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I noticed a lot of my procrastination came from habit. Opening Reddit, or Hacker News was the path to a surge of dopamine. Where as getting down to work didn'
by swalsh 7y ago
I noticed a lot of my procrastination came from habit. Opening Reddit, or Hacker News was the path to a surge of dopamine. Where as getting down to work didn't have the same surge. So I tried to just block "bad sites". That helped, but I still found myself occasionally opening a new tab, than out of habbit going to one of the sites. What I needed to do was remove the root cause. So I wrote this script (https://gist.github.com/steven-p-walsh/9b7c0ffd2fe4817d6745951766f5a0f0 https://gist.github.com/steven-p-walsh/9b7c0ffd2fe4817d67459...) it's like a shock-collar for social media.
- forgone 7y agoPics or it didn't happen
- swalsh 7y agoSorry, thought it was obvious from the script. It's not an actual shock collar... I play a loud high frequency beep. It's "shocking" to me :\
- kranner 7y agoThis uses the scapy module, so it's only for Linux and other unixes. Is there a scapy equivalent you know of for macOS?
- swalsh 7y agoI believe so, but yes... this script was a one off I wrote just for myself as a proof of concept. Not really cross platform yet :D
- wickoff 7y agoI've blocked Reddit and HN on my desktop, now I am watching more YouTube, drink 3 times as much coffee and tea and am hyperaware of what's going on outside of my window. Seems that specific websites aren't the cause, the problem is much deep than that.
- donkeyd 7y agoThis is exactly what happens to me. If I do work that I enjoy, I don't procrastinate. I don't even mind doing the shitty stuff if most of the work is fun, but when I'm not enjoying the majority of my work, I procrastinate... Which is what I'm doing right now.
- alexbanks 7y agoIf the problem is "I can't bring myself to focus on this task", the mediums used to distract yourself are irrelevant.
- ghostbrainalpha 7y agoAgreed, but if that is the root problem, is there a solution?
- dejaime 7y agoDiscipline is the first answer that comes to mind... but say it out loud and... yeah, it's a non-answer.
- Endy 7y agoThe solution is to push back on whoever assigned the task to you and what the value of it is, what the end result should look like, etc. If it's worthless effort and busy work, make them understand it. If it's just the boring drudge that makes the better things happen, at least you can be engaged in the end goal.
- mettamage 7y agoI have that too. I have a small suggestion. It doesn't solve the problem, but it makes it slightly more bearable. Find the least damaging form of procrastination and use that. For me these are: 1. Reading fiction books (currently reading "The Humans") 2. Exercise 3. Hacker News In that order (I'm protecting myself against YouTube which is way worse than HN).
- Aperocky 7y ago
- rajaravivarma_r 7y agoI put up something like this here https://github.com/rajaravivarma-r/focus-dns https://github.com/rajaravivarma-r/focus-dns. You can give this a try.
- Valk3_ 7y agoDunno if people find this useful, but there's a program called cold turkey that blocks certain sites that you can specify for a period of time that you also specify. I think it only supports Windows and macOS though. https://getcoldturkey.com/ https://getcoldturkey.com/
- dec0dedab0de 7y agoHN also has noprocrast, max visit, and min away, that are designed to help you break that addiction.
- oehtXRwMkIs 7y agoPython2? Is this script that old?
- lunchables 7y agoIf you are a procrastinator, I can't recommend The Now Habit enough. It's totally changed my life.