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Haven't watched the video. For me the only thing that works. The only hack that works is having a contract with a third party. You don't procrastinate on payi

Haven't watched the video. For me the only thing that works. The only hack that works is having a contract with a third party. You don't procrastinate on paying your mortgage right. You do it every month. You don't not show up for work right. Or for meetings right. You don't procrastinate on paying your cellphone bill/internet bill/paying rent etc. Why? Because you have contracts with another party and there are consequences if you miss them. Losing weight? No consequences! That novel you've been meaning to write.. no consequences! Want to learn a new language/do a passion project etc.. there are no consequences to not doing it. For me I resolved this issue by going into a contract with a third party with consequences if I miss my obligations. Inspired by a "lock-in" productivity based ted talk which was banned so I can't link it here.

codesternews 5y ago
Give me practical example of this? What and how you did
- vitabenes 5y ago
  You could make a bet with a friend or use something like stickk.com to increase the stakes.
- redmaverickclon 5y ago
  I had to create another account just to reply. I had nocprocrast turned on for hacker news (the irony!) Practical: 1. I lost 30 lbs from 200 lbs to 170 lbs How I did it. Step#1. Made an irreversible decision. I pay $100 every week if I miss losing 2 lbs that week. The deal was for 12 weeks. I started Monday and the deal is every Monday. I have to stand on the scale and take a pic and send it. 2. I solved 200+ Leetcodes over a span of a year Deal. I had to solve 10 problems a day on random days. Each missed problem costed me $25 per miss. Here is another guy who became ripped i.e 6 packed within 6 months https://nypost.com/2017/07/17/poker-player-goes-all-in-with-1-million-bet-to-get-in-shape/ https://nypost.com/2017/07/17/poker-player-goes-all-in-with-... Now to the theory part. See. The deal is this. The answer to procrastination is not more information. There is no magic info online that will change your brain and you stop procrastinating. You already know procrastinating is bad. You already know that you need to small chunk the work. You already know you need to be disciplined. You know you need to "just get started" or "just need to do it NOW!" that life is made up of choices and you need to make a choice.. You know this and yet... YOU WON'T DO IT! There is this movie called "Memento" where all these concepts are already discussed. Here is the gist. You are not ONE person. That's why nothing has worked so far and nothing will work in the future too. (likely) You are a multitude of people living inside of you. The you that is going to nod your head or is going to be "inspired" is not the same person who is going to wake up tomorrow. You listen to a video and have an "aha" moment but the you two days from now will not follow through on your grand plan. This is like a relay race between different versions of YOU and the problem is that there is a version of YOU that is definitely going to drop the baton. Now. You can hit rock bottom or want success as bad as you want to breathe air and then you will get what you want. This is what everyone already knows. But what if you kind of want to be ripped or kind of want to be done writing a book or just not sufficiently determined. Is there a mechanism by which you can still do the things you don't normally have enough motivation to do? The answer is a contract. Beeminder is one such but the biggest flaw is that you are still in charge so you can easily renege on it. Likewise for Stickk etc. Instead do this: 1. Make an irreversible decision where you are not the one to call off the deal. Just like a mortgage, internet bills, rent, cell phone bills etc. Watch yourself automatically, automagically achieve ridiculous stuff that previously you would Never have been able To do. This is a 100% anti self help approach. Note: I did lose a solid 30 lbs from 200 lbs to 170 lbs. But the problem is that once the contract expires I will likely go back to 185 lbs.. eventually. Likewise, you will never develop natural self discipline with this approach but hey.. it works..
  - valgor 5y ago
    Very interesting idea. If you had to pay, who did you pay? My thought is the money would go to charity, but since that is (usually) a good thing then I don't know if paying money for failing is a good enough incentive.
    - heliodor 5y ago
      It would probably be more motivating to give the money to a cause or person you hate.
    - redmaverick 5y ago
      I hired a contractor and I paid him when I failed. You should be hell bent on not paying a dime. Otherwise you are doing it wrong. If it goes for charity then your mind will sniff out an escape route. Instead give it to causes you don't believe in. The goal is to be afraid of failing. You should be kicking yourself and feel the pinch when your hard earned money is going out of pocket. Otherwise you are doing it wrong. Here's the deal. Even when you fail you still will win in the end and that the beauty of this approach. I lost 30 lbs over the course of 4 to 6 months. I lost around $200 - $300 and it definitely stung. But it was worth it for now I have a strong and fit body.
  - xerox13ster 5y ago
    It's interesting to me that you mention the "not one person" viewpoint. I am forced through traumatic past experiences to live my life consciously aware of these other "me"s and them of "me", as a result of dissociation. We have to actively communicate with each other internally and work together. Things don't happen if we don't agree on them, or other "me"s will go off and do their own thing and we have to get on the same page to keep that from happening. Lots and lots of therapy. Want to lose weight? I have to have every part of me on board, if one of me doesn't want to and instead wants to eat crap, they can and will and we lose our progress. I can't count the number of times the dev-minded parts of myself resolve to work on X project or leetcode/day only to wake up the next day switched to a different personality that doesn't remember making that resolution, or even know how to work on code. There are parts of me that cannot even comprehend code another part of me has written, but when the part that wrote it comes back it's crystal clear. It has to be communicated among everyone inside that we have the goal to work on X and time has to be given to the parts that want to and can, consciously (if we're even able at the time). There are still other parts with the internal authority to say that X thing will happen and they will show up every day to enforce their expectations. This doesn't happen often, usually in very stressful periods. Any time a part of me wants to make a long term change in my habits, appearance, or behavior it must be put to a quorum majority vote. If there is not a quorum or majority we cannot make the change, or the formation of the habit or new behavior will fail. If we have a quorum but a conflict in what we want to do any given moment, we end up procrastinating. Parts of me can try to make their own routines and habits, or do their own activities if they have time alone, but inevitably if it's against collective will it gets put to an end quickly. We have to have a contract with ourselves to be functional in day to day life. There is no reneging on the contract when we are forced to share a single life in this way. When we agree? It's powerful. Lost 100lbs in 2018, saved up and moved across country in the middle of the pandemic last year, got a new job, a new car, and started moving forward in our career. Also we get to use We/They/Them pronouns which is fun (I like to joke that technically any pronoun could be used for us.)
