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How to Beat Procrastination
- geuis 16y agoThe quintessential problem: Its a long article, I'll read it later...
- sliverstorm 16y agoNo, the quintessential problem is: Cool, I'll try that next week...
- radu_floricica 16y agoOr you could do what I did and impulse-order the book from Amazon. Now I'll have to read it. (I've been working on my book impulse-buying for a while now. Damn useful.)
- thibaut_barrere 16y agoA comment by antirez here [1] really led me to consider that procrastination is a signal rather than an issue: the best I can do is be aware of that and listen to it. Now I often realize that when I feel procrastination coming, it's because: - something needs to be clarified (a situation) - there is a risk that hasn't been assessed - I'm hungry - I'm tired (physically or mentally) - I'm hurting myself (RSI) [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190700 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190700
- math 16y agoFor me "something needs to be clarified" is often "faith in the idea needs to be clarified via stamp of approval from a third party". Yesterday, I was procrastinating badly. This morning, I talked about my project with someone and they were very positive about it. Today saw a massive burst of energy that will last through the week.
- mnazim 16y agoI am one of the worst cases of procrastination you can ever find. I always find something else to do instead of doing what I am supposed to do. Personally, I have experienced that there is only one way to get things done: 1. I try to minimize distractions(I say try because distractions will always be there; there is not a way around most of the time). 2. I make a (mental)TODO list, before going to sleep. 3. And finally nothing beats getting of my butt and actually start working. Just my thoughts.
- obsessive1 16y agoI often find the hardest part is actually starting whatever it is you're putting off. After that, it's a lot easier to keep going (provided you don't get distracted by interruptions). My solution is to turn off all my IM clients, load up a different browser without all the tabs I normally open, mute everything except the radio, and force myself to start it. After that, I can usually work through and get it finished.
- bound008 16y agoI'll read it later...
- apl 16y agoThis article is a significantly less bad than most, but still suffers from the ol' "depressed people should simply try to be happy, then the whole depression-thing isn't actually that bad" fallacy of mental illness. If you're hard-wired to be impulsive and have a knack for viewing things in a negative light, it is in fact incredibly hard to get rid of such behavioral tendencies simply by "getting off your butt, man." Similarly, all these hints and tips implicitly require the very quality they try to instill. Works for mild cases, but has little bearing on genuine pathological procrastination. (See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_M%C3%BCnchhausen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_M%C3%BCnchhausen)
- Qz 16y agoI mostly agree with you, but I'm wondering what precisely you mean by 'hard-wired to be impulsive'.
- ippisl 16y agoHyperactivity and impulsivity are two of the primary characteristics of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). So Adhd is one example of hard-wiring that affects impulsivity.
- Qz 16y agoI guess what I take issue with is the use of the term 'hard-wired' as the exact causes of ADHD are not known, nor is it necessarily permanent.
- Mz 16y agoI cannot get through this and someone would like me to read it. Any hope of a summary/tl;dr? (Or is it as crappy as I think it is?)
- GHFigs 16y agoAt the risk of becoming too meta, I'd like to ask anybody who is about to bookmark this "for later" to consider what would happen (viz. procrastination) if you didn't.
- mdaniel 16y agoInterestingly enough, yesterday (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2183183 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2183183) there was a Show-HN for a website designed to perform textual analysis and render the top few most-relevant sentences: http://www.bookshrink.com/ http://www.bookshrink.com/ I tried it on this article, and it was neat, but I realized that part of the reason this is so hard to skim is because of the information density in each sentence. Try bookshrink on it and you'll see what I mean after trying to read its output.
- siddhant 16y agoFunny. The author wrote a long article on how to avoid procrastination, when the intended audience isn't going to go beyond the first paragraph. How to beat procrastination? Set noprocrast to yes.
- nickzoic 16y agoNah, I read the whole thing, which is funny, because I've got a lot to get done this morning. Then I saw your comment, and figured I'd better reply. Oh, hey, look, there's that bookshrink thing they mentioned, I wonder if that's any good, I'll just check that out before I get started on this to-do list. Hey, I wonder if I can get a better to-do list manager ...
- mdaniel 16y agoI'm sorry if this is off-topic, but I have become amazingly addicted to Readability's view of webpages. On topic, switching to the Readability view increased my desire to read the article, because I found it less mentally tiring. However, if I had homework due in the upcoming days, I probably would have archived it into Readability, because I doubt reading it would have presented a lot of immediate value.
