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The Psychology of Dreaded Tasks

318 points by danicgross 8y ago

gnud 8y ago
Some good mind hacks here, but I have to say that changing wording from "do my taxes" to "organize my finances" is not a way to reduce dread. I have done my taxes about 18 times in my life. I have yet to organize my finances.
- wool_gather 8y ago
  Haha, seconded. Taxes are just like executing a program. Boring, sure, but fundamentally easy. Beyond the laugh, though, I find that a very strange rewording suggestion. Usually the advice (and I've found this good) is to make the to-do more specific and concrete. An open-ended project-sized item like "organize my finances" is a foolproof candidate for procrastination. "Do my taxes" is better, but might still be too big depending on the complexity. A real to-do for either would be something like "Collect tax forms and order by date (note: there may be one under the couch?)" -- it's reasonably scoped and has a very clear "I'm done" criterion. (EDIT: Looking at the article, it seems that "breaking it down" is indeed the suggestion. The specific wording chosen is still strange; it seems the author means something close to "gather documents" by "organize my finances".)
  - danicgross 8y ago
    Great feedback. Clarified. Thanks wool_gather and gnud!
- gm-conspiracy 8y ago
  Also, this is a unique US problem, no?
  - gnode 8y ago
    It's certainly not a problem for me in the UK; PAYE is automatic, and I've not yet had to do a tax return. Although I did once need to get an adjustment, which I did with a short letter. I do wonder why the US puts such a tax administrative burden on individuals.
    - jimmaswell 8y ago
      Lobbying by tax preparing companies is part of it.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    HN is ostensibly a forum for entrepreneurs, I'm sure most of the target audience here are familiar with filing taxes. Although I agree with my sibling comment that the requirements for individuals to file a tax return in the US always struck me as odd.
- keyle 8y ago
  My philosophy is if I hate it and it's not worth my time, I pay someone to do it. Thing is, watch a 'professional' work in the field you dread, and you will quickly pick on tricks of the trade and workflows that really change it to something quite easy (if you find the right person). Then the dreaded task becomes emulating that person, which is a lot easier the subsequent years. (e.g. have spreadsheets set up like them, follow the same steps, etc.)
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    That is assuming they themselves do not dread the task. Sometimes even a professional can't do it because the thing is just so big. From coding perspective, there is a point where rewriting is better than refactoring. Then you get to piecemeal attack the rewrite with the same resources allocated to refactoring, which rarely is possible.
- Tempest1981 8y ago
  The article's example was "gather finance documents". Like W-2, 1099, etc. Oh, looks like it was edited. :-)
mikece 8y ago
Essential reading on this topic: "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield https://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles/dp/1936891026/ https://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles/dp/1...
- Someone1234 8y ago
  Please could you explain a little how that helped you?
  - mikece 8y ago
    The key takeaway for me was: you will complete none of the jobs on which you don't work. If you don't feel like getting started, do something anyway. Just do something, no matter how small, and then do another thing. The hard part is getting started: once there is momentum then getting things done follows.
    - rainbowmverse 8y ago
      This is like saying "you get to Mars by starting the trip." The advice is sound, but doesn't help with getting off the ground. It's the kind of thing someone who already has little or no trouble starting buys on a poster for their workspace.
  - svat 8y ago
    I'm not the person you're replying to, but I find The War of Art very relevant, and let me explain how it helped me. The book is about the struggle of doing things that one cares about: writer's block and the like. It puts in very clear (if metaphorical) detail the nature of this inner struggle (what the author calls Resistance), has some description of the many pitfalls, and gives a bunch of tricks for beating it. Mostly, if you find you relate to the description of Resistance in the book, then framing the struggle in the way the author does can be inspirational. I have read the book two times so far, and each time it has helped me for a little while at least — until the demon of Resistance conquers me again. (Maybe the trick is to just read it every few months…)
TrainedMonkey 8y ago
The best way I found of actually getting through the dread tasks is to cheat. Ask for help from someone else (presumably they do not have the mental block). 1. Identify the dread tasks. 2. Ask someone who cares (about you) to help you. 3. Do them together, with the other person not letting you get distracted. For big tasks asking other people to help you chunk them also helps. After that avoid thinking about whole thing and just look at the small chunks.
- ajiang 8y ago
  I came to comment the same. I think there could be a business for "dread task buddy on demand". On second thought this sounds like a life coach
  - djmips 8y ago
    Yeah but 'life coach' has negative connotations whereas dread task buddy sounds awesome. This is one reason pair programming is good at times.
  - taylorjacobson 8y ago
    Haha I built this, it's called Focusmate [1]. Having an accountability partner is one of the only things that can almost guaranteed get me moving. [1] https://www.focusmate.com https://www.focusmate.com
- keyle 8y ago
  It's true that it works. And the other person usually doesn't dread the task themselves because it's about helping someone do it.
- prawn 8y ago
  I've long said that I could probably pay someone to stand behind me with a whip, and make more than enough from the productivity improvement to cover their wage.
  - pc_scared 8y ago
pmoriarty 8y ago
This article assumes you're just going to follow the advice it gives. If you can in fact do that, you're half-way there. But some people have strong resistance to doing anything that will get them closer to the dread task, and will instead distract themselves (say with video games or any number of other distractions), or by doing some other less-dreaded task, etc. There could be some underlying cause for such resistance which no amount of visualization, coaching, coffee, or workouts could touch. This is where working with the right therapist might help. "Right therapist" being the key phrase there. There are so many different therapists out there, and so many different approaches to therapy too. What might work for one person might not for another.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  > This is where working with the right therapist might help. What exactly would a therapist do? Saying consult a therapist seems a bit like a trope. It isn't within itself an answer. Simply talking through the mental block as if it is a rational decision isn't particularly helpful, a lot of the bad roadblocks are something deeper than your conscious mind or inner monologue. For example, there are many people who have read the books, followed the steps, and still struggle daily with these kind of dread task problem that seemingly get worse the longer you avoid them.
  - pmoriarty 8y ago
    "What exactly would a therapist do? Saying consult a therapist seems a bit like a trope. It isn't within itself an answer." Seeing a therapist won't magically make your problems disappear, but it could give you insight in to their cause, and if the therapist is good they could help you overcome those problems. No one should be under the illusion that it'll be the therapist doing all the hard work. The hard work will have to mostly come from you. As the saying goes, you have to want to change.. and also you have to be able to put in the work to change. The difference between this and trying to go it alone is that you'll have a trained professional on your side helping you to see your own blind spots, making suggestions you might not have thought of, and hopefully helping you to open up and look at issues you, your family, and your friends aren't trained to or necessarily willing or able to uncover or face. It's no guarantee, however. Maybe you'll wind up with an ineffective therapist, or a therapist you can't trust, or a therapist you don't like, or one that's using the wrong methodology for you, or maybe you just won't be willing or able to put in the hard work or face the pain you might encounter along the way of self-discovery and change. No guarantees. But hope and professional help and support -- things you might be lacking if you've tried to go it alone and failed. Some of us are stuck in a loop and need more than another self-help book or blog post to make progress with our issues.
plankers 8y ago
