22 ms·

Tricks to start working despite not feeling like it

• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• JonathanFly 7y ago
  >Start sloppy >Another trick to start sloppy - you might have high expectations of your finished work. >You want to write a great book, not just a good one. Or create a stellar artwork, or start a great business. >All those expectations can put more pressure on you than you can bear, leading you to avoid it by procrastinating. >Instead, you can escape those expectations by starting deliberately badly. I use this one a lot. I always heard it called a 'vomit draft'. It really works. It's easier to see how truly terrible thing could be improved than it is to just start working from a blank slate.
  • andai 7y ago
    You can't clean up a blank page. Gotta foul it up first!
  • ramblerman 7y ago
    This idea is captured nicely in the book "Art and Fear" with the following anecdote: "The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."
    • SiempreViernes 7y ago
      Was this book some sort of dystopia about teaching?
    • zupa-hu 7y ago
      how cool, thanks for sharing!
    • onion2k 7y ago
      Maybe this works for potters but I don't think it'd work for developers. If a compSci lecturer suggested one group would get an A for writing a perfect, bug free app and the other group would get an A for writing 50,000 lines of code, I wouldn't expect the group writing as much code as they could to make the best app.
      • selectnull 7y ago
        In this hypothetical scenario, instead of counting final lines of code, maybe we should count lines of affected code: take each commit and count how many lines were added, modified or deleted. That matches "the quantity trumps quality" idea above more closely in our industry.
      • cozos 7y ago
        Group B would be assigned to write 50 apps in this case. In your example 50000 LOC would be like making a really giant pot.
        • onion2k 7y ago
          In the pottery example Group A were marked by weight ("fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on."). Making a single giant pot could get you an A if the lecturer wasn't pedantic about the meaning of "pots".
          • Drakar1903 7y ago
            Well, if you're making "pots", you're not making "vases", "pans" or "thimbles". The experiment doesn't work if you don't set any acceptance criteria.
  • blowski 7y ago
    Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man Month: > Plan to throw one away. You will anyway.
  • Lex-2008 7y ago
    I also like how they mention marathon. Indeed, you don't start training for marathon by running all 42km on the first day, are you? No, for some of us in our current shape even running 5km is hard! So we should start with smaller things - those we can do - and tell ourselves that we have achieved something - and that tomorrow we probably will achieve slightly more.
  • mcv 7y ago
    It's often easier to add to something that already exists than to start something new from scratch. And when you're the one who created the thing in the first place, it's that much easier to make the improvements. Even if the initial thing is so terrible it needs to be redone completely, at least you figured out what you don't want. All while getting into the habit of doing the thing.
    • fastbeef 7y ago
      I stumbled upon this when trying to get started with my master thesis. In frustration, I threw a bunch of buzzwords and random thoughts at LaTeX and then stashed it for a day or two. After that, I picked it up, looked at it critically and went "well, this paragraph is obviously wrong, here's what it SHOULD say..." and two hours later I had a very rough draft finished.
      • sk0g 7y ago
        Currently struggling with writing a bachelor's thesis hard, so any other ideas/ tips you have, would be greatly appreciated!
        • fastbeef 7y ago
          Write out the whole thesis as headers and fill all the sections with Loren ipsums until you have the page count you want. Then, start filling in the real text
          • mcv 7y ago
            Please double check for the lorem ipsums before you hand it in.
  • kashug 7y ago
    I agree a lot with this. A blank page is the worst - I find it hard to get started. But if I just put something (probably something bad) it is much easier to just continue improving it.
    • skocznymroczny 7y ago
      For me it's different. It's easy for me to start a project. I get overly excited over a week, banging a lot of code. But as soon as I get stuck, I often get stuck forever and never come back to the project. Or I decide to "refactor" a piece of code, and then spend days thinking about how I'll "refactor" it, rather than just doing it or not doing it in the first place.
  • Valakas_ 7y ago
    > Start in a way that you could enjoy. Start doing in in a way that you could have fun, even if it's not as efficient as other boring/normal ways, so that the fun itself is the motivator.
  • nonameriot 7y ago
    Does this mean that, for instance, if you're writing a novel, you start without a structured outline?
    • summerdown2 7y ago
      Many people do! This is the 'architect' vs 'gardener' debate. A lot of writers start out with the notion of a story, then let it develop in the writing. If I remember correctly, Stephen King writes this way.
    • JonathanFly 7y ago
      >Does this mean that, for instance, if you're writing a novel, you start without a structured outline? It could, but there's no reason you couldn't start with a terrible outline instead of diving right into prose. The point is just that when you see something your brain will stark noticing all the ways it sucks and it gets things going.
  • hinkley 7y ago
    At work I found calling this draft a 'straw man' gets quite a few more people off of the starting blocks. It's just an avenue for having a discussion about what we actually want to say.
  • aeturnum 7y ago
    Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
  • CathedralBorrow 7y ago
    This absolutely works for me. I call it the 'zeroth draft'.
  • cloverich 7y ago
    Make it work, make it right, make it fast [1]. This has helped me tremendously in my programming career and especially in my side projects, where I have very limited time and energy. Its a solid strategy for breaking down complex work. [1]: https://wiki.c2.com/?MakeItWorkMakeItRightMakeItFast https://wiki.c2.com/?MakeItWorkMakeItRightMakeItFast
  • closeparen 7y ago
    Reminds me of an idea from Ira Glass's lecture circuit: as you learn a craft, you develop the taste to recognize that your own work is crap long before you get good enough to satisfy your own standards. You just have to push through and trust that it eventually ends.
  • philwelch 7y ago
    As Ernest Hemingway never actually said, "write drunk, edit sober". Which I don't take to mean literally getting drunk before you start working on something, but do it as if you were drunk, i.e. with little to no inhibition.
• vortico 7y ago
  Thanks, I have two projects I'm avoiding right now, and even though I've started them a few weeks ago, if I drop them for a few days I feel like I have to start back again. The "screw it, let's do it" and "what's the smallest step you can take right now" approach would work in my case. The first is nice because I sometimes convince myself that I'm too lazy or unmotived to work on it. But am I? Or do I just think I'm unmotivated but would actually put several hours into the job if I started right now?
  • Mirioron 7y ago
    One of the best ways to get yourself to take a small step on a project is to put some parts of it in places where you will stumble upon it. Eg when you put your computer to sleep have that project be at the front or leave your notes about the project in a place where you're likely to run into them etc.
