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Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time
- adamnemecek 7y agoProcrastination is a signal that you hate what you are supposed to be doing. Don't ignore it.
- flor1s 7y agoYou might hate what you are doing in the short term but love what you will gain from doing that in the long term.
- adamnemecek 7y agoNot really. The odds are if hating it now, the odds of you hating it forever are pretty high.
- idclip 7y agoActually a disturbed ego will hate doing a good thing, and love doing a bad thing. Thats the basis of affective disorders. Is it hate, or is it aversion? The spectrum of emotion isn't a simple thing, and i have seen people change.
- djsumdog 7y agoYou might like the result (like a clean house) but hate starting the process. That's one possibility. But you could also hate starting (a project for a job you hate) but you keep on doing it, ignoring those feelings, because we all have bills to pay. I think the second one is what you need to be aware of.
- temporaryvector 7y agoNot always true. I frequently procrastinate on things that I actively enjoy doing and want to do. There are times when I want nothing more than to be doing something and I still procrastinate doing it. This applies to things that aren't work or aren't productive just the same, things that take little effort like watching a series or playing a video game. Medication does make it a lot better and I don't procrastinate nearly as much as I used to, but before I started taking it, there were times where I'd lie on the sofa with the remote control next to me and I would just stare at the ceiling thinking about watching that movie I've been wanting to watch and I still couldn't bring myself to do it.
- idclip 7y agoHave you considered meditation?
- temporaryvector 7y agoYes, mediation, mindfulness and several other techniques for controlling emotions were things that we tried with my psychiatrist. Meditation didn't really work for me but mindfulness sure did.
- djsumdog 7y agoMeditation isn't always for everyone: https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/mindful-meditation-is-not-for-everyone/ https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/mindful-meditation-is-n...
- idclip 7y agoI know, but consider psychiatric meds perscribed - its generally very risky to mess with one’s head. Ive 700hours in monasteries under my belt, ive seen the dark side of meditation, aswell as its light. I still say take the risk tho. Mindful is a great tool. It needn't be vipassana. Many People who do vipassana often are at a point where its a last resort before something worse.
- idclip 7y agoOh yes i did mean mindfulness meditation, i have been to several mindfulness retreats (vipassanas) and used to have ADHD. I find cold showers and a morning/evening mindfulness sit work wonders.
- temporaryvector 7y agoI suppose I should clarify the kind of mindfulness I'm talking about. Basically what I was taught was how to pay attention to what I'm feeling and where those emotions are coming from. This helps a lot with lowering my anxiety and stress levels. Unlike meditation, this isn't something that I stop to do, aside from maybe a brief pause to take a couple of breaths, it's something I do throughout the day when I start feeling bad. Meditation didn't work for me because it implied taking some time out my day to do it, and that would just and either become a way to procrastinate or something that I would procrastinate doing and contribute to my anxiety. That aside, I think there's a lot of confusion about the terms "meditation," "mindful mediation" and "mindfulness" and I'm not sure I know the correct way to use them, but the above is what I mean when I say "mindfulness."
- chpmrc 7y agoThat advice ignores the fact that we hate most of the things we should do to be healthy. Should we just give up fitness and healthy eating just because we don't like them (in the short term)?
- adamnemecek 7y agoDo you procrastinate On these?
- read_if_gay_ 7y agoAn example might be to quit smoking. Anyone who quits will probably procrastinate that for a while. But no matter how much you are going to hate quitting, smoking just isn’t worth it.
- idclip 7y agoWent through that, can confirm.
- mercora 7y agoi do not favor this example either. to quit smoking is long term commitment to not do something anymore. When i am thinking about procrastination i think about tasks you can be done with. Even if you meant procrastinating before starting to quit i do not think it holds up as a good example because there is no way to be done with it and if i stop i restart at the beginning.
- chpmrc 7y agoWho doesn't? If we didn't there wouldn't be a whole industry dedicated to helping you do it.
- idclip 7y agoNot sure why youre being downvoted. There us alot of truth to that. Not all cases, but i believe many
- TeMPOraL 7y agoBecause GP phrased it as being absolute. Yeah, perhaps it's true for some. Frankly, those have it easy - there's a clear path to solving the problem: stop doing what you hate, perhaps first resolving the issue that forces you to do the things you hate. For me and many others here, procrastination is completely orthogonal to whether you hate something or not. That complicates things, because you can't just switch tasks, or jobs, to solve the problem or even to recover your mental strength.
- ivanhoe 7y agoProcrastination is a signal that task makes you feel uncomfortable, but that fear of it can be a result of many issues (boredom, laziness, feeling of incompetence, fear of making what seems as a hard decision, fear of people not liking it, fear of finishing as then you have to move to the next step, etc.). Usually it's far more complex than just "I hate doing it", because there's a deeper reason hidden behind that aversion.
- dasil003 7y agoAnd perhaps the most rational reason of all: because last time I was faced with a similar task I procrastinated and it went away on its own.
- onion2k 7y agoThe opposite is true for me - when I have a task I know I'm going to enjoy I put it off for ages because I like the anticipation of doing it. I also put off tasks I'm not confident about even if I'll like them because I fear the outcome. Failing makes me depressed. Neither of these are hating the task itself.
- naniid 7y agoWhy is that piece dated in future?
- funwithjustin 7y agoI can't tell if you're joking or not.
- sdan 7y agoBoss probably delayed the publish date after the writer procrastinated to write this.
- suyash 7y agoIt was probably published in another time zone, ahead of yours.
- naniid 7y agoUnlikely.. I am in Australia.. and its not 24/Jan/2020 anywhere on planet. Nevertheless, yes the comment was meant to be a joke.
- mercora 7y agoit has written "23rd January 2020" on it when i fetch it and the URL suggests this article has been created (not necessarily written) 21st January 2020 on their CMS.
- suyash 7y agoThis is a gem of an article, I always looked at Procrastination from a logical approach, turns out the real reason is emotional.
- adventured 7y agoThey don't inherently conflict. Emotions can be logical, so it can stem from both at the same time. That is, a logical emotion isn't necessarily a contradiction. Procrastination may be more heavily dictated by emotion and that emotion may exist for a logical reason that has deep roots which you still need to introspect and resolve. The emotion itself has a cause. I view the two as more likely to be deeply connected, rather than two things to be regarded separately.