Personal gripe, but he just had to mention coffee, didn't he? Are there any folks out there who like to get difficult things done without caffeine? edit: I guess not. edit #2: You're sending me mixed messages, Hacker News.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  I don't like to get difficult things done at all, that's the problem. I will take any advantage I can get. Sometimes caffeine helps, and in those cases I'm not gonna leave it on the table.
- benatkin 8y ago
  50mg of coffee. If it were pure caffeine it wouldn't be very much caffeine.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Are there any folks out there who like to get difficult things done without caffeine? Who would like that?
jl2718 8y ago
There is a point not addressed here. Some tasks are distasteful by nature, like cleaning manure out of horse stalls. It’s disgusting but I don’t have a problem with it. Other tasks are neutral by nature but infuriating by their very existence. Taxes fit into this category, even when owed a refund. Any kind of job/school application or process that takes a lot more of my time than the person who will evaluate it. I know that negative thought will come, and I don’t want to have them. Also, there are arbitrary decisions to be made that are irreversible and can have huge negative consequences if done wrong. These are also avoided. The idea that a task is avoided because it is distasteful by nature is really saying something about the simplicity and inconsequentiality of it.
- tokyodude 8y ago
  Not really a "task" in the sense that it only takes 5-10 minutes but I hate that in 2018 when I visit many medical offices I have to fill out lots of forms, even when it's an office I have a history with and none of my data has changed. Ideally they'd show me a screen and say "has anything changed?" the end. If a screen is too expensive they'd print out a piece of paper will all my data and just have me sign that it hasn't changed. When I've asked though I'm told "it's the law" and that it has to be handwritten. Maybe Estonia is better at this?
  - rainbowmverse 8y ago
    The library manages this the 1-2 times a year I go to a branch. They show me the latest information in the PINES database, ask me if it's all current, and input any changes. Of course, they don't have the same regulatory and liability concerns as a doctor.
    - konradb 8y ago
      Weirdly it feels like it might lead to more inaccuracies to have everything re-keyed many times, due to variances in how people remember things and enter subtly different information in forms on subsequent occasions.
  - 8y ago
keyle 8y ago
I'm a big believer in attacking a big problem after a workout and a good coffee. Also set a time for it. "8 am tomorrow, I'm doing this thing" After a work out, I can clean the entire house, pumping music in my ears, for example.
blt 8y ago
The highlighted sections on this page drive me crazy. They really interrupt the flow of the text.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  Most browsers these days offer a "reader mode" - great for reducing those distractions. (Also for dealing with sites with awful fonts or layouts.)
rabboRubble 8y ago
I've a theory for nasty work, the "Bikini Wax Theory of Nasty Work". The theory goes like this, a bikini wax and nasty work are exactly the same because: 1 - Nasty work and bikini waxes are both painful to do. 2 - you must move decisively and quickly for both nasty tasks and waxes, getting it over as quickly and competently as possible. 3 - if you fail to execute #2 properly the results will be a bloody and even more painful mess, likely taking more time to achieve the desired results. I've shared this theory with close colleagues. Nobody has told me I'm wrong to my face.
- deleted 8y ago
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- cm2012 8y ago
  Most people just wouldn't do a bikini wax given the options above. So maybe not the best advice for getting dreaded things done.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    And yet thousands of women get them every day, so there must be a reason. (Yes, they're painful. It's about 5 minutes of ripping off band-aids at 30-second intervals. Then it's over and it doesn't hurt at all any more, though the cortisone cream is soothing.) Oh, the reason to go through that? It saves 6-8 weeks of shaving a very sensitive (and awkwardly shaped and difficult to inspect) area and dealing with 5-o'clock shadows and stubble and ingrown hairs and razor nicks. If you're self-conscious about wearing a swimsuit (or, for some, about your appearance in the bedroom), it's totally worth it. Now, that nasty work that you're procrastinating on: why do you want it to be done in the first place?
    - rabboRubble 8y ago
      And yet thousands of women get them every day, so there must be a reason. > Yep!
hosh 8y ago
The idea of a prediction being painful matches my experience. I never thought of it that way, but now that I do, that makes things a lot easier. (I meditate, so just knowing about this helps me a lot).
dataisfun 8y ago
This is particularly hard for people with ADD. That said, I think it’s potentially dangerous to give advice that’s in any way titled the “Psychology of...” without actually basing it on evidence and the literature because people might confuse it for rigorous or clinically appropriate guidance. I recognize you couch this in your experience, but if you’re going to write about something that in anyway dovetails with a pathology, it could be helpful to include at least some even abridged literature review, since this will be viewed by thousands (given you’re a shoe-in for HN’s front page).
- interfixus 8y ago
  Exactly! >Don’t “do your taxes”. Just change the label to “gather finance documents” Finance documents? What finance documents? Which ones? How would I know without having started on my taxes? Wherever did I put them? They're all over the place. This is hopeless. Maybe tomorrow.
  - coroxout 8y ago
    You've been downvoted but I laughed because this is exactly the inner monologue I have whenever I try to start a Dreaded Task. "I don't know where to start! Well, I could start with document A, but then I'd need some information from document B, which requires document C, but I can't do C until I've done A -- oh no, a loop! I can't see how to get round this at all; maybe my head will be clearer tomorrow. Time for a break. (NB the "loops" often aren't really 100% circular, but seem insurmountable in my head; this is the point where talking to someone is invaluable, if I can get past the usually correct suspicion I'm going to sound stupid for making a big deal about a block which seems totally trivial and non-blocking when I try to put it into words) ...Also, didn't I already work on document B? But I can't remember where I got to, or where I put my notes, or what they mean..." I do suspect I might have AD(H)D but I live in a country where adult ADHD is not really recognised, so I guess I'll have to do the best I can using some of the good tips posted here instead.
  - cimmanom 8y ago
    Then you've figured out part of why you're procrastinating on the taxes in the first place. Time to rename the task again: "create list of finance docs needed for taxes."
nurettin 8y ago
>> Break down a big idea into small bits. I'm not getting this. Of course you would start by breaking down the task. This is what you do with every task. You don't just gulp down an entire task without planning ahead or thinking about steps. So this is no different than saying "now start doing the task". It is silly self-encouragement, trying to trick your brain into thinking that you did something to alleviate the problem. You did not. You just started the dreaded task and made yourself focus. I am tired of seeing these kinds of "advices from experts" online and in self development books.
- brazzledazzle 8y ago
  Now you’ve gone and ruined the placebo for the rest of us.
- anonthrowaway2 8y ago
  That is very obviously not how I begin a large, dreaded task when I am forcing myself to just start. Sounds to me like our brains work differently.
- nurettin 8y ago
  Here's some real advice: find out what is blocking you and slowly move to remove it from your path. First; It is not a "mental block". It is a tangible, existing stopper, you are just not focused enough to figure out what it is. It may be an academic topic you need to study, allocation of time, reading a guide, getting a permission or something as simple as getting feedback. If feedback is not available, try to find existing precedents to inspire you.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- svat 8y ago