- hasenj 16y agoImpulsiveness is a personality trait, it doesn't change, it's part of who you are. It comes from preferring to take information instead of making decisions. Some people have it and some people don't. For the people who don't have it, it would seem like a character flaw. But for the people who do have it, it seems like the most natural thing in the world. You can of course force yourself to be diligent, but it'll make you very stressed. (hint: startups are stressful). You can only force yourself if you see a value thats attainable in the foreseeable future. If something is of low value, low importance, and boring, why would you want to force yourself to do it? It doesn't make any sense. I'd advice you to defer it and do something that's more interesting and more valuable while you can.
- mono 16y agoAccept Procrastination as a different way to do something! There is a brilliant 4 minute movie about it all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=37wR_TWdVy0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3...
- edw519 16y agoedw519 has one form to complete, two database tables to configure, four functions to test and an app to deploy today. But instead of getting started, he minimizes his test environment and Textpad and opens a browser window to Hacker News. He knows he has 6 hours of work and only 7 hours before the Super Bowl and he understands that he'll probably be too drunk to program after the game. But he is too caught up in stories of software development, scientific journeys, industry trends, the pratfalls of rich and famous hackers, and silly articles about procrastination. edw519 is lazy. He should close his browser and get back to work. (Simple story, but too boring for a scientific study.)
- pasbesoin 16y agoedw519's waiting for the next Perl [1] -- 1 Where "Perl" stands for your epiphany of choice, slaying the twin dragons of monotony and repetition while riding in on a linguistic unicorn of intrigue with teasing hints of familiarity. And sigils -- because tagging's always been underrated. (P.S. I'll trade you for my PHP crap.) -- EDIT: OT: Have you ever gotten used to Textpad 5?
- apollo 16y agoAs your first sentence indicates, in this scenario you have specific, attainable goals. Just getting to that point goes a long way towards beating procrastination.
- zachallaun 16y agoThe author postulates three character vignettes, each one based upon an identified predictor of procrastination. There exists, however, a forth: Zach stares at a blank document in Microsoft Word. His essay assignment on municipal politics, due tomorrow, is mind-numbingly dull. He decides to take a break, texts some friends, watches a show, and finds himself even less motivated to write the paper than before. At 10PM, he finally dives in, but the result is... well, it's great. This forth case is strange, because it does not suffer from the generally proposed downfalls of procrastination. This is because the author has ignored an entire segment of procrastinators: Those that operate better under an impending deadline. This is how I completed nearly every task in school thus far, and assignment grades less than an A are few and far between despite the fact that I put in, in many cases, a small fraction of the time it took my classmates to complete this assignment. I operate this way because stress is my friend. My output quality/time ratio is never greater than when I'm working with a looming deadline. My entire life I was told that procrastination is bad. Procrastination is bad. Procrastination is bad. It's only recently that I've realized that procrastination is actually one of the greatest contributors to my success.
- andrewce 16y agoMy younger sister refers to this as "Percolation", as do others (http://www.learningassistance.com/2005/june/percolation.html http://www.learningassistance.com/2005/june/percolation.html). Sometimes, I need to sit with an idea for a week or so before taking action, and the product is great, albeit somewhat rushed. This gets me in trouble on occasion, but less often than one might think. I've found lately that working piece by piece well before deadline gets about the same quality of work done, but I also have bigger projects and more generous deadlines now.
- tel 16y agoThough I'm very sympathetic to eustress as a wonderful motivator of good work, it falls on its ass when you suddenly lose external deadlines. This occurs in varying degrees depending on your life path, but almost always you're expected to take more personal responsibility of your schedule in any challenging (desirable) job. So it's just worth noting that combining eustress/percolation with aggressive personal goal-setting might be necessary to keep this sort of thing up.
- ajays 16y agoI'm a terrible procrastinator too. Unfortunately, sometimes I work best under pressure; so this feeds back into procrastination. But it doesn't always work this way. Sometimes the task is so big that "under pressure" is not possible. I've found that chopping up the task into bitesize bits always helps. I'll get the little task done quickly; and then if I feel like it, I can keep going; otherwise, I can get up and do something else, basking in the glow of having accomplished the task I wanted to. After a few days of such repeated positive experiences, I find that I can pick up steam and really accomplish a lot.
- solipsist 16y agoI have to say that most of us who are taking the time to read this are probably procrastinating in the first place. Therefore it would have been better to publish this article on a weekday when people are most susceptible to procrastinating online. After all, those are the people this article is targeted for.