- coldtea 7y ago>They don't inherently conflict. Emotions can be logical This is a semantics issue. Parent means logical in the sense of the process of thought, analysis, etc. Not in "makes sense". Given that, emotions can be reasonable, but not logical. I.e. they can be valid descriptions of the situation, but they are not themselves some kind of logical analysis or reasoning - they are just feelings. (On the other hand, a logical analysis can produce emotions. I.e. logically determining "the oxygen in our cabin runs out in 2 hours" can produce panic. And the opposite: an emotion might get us to think / perform a logical analysis).
- serioussecurity 7y agoMost of my interesting papers have resulted from letting go of my "logical" brain and letting my emotions play with the problem until a line of attack opens, then I turn on the logic brain to get it done.
- suyash 7y agoThey absolutely conflict - emotions are the driver of most human decisions and rationalization happens later. You can think of it from Neuroscience lens - The Neo Context part of the Brain fires later and takes longer to engage and is less powerful when compared to the Reptilian Brain. This was also explained in Daniel Kahneman work (System 1 vs System 2) Therefore, the key is to manage emotions as the article points out.
- isaikumar 7y agoWell I am reading this while procrastinating...
- juskrey 7y agoProcrastination is a BS detector.
- onion2k 7y agoIf that's true then all my school work and university assignments were BS.
- arkadiytehgraet 7y agoThey very well could be, and most probably were indeed BS?
- matheusmoreira 7y agoMost likely.
- juskrey 7y agoBingo
- adrianmonk 7y agoThis BS detector has a notoriously high false-positive rate. (Which, furthermore, acts as an enabler for making excuses.) But it actually does detect BS sometimes. Sometimes it even tells you that your mind is in conflict with itself. In the case of school work, maybe some part of you believes the material is useful to understand, but some other part of you is not convinced. Sometimes that feeling can even nudge you toward harmonizing those parts of your mind. Which can be nice. (But not always truly necessarily.) For example, my CS degree required a digital circuit design (EE) class that I didn't enjoy at all. But in hindsight, I am now absolutely convinced of its usefulness and relevance. If I could have been convinced of that while I was taking it, it might have been easier to do the work. Although I wouldn't assume that's a realistic approach because maybe I needed to learn it first and then apply it before I could appreciate why it's useful. Sometimes you need to just power through even though you're not feeling it. Still, the point is that procrastination served as a kind of an indicator that I felt it was BS. It doesn't necessarily fix anything to know that, but it's not wrong either.
- 7y ago
- rvz 7y agoIf you are going to procrastinate somewhere, you might as well do it here on HN. At least you can be inspired about other people's projects, tutorials and learn something etc. But reading generic news articles like this about procrastination? I don't think so.
- mettamage 7y agoYea but ultimately no. Too much of anything screws you over. Too much HN feels like hoarding huge piles of clothes in your house. Except, the clothes are knowledge. The problem is that you’re not structuring the knowledge inside your mind. This can be fine when reading an article but not when you read 20 to a 100 per day. I’ve been there, I wouldn’t be able to remember what I read. With that said, you do learn something.
- mbar84 7y ago> Except, the clothes are knowledge. If only! Most of it is actually just semi useful information rather than knowledge.
- graphpapa 7y agothe antidote presumably being whatever a capsule wardrobe is for information
- neuronic 7y agoIt's also the discipline to clean up, keep it ordered and throw things out that aren't useful anymore.
- dmos62 7y agoI think it's a good idea to have discussions about procrastination. It's something a lot of us experience. Something would be wrong if it didn't appear semi-frequently on the front page.
- toyg 7y ago> At least you can be inspired about other people's projects Or get nauseous at everyone's apparent ability to ship wonderful weekend projects at 25, while you can't finish a damn project in 6 months with twice the work experience. HN is the geek's social media but it should still be treated as social media for all intents and purposes.
- rl3 7y ago>Chronic procrastination is linked with mental and physical health costs, from depression and anxiety ... I would argue that anxiety can actually be a cause of procrastination. It turns into a nasty feedback loop that can go something like this: Anxious -> Procrastination -> [Depression] -> More anxious -> Repeat Depression of course depending on the circumstances, but it stands to reason if you're a chronic procrastinator that frequently doesn't get done what you want to get done, depression will often follow in some cases. I had the privilege of experiencing this cycle first hand due to pharmacological reasons when I was on a xanthine derivative for nine months. Methylated xanthine is chemically similar to caffeine, so being hopped up on that 24/7 was ultimately quite unpleasant. It was common for others to only tolerate the same medication for weeks due to anxiety issues. Once I went off the stuff, the procrastination ceased within days. It was like a new lease on life. Which is ironic, because even years before that I'd always considered myself a bad procrastinator. No doubt habits and, to a greater extent emotional well-being (as the article states) are considerable factors. I would also argue hypomanic features and ADHD can play a large role in procrastination as well. Furthermore, I suspect the two are often confused for one another and share similar pathology.
- pgt 7y agoFascinating point about caffeine as a methylxanthine. My experience with caffeine is that it can help kickstart me into doing something I have been putting off, but easily overcompensates by making me start too many things at once and thereby worsening symptoms of ADD. I suspect this is related to caffeine's dopaminergic action (dopamine regulates anticipatory training): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Effects_on_striatal_dopamine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Effects_on_striatal_d...
- rl3 7y agoYeah, that's the same story with me. Normally I don't even consume caffeine for that reason. On the occasions I do have it and attempt to accomplish something that requires focus, it elevates energy but worsens focus considerably, even in minute amounts. It's at best a fun way to spin my tires, and at worst the harbinger of productivity destruction.
- mettamage 7y agoYesterday I had a bit of a talk with myself about my behavior pertaining to procrastination. I am addicted to: - YouTube - Gaming Worse, I have quite a runway due to low living expenses. I came with a new idea today, I hope it helps anyone else. I need to get good at generating my own feelings. This is why I play games and watch videos. I do it to feel something. In order to do that I need to stay as close as to the activity itself while doing it myself. I came up with the following replacement rules: TouTube —> tell a story to myself. Yesterday I started a story about an alien who is a cat (and I wasn’t thinking about the show Salem even!). This cat/alien has seen humans for 5000 years. Games —> digital product design. Yesterday I imagined how it is to design a newsletter, in terms of aesthetics and UX. I hope this idea might help anyone. I sure haven’t read it anywhere.