• miloshadzic 7y ago
  How do people still fall for advertorials like this?
  • foxX 7y ago
    You deserve to be at the bottom, because how dare you!? It is known that buying and going through the 4 week anti-procrastination program from deprocrastination.co instead of doing real work for 4 weeks helps you not procrastinate. Dothraki choir: "it is known".
  • dang 7y ago
    Presumably they found the content interesting. That's the high-order bit, and in the end the only thing that really matters on HN.
• lake99 7y ago
  Has anyone here come across good research-based methods of dealing with procrastination?
  • travbrack 7y ago
    Try http://www.procrastination.ca/ http://www.procrastination.ca/ and the iProcrastinate podcast. Main takeaways are: * Just get started. * Don't give in to "feel good". * Use implementation intentions to put the trigger for action in the environment. * Procrastination is an existential issue. One who is procrastinating is not getting on with their life. * Approach goals are better than avoidance goals.
• andai 7y ago
  Anyone tried using a chain calendar? I used an app that tracked how many days in a row I meditated and that's the first time in my life I was able to do a good habit consistently for 15 days straight. I didn't want to break the chain! Later I used the same idea for studying every day, started with a few minutes and worked it up slowly. Eventually, I was able to concentrate for long periods of time. That sense of momentum and progress is very encouraging.
  • thecatspaw 7y ago
    I thought about doing the chains, but I was always held back by the thought of having to break the chain for legit reasons. For example I'm currently practicing guitar, so I'd create a chain for that. But there are legit reasons why I can not play at a given day, I might not be able to access a Guitar because Im in a Hotel in a different country, or a myriad of other reasons.
    • scandinavegan 7y ago
      So cheat! If you use a physical calendar, you can mark those days with another symbol, like an arrow to show that the chain carries on. If you use an app, you can mark the day anyway, knowing that you had a legitimate reason to skip it. Think of all the benefits you would get from practicing 95% of the days marked, compared to a much lower percent without the chain. Don't let the 5% or 1% stop you. As an aside, this is my view of veganism. When I talk to people who say they can't go vegan because they'd miss cheese too much, or kebab, or whatever, I suggest they go vegan and keep eating cheese or kebab. 95% is a lot better than nothing! That said, I can't do chains. I get anxious after a while carrying a long streak, and will either conveniently forget a day and mess up the streak (and feel relieved), or decide during a streak that I'll stop at 30, or 100, or whatever, just to give me permission to get off the treadmill. I don't like when enjoyable things turn into a chore. Some apps are nice and let you go back and add marks even if you forgot to do it on the day. Some apps, like Duolingo, let you unlock tokens that protect your streak if you miss a day. But some apps are really strict, which can be annoying if you finish something after midnight and realize that you just broke the chain. My wife had that with a writing app where she finished exactly at midnight, which counted for the next day and her streak was broken. So if I did a chain, I'd use a text file, or a paper, or send myself an email a day logging that I did the task. I wouldn't trust an extremely rigid app, because, as you say, there can be legitimate reasons why you miss.
• d--b 7y ago
  I use all of these, and they work pretty well. Structured procrastination is also a good one: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ The basic concept is that work is procrastination of something more important. There is nothing like having a big writing deadline to get the cleaning done!
  • Mirioron 7y ago
    This technique was incredibly useful for me in college. I got so much programming homework done while I was procrastinating writing reports.
• kkwteh 7y ago
  I use the small wins trick a lot. I start with the smallest win, which is writing down a small win on my todo list. Then, when I see the small task, I feel motivated to do it just so I can have the pleasure of checking it off my list. By that time, I'm usually on a pretty good roll and keep working.
  • prawn 7y ago
    Same. I do it when the dishes have piled up. Tell myself I'll just quickly do the easy ones, and then next thing I carry on and decide to do the biggest remaining dishes so the bench looks cleaner, and from there it's downhill and easy.
    • scandinavegan 7y ago
      With a counter full of dirty dishes, I tell myself that I'll just quickly fill the dishwasher with the easy stuff and start it. I'll leave the rest for later. But when I've started the dishwasher, there's usually only three items left, like a soft plastic lid or a tea mug that can't go in the dishwasher. So I wash those by hand. Now the counter is empty, but stained, so I might as well wipe it so that it's clean for next time I cook. It all starts with the lazy "I'll just throw the easy stuff into the dishwasher", but momentum takes over. Listening to interesting podcasts help!
• kuu 7y ago
  Funny to read as we are probably procrastinating.
  • newqer 7y ago
    When my brain is running idle, my hands autonomously type "Hacker News" in the address bar of my browser.
    • zytek 7y ago
      More like cmd+l (address bar), n (autocompletes to news.ycombinator.com), enter. At least I'm getting efficient at bad habits ;-)
      • rocgf 7y ago
        I do exactly that, but with a Ctrl + T first. :) I tend to do it with complete lack of thought.
      • goobynight 7y ago
        I'm also a cmd+l -> n -> enter guy
  • m3kw9 7y ago
    This procrastination is actually probably useful. If I go on other social networks the probably of usefulness or random items that an Algo targets me approaches zero
• echelon 7y ago
  I have ADHD, so this is a constant struggle. Make sure the thing you have to do is something you want to do. While you can procrastinate on the things you're truly interested in, ultimately you're more likely to follow through with the things that interest you than the other random tasks that require doing. Writing that design doc, report, or review at work? Meh. I drag my feet until I'm the last person in the office and I have to finish. That obscure side project that really interests me? Hell yeah. It's called hyper-focus, and those with ADHD know what it's like. Check out my Github streak. I think I've got the world's fastest faster-than-realtime CPU-only neural TTS and Voice Conversion (VC) systems with multi-speaker embeddings outside of Google. And I wrote an entire data ingestion, cleanup, and curation engine to build massive data sets for training. A year ago I didn't even know what any of this stuff was, and now I can't pull myself away from it. Building is magnetic and addictive, but it's not the thing I need to do. Sometimes you can pivot the energy you have from a desirable task into an undesirable one. I tell myself I can't work on the fun thing until I get the mundane one done. It's a hack that doesn't always work. I want to structure my life around things I want to do to the exclusion of all else. I think I'm starting to get there. I've trimmed a lot of unnecessary things from my life. My dream is to get rich enough doing desirable side hustles that I can pay people to take care of all the undesirable tasks. Delegation to achieve efficiency. I can work like there is no tomorrow on random side projects. I just wish I could redirect all that focus and energy at will into the areas that need them. I can't. So I have to become what interests me.