  Comments like this make me realize there's an entire universe of people who don't have the problems I have, and I wonder what it's like to be like them, and have learned the things that are so obvious to you. For example: Is it obvious to you that faced with a task you're dreading and procrastinating on, it helps to replace it in your mind with something smaller? It was not obvious to me, and was learned after years of misery, and even now I have to consciously remember to do it, and whenever I do do it, I find it helps immensely. (For example, when there's an email I'm dreading replying to, and have been procrastinating for weeks—it hanging on my mind every day of course—it helps when I replace “reply to Ram's email” with “just write a reply to Ram's email” or (if that doesn't work) even “write a garbage outline of a reply…” or even “reread Ram's email”. For another example, I had to apply for a travel visa and was procrastinating for months, and what finally helped was mentally replacing “finish the rest of application process” with “create a travel history document” with (when that didn't work) “collect all travel history”… along with the “talk to people” trick.) And yes, the idea is indeed to “trick your brain“ into doing the dreaded thing. At least, I have found it to help. The matter-of-fact way in which you say “You don't just gulp down an entire task without planning ahead or thinking about steps” is really inspirational, because that's not my mental model of doing things, and I have to consciously practice it. I wish I learned these things in school, instead of just coasting by and now struggling with getting anything done at all.
eudora 8y ago
I must say, just last night I had a bit of coding to start and it seemed like I was being asked to kill a kitten or something, the thought was so incredibly depressing. I forced myself, through the resistance, just to start. I said I'd do it for an hour then I could stop. Note that this was beginning a new, big task. If I was in the middle of it I probably wouldn't have had such a huge urge to resist it. Anyway, once I started it was cripplingly painful for about 5 minutes. Then I couldn't stop for the next few hours - I think because the thing I was working on was incrementally rewarding - every 5 minutes or so I could see the progress I was making. Also, it helped a lot that I put on an interesting podcast that makes me feel great. I suppose my point is that this guy is pretty correct, at least for me: it was pain I was avoiding, and just starting was the biggest hurdle. I'm a bit ADD-ish, I think, so YMMV.
- phito 8y ago
  Yep, it is so hard to actually START doing something. Sometimes I "prepare" myself for multiple minutes, then get too overwhelmed in my head about it and end up procrastinating. But once I'm into it it's not that bad. It's crazy how aware I am of this behavior, and yet always fall back in it. I've tried every single advice I could find on the internet, but none of them worked because in the end, the only way for me to do something is to start doing it. It sounds easy, but it is so, so, soooo hard. And the worst thing is that people sometimes associate it with lazyness. I don't think I am lazy. This honestly feels more like something is broken in my brain, and I don't have much control over it. I'm not giving up tho, still try to fight it daily. Sometimes I spend a whole day with a foggy head, trying to start do get things done, but I just can't...
- an_throwaway 8y ago
  There is this crazy swimmer here - he swam down 50 miles of the ganges river in some iron man contests - and he constantly swims between islands. The way he visualizes is splitting down the goals to smaller portions. "I only think about the next 15 minutes, if I would think about the whole thing I would go crazy.".
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
redmaverick 8y ago
I created a terminator script at work. It shutdowns my system if progress.txt is not updated in the next 3 minutes. If I am dreading any task, I launch this. All I have to do is make any progress and record it in the progress.txt file. It forces me to focus. Shutting down the system is not a life threatening situation but it is annoying and a minor inconvenience. Especially since it takes a few minutes to restart the system and load all the applications.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  What job do you do where you can be productive while interrupting yourself every 3 minutes to update a text file? Or am I misunderstanding something?
  - redmaverick 8y ago
    3 minutes is an arbitrary time limit, you can set it to anything. This forces you to act. Once you get to a flow state you can turn off the program.
- jayliew 8y ago
  Interesting. What I like about this is that if you're subconsciously procrastinating by avoiding doing the thing you need to do (by say, justifying something else less dreadful to do), this is immediate feedback that will snap you back to reality to focus on the one thing.
pipio21 8y ago
I have been doing that for years form me and for others(managing people) so they do not procrastinate with the team like they will do if alone. I do that without telling them I am doing that. I will add some things I consider very important: Use paper, write things down. Dividing a big task means nothing if you have no external memory you could trust to free the brain short term memory but you could recover it later. Paper today is the cheapest and more advanced external memory there is. You could also use a tape recorder if you prefer audio memory. After creating small sub task(tactics) from your general strategic thinking, put a checklist square near it. When you finish the task, check it. Every hour of deep work, mark it on a calendar like a prisoner does with sticks. This provides visual feedback for your brain of your accomplishments, specially with hard tasks that takes months to complete. The word for managing to do dread task is "reframing" into something that is important and positive for you. Of course if you have money and power you could delegate most of the dreaded task, like googlers do with most of their domestic chores. There are more things but the important thing is that you need practice, practice and practice until you get it. And like in anything else you will learn it much much faster if you personally know someone who "gets it" and learn from this person directly. I have met some "naturals" of this processes in my life but I am not. I developed this skill over a long period of time, making me super productive compared to when I started.
- sturakov 8y ago
  I generally enjoy using paper for this reason as well, but I struggle with organizing the paper. Or, sticking to some form of organization. I've tried setting up bullet journals, but paper discourages me for a few reasons. - What if I need to edit or add extra content? I generally write in pen so that what I write down sticks around. - I prefer to write in a stream of thoughts. To organize the paper, I try to think ahead and categorize my nebulous thoughts. This extra effort discourages me from writing and eventually, from using any organization system with paper. I like Evernote because I can throw it in there and search will eventually help me find it.
tofflos 8y ago
In the "Learning How to Learn" course, that was mentioned in the MOOC-discussion a while back, they suggest tackling this by focusing on process over product and tying a reward to it: "I'm just gonna sit here and do taxes for 25 minutes and then eat some chocolate" rather then "I'm going to finish my taxes". The reasoning is that by removing the pressure of completing the whole task you can sometimes convince yourself to stop procrastinating. If that still doesn't do it for you then at least you have the chocolate.
- tofflos 8y ago
  By the way "The Psychology of Dreaded Tasks" is a really good name.
- afarrell 8y ago
  Also, in that 25 minutes, you can discover the actual blocker to doing the task. Oftentimes, I find that my dread about a task is because of some ambiguity. By committing to a certain chunk of time working on it, it becomes obvious what that ambiguity is. Of course, then I have to push through the discomfort of resolving that ambiguity. But that is easier now that I'm an adult and: 1) Know how to frame questions in a way that sets the answerer up for success. 2) Can ask "why are we doing this?" (better phrased "what is our goal in doing this?") and get an actual answer this rather than "because I said so". 3) Have the backbone & confidence to push back when someone says "stop procrastinating, just write the damn essay." and press until I get the question answered or decide that I'm not going to do the task.
  - scandinavegan 8y ago
    Yes! What's stopping me is usually that I'm not entirely sure how to do something or I'm afraid that I will uncover some really hard or time consuming problem when I start doing the task. Instead, often only a short time is needed to get an overview of the task and realize it's not that hard. For me, the first step is to commit to only a five minute overview and information gathering session. During those five minutes I will figure out what output is expected from me, write down a couple of concrete tasks, and then start with the one that either looks like it will add the most value or, if I'm low on energy, the one that's most fun. When I tick it off, I'm at least closer to completion and hopefully has enough momentum to start the another task on the list. All of the above are best case scenarios, as I still usually put off things for way too long and have to work through the night to catch up. I constantly try to improve this, but as soon as one deadline has passed with a marathon work session, I relax because the next deadline is far off.
