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After many decades of fighting procrastination the most important thing I have learned is that you cannot analyze yourself out of procrastination. You cannot re
by JabavuAdams 6y ago
After many decades of fighting procrastination the most important thing I have learned is that you cannot analyze yourself out of procrastination. You cannot read articles to solve your procrastination problem. The only thing that works is to start the work. I wish there were something else I could tell you, but that's it. Just open the book, open the editor, open the document, whatever.
Now, that said, you may be burnt out, or you may not actually have to do the thing you're putting off. That's different. I'm talking about something you know you have to do (or else painful and undesirable consequences), but you're avoiding starting it. It's a trap. Just find any way to start. Do a bit, don't get down on yourself if you only do a bit. It's better than nothing.
- pototo666 6y ago> Do a bit, don't get down on yourself if you only do a bit. It's better than nothing. This mindset is valuable, thanks :)
- santa_boy 6y agoThis has been my experience too. No amount of self-help books, videos or workshops really help. They may actually end-up hurting if you go overboard with investing time, mindshare and money. The only way I've been able to improve is: > The only thing that works is to start the work. I wish there were something else I could tell you, but that's it. Just open the book, open the editor, open the document, whatever. If you fail, try again.
- longnguyen 6y agoAgree wholeheartedly! During the years I've developed a habit to "prepare" the work for tomorrow. Imagine at the end of the day, you're about to work on this "quick and easy" task. How about just do a little of it (not enough to finish the task) and let your tomorrow-self do the rest? My favorite technique when I'm super lazy, is to write a function with bunch of syntax errors. It forces myself to clear this shit up the next day. And boom, you start working without even knowing it
- asidiali 6y agoHah, picturing an IDE plugin that auto swaps a couple random keywords or characters after last save to always give you a fresh syntax error when getting started! Whack-a-mole reverse linter, the next big thing...
- JoeCrosby 6y ago> start the work Not the work, but some work. You want to procrastinate on something most similar to what you are doing. So if you are on YouTube, start coding. Then when you are coding, its just a matter of switching to coding that thing you should be doing.