  • scandinavegan 7y ago
    I don't have an ADHD diagnosis, but I struggle with procrastination. Does it help you at all to have external recipients of your work, or does it not factor in at all in what gets done? It helps me if I tell someone else "I'll send you the report today", because it makes me more accountable. I'll probably delay it until panicking at the end of the day, but I will at least hammer something out and send it off. Or worst case finish it tomorrow morning, after having started, but having to leave work the day before, which is still better than postponing even longer. For me to do tasks, I need to reach the "Screw quality and completeness, I need to send _something_!", which usually turns out to be plenty good enough based on feedback. I just need to find someone to promise sending the result to for my more important tasks.
• tiborsaas 7y ago
  My trick is between point 2 and 3. I try to find something, anything interesting in the subject I can play with. It can be really small or minor part of the project, but if it starts to interest me it just drags me to the whole work mindset. I'm basically conning myself into liking the task :)
• e19293001 7y ago
  I'd like to share this post[0]: The last two weeks I made it a goal to run 5km every morning. A few times, particularly today, I felt lazy and run down, but I got out of bed anyway and told myself that I'll at least walk. The next thing I know I'm running and feeling amazing and on to set one of my better times. The point: When you tell yourself "just one more game" or "just one more post", or "just one more video" and end up doing 3-5 hours more, do that with your other tasks too! "just one line of code", "just one tutorial", "just one rep", "just one line of reading/writing". We all have this amazing mental tool that we've been honing for years, the tool of self deception. Time to use it for good and not evil. Copied from: [0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/cdir3g/trick_yourself_into_productivity_the_same_way_you/ https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/cdir3g/trick_...
  • agumonkey 7y ago
    I did this last summer. Simply walking early to get some bread. It quickly turned into an automatic alarm clock, gave me a good 30 min of "warm up" walking that also let my brain coast while watching the woods. You come back both refreshed and all warmed up blood wise. It was very very beneficial altogether. If it wasn't for the wrong job I took next and winter killing the morning sun I'd still be doing this. Actually now that spring is here, I feel the need. The need for .. walk.
  • bengale 7y ago
    This is a good reason to break your tasks up into smaller chunks too. One more thing checked of the list is easier when its something like "add a button" and not "implement entire feature".
  • tw1010 7y ago
    I used to be sceptical that the concept of overtraining was a thing, but it definitely is. Just saying that running every day consistently might not necessarily be good for you in the long run. Listen to your body.
    • danielbln 7y ago
      Agreed, "listen to your body." is really important advice. I've been running every day without exception for 1252 days now, and there have been really slow, really short (2k) runs whenever I felt my body needed a bit more leeway for recovery. It takes some practice and it's not for everyone, but daily/streak running can be transformative (and was/is for me).
• Ma8ee 7y ago
  One thing that really has helped me with e.g. writing an email that I dread writing is to just write a draft that I don't plan to do anything else with than use as a starting point when I write the real email that I won't write until tomorrow. Often the draft is good enough to send after only small edits. Or the writing of the draft have helped me to clarify my thoughts enough, combined with a night of processing, that writing the real mail the next day becomes relativly easy.
  • scandinavegan 7y ago
    My trick to start emails is to add To and Cc last, when I'm happy with the email. If I add them first, I worry that I'll click send by mistake halfway through my draft (and a secondary worry is that the draft will be full of inappropriate stuff and curse words, which I never add even to drafts, so it's not a rational thought). If I add the recipients first, it also feels like they sit there looking at me expectantly as I write, which makes it harder. An email not addressed to anyone, but of course with the recipients in mind to adapt the content, makes it easier for me to treat the first version as a draft. Sleeping on non-urgent emails sounds like an excellent idea, because your view of the issue may change.
  • sailfast 7y ago
    This is a good strategy for contentious topics. That said, I would argue that the best thing in this situation to get the task done is to call the person. That way you can hear them, react to them, and the task is done at the end of the call. That said, I don’t know anything about your email, audience, etc so you do what works for you. My underlying hypothesis is that too many people are afraid of making phone / video calls, but it’s a much better way of getting difficult things done sometimes.
• nunodonato 7y ago
  The basics I learnt with GTD have proven to be very useful for me in multiple occasions: * be clear about what you are doing, ie. what is the desired outcome/end goal (especially important when delegating or receiving a delegated task) * be very specific about the next(physical) action - break it down as much as you need, just to get started There can be some unconscious emotional reasons for procrastination, but that's another matter :)
• nreece 7y ago
  >> "Screw it, let's do it" Similar productivity hack that works, shared by Kevin Systrom (Instagram founder): "If you don't want to do something, make a deal with yourself to do at least five minutes of it. After five minutes, you'll end up doing the whole thing." https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-5-minute-hack-instagram-founder-kevin-systrom-uses-to-beat-procrastination.html https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-5-minute-hack-insta...
• HNLurker2 7y ago
  >Billionaire Richard Branson has a catchphrase: "Screw it, let's do it" He is a black swan. Britain has only one Richard Branson and that is Richard Branson.
  • gdy 7y ago
    Sir Richard Branson is British.
    • HNLurker2 7y ago
      His successes were in the United States
      • mcv 7y ago
        Virgin Records was British until it was bought.
      • cambalache 7y ago
        Dont be stubborn just to save virtual face, you are losing an opportunity to learn.
      • gdy 7y ago
        Virgin Records and Virgin Atlantic are both British companies. The only company closely associated with the US is Virgin Galactic, but it hardly a success. Yet.
• wizardforhire 7y ago
  Obligatory UT Admiral William H. McRaven Commencement Address[1] Worth the whole watch, however it’s makes he makes a very compelling argument for making your bed in the morning. I’ll add cleaning as part of the morning routine is also highly effective to get moving. https://youtube.com/watch?v=pxBQLFLei70 https://youtube.com/watch?v=pxBQLFLei70
• long_warmup 7y ago
  Three advices given by the article - and many more - was given in "Rework" book (by creators of basecamp). Book worth reading, even though many advices are, well, obvious.
• darthreid 7y ago
  I'm needing this a lot right now for a massive project to deliver at work. I get so tangled up in the mess of trying to make it perfect or thinking that I'm not approaching the problem in the best way that I end up twiddling my thumbs for hours, pretty much doing nothing worthwhile the whole time. I'll be trying these out tomorrow and see how deprocrastinated I can get before veering off again.