- john_minsk 7y agoInteresting, did you just start doing it or has been on it for some time?
- mettamage 7y agoJust started so in that sense this idea hasn’t been battle tested. But replacement addictions work quite well with me (eg coca cola —> green tea). So the fact that this is a replacement scheme as well does give the idea some promise for me.
- CaptArmchair 7y agoHat tip: reddit/r/writingprompts. A poster provides a single line describing a premise and commenters write short stories. It's a great way of getting triggered to be creative. The difference between gaming / youtube is that writing is producing. You're creating something. And that triggers different parts of your brain making you feel like you're accomplishing something. Beware though. Writing short stories can become a procrastination in itself! For instance, instead of doing homework, you write a short story. Managing yourself is also being aware that your mind works at different speeds. Read up on Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow to get the idea. The big challenge each of us faces is learning to live with yourself and striking the right balance.
- didibus 7y ago> The task we’re putting off is making us feel bad – perhaps it’s boring, too difficult or we’re worried about failing – and to make ourselves feel better in the moment, we start doing something else, like watching videos I always thought this was the agreed upon perspective. I actually had never heard that some people explained it as a time management problem.
- gyulai 7y agoI really don't see the point of studying statistical correlations between cat videos and heart disease. The way I see it, these statistical correlations give you clues about where to start looking for mechanisms of causation, but as long as there is no causal mechanism, there's just nothing there. -- It's like a detective forming a theory of a crime so they know where to start looking for evidence. But the evidence is what a court is going to need to convict someone. If you look purely at correlations, I bet that almost any psychological condition correlates with almost any other, to the extent that they are all caused by an unobserved outside factor. Let's call that factor "having a shitty life". A shitty life probably involves having a boring job, which makes you more likely to procrastinate. But a shitty life will also make it more likely that you'd be an alcoholic, drug-addict, suffer from depression and/or anxiety, etc etc
- tern 7y agoLearning how to process my emotions made procrastination a non-issue in my life. After learning better models, I don't even use the word anymore. There are many techniques, but I'd recommend looking at the bio-emotive framework to start.
- walamaking 7y agoCould you elaborate a bit on what this bio-emotive framework is? I checked out Dr. Douglas J. Tataryn's website but there's some paid content.
- moneywoes 7y agoWhere do I begin to solve this problem?
- nabla9 7y agoThere are some tricks. Instead of trying to force yourself to do the thing, refuse to do anything else. Instead of replacing activity with another, just sit still either eyes closed or looking at a wall or desk (not a screen or anything entertaining). Only replacement activity should be no activity, pure boredom. Don't judge yourself and don't feel quilt. If you are stubborn with this, you may notice that you start doing the thing as an impulse without seeing the decision to act coming. Somehow the motivation is there but your constant emotional monitoring is blocking it. If you start to procrastinate with the procrastination avoidance, all hope is lost.
- gexla 7y agoI have been remote working for many years. And I have done a handful of office working. I would have considered myself (probably wrongly) the worst procrastinator. It seemed like most of the people I worked with were able to get things done better than I could. And I have been on the "overwork" part of the spectrum where I'm all about working until burnout. It's about emotions, yes. But that's not very specific. This is one of those subjects where 10 different people could give 10 different explanations and nobody would be wrong. It's a rat's nest of issues. A bunch of threads tightly wound to create a mess of a problem. Fixing a procrastination problem probably takes more of a gut feel than an attempt to understand it. I don't know what causes it, but most of the time what fixes it is focus. Why do students cram? Because time constraints strip away the BS and they're only left with figuring out a strategy for studying. What are my best strategies to stop procrastinating? I'm out of money. Time is running out. I have a gun to my head. Getting things done is sometimes like trying to reach through a heavy fog to snatch a pin head size blinking orb of light. The moving swirling fog distracts and makes you lose site of the blinking thing you're trying to keep in sight. What you have to do is mentally banish the fog and go straight for that blinking thing and grab it. Another issue for me is a failure to commit. The more I think about all the stuff I want to do, the less I'm willing to put the effort into doing one thing. Possibilities are more interesting than reality. Even as reality kills off possibilities, I can always spin up more. Reading HN is like a staging zone where I'm not having to commit to anything. I'm not getting anything done, but at least I'm still keeping all the possibilities in play. It's like a dude who likes to play the field rather than settle down and get married. ;) As I mentioned above, certain realities I can't ignore. Paying bills is a major one.
- OnACoffeeBreak 7y ago>Fixing a procrastination problem probably takes more of a gut feel than an attempt to understand it. The article mentions mindfulness and I think it can replace the gut feel as a way to understand the root cause of procrastination. One can literally observe what is happening in your mind and body and what is happening around you before, during and after procrastination events and work from there to address anything you want to change. Learning about and practicing self-compassion [1] should, IMHO, help deal with it as well. 1: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b357/87b9b21486d00458e85f8bcdf84d44e83c7c.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b357/87b9b21486d00458e85f8b...
- elfexec 7y agoIsn't this like the 3rd or 4th post about procrastination on the frontpage the past few days? People seem to love to procrastinate by reading about procrastination. Haiku time. "Procrastinate by Reading articles about Procrastination"
- TeMPOraL 7y agoPerhaps. HN has had a steady stream of procrastination articles ever since I remembered. They're of interest to those of us that come here to procrastinate :).
- pmoriarty 7y agoTim Pychyl, who's ideas this article discusses, goes in to these ideas much more deeply in a really fantastic video here: [1] I've watched a ton of videos on procrastination, and read a lot about it, and this video is head and shoulders above everything else. Highly recommended. He also has the iProcrastinate Podcast[2], which also has some useful and interesting episodes. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhFQA998WiA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhFQA998WiA [2] - http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/ http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/
- enigami 7y agohttps://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti... WaitButWhy blog gave me an amazing insight into why do we procrastinate in the most simplest form. I've felt like, I was literally reading about me
- Brave-Steak 7y agoWhile I've spent a lot of time reading everything he's written, I never felt that any of it helped me overcome my procrastination. It was just recognition and a shallow, fleeting satisfaction in that recognition.