vitabenes 5y ago
Yep, that works. Problem is, some people aren't willing to commit to that level, so more of a baby steps approach is relevant.
throwaway675309 5y ago
To a point, but you can also create a negative stigma associated with the activity through conditioning using this sort of consequential-based motivation unfortunately. Sometimes when you do something out of fear of a negative consequence it ends up becoming an activity that, while you might become more proficient at it, you might also grow to dislike the activity. (How many children were forced to learn a musical instrument by their parents and as a result hate it)
- redmaverick 5y ago
  This was my exact initial fear in theory but it doesn't work out that way in practice. Children are forced to learn a musical instrument and it takes away their sense of agency. They will hate both the instrument and the parent. This makes sense. Here. In this case the situation is different. Both the parent and the child is the same person. In my case I was pretty excited because finally I found something that worked and resolved my issues. Once the feeling of accomplishment sets in you will feel pretty happy. Once your mind knows that there is no way out it starts adapting and starts assisting you. That's why the contract should be irreversible.
Falling3 5y ago
Creating accountability is definitely a solid strategy, but I've got to point out that I absolutely procrastinate all of the things you mentioned in your first several paragraphs.
- redmaverick 5y ago
  This strategy doesn't eliminate procrastination. You still pay the price but it evens out the peaks and valleys of productivity/unproductivity. For ex: You need to spend 3 hours and write a 5 page report that is due on Monday at 9:00 AM. You spend the whole week not working but feeling guilty about not making progress. Then suddenly in the last minute i.e a few hours before the deadline i.e around 5:00 AM to 8:00 AM you start panicking and make progress. You turn in less than stellar report. With a contract based strategy you still procrastinate. But the end result is much better. i.e You need to finish 2 pages by the middle of the week or you pay $25 per missed page. Another 2 pages in the second half of the week. This way you still procrastinate and occasionally you pay the penalty but still you would be done with the essay/ report 2 days in advance rather than the last minute where the consequences are way higher in terms of getting a bad grade/losing scholarship/not graduating/ not getting into a better career etc.
  - nonbirithm 5y ago
    For me the monetary based strategy loses its luster because the introduction of money causes you to see the consequences in terms of finances. As in, you start to think that you can just pay the 25 dollars as a subscription fee to skip doing the work for that week, and so long as you don't raise the amount of money you lose, this continues indefinitely. And of course, without a third party, there is nothing obligating you to raise the price for failure. In the end, because the system eventually fails in its purpose of getting you to work, you start to wonder why you're paying a 25 dollar subscription to skip work instead of skipping work free of charge, so you simply cancel the obligation. That's the major problem with setting up timers or schedules or other obligation mechanisms yourself. If they're in your control, you're given as much freedom to remove them as you have to set them up in the first place. If no amount of self-restraint or anti-postcrastination systems can get me to do something I tell myself I want to do, then maybe I either need to have someone force me to do it or realize that what I say I want in life is wrong. Maybe this is because I've been trained so that about the only thing left that's 100% effective for getting intrinsically boring work done is someone else forcing me to do something.
Scarbutt 5y ago
For some people is not that easy, no mater how high the stakes are.
antisthenes 5y ago
Sorry, but I don't buy this. > You don't procrastinate on paying your mortgage right. You do it every month. You don't procrastinate on paying your cellphone bill/internet bill/paying rent etc. Yes, because it is effortless and auto-pay does it for me. What you're really saying is that I don't procrastinate earning money to pay for those things, which is not the same thing as just paying for them. > You don't not show up for work right. Or for meetings right. Showing up for work and procrastinating on some tasks at work is not the same thing. You're doing your point a disservice by painting it in black and white. > Why? Because you have contracts with another party and there are consequences if you miss them. I've had tenants whose stay was conditional on fulfilling certain obligations specified in the rent agreement, aside from paying rent. Even though there were consequences for not doing so, none of them did it and 1 ended up being evicted. > For me I resolved this issue by going into a contract with a third party with consequences if I miss my obligations. This only works because you're already a high-consciety individual. Sure, consequences help in general, but only if you know exactly what the problem is AND if you actually have the flexibility and energy to complete the things you have been procrastinating on.
brailsafe 5y ago
Uh, I procrastinate on or just miss all those deadlines very frequently. The consequences just don't exist or pile up. Sometimes consequences don't impact your(general) likelihood of successfully doing something on time.
quickthrower2 5y ago
Doesn’t work for me. As evidenced by past parking tickets, uncollected rubbish bins and other such things. OTOH my bills are automatically paid for the most part. Has nothing to do with procrastination. Also if you want to focus on some creative work from 9-10 before the stand up, who is going to check you did it “to the contract”? And how do they check?