  • OnACoffeeBreak 7y ago
    I'm in a similar situation right now, and I've been in this kind of place many times before. I try to keep the seemingly idle time to a minimum, but I also acknowledge that my brain is still thinking about the problem during those times, so I don't beat myself up about it and go for a walk when that happens. The self-doubt is also normal, and I actively push against it by reminding myself that, while someone that has done this before can likely jump to a good solution right away, it doesn't mean that it's realistic to expect that of myself. Being tangled in a mess of something you are not an expert in is a normal way to learn. I have to remind myself that this approach worked before and there is no reason to believe that it won't work this time. I'm going to put these tips to good use today: I don't know if this is the right module to use for this. It looks like it doesn't do X and Y. Screw it, I'm going to try to get Z working. I can't figure out the proper way to pass this argument in? Let's just hard-code it for now to get things working and mark it with a TODO.
• gatestone 7y ago
  Keep this pinned on top of Hacker news, please.
• tw1010 7y ago
  Pet peeve: when people take phrases intended for one thing and uses them for a slightly modified purpose. I take Branson's "screw it, let's do it" mantra as something entreprenurial, a call to break the rules (and stuff like that). Using it in this purpose feels more like "screw it, let's work even though I'd rather stay in bed", which is different emotionally, and kind of saturates the sayings power. (Maybe nikes "Just do it" would fit better, but I get that its associations to big corporations isn't as well suited for the startup atmosphere we're surrounded by.)
  • wccrawford 7y ago
    Plus, Shia Labeouf already took the "just do it" and turned it into a meme that's perfect for this situation, so it's a much better choice anyhow.
  • wastedhours 7y ago
    Especially as the root of that phrase is in really wanting to do something, in the face of overwhelming external pressure to not do it (I think he coined it when launching Virgin Atlantic and noone thought the business plan looked solid).
• mapcars 7y ago
  Our focus on results (and in turn expectations) is completely wrong. The result is subject to million things which are not in our control. The only thing we can do is to do our part as well as possible and enjoy whatever the result there is. This way one can be as productive as currently possible for him/her and at the same time have no struggles with stress or failure.
• praptak 7y ago
  If you found the advice valuable, you may also like the two part series [0,1] on procrastination from waitbutwhy. The value there is the detailed analysis of the "just starting" part, why it is hard and how to still do it. [0]https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti... [1]https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.h...
• hootbootscoot 7y ago
  put a coffee on, start the project while the coffee is still brewing, have your first cup as the reward to push you into gear. Those 5-10 minutes will give your brain a chance to frame the essential challenge of the moment.
• preommr 7y ago
  Here's something that I think works best: Detaching yourself from everything and writing things down. Either a piece of paper or a text document. Start writing concrete things that need to be reinforced, that are easy to answer and can be connected together. Things like the goal of the software, core modules, what you're working on now, etc. Expand to things like what new features would be nice, how to implement them, etc. This works better than vague solutions like "do one thing" because where do you start? Writing a line of code somewhere for the sake of it is pointless. Especially if it's bad code, that just makes me feel worse knowing I'll probably have to undo it later because that's usually what ends up happening based on past examples. Detaching yourself from the work frees you from all the things tying you down that clouds your mind. Taking a moment to reorganize gives you a new thing to focus on, and arms you with purpose which makes it easier to work.
  • raindropm 7y ago
    This is also important. Some type of work need to have certain kind of plan of 'What's Next'. Even a simple checklist will do. Maybe some kind of simple month/week plan. Some may argue that it may leads to overplanning, but I found that randomly do something everyday just for the sake of doing it but didn't move into the direction of your goal made you felt empty in the long run, because all those time you've spent lead to nothing worthwhile.
• peteretep 7y ago
  One trick I don't remember the source of that I've used to great effect over the years is: - take a list of tasks you're procrastinating on - set a timer for five minutes - do just five minutes on task one. Then stop, and do the next, even if you were enjoying the first one - keep cycling over until you've unblocked them all
  • kerrsclyde 7y ago
    I've cut it down further, I'll do 30 seconds on a task just to get me going. Then I can't cope with doing 30 secs on something and I'm up and running.
• keiferski 7y ago
  I have a nagging feeling that any time we have to force ourselves to do a task, something is wrong at a fundamental level; that we are somehow out-of-tune with nature; that contemporary society is missing a key insight about our minds and the way we organize our work. An eagle doesn't force itself to hunt for food; it just hunts. I can't imagine it having to psych itself up simply to be. Looking for and harnessing that level of purity seems ultimately more fruitful than playing psychological tricks on your mind. Easier said than done, unfortunately.
  • sideshowb 7y ago
    I kind of agree, but if you take the premise of Sapiens that homo sapiens is distinct from other animals in ability to organize around stories rather than more immediate drivers of behaviour - then this may just be part of the human condition.
    • keiferski 7y ago
      Yeah, I'm not arguing that we are simply like other animals, but rather that we aren't organizing our work efforts in a way more cognizant of our nature. Instead, most productivity advice seems to be about fooling or 'hacking' yourself into being some sort of machine.
      • codersteve 7y ago
        Definitely on to something. Our minds create ideas but it takes long term effort to realize them. Along the way, our instincts get in the way.
  • muzani 7y ago
    Marc Andreessen advises to do whatever we feel like doing, because it's a good way to stay in flow. I think he's in a lucky place to want to do important things though. Most of us just want to lie down and watch TV. It's probably the side effect of addiction. If we bore ourselves, we tend to get inspired to try something else.
  • 7y ago
• ypcx 7y ago
  Be aware that the brain is a power-hungry/power-intensive organ. Give the brain (and body) enough nutrients they need for functioning. The brain (and the body) enters a power-save mode if not fed properly, which may manifest as reluctance to work (to perform deeper thought) and result in procrastination and worse, in depression. Don't try to replace real nutrients with coffee or other stimulants - these work great on top of a great nutritional base. Be aware that your body has various nutrient buffers, cycles and momentums and it may take months or even years to really run out of some really important nutrients, given your diet and lifestyle, and this will be exacerbated and accelerated by aging. Other nutritional deficiencies can have a fast onset, triggered by a temporary change in diet (something "bad" you ate), or by an illness. Know, that the decline in the efficiency of your digestive tract due to insufficient diet also has its own momentum, so it may be much slower to re-feed the body all the nutrients you need, because the internal organs need to heal first. Two of my personal "works for me" tips: explore the ketogenic diet and the effect of ketones/ketosis on the brain function, and/or try out the Wim Hof breathing method.