- flopunctro 7y agoI don't think it helped him (Tim of WbW) either. I don't think it was even supposed to help; reading his writings, I never had the feeling he was offering a solution -- rather, he was fascinated by the phenomenon, and was doing a kind of nerdy, technical analysis of his state. One that I (and others) could resonate with. What actually helped me was framing the issue in a somewhat buddhist manner. I purchased his Panic Monster and the Monkey, sat them on my desk, and tried to look at them (and thus at my procrastination) with kindness and acceptance. FWIW, my procrastination hasn't gone away (here I am, on HN); but it shrunk, and it stopped being such a big problem for me.
- ohmyblock 7y agoAlmost exactly same title: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19975862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19975862
- sambe 7y agoI can't believe the state-of-the-art thinking was genuinely that it's a time management problem. Surely some self-awareness of the mental battle goes a long way to quashing that quickly. I'm not thinking "I estimate this will take 1 hour". I'm thinking "I don't want to do this", and there's a tension between inevitability and the unpleasantness.
- m-i-l 7y agoSame here. Long ago I realised that I have a tendency to procrastinate when faced with having to do things I don't want to do (while conversely being quite good at being focussed on the things I do want to do). Time management only comes into it in the the sense that I want to spend less time doing things I don't like and more time doing the things I do like. Doesn't seem a particularly surprising piece of self-insight to be honest. So, when I realise I'm procrastinating, i.e. faced with something I don't want to do, questions are: Do I really have to do it? If I really have to do it, why don't I want to do it and can I make it any less bad? And if I have to do it and can't turn it into something I really want to do, why can't I simply just get it done and out of the way so I can get on with the other things I actually want to do instead? I wouldn't be surprised if this was generally applicable to some or many other people too.
- psv1 7y agoI was incredibly unproductive during the first half of my 20s and procrastinated to the point of setting my career back a few years. Around the time I turned 26 I was suddenly able to actually do what I said I would, get stuff done, and in fact be extremely productive. So even though I've overcome it myself, I have no idea what advice to give to someone who's struggling with procrastination.
- Sepova 7y agoThe article is written by Captain Obvious but I really enjoy the quality comments here!
- toyg 7y agoSome topics on HN really need little more than a title to trigger a good comment thread. A lot of people don't even read TFA anyway and the best comments come from personal experience. Sometimes I think a random topic generator would suffice - which is almost what Ask HN is, but not quite.
- mszcz 7y agoYep, had the same realisation. The quality of links varies somewhat, but the quality of comments here rarely does.
- walterkrankheit 7y agoIs procrastination really the biggest ailment we suffer in today's world? There's an awful lot of concern over it. Although remote working is possibly its biggest contributor when it comes to professional procrastination. I mean, when in an office surrounded by others, sure, you could, but only if everyone else is and that's not likely to be the case.
- matwood 7y ago> Is procrastination really the biggest ailment we suffer in today's world? I think about procrastination as part a larger discipline problem. Other parts of the same problem are people's lack of willingness to exercise and eat properly. When framed in a larger sense, I do think it is a big ailment in todays society.
- Aeolun 7y agoHuh? I’m working in a bigger corporation, and if I just faff around for a day I’m not sure anyone would notice. Of course I can’t spend it watching cat videos, but reading reddit or HN is very possible (or basically anything that looks workish).
- yogrish 7y agoProbably this is the best explanation by Oliver Emberton on how to beat procrastination. https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/01/15/how-do-i-get-over-my-bad-habit-of-procrastinating/#3814ce2f544c https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/01/15/how-do-i-get-o...
- newqer 7y agoThank you for the mental image of an impulsive baby reptile in my brain.
- benjaminsuch 7y agoI noticed that I procrastinate when I have to do things I don't want to do OR if I don't know how to do them. An example for the latter would be a programming issue. If I don't know how to solve it or I expect it to be a big hassle I procrastinate away from it.
- yiyus 7y agoThat's curious. I have the opposite problem. Solving difficult problems is a main part of my job. I love a challenge and get totally absorbed by a good problem. I read everything I find about the topic, I try different solutions, I think about it the whole time. But once I have figured out a solution and I have to do all the tedious work that comes after, I lose interest and start doing other things. Programming is an interesting example. I get to work when I have to think how to refactor everything in a nice way, for example, but once I find the right design and I see it works, changing everything becomes a mechanical task, and I tend to postpone that tedious work to try to solve some weird problem I found by chance in some irc channel or stackexchange. I think that this diversity is great. We should work together!
- stared 7y agoI've learned the most valuable things from the HowToADHD channel: 1. Procrastination is related to fear, and the fight, flight & freeze responses for work. Procrastination = flight. Pulling an all-nighter = fight (gets things done, but at a health cost). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlObsAeFNVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlObsAeFNVk 2. For people with ADHD (e.g. myself) there are two times: NOW and NOT NOW. That way, it is hard to do any activity, unless is urgent (e.g. deadline). Anything for "some time" (or "tomorrow") is going to stay that way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLkOZhROvA4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLkOZhROvA4 ... Also, I recommend "Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder" by Edward Hallowell and John Ratey. I discovered this book thanks to HN and a post about dyslexia. The book shows quite a few stories of adults with AD(H)D and how do they cope with work and relationships. The stories are diverse (it is certainly not all ill-behaved boys), and give a point of reference. I wished I had known that book before. I got diagnosed only the last year, being 33 years old. Before turning 30 I hadn't suspected having ADHD, as I had quite a few misconceptions both about the condition, and what is "typical" in humans. ... And from recent things: this recent HN is invaluable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22105229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22105229 > 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". And from a linked Reddit post: "Eat the frog first doesn't work for many of the groups who struggle with procrastination. My ADHD group often gets newcomers who say they've tried everything. There must be something terribly wrong with them because trying to eat the frog first makes things worse for them. In fact, trying to eat the frog first makes it worse for most people with ADHD. We do better with small things, and even better with a small, well-chosen fun thing before the important thing. It builds dopamine and success and reduces anxiety. Also, sometimes we need to de-stress. Yes, I let my kids play video games after school. They relaxed until after supper. They knew that if they didn't get their work done before class started, and were cranky from lack of sleep, we'd have to change the rules."
- andai 7y agoDo you know any ways we can use this knowledge to improve the situation?
- mikorym 7y agoI can't blame anyone for procrastinating if they don't like what they are doing. I procrastinate a lot more if I am not satisfied with what I am supposed to be doing.
- hathym 7y agohere I am procrastinating by reading about procrastination instead of working on my dream project...