Bakary 8y ago
There are so many articles on productivity on the internet that I'm starting to wonder whether there isn't a deeper problem at hand here.
Dowwie 8y ago
Additionally.. 1. Give yourself permission to just try, for a little while 2. use fear-setting for really tough moments A technique that I've found helpful when dealing with anxious thoughts is I become mindful of the anxious feeling, realize what I'm feeling anxious about, and then give myself permission to just try, regardless of the outcome. I'll explicitly granting myself permission to "just try" and even throw in "just for a little while, see how things go". This at times has turned into a productive, multi-hour session. Tim Ferriss talks about a technique use to confront fears, called "fear setting" [1]. Essentially, I put together a 3-column table and think through the worst that can possibly happen. It helps me think about risks and realize what I can handle. This helps to manage worry. [1] https://tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/ https://tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/
- tomerv 8y ago
  I have a similar trick. When I need to write something (code, email, etc.) that I don't know how to start, I tell myself that right now I'm only writing a draft. It might turn out to be a final revision later, but right now it's just a draft. This reduces the stress and allows me to experiment. The problem is that it doesn't work for things that I can only do once, like talking to someone about a difficult topic.
  - ben_w 8y ago
    Many people rehearse difficult conversations beforehand. Would that approach help?
    - notduncansmith 8y ago
      I’d like to add onto this a bit. The point of rehearsing beforehand is not to come up with a speech to recite, but to give yourself a chance to edit your communications. Often, the brain’s first pass at articulating something is suboptimal, and it takes some critical analysis to refine that into something that fully communicates the desired signal with minimal noise.
- hxchen 8y ago
nnq 8y ago
Does anyone else have an absolute dread of FIXING / REPAIRING something? And a solution for this dread? Sometimes I'm at a point where I would put my hand in a running blender together with a live kitten or something painful and horrible like that, just to get NOT to have to FIX something that needs fixing and instead to START something new or to completely replace or refactor something or to buy something new and set it up in the place of the thing needing fixing... anything, just not repairing, not debugging, not fixing or not optimizing one more little half/broken thing. The only thing I similarly dread is "going the last mile" from 80% to 100% and finishing any project/task, but for this at least I have a big bag of tricks that works most of the time. But fixing / repairing instead of replacing something or starting with something completely new... This is HELL for me. Even visually, a blank piece of paper or a blank screen pumps me up with energy. But when I see something already half-working / half-written but know that there are some serious bugs/defects that I need to hunt down and repair somewhere in that. It sometimes fills me with so much dread that my subconscious makes me "forget" that that task exists, or forget what its components are so I end up miss-estimating by factors of up to 100x (with obviously horrific consequences for everyone's budget and sanity).
- philbarr 8y ago
  Besides having decent source control habits so you know you can go back if you mess up, I usually have a "playground" project that is pretty similar to the app I'm working on. I can do what I like in there, experiment, break things, doesn't matter. That way if I have a problem I can't seem to even get started with in my main app, I go in my playground app and start there instead. It's like my cosy developer "safe zone".
- Klathmon 8y ago
  I've had very similar feelings before, and in my experience that fear of "fixing" is telling me something, that i'm not in a good position to be fixing whatever it is. You mention that "refactoring" doesn't give you the same dread? Could it be because you know the problem better if you are tackling a refactoring but you don't when you are bugfixing? I've found that that dread wasn't from bugfixing, but was from a lack of confidence about the part of the codebase i'm working on. Personally, I've found good results with tricking my brain into thinking i'm "refactoring" while really "bugfixing". Schedule the time to review the codebase that i'll be bugfixing, talk to the author if possible (and it's not you). If I want to indulge myself I'll sometimes "mock refactor" it, I'll open a new tab in my editor and almost pseudocode rewrite the component or module that needs fixing/debugging. Then once I feel I understand it enough, I can actually dive in and fix the bugs in the original code. And by that time i'm familiar enough with that section that i'm not fearing every letter typed as I know what will happen, I understand the intent behind the code. I also struggle with the fear of "wasting time" a lot with this kind of stuff. I have this incorrect feeling that if I was able to develop these 300 lines of code in 6 hours, that I can't possibly devote 6 more hours to fixing a few lines. But the reality is that often the small 1-2 line bugfixes are the largest timesinks of all, and that I can't be afraid to schedule those 6 hours to look into that bug. Once I get over that hump that I'm somehow "cheating" the system by allocating so much time to what ends up being so little change, I feel a LOT better about actually doing it.
thinkingemote 8y ago
When I was a little child I used to hate going for a bath, but really enjoyed being in the bath, and didn't want to leave. I remember thinking to myself then, "why do I hate getting in the bath when it's so nice in it?!" I still don't know why, and it's still both amusing and puzzling when I encounter similar things with coding and other tasks as a grown up.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  I think exercise can be like this for a lot of people. If you do figure out the solution, let us know, would you?
- ikeyany 8y ago
  Fear of change and temporary discomfort. Homeostasis/equilibrium is comfortable when you're in it.
Bizarro 8y ago
Coffee will give you a boost for a limited amount of time, then you feel worse then before. I still drink coffee, but I don't do the morning routine anymore. I have energy in the morning, the afternoon is when I need the boost. Working out and the resulting endorphin rush is great, but once again that's a temporary fix. You probably got a couple hours of the endorphin rush until you're more tired than you normally would be. Don't overdo the workouts, know when the best time for you to workout is, and get plenty of rest.
hyperpape 8y ago
This sounds nice, but given that the title is "The Psychology of Dreaded Tasks", I'm saddened there's essentially no reference to psychological findings. The references to the brain in the article are completely unreferenced. They sound fine given what I know about predictive processing, but I can't really tell whether they're just a nice sounding story, or something scientific. There a lot of psychological work on procrastination (I'm not sure how much neuroscience there is, but there's bound to be some). This post would have been less impressive but more honest without the veneer of psychological authority.
- kyleperik 8y ago
  I don't think whenever someone says "psychology" they're going to have extensive knowledge on the subject. Sounds like he's speaking from his own experience. What would you call it? He's talking about the brain isn't he? Or are these terms reserved only for those who've gotten their PhD?
  - hyperpape 8y ago
    Make the title something like "How to approach dreaded tasks", or maybe something a little more creative than that. The topic really doesn't have to be about the brain. We all have experience confronting tasks we dread, but we don't have to know anything about the brain to talk about that experience. Now, maybe neuroscience comes along and tells us something new about how that dread happens, how to confront it, etc. If so, that's great--but it should be properly cited. Also note that simply invoking the brain does not necessarily add anything: if you find out dread involves the XYZ subsystem of the brain, that is irrelevant to a discussion of the experience of dread, until you say what we've learned from it being the XYZ subsystem. So my demand is intellectual honesty. Which parts of your post are grounded in science, which are personal experiences, which are just fluff?
cookingrobot 8y ago
My instinct is always to talk about my goals for the reasons listed in this post. But research suggests that talking about goals makes it less likely that you'll follow through: https://www.inc.com/melissa-chu/announcing-your-goals-makes-you-less-likely-to-ach.html https://www.inc.com/melissa-chu/announcing-your-goals-makes-...
brokenmachine 8y ago
I'm avoiding a dreaded task by being on hn right now...

