that as you put something in the background something can take its place. I've solved some of the most challenging problems I've ever faced in my professional life this way. By focusing on something else, usually another task in an entirely different project or section or even just looking at Youtube I'll often have an epiphany about something in a completely unrelated task. I'll go to prove my assumptions and sure enough, problem solved. Much more efficiently I might add. When I only have one major thing to accomplish this looks like I'm doing nothing because on the surface I'm not. I'm often here on HN reading articles or on other websites filling my brain with useless trivia but it doesn't mean my mind isn't churning through the plates I have spinning. I'll also often pull a task out of background, make more assumptions, prove them incorrect, then put the task back in background mode until that efficient answer comes. This is not every task mind you, some things I can solve immediately. For the things I can't, this model absolutely does work for me 100% of the time.
vinceguidry 11y ago
> A little planning goes a long way. Planning can be accomplished like any other task in exactly the same way. "I need to plan the Xyzzy presentation, am I ready to do this?" <consult gut feeling> "Yes, let's give it a go. What sorts of information am I going to need?" And go about your plan. "Planning" can be just the thing your subconscious has decided a particular task needs. At this point it's no longer a task, but rather a project, and gets 'filed' differently in my mind. For each project, the first thing I do is decide what constitutes "done" for that project. I may be ready for the task of making that decision or my subconscious might decide I'm not ready for even that step yet. From the conception of done I can then create a road map from here to done. Road maps have tasks, each task gets accomplished individually in the same subconscious-driven fashion. The road map isn't typically written down, it exists in my mind 'somewhere'. A lot of times, subconscious 'nopes' alert me to the fact that there's something wrong with the road map or the approach. One of the keys to making this work is to prioritize learning. Every nope contains a lesson, one of the reasons I let things go as long as they need to is so that I can give the subconscious space to bring these lessons to awareness. I consider the lessons to be more important than task completion in all but truly urgent and pressing issues.

nxb 11y ago

> What I have found is that the subconscious will resist taking action on something perceived to be important until it's worked out an appropriate approach. Yup, that's why whenever I get stuck on the high-level design, I'll often start doing some of the small sub-tasks for which I'm highly-confident will be a part of the end-solution, and for which I'm highly confident that I know the interface they'll need, no matter what high-level approach is taken. That extra domain work on the sub-tasks often feeds back to helping with the high-level planning too. This, combined with abstract non-functional high-level prototypes will attack the problem from both the top and bottom. Hopefully you eventually complete the task when you meet somewhere in the middle.

blazespin 11y ago

Agreed procrastination is just your brain telling you are not ready to start or that something may happen which makes the work not relevant. Procrastinating is always a very good idea. The trick is picking the right alternative tasks that are either higher value or will help you get ready. I find meditation works great. Just envisioning myself doing the task. It will often reveal the key parts my subconscious is worried about.