- newqer 7y agoSame here! I've read so much about it, I think i could write a thesis about the subject. But you know.. Before a project is finished, it needs to start first :)
- saboot 7y agoHas anyone tried the therapy described in the article? Did it help your procrastination, perhaps in a dramatic way? I agree with the article, now I'm looking for solutions.
- EndXA 7y agoIf anyone wants to learn more about this topic, I wrote an extensive overview of specific reasons why people procrastinate: https://solvingprocrastination.com/why-people-procrastinate/ https://solvingprocrastination.com/why-people-procrastinate/ It covers all of the most common reasons for procrastination, such as abstract goals, a disconnect from the future self, anxiety, task aversion, perfectionism, and fear of failure. In addition, there's a comprehensive follow-up article, which explains how you can use this information in order to overcome your procrastination: https://solvingprocrastination.com/how-to-stop-procrastinating/ https://solvingprocrastination.com/how-to-stop-procrastinati... It describes a system you can use for overcoming procrastination, as well as various specific techniques you can implement, such as breaking large tasks into actionable pieces, scheduling tasks based on your productivity cycles, marking streaks of successes, and visualizing your future-self.
- AstralStorm 7y agoUltimate issue it does not tackle is lack of real reward. Usually when we do something that is not strictly required of us it's for a reward. (Including mutants who like solving problems just for the sake of solving problems.) Abstract rewards are obviously not rewards. They're hypotheticals. Most of the time we do not get rewarded for work, much less proportionally to effort. This of course over time ruins self-control on tasks. (It's good that caring for kids is hard wired in most.)
- non-entity 7y agoIn my case, there is a tangible reward for many things, but if it's long term (i.e. and reward will only be realized years or even just months out) I probably wont ever do it. Ots a huge problem for me atm.
- EndXA 7y agoI strongly recommend taking a look at first three sections in the article I linked above: 'Abstract goals', 'Rewards that are far in the future', 'A disconnect from our future self'. They will give you a lot of insights into why this is an issue for you, which can later help you find a solution. Also, here are two techniques I discuss that you might find helpful: - Try to find ways to reward yourself for making progress on your way to your end goal. For example, you can create interim goals that are closer in time and reward yourself for making progress. - Try to visualize your future self achieving the long-term rewards that you're interested in.
- Udik 7y agoI want a way to pin this article to the top of the front page. Twice this morning I got slightly unnerved by something and automatically opened hacker news: then I read the title, realised I was trying to avoid thinking about something, and closed the tab again. :)
- INGELRII 7y agoAs the society advances and problems are solved for us, we are left with the most central core problem, ourselves. Related to concepts like 'agency', 'impulse control', 'willpower', 'restraint', 'free will', 'delayed gratification' are connected to our status and self image. If you think humans as AI systems, we are facing issues with our reward function. Short term reward seems to overrule long term planning and goals if the outside pressure is not there and we have a choice. Is this something without technical solution or can we learn to reprogram our reward function with biofeedback, brain implants, meds or application in Apple watch? I think the subject deserves a Black Mirror episode and few startups.
- classified 7y ago> If you think humans as AI systems Humans are not "AI" systems but infinitely more complex. Which is why, among other things, humans are capable of driving a car safely while "AI" is not. I for one would feel disgusted with myself if I were to discover that I'm nothing more than the output of a reward function. YMMV.
- Brave-Steak 7y agoWhat makes you think we are anything more than the output of a reward function? Dopamine and other hormones function as our reward system and are so fundamental and drive effectively all of our behaviours and our learning from the moment we were born. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reward_system https://academic.oup.com/endo/article/151/5/1978/2456493 https://academic.oup.com/endo/article/151/5/1978/2456493
- lr4444lr 7y agoThe fact that it disgusts him, and that you in turn might appreciate the irony of the reward system actually hating itself is pretty strong evidence that there's more to the human experience than biologically reinforced operant conditioning.
- 7y ago
- pdkl95 7y ago> ‘Just get started’ An unexpected side-effect of learning to use version control tools (esp. git) was significantly reduced friction before starting something. I might delay or avoid a messy refactoring or architectural change that I intelectually understood was important. Making sweeping changes across many parts of a project became a fear of "ruining the entire project". While logic usually overcame that unreasonable fear, some friction/hesitation could remain. Training myself to always "git init" before even trivial projects and religiously commit changes while writing/editing completely removed that friction. "Of course I can start now - if I mess it up, I can just revert back to the master branch."
- ajayyy 7y agoI agree. It also lets you know where you left off since you can look at your commit message history. And, if you get lost, you can check what you've actually done since your last commit with git diff.
- throwout98423 7y agoI went 35 years of managing to be a capable, but never exceptional, achiever -- in high school, college, and in my career. I've also been a terrible procrastinator all during that time. It was never evident to me in school because I'd get the same grades as the kids working substantially harder than me. However, once I got into the workforce, and it took me many years to realize it, that performing to the "mean" was not where I wanted to be. The turning point for me was finally getting an ADHD (particularly the attention side, as an adult) diagnosis and being treated for it. Once I started on Adderall, I finally saw myself able to put in the same efforts as others and it felt like I was able to get ahead of others in terms of performance. Besides the chemicals helping, just being able to focus better made it easier for me to figure out what systems I need to in place to ensure I'm staying on top of things and being productive. You often hear this advice but for someone who has a difficult time starting things, the idea of "building systems" is overwhelming. I'm not sure I'm at the point where I'm confident enough to taking the pills but I'm pretty sure if I did, I'd be better off than I was before I started.
- Brave-Steak 7y ago> ADHD (particularly the attention side, as an adult) I take it that means hyperactivity wasn't one of your symptoms? I have the suspicion that I suffer from ADD (you basically described the same life I've had), but the hyperactivity part makes me unsure of myself.
- dmos62 7y agoWhat do you mean when you say hyperactivity makes you unsure of yourself?
- Brave-Steak 7y agoIf hyperactivity is one end, I'm on the complete other end. And I always associated ADHD with being hyperactive.
- dmos62 7y ago
- LoreleiPenn 7y agoIn my personal case, I procrastinated way too much for not being "myself". Once I fixed that.... I stopped procrastination a lot. Indeed I agree with the opinion that it is more a problem of emotions rather than time managing and my personal experience showed it to me. Fortunately for me I knew me and knew what was wrong and when I attended that, it just worked out as expected.