318 points by danicgross 8y ago

gnud 8y ago

Some good mind hacks here, but I have to say that changing wording from "do my taxes" to "organize my finances" is not a way to reduce dread. I have done my taxes about 18 times in my life. I have yet to organize my finances.

wool_gather 8y ago
Haha, seconded. Taxes are just like executing a program. Boring, sure, but fundamentally easy. Beyond the laugh, though, I find that a very strange rewording suggestion. Usually the advice (and I've found this good) is to make the to-do more specific and concrete. An open-ended project-sized item like "organize my finances" is a foolproof candidate for procrastination. "Do my taxes" is better, but might still be too big depending on the complexity. A real to-do for either would be something like "Collect tax forms and order by date (note: there may be one under the couch?)" -- it's reasonably scoped and has a very clear "I'm done" criterion. (EDIT: Looking at the article, it seems that "breaking it down" is indeed the suggestion. The specific wording chosen is still strange; it seems the author means something close to "gather documents" by "organize my finances".)
- danicgross 8y ago
  Great feedback. Clarified. Thanks wool_gather and gnud!
gm-conspiracy 8y ago
Also, this is a unique US problem, no?
- gnode 8y ago
  It's certainly not a problem for me in the UK; PAYE is automatic, and I've not yet had to do a tax return. Although I did once need to get an adjustment, which I did with a short letter. I do wonder why the US puts such a tax administrative burden on individuals.
  - jimmaswell 8y ago
    Lobbying by tax preparing companies is part of it.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  HN is ostensibly a forum for entrepreneurs, I'm sure most of the target audience here are familiar with filing taxes. Although I agree with my sibling comment that the requirements for individuals to file a tax return in the US always struck me as odd.
keyle 8y ago
My philosophy is if I hate it and it's not worth my time, I pay someone to do it. Thing is, watch a 'professional' work in the field you dread, and you will quickly pick on tricks of the trade and workflows that really change it to something quite easy (if you find the right person). Then the dreaded task becomes emulating that person, which is a lot easier the subsequent years. (e.g. have spreadsheets set up like them, follow the same steps, etc.)
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  That is assuming they themselves do not dread the task. Sometimes even a professional can't do it because the thing is just so big. From coding perspective, there is a point where rewriting is better than refactoring. Then you get to piecemeal attack the rewrite with the same resources allocated to refactoring, which rarely is possible.
Tempest1981 8y ago
The article's example was "gather finance documents". Like W-2, 1099, etc. Oh, looks like it was edited. :-)

mikece 8y ago

Essential reading on this topic: "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield https://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles/dp/1936891026/ https://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles/dp/1...

Someone1234 8y ago
Please could you explain a little how that helped you?
- mikece 8y ago
  The key takeaway for me was: you will complete none of the jobs on which you don't work. If you don't feel like getting started, do something anyway. Just do something, no matter how small, and then do another thing. The hard part is getting started: once there is momentum then getting things done follows.
  - rainbowmverse 8y ago
    This is like saying "you get to Mars by starting the trip." The advice is sound, but doesn't help with getting off the ground. It's the kind of thing someone who already has little or no trouble starting buys on a poster for their workspace.
- svat 8y ago
  I'm not the person you're replying to, but I find The War of Art very relevant, and let me explain how it helped me. The book is about the struggle of doing things that one cares about: writer's block and the like. It puts in very clear (if metaphorical) detail the nature of this inner struggle (what the author calls Resistance), has some description of the many pitfalls, and gives a bunch of tricks for beating it. Mostly, if you find you relate to the description of Resistance in the book, then framing the struggle in the way the author does can be inspirational. I have read the book two times so far, and each time it has helped me for a little while at least — until the demon of Resistance conquers me again. (Maybe the trick is to just read it every few months…)

TrainedMonkey 8y ago

The best way I found of actually getting through the dread tasks is to cheat. Ask for help from someone else (presumably they do not have the mental block). 1. Identify the dread tasks. 2. Ask someone who cares (about you) to help you. 3. Do them together, with the other person not letting you get distracted. For big tasks asking other people to help you chunk them also helps. After that avoid thinking about whole thing and just look at the small chunks.

ajiang 8y ago
I came to comment the same. I think there could be a business for "dread task buddy on demand". On second thought this sounds like a life coach
- djmips 8y ago
  Yeah but 'life coach' has negative connotations whereas dread task buddy sounds awesome. This is one reason pair programming is good at times.
- taylorjacobson 8y ago
  Haha I built this, it's called Focusmate [1]. Having an accountability partner is one of the only things that can almost guaranteed get me moving. [1] https://www.focusmate.com https://www.focusmate.com
keyle 8y ago
It's true that it works. And the other person usually doesn't dread the task themselves because it's about helping someone do it.
prawn 8y ago
I've long said that I could probably pay someone to stand behind me with a whip, and make more than enough from the productivity improvement to cover their wage.
- pc_scared 8y ago

pmoriarty 8y ago

This article assumes you're just going to follow the advice it gives. If you can in fact do that, you're half-way there. But some people have strong resistance to doing anything that will get them closer to the dread task, and will instead distract themselves (say with video games or any number of other distractions), or by doing some other less-dreaded task, etc. There could be some underlying cause for such resistance which no amount of visualization, coaching, coffee, or workouts could touch. This is where working with the right therapist might help. "Right therapist" being the key phrase there. There are so many different therapists out there, and so many different approaches to therapy too. What might work for one person might not for another.

Someone1234 8y ago
> This is where working with the right therapist might help. What exactly would a therapist do? Saying consult a therapist seems a bit like a trope. It isn't within itself an answer. Simply talking through the mental block as if it is a rational decision isn't particularly helpful, a lot of the bad roadblocks are something deeper than your conscious mind or inner monologue. For example, there are many people who have read the books, followed the steps, and still struggle daily with these kind of dread task problem that seemingly get worse the longer you avoid them.
- pmoriarty 8y ago
  "What exactly would a therapist do? Saying consult a therapist seems a bit like a trope. It isn't within itself an answer." Seeing a therapist won't magically make your problems disappear, but it could give you insight in to their cause, and if the therapist is good they could help you overcome those problems. No one should be under the illusion that it'll be the therapist doing all the hard work. The hard work will have to mostly come from you. As the saying goes, you have to want to change.. and also you have to be able to put in the work to change. The difference between this and trying to go it alone is that you'll have a trained professional on your side helping you to see your own blind spots, making suggestions you might not have thought of, and hopefully helping you to open up and look at issues you, your family, and your friends aren't trained to or necessarily willing or able to uncover or face. It's no guarantee, however. Maybe you'll wind up with an ineffective therapist, or a therapist you can't trust, or a therapist you don't like, or one that's using the wrong methodology for you, or maybe you just won't be willing or able to put in the hard work or face the pain you might encounter along the way of self-discovery and change. No guarantees. But hope and professional help and support -- things you might be lacking if you've tried to go it alone and failed. Some of us are stuck in a loop and need more than another self-help book or blog post to make progress with our issues.