  • humansvsrobots 7y ago
    That's probably the most effective way to increase productivity. I would automate this if I could.
  • rustybelt 7y ago
    Cleaning up my diet has been far and away the best productivity "hack" I've ever tried. I cut bread and most sugar without being aggressively low-carb and feel sharper, more focused, and more motivated than ever. I wish I'd done this 20 years ago when my parents and doctors were pushing Ritalin and Adderall on me instead.
• unusximmortalis 7y ago
  TL;DR every journey start with one step. so make that first step no matter how small it is, and don't give it __too much__ thought nor emotions. after that in most of the cases the second step will come naturally and so on and so forth.
• BaitBlock 7y ago
  I've a side project extension underdevelopment "Baitblock": https://baitblock.app https://baitblock.app that helps people deal with this. We've pretty advanced stuff coming up like in page distraction blocking using machine learning, 1st party tracking protection (deletes cookies on websites that you're not logged in to), TL;DR before clicking the link submitted by other Baitblock members, blocking sites (although it is pretty standard), etc. Keep in mind that the already implemented features have a few bugs (to put it politely), while the others are in development but this is very early preview (latest version is under store review that is shown in demo vid in site) :) Since I'm from Pakistan, we dont have Stripe and Paypal here, so Baitblock is free for early people.
  • spai2 7y ago
    This looks cool! Thanks for making it available for free. Awaiting Firefox support so that I can give this a try.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
• Simon_says 7y ago
  Oh wow, I totally misinterpreted the headline.
• walterkrankheit 7y ago
  Totally cheesy, but not untrue. Although, I couldn't escape the irony that I was reading it to put off something else.
• matteuan 7y ago
  Related to this post, I just listened to an interesting podcast about habits[0]. It debunks some of the common myths about willpower and self-control. According to the host, the "secret" is building healthy habits over time. The problem is that we need gratification (while forming the habit) and we shouldn't have many obstacles to perform the activity we want to make a habit. Basically, we're all (maybe not you Elon) wired lazy and the only solution is to force ourselves to have only one easy choice. https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/787160734/creatures-of-habit-how-habits-shape-who-we-are-and-who-we-become https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/787160734/creatures-of-habit-...
• endorphone 7y ago
  Two books by the same author that I recommend on this subject- --The War of Art --Do The Work Both by Steven Pressfield. They're imperfect -- they call out to imaginary forces uncomfortably too often, and they take a relatively concise bit of content stretching it to book form, leaving it sometimes a bit threadbare, however they're an easy, enjoyable read and I found them useful.
• micheljansen 7y ago
  Funny that these are all about starting where my problems are mostly about finishing things. I love to start new things and often struggle to finish something because I would much rather start something new. I suspect the "shiny new thing" syndrome is common, especially in tech, but I have not read a lot about it (apart from GTD). Over time, I have developed coping mechanisms for this myself but I was hoping to learn some new tricks. Any tips?
• modi15 7y ago
  I have tried all these things, but they dont work for me. How about when you dont feel like working, simply don't work. Do something you feel like and then work when you feel like it again.
  • lazyjones 7y ago
    Yep, often when we don't find the energy and motivation to do something, there's something wrong that needs fixing. Depression, the work being pointless, FOMO and other desires that should be addressed. Work as escapism ("start sloppy until the task has all your attention") works sometimes, but it's not really victory over procrastination nor even desirable.
  • momirlan 7y ago
    wish that worked for me. one thing that kept me going without effort was "Duolinguo". this clever language learning app has a points system and system of leagues where you move up if you are among the first 10 in a cohort. for competitive persons like me it works very well. i am working my language skills first thing in the morning and last at night, and anywhere in between. the idea is being in a community of like minded people stimulates you.
• ycosynot 7y ago
  "If you're not planning, you're planning to fail." Benjamin Franklin This is what got me from a slump to a very productive, accomplished man. I plan every 15min of my mornings (Elon Musk plans every 5min!), then freestyle afternoon because that suffices me. You should write your tasks as Daily on Google Calendar then you can Sync with Samsung Galaxy Watch (because yes, it is so amazing that it is time to grab a smartwatch!) and display the list of tasks for the morning. Just a tip. Planning.
  • Tyr42 7y ago
    I always heard it as "if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail", which has a nice ring to it.
• danybittel 7y ago
  What usually works for me: Don't start at all! Instead, tinker with the project. Just some cleanup, rename a variable, just tinkering without pressure. Before I know, I'm deep into work.
• anon463637 7y ago
  The two best tricks I've found: 0) Getting antidepressants because you won't want to do anything much when you're depressed. 1) Getting meds if you have ADD because you will always be starting something else to never finish in order to repeat the cycle over-and-over again.
• aazaa 7y ago
  > Every small win is motivating. Every small win builds momentum. Momentum energizes. Starting small is an unreasonably good way to hack your brain. A book called "Tiny Habits" describes a system of behavior modification based on the idea: https://www.tinyhabits.com https://www.tinyhabits.com It gives the example of flossing. Instead of resolving to floss every night, resolve to floss one single tooth every night. It takes less than five seconds. As you take on the habit, it becomes easier to expand it. Starting big in contrast is a good way to fall off the wagon. One of the book's key insights is that the new habit you want to take on needs an anchor - something else you already do habitually that will precede your new habit. You can pick up any new tiny habit, but you need to attach it to something you already do habitually. This will be the trigger without which no new behavior can stick. In the case of flossing, that anchor could be brushing your teeth. So if you don't regularly do that, you might want to start there by brushing your teeth every day for five seconds. You could anchor that to the finishing dinner. Or getting out of the shower. And so on.
  • cedricium 7y ago
    In a similar vein, James Clear outlines this same sort of principle as "habit stacking"[0] in his book, Atomic Habits. [0]: https://jamesclear.com/habit-stacking https://jamesclear.com/habit-stacking
  • randomsearch 7y ago
    Something I’ve learnt about fitness recently, and particularly recovery from injury, is that you have to push your body very very very slowly up. Much more slowly than I ever thought was necessary. And too much, back off. Gently gently catch the monkey. Is it that you’ve discovered the mental equivalent of this attitude to physical training?
  • lloydde 7y ago
    Flossing seems like an example concept for a different concept. The tiny task is a trick to get you to start. Once started you’ll floss them all.