- KaoruAoiShiho 7y agoBeing healthy is a key to solving procrastination. Feeling good about yourself, feeling prepared and optimistic, feeling good about your body, all puts you in the right state of mind to achieve and "exercise willpower". Being tired or out of shape really hurts that! So sleep well, eat well, and get some exercise.
- mlatu 7y ago> By this view, I haven’t fully appreciated how long my assignment is going to take and I’m not paying enough attention to how much time I’m currently wasting on ‘cyberloafing’. With better scheduling and a better grip on time, so the logic goes, I will stop procrastinating and get on with my work. My guess is whoever came up with that BS never procrastinated themselves.
- johnnyAghands 7y agoInteresting; it almost seems obvious now. Sidebar: This BBC mobile site experience is freaking refreshing!
- nestorherre 7y agoI can recommend reading the books Atomic Habits, Deep Work and Digital Minimalism. The biggest takeaway from all 3 imho is environment design [1] [2], explained best in Atomic Habits (but also "used" in the other 2). Also I'd recommend the Pomodoro technique, which is quite useful for me. [1] https://jamesclear.com/power-of-environment https://jamesclear.com/power-of-environment [2] https://jamesclear.com/environment-design-organ-donation https://jamesclear.com/environment-design-organ-donation
- fxtentacle 7y agoProcrastination is a word often used to describe others without knowing the internal state. If my boss decides on a fancy but obviously useless project and I work on something else instead, then to the uninitiated onlooker it might look as if I am procrastinating, whereas in reality I am following up on a rational decision not to waste my valuable lifetime on a useless initiative. Similarly, students not studying for a test looks like procrastination to the parents, but if the student knows that the test results don't matter, it can be a good and rational decision to spend your effort on something else instead. "Procrastinating" on learning for a Latin exam and instead coding in C++ for fun seems like a highly profitable choice.
- myth_buster 7y agoPast/related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17878716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17878716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19482238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19482238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19975862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19975862
- rb808 7y agoI wonder how much procrastination is due to people doing things they dont really want to do. Ie people doing a course and University not because its their dream its because everyone expects then to go there and that course is a route to a good career. Combined with hot housed kids that were given lots of homework but no time to play. Its a recipe for office blocks full of people doing respectable jobs they don't really want to do and procrastinating all day.
- jmcqk6 7y agoI can't speak generally, but specifically for me, procrastination is more about perfectionism than avoiding something I don't want to do.
- anthonypasq 7y agoWell of course thats the case. The issue is that most people giving the choice would just relax all day. You'll have a hard time convincing me successful people arent just born lucky enough to really enjoy something that the capitalist system values. They don't view their work as a grueling exercise in self-motivation and discipline. They genuinely enjoy it and couldnt picture themselves doing something different.
- twodave 7y agoI struggled with procrastination through much of my childhood and young adult life. Like most real-life problems, there is no magic solution, but I've found the most impactful helpers to be: 1. Having others depending on me. Since I've been married and had children, I'm the one who has to support them. This adds a little anxiety to the mix, of course, but it's a net positive for me. 2. Removing things from my life that I do not need. Facebook, non-casual video games, unhealthy relationships, excessive <fill in the blank>. I find that this is not a one-time decision but rather a continual pruning of "bad branches" from my life. 3. Regular exercise. If I feel good about my activity level and my own body, I begin to find work and other responsibilities to be less of a drain. 4. Caffeine, but without overdoing it. If I drink a cup or two of coffee throughout the day, it allows me to focus in ways that are otherwise beyond my ability. Too much caffeine actually produces the opposite effect, and I'll get nothing done.
- alexanderthe- 7y agoI'm just starting to get a handle on this now that I hit 30. We look to successful people to see how they manage their time, thinking that by copying their routines and habits as inputs, we will be also be able to yield some of their success as outputs; however, we will never be able to copy the procedure that returns that output (consciousness, mindset, motivations, neurology, purpose, talents, traumas, upbringing, values). Ultimately, I think the answer comes from ridding yourself of distractions, and asking yourself the question - "What do I want out of life?" If you can answer that question, you will also be able to manage your time efficiently, because you will always be directed toward that purpose. Without knowing your individual purpose in life, you will go through life checking the boxes that biology and society put before you. With that said, it can be hard to settle with realization that you aren't personally driven to do anything that will make you an idol among your peers; you can finally stop trivializing everything in your life and just enjoy it, enjoy the process, enjoy the journey.
- vorpalhex 7y ago> we will never be able to copy the procedure that returns that output (consciousness, mindset, motivations, neurology, purpose, talents, traumas, upbringing, values). This particular claim feels too pessimistic to me. Sure you obviously can't copy someone's upbringing or traumas (nor should you), but in general these traits are trainable. Someone else might have a leg up on being born with greater charisma or focus, but those are generally trainable things with effort. > Ultimately, I think the answer comes from ridding yourself of distractions, and asking yourself the question - "What do I want out of life?" I agree with this claim generally. You won't rid yourself of all distractions, but you can engage with them efficiently and prioritize what matters. > Without knowing your individual purpose in life Purpose isn't a goal like "be able to deadlift 400lbs". It's more of a goal like "improve my weightlifting". It's a moving goal post and at times you'll have it more in view and other times less in view. > it can be hard to settle with realization that you aren't personally driven to do anything Sometimes people do have drive to do a thing, but more often they're chasing what they genuinely enjoy and that is what gives them the strength to push through difficulties. Don't feel like you need some deep world changing mission statement - it's probably enough to act with genuine, directed enjoyment and curiosity.
- Balanceinfinity 7y agoIronically, procrastination is often tied to boredom (just because we have something to do doesn't mean we aren't bored). Boredom is no small thing: http://www.toolsforhealthandwellness.com/negative-effects-of-boredom http://www.toolsforhealthandwellness.com/negative-effects-of...
- moron4hire 7y agoWhen I first started Escitalopram (Lexapro), I noticed a marked improvement in my ability to get things done. I was a big exploiter of "productive procrastination", where I would work on smaller jobs to procrastinate bigger ones. With the anti-anxiety medication, that stopped completely, and it became pretty clear that it was feelings of anxiety towards that big/unknown/unbounded/boring/detestable job that was fueling the procrastination. Unfortunately, after about a year and a half, that all went away. Those baseless feelings of doom towards nebulously defined work creeped back. I found myself getting irritated at little things again. And on top of that, my work life had gotten significantly better, so it wasn't like I could blame stress anymore. The drugs just seemed to stop fulfilling their beneficial purpose, leaving me only with the side-effects (insomnia, teeth-grinding, anorgasmia). So I weaned myself off. Still irritable, but at least I can get to sleep at night, which is having a bigger effect on the irritability than the drugs did.