plankers 8y ago

Personal gripe, but he just had to mention coffee, didn't he? Are there any folks out there who like to get difficult things done without caffeine? edit: I guess not. edit #2: You're sending me mixed messages, Hacker News.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago
I don't like to get difficult things done at all, that's the problem. I will take any advantage I can get. Sometimes caffeine helps, and in those cases I'm not gonna leave it on the table.
benatkin 8y ago
50mg of coffee. If it were pure caffeine it wouldn't be very much caffeine.
coldtea 8y ago
>Are there any folks out there who like to get difficult things done without caffeine? Who would like that?

jl2718 8y ago

There is a point not addressed here. Some tasks are distasteful by nature, like cleaning manure out of horse stalls. It’s disgusting but I don’t have a problem with it. Other tasks are neutral by nature but infuriating by their very existence. Taxes fit into this category, even when owed a refund. Any kind of job/school application or process that takes a lot more of my time than the person who will evaluate it. I know that negative thought will come, and I don’t want to have them. Also, there are arbitrary decisions to be made that are irreversible and can have huge negative consequences if done wrong. These are also avoided. The idea that a task is avoided because it is distasteful by nature is really saying something about the simplicity and inconsequentiality of it.

tokyodude 8y ago
Not really a "task" in the sense that it only takes 5-10 minutes but I hate that in 2018 when I visit many medical offices I have to fill out lots of forms, even when it's an office I have a history with and none of my data has changed. Ideally they'd show me a screen and say "has anything changed?" the end. If a screen is too expensive they'd print out a piece of paper will all my data and just have me sign that it hasn't changed. When I've asked though I'm told "it's the law" and that it has to be handwritten. Maybe Estonia is better at this?
- rainbowmverse 8y ago
  The library manages this the 1-2 times a year I go to a branch. They show me the latest information in the PINES database, ask me if it's all current, and input any changes. Of course, they don't have the same regulatory and liability concerns as a doctor.
  - konradb 8y ago
    Weirdly it feels like it might lead to more inaccuracies to have everything re-keyed many times, due to variances in how people remember things and enter subtly different information in forms on subsequent occasions.
- 8y ago

keyle 8y ago

I'm a big believer in attacking a big problem after a workout and a good coffee. Also set a time for it. "8 am tomorrow, I'm doing this thing" After a work out, I can clean the entire house, pumping music in my ears, for example.

blt 8y ago

The highlighted sections on this page drive me crazy. They really interrupt the flow of the text.

cimmanom 8y ago
Most browsers these days offer a "reader mode" - great for reducing those distractions. (Also for dealing with sites with awful fonts or layouts.)

rabboRubble 8y ago

I've a theory for nasty work, the "Bikini Wax Theory of Nasty Work". The theory goes like this, a bikini wax and nasty work are exactly the same because: 1 - Nasty work and bikini waxes are both painful to do. 2 - you must move decisively and quickly for both nasty tasks and waxes, getting it over as quickly and competently as possible. 3 - if you fail to execute #2 properly the results will be a bloody and even more painful mess, likely taking more time to achieve the desired results. I've shared this theory with close colleagues. Nobody has told me I'm wrong to my face.

deleted 8y ago
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cm2012 8y ago
Most people just wouldn't do a bikini wax given the options above. So maybe not the best advice for getting dreaded things done.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  And yet thousands of women get them every day, so there must be a reason. (Yes, they're painful. It's about 5 minutes of ripping off band-aids at 30-second intervals. Then it's over and it doesn't hurt at all any more, though the cortisone cream is soothing.) Oh, the reason to go through that? It saves 6-8 weeks of shaving a very sensitive (and awkwardly shaped and difficult to inspect) area and dealing with 5-o'clock shadows and stubble and ingrown hairs and razor nicks. If you're self-conscious about wearing a swimsuit (or, for some, about your appearance in the bedroom), it's totally worth it. Now, that nasty work that you're procrastinating on: why do you want it to be done in the first place?
  - rabboRubble 8y ago
    And yet thousands of women get them every day, so there must be a reason. > Yep!

hosh 8y ago

The idea of a prediction being painful matches my experience. I never thought of it that way, but now that I do, that makes things a lot easier. (I meditate, so just knowing about this helps me a lot).

dataisfun 8y ago

This is particularly hard for people with ADD. That said, I think it’s potentially dangerous to give advice that’s in any way titled the “Psychology of...” without actually basing it on evidence and the literature because people might confuse it for rigorous or clinically appropriate guidance. I recognize you couch this in your experience, but if you’re going to write about something that in anyway dovetails with a pathology, it could be helpful to include at least some even abridged literature review, since this will be viewed by thousands (given you’re a shoe-in for HN’s front page).

interfixus 8y ago
Exactly! >Don’t “do your taxes”. Just change the label to “gather finance documents” Finance documents? What finance documents? Which ones? How would I know without having started on my taxes? Wherever did I put them? They're all over the place. This is hopeless. Maybe tomorrow.
- coroxout 8y ago
  You've been downvoted but I laughed because this is exactly the inner monologue I have whenever I try to start a Dreaded Task. "I don't know where to start! Well, I could start with document A, but then I'd need some information from document B, which requires document C, but I can't do C until I've done A -- oh no, a loop! I can't see how to get round this at all; maybe my head will be clearer tomorrow. Time for a break. (NB the "loops" often aren't really 100% circular, but seem insurmountable in my head; this is the point where talking to someone is invaluable, if I can get past the usually correct suspicion I'm going to sound stupid for making a big deal about a block which seems totally trivial and non-blocking when I try to put it into words) ...Also, didn't I already work on document B? But I can't remember where I got to, or where I put my notes, or what they mean..." I do suspect I might have AD(H)D but I live in a country where adult ADHD is not really recognised, so I guess I'll have to do the best I can using some of the good tips posted here instead.
- cimmanom 8y ago
  Then you've figured out part of why you're procrastinating on the taxes in the first place. Time to rename the task again: "create list of finance docs needed for taxes."

nurettin 8y ago

>> Break down a big idea into small bits. I'm not getting this. Of course you would start by breaking down the task. This is what you do with every task. You don't just gulp down an entire task without planning ahead or thinking about steps. So this is no different than saying "now start doing the task". It is silly self-encouragement, trying to trick your brain into thinking that you did something to alleviate the problem. You did not. You just started the dreaded task and made yourself focus. I am tired of seeing these kinds of "advices from experts" online and in self development books.

brazzledazzle 8y ago
Now you’ve gone and ruined the placebo for the rest of us.
anonthrowaway2 8y ago
That is very obviously not how I begin a large, dreaded task when I am forcing myself to just start. Sounds to me like our brains work differently.
nurettin 8y ago
Here's some real advice: find out what is blocking you and slowly move to remove it from your path. First; It is not a "mental block". It is a tangible, existing stopper, you are just not focused enough to figure out what it is. It may be an academic topic you need to study, allocation of time, reading a guide, getting a permission or something as simple as getting feedback. If feedback is not available, try to find existing precedents to inspire you.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
svat 8y ago
Comments like this make me realize there's an entire universe of people who don't have the problems I have, and I wonder what it's like to be like them, and have learned the things that are so obvious to you. For example: Is it obvious to you that faced with a task you're dreading and procrastinating on, it helps to replace it in your mind with something smaller? It was not obvious to me, and was learned after years of misery, and even now I have to consciously remember to do it, and whenever I do do it, I find it helps immensely. (For example, when there's an email I'm dreading replying to, and have been procrastinating for weeks—it hanging on my mind every day of course—it helps when I replace “reply to Ram's email” with “just write a reply to Ram's email” or (if that doesn't work) even “write a garbage outline of a reply…” or even “reread Ram's email”. For another example, I had to apply for a travel visa and was procrastinating for months, and what finally helped was mentally replacing “finish the rest of application process” with “create a travel history document” with (when that didn't work) “collect all travel history”… along with the “talk to people” trick.) And yes, the idea is indeed to “trick your brain“ into doing the dreaded thing. At least, I have found it to help. The matter-of-fact way in which you say “You don't just gulp down an entire task without planning ahead or thinking about steps” is really inspirational, because that's not my mental model of doing things, and I have to consciously practice it. I wish I learned these things in school, instead of just coasting by and now struggling with getting anything done at all.

