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This strikes me as a somewhat naive understanding of human motivation. While these kinds of reframing techniques might have some impact, most people procrastina

This strikes me as a somewhat naive understanding of human motivation. While these kinds of reframing techniques might have some impact, most people procrastinate because of subconscious motives they have rather than conscious ones. If you procrastinate to the point that it negatively impacts your ability to function effectively, by definition you have a psychological disorder (of whatever severity) and would do well to tackle that in some form of therapy. Cognitive psychology might offer a more sophisticated version of this article's strategy, where psychodynamic would try to identify and work through the underlying cause of your motives not to work (e.g. part of you wants to experience the sense of crisis that comes from being incredibly behind on a deadline, so let's try to understand that part of you).

ForrestN 15y ago
Naive might be too strong, I guess I meant incomplete. These kinds of tricks can be helpful, but are unlikely to "solve" the problem for most people.
SatvikBeri 15y ago
This kind of reframing is a technique to align your subconscious motivations with conscious ones. In contrast, there's very little evidence that discovering the "cause" of a motivation really helps. There's a significant amount of evidence that actively building positive emotional connections to the activities you want to do is useful-see Switch, or The Talent Code for examples.
- klbarry 15y ago
  I also seem to remember that professional therapy in many psychological cases is not significantly more likely to help a person than self discovery/friends/environment change, etc.
  - ForrestN 15y ago
    I'd be interested to see this research. My understanding is that talk therapy is generally considered to be effective, although there is much controversy about which kinds are most effective and how that effectiveness compares to drugs.
- ForrestN 15y ago
  Yes, as I said it is definitely an attempt at dealing with the subconscious, but it's an attempt to do so only be engaging with the conscious. The idea is basically to bolster the strength of the conscious motives, which again, might be somewhat helpful. Discovering the cause alone might not necessarily helped, but being armed with the information is invaluable. Knowing that what's happening when you're declining to work on a project is that you're trying to recreate the feeling worthlessness associated with being criticized as a child is pretty useful in understanding the situation and addressing it. I guess the broader point is just that self-help and tips and tricks can be helpful to generally healthy people who occasionally procrastinate or whatever, but that people who are significantly inhibited by their inability to motivate themselves are likely depressed or suffering from anxiety and need to deal with it medically. You can't cure an anxiety disorder with "REPS". I'm not a psychologist, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's damaging to people who are considering getting treatment to be told that "procrastination" is some kind of normal thing that they can fix by thinking about things a little differently.

ForrestN 15y ago

Naive might be too strong, I guess I meant incomplete. These kinds of tricks can be helpful, but are unlikely to "solve" the problem for most people.

SatvikBeri 15y ago

This kind of reframing is a technique to align your subconscious motivations with conscious ones. In contrast, there's very little evidence that discovering the "cause" of a motivation really helps. There's a significant amount of evidence that actively building positive emotional connections to the activities you want to do is useful-see Switch, or The Talent Code for examples.

klbarry 15y ago
I also seem to remember that professional therapy in many psychological cases is not significantly more likely to help a person than self discovery/friends/environment change, etc.
- ForrestN 15y ago
  I'd be interested to see this research. My understanding is that talk therapy is generally considered to be effective, although there is much controversy about which kinds are most effective and how that effectiveness compares to drugs.
ForrestN 15y ago
Yes, as I said it is definitely an attempt at dealing with the subconscious, but it's an attempt to do so only be engaging with the conscious. The idea is basically to bolster the strength of the conscious motives, which again, might be somewhat helpful. Discovering the cause alone might not necessarily helped, but being armed with the information is invaluable. Knowing that what's happening when you're declining to work on a project is that you're trying to recreate the feeling worthlessness associated with being criticized as a child is pretty useful in understanding the situation and addressing it. I guess the broader point is just that self-help and tips and tricks can be helpful to generally healthy people who occasionally procrastinate or whatever, but that people who are significantly inhibited by their inability to motivate themselves are likely depressed or suffering from anxiety and need to deal with it medically. You can't cure an anxiety disorder with "REPS". I'm not a psychologist, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's damaging to people who are considering getting treatment to be told that "procrastination" is some kind of normal thing that they can fix by thinking about things a little differently.