- rafaelvasco 7y agoI recently adopted a timed activity method. I make a list like: Eat, Watch TV, Code, Playing Games, Play Guitar etc. I then allocate a timeframe for each one. Every week night after work I do it like: 30m eating and watching netflix at the same time, 20m hard exercise, 60m guitar, 60m coding, 60m gaming, 60m reading. All timed with my smartphone. This is key. It must be timed with an alarm at the end. There's always more or less 290 minutes available each night to allocate. If I remove one activity I just double the time of another one and so on. This way the procrastination was completely obliterated. Also I can more easily maintain really useful habits like exercise everyday, practice something everyday etc. I can exchange reading time for meditation time for example. At weekends it's the same idea, just with more activities and/or bigger time frames. The more time you have the easier it is to waste it all if you don't organize yourself;
- tra3 7y agoThis is similar to pomodoro technique [0]. I love it because it gets me in "the zone" quickly. > I recently adopted a timed activity method I'm not sure how long you'll be able to sustain it, but my experience has been that unstructured free time is absolutely necessary for recreation. If you push yourself too hard, you'll burn out. Good luck! [0]: https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique
- rafaelvasco 7y agoYes. I've noticed it. You can't just live like this 100%. Best of life is still all about unexpected and surprising things as well. But this is useful to get you to focus. One must make a balance with these things. Fixed timings, alarms etc are just to get you used to it. The idea is that your mind get conditioned to better manage your time. The final goal is building effective life habits; It is vital that not only you manage your current life but seek to open your life to new horizons by doing different activities and exploring new things. I recently moved away to a new City, and that makes a huge difference. Opens several windows of opportunity, which by the way is another very interesting topic;
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- The_mboga_real 7y agoAnd now to waste 5 minutes, which will NOT help you save any time.
- gdubs 7y agoDr [David] Burns is one of the people who helped popularize Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in his book, “Feeling Good”. It’s cool to see these ideas becoming validated through studies. I’m not very familiar with ACT, but as an offshoot of CBT that includes a mindfulness component, it sounds fascinating. Burns talks about the “do one small thing” strategy in his books, and (anecdotally) it can be very effective. When you’re at a point where even the small step seems impossible, he has tips on drilling into the underlying emotions. Ultimately, your brain sees the discomfort associated with not working on something as outweighing the discomfort of actually doing it. Often, this is a cognitive distortion — which CBT aims to help one sort through. And sometimes the task really isn’t worth doing. I know I go on a lot about meditation in my comments, but (again n=1) it can help clarify thoughts and emotions — particularly the kind of cognitive distortions that lead to self-destructive habits. Now I’m curious to learn more about ACT...
- Allower 7y agoCBT only works if you are a dumbass without questions. As in if you dig deep enough you realize there is no fucking point to doing anything. Lots of people claim this is "dangerous" thinking, but that only reveals their own inability to find a satisfactory response, their own terror in confronting the reality that their entire life has been nothing but a waste of time, and there is no way it could be anything else. Everything they thought was important is just as illusory as those deemed unimportant. The foundations of their beliefs are nothing more than hollow tribal chants.
- willidiots 7y agoI spent two years with a fantastic psych in the bay who studied under Burns. She used a combination of 50% ACT, 50% Burns CBT and it was very impactful. Workbooks for homework were The Happiness Trap and the Feeling Good Handbook. Fundamentally changed my life for the better.
- rob_austin 7y agoWould you mind sharing the name of the psychiatrist? I'm looking for one.
- gfs78 7y agoProcrastination is more about dreams, opportunities and possible outcomes than time management and emotions. If you have the chance to win it big doing something you love you will find the time. If you have less of a chance or you don´t like it that much you won´t be able to find that much time. If what you have to do is something out of obligation or you don´t care at all you will procrastinate. And it´s fine. It´s your inner compass trying to tell you that maybe this is not for you/wasted effort. In the short term the best strategy for procrastination is to put your pants on and do it. In the long term is making sense about why you are doing what you do and evaluating if it brings value to your life or not.
- darod 7y agoGranted all of us have lots of work to do but I'm interested in knowing where others think the line is between procrastination and curiosity. I read HN almost everyday because I feel it keeps me in the know to tech related issues. I also read cnn, nytimes, and a few other industry specific sites. If these reads are time boxed, I imagine it wouldn't be considered procrastination. Yet, if I went back too often then it slowly creeps into that procrastination zone. thoughts?
- cryptozeus 7y agoProcrastination articles start to appear on HN as we get close to end of January. There is a lesson in there somewhere.
- adrianmonk 7y agoI've only just recently started to appreciate how much emotions can utterly dominate our thinking. We believe we are rational creatures, but we have all these emotional mechanisms in our brain that kick in and do a hardware override of everything. For me the first step in getting better control of this is just to understand that it's happening. I came to this realization from a fascinating book about anger[1]. The idea of this book is to explain how your brain activates anger so that you can deal with it better. Hopefully my explanation won't butcher the technical stuff too badly, but I believe the gist is that anger is a useful mechanism in your brain that is supposed to kick in when certain conditions are met and drive you toward taking action when you really need to. As such, there's a part of your brain that's sitting around monitoring to figure out if any such conditions have been met. When it decides they have, then two things happen. One is that it sort of juices your brain with something that heightens alertness and focus. This boost gives you the mental energy to act. (Think of something kind of like an adrenaline rush.) The other is that it directs your attention to the issue. It does this over and over and over again until it is resolved. If you don't act (because of impulse control, lack of opportunity, or failure to decide how), it's like hitting a snooze button. You can put the thought out of your mind, but the alarm will go off again and bring it back. So, in computer terms, there's a hardware control system here. It turns on and periodically generates a non-maskable interrupt which jumps you into a routine it provides. And it cranks up the CPU clock speed to the point of nearly overheating. And there is no instruction to just make it stop. The only way to shut it off is to change the conditions that enabled it. Anyway, the point is that our thoughts exist within the framework of this system. Our brains are capable of rationality, but this framework can kick in and preempt that. And anger is just one of many systems! Therefore, if you want to gain control of your thinking, you must gain control of your emotions. (Emotional regulation is supposed to be important to mental health, and after learning about this one emotion, I can see why.) Gaining control might be a misleading phrase here because you can't stop or eliminate them. Instead, your only choice is to learn how they work and how to manage them. You need to learn to work within the framework. Which takes practice and honing skills. If you don't, then you are just being led around blindly by them, leaving everything up to chance. Either you get a handle on them, or they control you. Or maybe I should say they do control you, and your only choice is to control how they control you. --- [1]: The book is called "Healing the Angry Brain: How Understanding the Way Your Brain Works Can Help You Control Anger and Aggression". See https://www.google.com/books/edition/Healing_the_Angry_Brain/IknhPaMyPkkC https://www.google.com/books/edition/Healing_the_Angry_Brain...