eudora 8y ago

I must say, just last night I had a bit of coding to start and it seemed like I was being asked to kill a kitten or something, the thought was so incredibly depressing. I forced myself, through the resistance, just to start. I said I'd do it for an hour then I could stop. Note that this was beginning a new, big task. If I was in the middle of it I probably wouldn't have had such a huge urge to resist it. Anyway, once I started it was cripplingly painful for about 5 minutes. Then I couldn't stop for the next few hours - I think because the thing I was working on was incrementally rewarding - every 5 minutes or so I could see the progress I was making. Also, it helped a lot that I put on an interesting podcast that makes me feel great. I suppose my point is that this guy is pretty correct, at least for me: it was pain I was avoiding, and just starting was the biggest hurdle. I'm a bit ADD-ish, I think, so YMMV.

phito 8y ago
Yep, it is so hard to actually START doing something. Sometimes I "prepare" myself for multiple minutes, then get too overwhelmed in my head about it and end up procrastinating. But once I'm into it it's not that bad. It's crazy how aware I am of this behavior, and yet always fall back in it. I've tried every single advice I could find on the internet, but none of them worked because in the end, the only way for me to do something is to start doing it. It sounds easy, but it is so, so, soooo hard. And the worst thing is that people sometimes associate it with lazyness. I don't think I am lazy. This honestly feels more like something is broken in my brain, and I don't have much control over it. I'm not giving up tho, still try to fight it daily. Sometimes I spend a whole day with a foggy head, trying to start do get things done, but I just can't...
an_throwaway 8y ago
There is this crazy swimmer here - he swam down 50 miles of the ganges river in some iron man contests - and he constantly swims between islands. The way he visualizes is splitting down the goals to smaller portions. "I only think about the next 15 minutes, if I would think about the whole thing I would go crazy.".
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

redmaverick 8y ago

I created a terminator script at work. It shutdowns my system if progress.txt is not updated in the next 3 minutes. If I am dreading any task, I launch this. All I have to do is make any progress and record it in the progress.txt file. It forces me to focus. Shutting down the system is not a life threatening situation but it is annoying and a minor inconvenience. Especially since it takes a few minutes to restart the system and load all the applications.

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
What job do you do where you can be productive while interrupting yourself every 3 minutes to update a text file? Or am I misunderstanding something?
- redmaverick 8y ago
  3 minutes is an arbitrary time limit, you can set it to anything. This forces you to act. Once you get to a flow state you can turn off the program.
jayliew 8y ago
Interesting. What I like about this is that if you're subconsciously procrastinating by avoiding doing the thing you need to do (by say, justifying something else less dreadful to do), this is immediate feedback that will snap you back to reality to focus on the one thing.

pipio21 8y ago

I have been doing that for years form me and for others(managing people) so they do not procrastinate with the team like they will do if alone. I do that without telling them I am doing that. I will add some things I consider very important: Use paper, write things down. Dividing a big task means nothing if you have no external memory you could trust to free the brain short term memory but you could recover it later. Paper today is the cheapest and more advanced external memory there is. You could also use a tape recorder if you prefer audio memory. After creating small sub task(tactics) from your general strategic thinking, put a checklist square near it. When you finish the task, check it. Every hour of deep work, mark it on a calendar like a prisoner does with sticks. This provides visual feedback for your brain of your accomplishments, specially with hard tasks that takes months to complete. The word for managing to do dread task is "reframing" into something that is important and positive for you. Of course if you have money and power you could delegate most of the dreaded task, like googlers do with most of their domestic chores. There are more things but the important thing is that you need practice, practice and practice until you get it. And like in anything else you will learn it much much faster if you personally know someone who "gets it" and learn from this person directly. I have met some "naturals" of this processes in my life but I am not. I developed this skill over a long period of time, making me super productive compared to when I started.

sturakov 8y ago
I generally enjoy using paper for this reason as well, but I struggle with organizing the paper. Or, sticking to some form of organization. I've tried setting up bullet journals, but paper discourages me for a few reasons. - What if I need to edit or add extra content? I generally write in pen so that what I write down sticks around. - I prefer to write in a stream of thoughts. To organize the paper, I try to think ahead and categorize my nebulous thoughts. This extra effort discourages me from writing and eventually, from using any organization system with paper. I like Evernote because I can throw it in there and search will eventually help me find it.

tofflos 8y ago

In the "Learning How to Learn" course, that was mentioned in the MOOC-discussion a while back, they suggest tackling this by focusing on process over product and tying a reward to it: "I'm just gonna sit here and do taxes for 25 minutes and then eat some chocolate" rather then "I'm going to finish my taxes". The reasoning is that by removing the pressure of completing the whole task you can sometimes convince yourself to stop procrastinating. If that still doesn't do it for you then at least you have the chocolate.

tofflos 8y ago
By the way "The Psychology of Dreaded Tasks" is a really good name.
afarrell 8y ago
Also, in that 25 minutes, you can discover the actual blocker to doing the task. Oftentimes, I find that my dread about a task is because of some ambiguity. By committing to a certain chunk of time working on it, it becomes obvious what that ambiguity is. Of course, then I have to push through the discomfort of resolving that ambiguity. But that is easier now that I'm an adult and: 1) Know how to frame questions in a way that sets the answerer up for success. 2) Can ask "why are we doing this?" (better phrased "what is our goal in doing this?") and get an actual answer this rather than "because I said so". 3) Have the backbone & confidence to push back when someone says "stop procrastinating, just write the damn essay." and press until I get the question answered or decide that I'm not going to do the task.
- scandinavegan 8y ago
  Yes! What's stopping me is usually that I'm not entirely sure how to do something or I'm afraid that I will uncover some really hard or time consuming problem when I start doing the task. Instead, often only a short time is needed to get an overview of the task and realize it's not that hard. For me, the first step is to commit to only a five minute overview and information gathering session. During those five minutes I will figure out what output is expected from me, write down a couple of concrete tasks, and then start with the one that either looks like it will add the most value or, if I'm low on energy, the one that's most fun. When I tick it off, I'm at least closer to completion and hopefully has enough momentum to start the another task on the list. All of the above are best case scenarios, as I still usually put off things for way too long and have to work through the night to catch up. I constantly try to improve this, but as soon as one deadline has passed with a marathon work session, I relax because the next deadline is far off.