• cjfd 7y ago
  It may not always be wise to start working despite not feeling it. One could burn out that way. Scott H. Young write an article about this recently. https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2020/01/13/too-tired/ https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2020/01/13/too-tired/ I have also experienced this. When I got my first job I actually tried to work all the time, besides the occasional breaks, ignoring feelings of tiredness. This got to the point where I was feeling tired pretty much all the time I was awake. Then I concluded I should give into my cravings for purposeless web surfing sometimes.
  • codekansas 7y ago
    I wonder how much of this is because of physiological aspects that have to change to keep up with your other lifestyle changes. Brain exercise takes energy, and you might just not used to eating and sleeping enough to maintain that level of exercise.
  • m3kw9 7y ago
    Agree, the way should be instead how to make myself feel like starting that task. Ask yourself why you are not feeling it, but obviously it’s because there are more fun tasks, so you need to solve why it isn’t fun, and devise a way to make it fun for you. As opposed to treating the task as torture.
• majortennis 7y ago
  this post was terrible
  • paulpauper 7y ago
    agree. i dunno how stuff like this gets so many votes and a lot of quality contributions do not.
• amonroe805 7y ago
  I'd like to submit an another interesting motivational tactic along these lines: The Christian/Catholic practice of Lent. I've observed many friends who practice Lent make major life changes that are hard to make at any one time (going vegan, quitting smoking, etc.) because of how major they are. Lent helps because the change is "only for Lent", but I observe that many people carry those changes on indefinitely. Lent helped them trick themselves into taking on a major lifestyle alteration alongside a major support network of many other people doing the same thing. But once you've built a habit for a month, what's one more month? I think there's a lot of value in this tradition done well.
  • wastedhours 7y ago
    Agree with this, I gave up sugary soft drinks as a teenager after doing it for lent. "I might as well go for another month" lasted nearly 2 1/2 years (until I went to uni and wanted a mixer for rum...)
• racuna 7y ago
  I switched to podcasts instead of music to workout. Most of the podcasts I listen are very motivational, also keeps my english from getting rust and I can learn something while I pumping iron.
• pojntfx 7y ago
  Doing something bad intentionally first is a really great tool. I do this a lot with my Go projects; I'll write a really crappy, huge `main` function, push it to GitHub and then my mind tells me "hey, you can't let that be out there in public like this!" and I can't help myself but to start actually writing on it.
• scrdhrt 7y ago
  I apply the LT5 rule: If a task takes Less Than 5 minutes, do it now. This works really well for me because I can concat several LT5 tasks.
  • twic 7y ago
    I often apply this rule, then find that the task actually takes half an hour, and now i'm two hours late for something.
• Insanity 7y ago
  For me I like to remember that the hardest part is just getting started. Even when I don't feel like doing X, I've gone through it often enough now that I know starting will get me into the flow eventually.
• ArtWomb 7y ago
  I started publishing a daily dev log. Coinciding with YC SUS Winter 2020 https://okaq.github.io/log https://okaq.github.io/log Just simple markdown pages with daily progress. Eventual goal is a live video stream For my own part, I can say that once you reach the point where the thing you are working on is more interesting than anything else. The rest of the world melts away
  • samename 7y ago
    Link results in a 404
• aj7 7y ago
  Start sloppy works well for people who have perfectionist problems.
• bezchristo 7y ago
  I find this post on Wisdomination applicable to this scenario. It changed the way I approached tasks. http://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motivation-what-you-need-is-discipline/ http://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motivation-what-you-need-...
• InvisibleUp 7y ago
  Procrastination is a tricky beast. I'm not going to discount advice like this, because it is helpful. But it is only one piece of the puzzle. There's a stark difference between "I don't quite feel like starting this yet, so I'll put it off for a little bit" and "I absolutely want nothing more than to start this but I can't force myself to", between laziness and a genuine inability to begin. Not to give medical advice in the comments section of a web article, but if the latter description describes you, understand that most people don't go through those struggles. This may be an issue that needs more work to solve than reading self-help articles; it may be caused by burn-out or ADHD or some other executive functioning issue. Do look into this is procrastination is something you are constantly struggling with in your life. I wrote [an article][1] about my experiences with procrastination and ADHD, if you're interested in more. I'd also recommend the fantastic [ADHD Alien comics][2] for a nice digestible summary of what ADHD is like. [1]: https://invisibleup.com/articles/27/ https://invisibleup.com/articles/27/ [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHDAlien/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHDAlien/
  • skinkestek 7y ago
    Thanks for creating your web page and thanks posting both! These are brilliant, both of them it seems !
  • stevewodil 7y ago
    Awesome article, I definitely relate to a lot of the things mentioned. Wondering if I have ADHD as well. I was always smart enough to make it through school without applying much effort, so perhaps it went undiagnosed..
  • quickthrower2 7y ago
    There is a third type of blocker. Being too sick or fatigued. Knowing when to push through but risk having less energy later or the next day, or hold back can be a challenge. If you don’t get fatigue think of t like the decision to do an all nighter: you can’t do one every night!
  • mujina93 7y ago
    I read your writeup on ADHD. I really appreciated the advice that you give (seeking help, finding ways to commit, etc), but you (as any other existing resource on ADHD) could not convince me that ADHD is a thing. The symptoms you described, you explicitly say, are rather unique. If I think about most of the people I know, I would instead say that they are quite common. Either everyone around me, me included, has ADHD, or the definition for this disorder is quite fuzzy. Just think about the astonishing number of people that buy books, watch videos, read threads - like this very one - that propose solutions to procrastination. All these people have similar symptoms, but I wouldn't say they are ill (even though they all have problems, and they all would greatly benefit from help, don't get me wrong). Nor I would be satisfied with the simplicistic way of classifying some of those as "sick and allowed to legally do amphetamines" and the rest in the negative set. I read the official set of symptoms to diagnose ADHD that you linked in the article. I found that embarassing. Lacking in scientific soundness. Please pardon my bias as a data scientist, and allow me to distort a quote for an increased dramatic effect, but a thing like "if you have at least 6 symptoms among: moving too much, not wanting to do your homework since before you were 12, etc. - > then you have ADHD. But if you are more than 17, you only need 5 symptoms. Because you know, 5 is the magic number" doesn't strike me as a sound classification method. I'll add that the sole fact that there are significant differences in the percentages of diagnosed ADHD cases among different continents should convince anybody that believes in science (=statistics/scientific method) that the model "if you check these boxes, then you have ADHD" is a horrible one to fit a very complex reality. Symptoms are like a mixture of mostly independent gaussians, and we are trying to force a binary classification on it, clumping variables together and imposing arbitrary thesholds. But we'll never get a decent representation of reality in this way. Having only a few classes, if having classes at all, is conceptually wrong in this case. I think this simplified way of doing things can be ok for doctors that want an easy life (tick some boxes, get paid, feel you helped somebody) and for people that want a quick improve in performance and/or that want to feel relieved/justified by being labeled as ill (it may be adults wanting this for themselves, or anxious parents for their children. And both could be not fully aware about their drives. Therefore I'm not attacking anyone here. I'm highlighting a diffuse social problem and trying to raise awareness). But this cannot be accepted by people that care about grasping all the nuances of complex phenomena, and that want to sensibly improve people's lives (by reducing the stigma around psychological problems, which we all have, by pushing for a culture with less simplification - especially in medicine and psychology - and that acknowledges observables as being continuous, by fighting for more equality around the world in the access to drugs and nootropics and for more education on drugs and mental hygene). Pardon my English (it's not my first language) and pardon my tones (I may sound salty but I am really just looking for a high quality discussion in a beautiful place like HN, and I would love to be proven wrong on the ADHD existance). (((And pardon all my lispy parentheses.))) TL;DR I rant about ADHD just being a label attached with poor criteria. It does not capture the complexity of reality, which is made of all shades of unsatisfaction, lazyness and interconnected psychological issues.