- joshklein 7y agoI recommend “Procrastination” by Burka & Yuen. For the kind of person who frequents this site and endures suffering due to procrastination, even seeing their clinical definition of maladaptive perfectionism (and learning why procrastinating provides relief from it) could reduce your level of anxiety and self-flagellation, if not help you change your behavior. The first section of their book provides a framework for understanding what is happening when you procrastinate, then orients your investigation into the underlying causes specific to you (or those not applicable to you). The book's second section offers self-directed cognitive behavioral therapies. "Procrastination" is based on decades of the authors’ clinical experience. The 25th anniversary edition pulls in updated academic research from as far afield as behavioral economics (future discounting) that didn't exist when the book was first published. [This comment is a reposted version of one of my own previous comments]
- surds 7y agoProcrastinating on HN reading about procrastination... Better get back to work.
- fend_lost 7y agoYou think your emotions are behind the wheel and telling you what to (and not to) do? If you think that, then you're going to have a difficult time getting to the root of the problem. Emotions (often multiple) are the middlemen designed to keep you from confronting your "self". Well all live behind our subconscious, there's no escaping that. The problems arise when we choose to go on auto-pilot and rely on our subconscious too much. You think you have problems in this world? How many? Dozens, hundreds? Wrong. You have one problem, and its you. Marianne Williamson nails it with this thought... “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
- realbarack 7y agoBetter formatting: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
- lcall 7y agoOther somewhat related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22096571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22096571 ("Ask HN: I don't want to be a worker any more I want to be a professional") https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20930439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20930439 ("how do you keep your programming motivation up?") https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18903886 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18903886 "Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to keep working on a project? " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19777976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19777976 "ask hn: how do you stay disciplined in the long run?"
- cbar_tx 7y agoprocrastination is also the reason I'm here
- timwaagh 7y agoso if procrastination is usually sadness masquerading as inaction (and it might well be), why don't they address the root cause and just put everyone on prozac?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- zackmorris 7y agoI posted this comment under the "Why I procrastinate" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22127841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22127841) and "ADHD, a Lifelong Struggle" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22129777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22129777) articles today, but I think it's important enough to the HN viewership that it should be shared here as well. Hope this helps someone: I just discovered yesterday that I suffer from task anxiety related to ADD/ADHD, after a lifetime of struggling against falling into patterns of depression. It's felt as almost a pain in my gut between my chest and belly whenever I go to start working on something I have to do. I just worked through this series of exercises and it really helped me identify what's actually going on, with some solutions: https://addandsomuchmore.com/2012/01/29/taskmaster-getting-things-done/ https://addandsomuchmore.com/2012/01/29/taskmaster-getting-t... https://addandsomuchmore.com/2012/02/11/task-anxiety-awareness/ https://addandsomuchmore.com/2012/02/11/task-anxiety-awarene... https://addandsomuchmore.com/2012/02/14/virtue-not-own-reward/ https://addandsomuchmore.com/2012/02/14/virtue-not-own-rewar... https://addandsomuchmore.com/2012/02/16/doling-out-the-cookies/ https://addandsomuchmore.com/2012/02/16/doling-out-the-cooki... https://addandsomuchmore.com/2012/02/24/when-the-game-is-rigged/ https://addandsomuchmore.com/2012/02/24/when-the-game-is-rig... Some other keywords to look for are "impossible task" and "executive dysfunction", both maladies being seen predominantly in millennials. I just happened to get them 10 or 20 years ahead of time by starting computers when I was 12 as a Gen Xer.
- Thorentis 7y agoAgree with lots of the article but: > One study used ‘mood-freezing candles’ to trick some volunteers into thinking their low mood was frozen and, in this case, they didn’t bother procrastinating. What?
- cjg 7y agoIn "The Regulation of Emotion": "the experimenter burned scented candles in the room, which she presented as part of her research on aromatherapy. She told some participants that the candles would freeze their current mode state for about an hour. The rest were told that the candles would not affect their moods."
- romain_o 7y agoIn my case procrastination mostly happens when I don't schedule things properly. I think it's more a time-management issue rather than an emotional thing. Timeboxing my daily schedule and commitment are the best solutions.
- tylerjwilk00 7y agoWe procrastinate because a lot of what we do _really_ doesn't truly matter. That thing you're procrastinating probably won't mean jack when you are on your death bed. The conflict is that we feel like that thing should matter and yet we don't want to do it. Which choice is the delusion? "The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide." ~ Tyler Durden
- 99chrisbard 7y agoSet SMART goals? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria
- juzerali 7y agoIt was high time for someone to put it in perspective and thankfully someone has. Managing to do lists or calendars are no substitute to living an authentic life. It might help to understand from where does the stress of procrastinating originate. My hypothesis is that it comes from the procrastinator getting hung up on a "desired outcome". Procrastinator expects certain reward in lieu of his work, for instance making someone feel a certain way about them. But they realise how unlikely the exact outcome is. Inability, perceived or real, of managing with even slightly different outcomes is what causes the stress in the first place. Then later, the guilt works as double whammy for the procrastinator. Here is where I disagree with the article. Taking first step might be a stimulant, but not a solution. It might cause further stress when it becomes clearer that the desired outcome is more unlikely. Possible solution might be to let go of desire to control the world and people who are going to be affected by the work. Building confidence in oneself, trusting others, and self awareness are the only way out.
- edisonjoao 7y agothis is true