Bakary 8y ago

There are so many articles on productivity on the internet that I'm starting to wonder whether there isn't a deeper problem at hand here.

Dowwie 8y ago

Additionally.. 1. Give yourself permission to just try, for a little while 2. use fear-setting for really tough moments A technique that I've found helpful when dealing with anxious thoughts is I become mindful of the anxious feeling, realize what I'm feeling anxious about, and then give myself permission to just try, regardless of the outcome. I'll explicitly granting myself permission to "just try" and even throw in "just for a little while, see how things go". This at times has turned into a productive, multi-hour session. Tim Ferriss talks about a technique use to confront fears, called "fear setting" [1]. Essentially, I put together a 3-column table and think through the worst that can possibly happen. It helps me think about risks and realize what I can handle. This helps to manage worry. [1] https://tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/ https://tim.blog/2017/05/15/fear-setting/

tomerv 8y ago
I have a similar trick. When I need to write something (code, email, etc.) that I don't know how to start, I tell myself that right now I'm only writing a draft. It might turn out to be a final revision later, but right now it's just a draft. This reduces the stress and allows me to experiment. The problem is that it doesn't work for things that I can only do once, like talking to someone about a difficult topic.
- ben_w 8y ago
  Many people rehearse difficult conversations beforehand. Would that approach help?
  - notduncansmith 8y ago
    I’d like to add onto this a bit. The point of rehearsing beforehand is not to come up with a speech to recite, but to give yourself a chance to edit your communications. Often, the brain’s first pass at articulating something is suboptimal, and it takes some critical analysis to refine that into something that fully communicates the desired signal with minimal noise.
hxchen 8y ago

nnq 8y ago

Does anyone else have an absolute dread of FIXING / REPAIRING something? And a solution for this dread? Sometimes I'm at a point where I would put my hand in a running blender together with a live kitten or something painful and horrible like that, just to get NOT to have to FIX something that needs fixing and instead to START something new or to completely replace or refactor something or to buy something new and set it up in the place of the thing needing fixing... anything, just not repairing, not debugging, not fixing or not optimizing one more little half/broken thing. The only thing I similarly dread is "going the last mile" from 80% to 100% and finishing any project/task, but for this at least I have a big bag of tricks that works most of the time. But fixing / repairing instead of replacing something or starting with something completely new... This is HELL for me. Even visually, a blank piece of paper or a blank screen pumps me up with energy. But when I see something already half-working / half-written but know that there are some serious bugs/defects that I need to hunt down and repair somewhere in that. It sometimes fills me with so much dread that my subconscious makes me "forget" that that task exists, or forget what its components are so I end up miss-estimating by factors of up to 100x (with obviously horrific consequences for everyone's budget and sanity).

philbarr 8y ago
Besides having decent source control habits so you know you can go back if you mess up, I usually have a "playground" project that is pretty similar to the app I'm working on. I can do what I like in there, experiment, break things, doesn't matter. That way if I have a problem I can't seem to even get started with in my main app, I go in my playground app and start there instead. It's like my cosy developer "safe zone".
Klathmon 8y ago
I've had very similar feelings before, and in my experience that fear of "fixing" is telling me something, that i'm not in a good position to be fixing whatever it is. You mention that "refactoring" doesn't give you the same dread? Could it be because you know the problem better if you are tackling a refactoring but you don't when you are bugfixing? I've found that that dread wasn't from bugfixing, but was from a lack of confidence about the part of the codebase i'm working on. Personally, I've found good results with tricking my brain into thinking i'm "refactoring" while really "bugfixing". Schedule the time to review the codebase that i'll be bugfixing, talk to the author if possible (and it's not you). If I want to indulge myself I'll sometimes "mock refactor" it, I'll open a new tab in my editor and almost pseudocode rewrite the component or module that needs fixing/debugging. Then once I feel I understand it enough, I can actually dive in and fix the bugs in the original code. And by that time i'm familiar enough with that section that i'm not fearing every letter typed as I know what will happen, I understand the intent behind the code. I also struggle with the fear of "wasting time" a lot with this kind of stuff. I have this incorrect feeling that if I was able to develop these 300 lines of code in 6 hours, that I can't possibly devote 6 more hours to fixing a few lines. But the reality is that often the small 1-2 line bugfixes are the largest timesinks of all, and that I can't be afraid to schedule those 6 hours to look into that bug. Once I get over that hump that I'm somehow "cheating" the system by allocating so much time to what ends up being so little change, I feel a LOT better about actually doing it.

thinkingemote 8y ago

When I was a little child I used to hate going for a bath, but really enjoyed being in the bath, and didn't want to leave. I remember thinking to myself then, "why do I hate getting in the bath when it's so nice in it?!" I still don't know why, and it's still both amusing and puzzling when I encounter similar things with coding and other tasks as a grown up.

cimmanom 8y ago
I think exercise can be like this for a lot of people. If you do figure out the solution, let us know, would you?
ikeyany 8y ago
Fear of change and temporary discomfort. Homeostasis/equilibrium is comfortable when you're in it.

Bizarro 8y ago

Coffee will give you a boost for a limited amount of time, then you feel worse then before. I still drink coffee, but I don't do the morning routine anymore. I have energy in the morning, the afternoon is when I need the boost. Working out and the resulting endorphin rush is great, but once again that's a temporary fix. You probably got a couple hours of the endorphin rush until you're more tired than you normally would be. Don't overdo the workouts, know when the best time for you to workout is, and get plenty of rest.

hyperpape 8y ago

This sounds nice, but given that the title is "The Psychology of Dreaded Tasks", I'm saddened there's essentially no reference to psychological findings. The references to the brain in the article are completely unreferenced. They sound fine given what I know about predictive processing, but I can't really tell whether they're just a nice sounding story, or something scientific. There a lot of psychological work on procrastination (I'm not sure how much neuroscience there is, but there's bound to be some). This post would have been less impressive but more honest without the veneer of psychological authority.

kyleperik 8y ago
I don't think whenever someone says "psychology" they're going to have extensive knowledge on the subject. Sounds like he's speaking from his own experience. What would you call it? He's talking about the brain isn't he? Or are these terms reserved only for those who've gotten their PhD?
- hyperpape 8y ago
  Make the title something like "How to approach dreaded tasks", or maybe something a little more creative than that. The topic really doesn't have to be about the brain. We all have experience confronting tasks we dread, but we don't have to know anything about the brain to talk about that experience. Now, maybe neuroscience comes along and tells us something new about how that dread happens, how to confront it, etc. If so, that's great--but it should be properly cited. Also note that simply invoking the brain does not necessarily add anything: if you find out dread involves the XYZ subsystem of the brain, that is irrelevant to a discussion of the experience of dread, until you say what we've learned from it being the XYZ subsystem. So my demand is intellectual honesty. Which parts of your post are grounded in science, which are personal experiences, which are just fluff?

cookingrobot 8y ago

My instinct is always to talk about my goals for the reasons listed in this post. But research suggests that talking about goals makes it less likely that you'll follow through: https://www.inc.com/melissa-chu/announcing-your-goals-makes-you-less-likely-to-ach.html https://www.inc.com/melissa-chu/announcing-your-goals-makes-...

brokenmachine 8y ago

I'm avoiding a dreaded task by being on hn right now...