• jkingsbery 7y ago
  "I have work to do, but I'll just check hacker news first... Oh, there's an article about how not to procrastinate... which is great, I'm trying not to procrastinate so much. Let me read that first before I start my work." Seriously though, I agree with the approach. When starting a talk or writing a design doc, I'll sometimes just start with an outline or half-baked paragraph. From there, writing the rest comes down to filling out areas where more detail is needed, verifying statements, and so on.
• werber 7y ago
  And sometimes, it's great to just let an idea go and enjoy the present. Enjoying your loved ones, and just doing "nothing", has been my favorite part of life so far. I have returned to things I never thought I would get around to and ended up finishing them, but not all procrastination is bad. Go to work, work 8 hours, and then ride a unicycle with a bunch of clowns, eat pizza with friends.
• slavapestov 7y ago
  If you don’t feel like doing something it probably sucks and isn’t worth doing. Hustle culture is stupid. When you’re on your deathbed you’re not going to look back on your life and wish you had worked more or made mode money.
  • MockObject 7y ago
    If my deathbed is under a sheet of filthy cardboard as I sleep on the street, believe me, I'll be looking back wishing I'd made more money.
• greendestiny_re 7y ago
  I found that, if I have to meet a deadline, writing down the deadline on a post-it note and making it highly visible, i.e. taping it to the side of the screen, will increase the chances of me meeting the deadline. Also, explicitly promising to the client that I'll do it motivates me to not let down the client.
• swat535 7y ago
  In the context of programming, every time I don't feel like writing code, I just tell myself: I'm not gonna write code, I'll just run the test suite and then come back to it later. That causes me to open my terminal, which then requires me to getting the updates from upstream before running the tests, and then I have to inspect the new changes which then requires me navigating to the project.. By then, I'm writing code. This works really well! For other things such as exercising, I just tell myself, I'm not gonna exercise, I'll just put on my headphones to listen to my "exercise" playlist. This causes me to walk to my bedroom to grab my earphones (I have a wireless one for exercising and always keep them near my workout clothes), which causes me to open the drawers, and by then, I might as wear change and then I'm all set!
• allovernow 7y ago
  The harder I try to trick myself, regardless of the technique, the harder my inner miscreant screams to procrastinate. It's like a resistance to being told what to do, even by myself. Honestly the most reliable solution I've found is amphetamines. Less than ideal advice to depend on substances, but a therapeutic dose of Adderall can be the difference between surfing the internet and half-assing all day until finally starting work in earnest 5-7 hours later, if at all, and starting work within an hour of dosing. Coffee comes in a distant second. Of course coming up against a tight deadline does wonders for motivation too...but in my experience if I set an arbitrary deadline I know I'm just lying to myself - there have to be real consequences.
• durmonski 7y ago
  Well, that's a really awesome website :)
• flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
  I shot out of bed for the 5th morning in a row today to make it to Mysore style yoga class at 6am. I was tired and hungry. I had to pick up my better half from the airport last night at 2am because her flight was delayed. I was nervous that I wouldn't remember the standing sequence for the 5th time in a row. I lost my chant card already that I was just given yesterday... I had every excuse in the book not to go, but I went anyways. Turns out I wasn't that tired or hungry, I remembered the chant and the standing sequences almost perfectly, and I made it a few more poses into the seated series. I can't wait to go back tomorrow. No matter the circumstances.
  • moretai 7y ago
    If you can manage to do it everyday in a row for 5 months, then we shall see the truth of those last two statements.
    • flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
      I've done yoga every single day for 11 months straight now... I only just started Mysore 5 days ago (from the time of this comment).
• cr0sh 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure I've used these and similar tricks over the years, and still do. For the most part, I've found that the first two mentioned were the ones that mostly would get me going. More often than not, I find myself hours later lost in the task, having complete way more than I intended to. The third one - starting with something small - also comes in handy, usually when I am cleaning or organizing something. I'll first look at something and say "yeah, I'll put this back where it belongs right now" and before I know it, one thing becomes another and everything is cleaned up. But I've always been a procrastinator - especially on personal projects. It's one of my personal failings. Though if the project has a deadline (like I recall with homework in high school decades ago), I find that the pressure to finish quickly ends up gaining me a successful outcome. I think these tips are useful, and may help others who don't know about them, or haven't developed them on their own. Great posting!
• kodt 7y ago
  I'll read this later when I feel like it.
• tekkk 7y ago
  My small bit of advice is to think everything what you do as feedback loops. Eg if you start browsing youtube videos, you'll get by each video more and more into it and at some point cant stop watching. Same for work or workouts or whatever. Once the initial cognitive burden of starting the work has happened, it's should be your utmost priority to just keep at it. Minimize the distractions and get back to the 'looping' as soon as possible. In time the act of doing becomes so easy, that you dont need to invest that much in starting up. Just to stay focused. And your flow-state becomes so strong that you dont even become distracted as the work is so interesting to you
• jshowa3 7y ago
  This post led me to finally create my perpetual motion machine! "Screw it, just do it right!?"
• Zenst 7y ago
  I always used to leave myself a few simple tasks at work ready for the start of the next day, so I could ease myself into the day. Nowadays email has helped with that, at least reading it. Learned best to draft reply and then after lunch go thru and edit/rewrite before sendings. Worked well for me. Though the biggest issue (and gift) I have is actually over-thinking and with that, seeing the bigger picture can be darn depressing on so many issues that I often find my zest for life lacking that anything else struggles to stand a chance of having a shot. But, just one more day has worked for decades.
• m3kw9 7y ago
  I think one of the best trick is to split out the work into super small pieces of meaningful work. And treat that as the work it self. Most times it’s because there is no fun in looking at the huge task and getting stuck On where to start. This is why working at a corporation is easier, there are leads and managers Already divided up the work for you to do.
• debt 7y ago
  Normal Mailer once said he writes even if he doesn't want to because he was always able to write himself into a writing mood.
• foobar_ 7y ago
  Over analyzing leads to inaccuracies and hairy loops and sometimes actively experimenting, with conscious damage control is the only way to go. I would also like to add start funny. Solemnness is for dead people.
• unnouinceput 7y ago
  This works for everything except one big case. Project with 90% of work done but the last 10% is the one holding the project to be released because it's a hard but core functionality of it and all previous programmers didn't touch it/knew how and the customer is adamant about it. So I get the ugliest part with the high expectation from the client to be finished fast. I usually avoid this type of projects as well, but in few cases where I did it I found the only working solution is the rubber duck one. Usually I use my wife (non-technical person) as the rubber duck and I explain to her, while she is in the kitchen cooking, all the steps I need to do in order to complete the last 10%. After the 2 hours filling her head with technical details, to which she pays absolutely 0 attention to it, I can do it. So, tldr; -> rubber duck technique.
• martinGresky 7y ago
  "1st world problems" come to mind
• indigodaddy 7y ago
  Don't go to hackernews might be one...
• axaxs 7y ago
  These life hacks have never worked for me. I realized too late in life that I do my best work at night. I'm not sure if it's because I'm bored, or tired and my brain has slowed, or the news cycle has slowed down, but I can sit down at 10pm and pop out hundreds of lines of working code by 1am. If I ever have a large project to work on, I'd guess 70 percent of it is done after 9pm. Luckily, my company doesn't micromanage and as long as I write quality code on schedule everything works out.
• randomsearch 7y ago
  I’m generally good at avoiding procrastination. I have bad periods but months go by without me reading news or social media during work periods. OTOH, a friend is the opposite. He’s the biggest procrastinator I know. Between us I don’t see an obvious explanatory factor. I would guess therefore that it’s something innate, perhaps a genetic factor. He just doesn’t seem to have the same discipline as me. The only thing I see that works for him is to have external pressure. What I’m saying is - if you’re a super procrastinator like my friend, maybe all the tricks in the world won’t help you to be motivated without a real and pressing deadline. Compare yourself in those situations to your every day, see if there’s some insight there.
  • yomly 7y ago
    I procrastinate extremely hard over things I don't want to do, and maybe things I am intimidated by their difficulty. And yet, I am capable of steady self learning and can quite comfortably find the motivation to exercise 10+ hours a week. I don't think it's very black and white because along certain dimensions I am hyper disciplined but others heaven and hell would struggle to get me moving. I do respond to external pressure tho. So sample size of one, YMMV
    • chpmrc 7y ago
      I think most of the time we overlap lack of scheduling/discipline with laziness (being a couch potato). I'm a disaster at scheduling things, unless they involve other people. But when it comes to putting in the effort and the hours to get something done before a deadline, man, you can bet it's gonna get done. Similarly I've had periods of 3-4 months at a time where I was super disciplined about nutrition and exercise followed by a period of extreme disregard for anything related to my health. As in eating pizza 3-4 times a week. What I noticed is that it all starts with going to the gym 1-2 times and not interrupting the routine. A trip abroad, a week long illness, they all pretty much end any kind of virtuous cycle that was forming. Maybe the trick is just to be consistent for X time? I don't know.
      • yomly 7y ago
• welder 7y ago
  I always thought procrastination was a good thing. Why trick yourself into doing some thing? If it's worth doing, you won't have to trick yourself.
• musicale 7y ago
  > Check out our new 4 week program on how to defeat procrastination Great, that should help me put things off for at least 4 weeks!
• SlowMo22 7y ago
  Hi, I'm wondering what reasoning for getting banned for describing this as a "1st world problem." Not only down-voted but my comment completely disappeared (not only faded out but gone from the page.) Isn't that a violent reaction to a very ordinary exercise in free speech?
  • whiddershins 7y ago
    I wasn’t there for that but you aren’t gone, you are on the second page. You might not have showdead enabled? Or not realized you are on the second page? People likely downvoted you because they didn’t feel the comment contributed to the discussion. They may also have felt it was dismissive or likely to cause acrimony. I think it’s best not to take this stuff personally. It’s take a lot of effort to maintain a high level of discussion on Hacker News, and people try to help out by downvoting comments that seem to need downvoting. I’ve had comments downvoted and even flagged. I felt upset at first, but then I just decided to view my communication skills as a work in progress. It’s not a big deal, in the end.
• teekert 7y ago
  Mind over matter guys, "Screw it, lets do it." is the best advice: just start, anywhere. I've struggled with this my entire life and nowadays I just start writing (code or documents). It feels like getting out of bed after a night with a crying baby, but you know, have a coffee, stare into the bright daylight of a new day and that moment of actually deciding to push away the sheets is long forgotten. Edit: I have two brothers, one with ADD one with issues with Alcohol. All three of us have issues starting and finishing things that are import for an orderly life. The one with the alcohol problem is (or was perhaps, he's ding pretty good now) really prone to feeling like a victim and just dropping everything when things don't go smoothly. The main difference between me and my brothers is my ability to kick my own ass into action. Other than that I recognize many aspects of their character in mine. Maybe the thought of the troubles they have had helps me. Still, the most fun things always go first, but hey, I've earned that little pleasure, right? ;)
• mustafabisic1 7y ago
  Perfect timing. Just need to start writing out code for an email. Screw it, let's do it!
• vbtemp 7y ago
  For me, recently, procrastination (at work) was something deep down inside telling me that I was not happy where I was at work. When I got a new job with much more autonomy, and the position was what I could make of it, my procrastination problem pretty much vanished. At my old job I tried all the tricks and ways to frame it mentally, but all it served to do was suppress something my instinct was telling me I need to get out of.