codesternews 5y ago

Give me practical example of this? What and how you did

vitabenes 5y ago
You could make a bet with a friend or use something like stickk.com to increase the stakes.
redmaverickclon 5y ago
I had to create another account just to reply. I had nocprocrast turned on for hacker news (the irony!) Practical: 1. I lost 30 lbs from 200 lbs to 170 lbs How I did it. Step#1. Made an irreversible decision. I pay $100 every week if I miss losing 2 lbs that week. The deal was for 12 weeks. I started Monday and the deal is every Monday. I have to stand on the scale and take a pic and send it. 2. I solved 200+ Leetcodes over a span of a year Deal. I had to solve 10 problems a day on random days. Each missed problem costed me $25 per miss. Here is another guy who became ripped i.e 6 packed within 6 months https://nypost.com/2017/07/17/poker-player-goes-all-in-with-1-million-bet-to-get-in-shape/ https://nypost.com/2017/07/17/poker-player-goes-all-in-with-... Now to the theory part. See. The deal is this. The answer to procrastination is not more information. There is no magic info online that will change your brain and you stop procrastinating. You already know procrastinating is bad. You already know that you need to small chunk the work. You already know you need to be disciplined. You know you need to "just get started" or "just need to do it NOW!" that life is made up of choices and you need to make a choice.. You know this and yet... YOU WON'T DO IT! There is this movie called "Memento" where all these concepts are already discussed. Here is the gist. You are not ONE person. That's why nothing has worked so far and nothing will work in the future too. (likely) You are a multitude of people living inside of you. The you that is going to nod your head or is going to be "inspired" is not the same person who is going to wake up tomorrow. You listen to a video and have an "aha" moment but the you two days from now will not follow through on your grand plan. This is like a relay race between different versions of YOU and the problem is that there is a version of YOU that is definitely going to drop the baton. Now. You can hit rock bottom or want success as bad as you want to breathe air and then you will get what you want. This is what everyone already knows. But what if you kind of want to be ripped or kind of want to be done writing a book or just not sufficiently determined. Is there a mechanism by which you can still do the things you don't normally have enough motivation to do? The answer is a contract. Beeminder is one such but the biggest flaw is that you are still in charge so you can easily renege on it. Likewise for Stickk etc. Instead do this: 1. Make an irreversible decision where you are not the one to call off the deal. Just like a mortgage, internet bills, rent, cell phone bills etc. Watch yourself automatically, automagically achieve ridiculous stuff that previously you would Never have been able To do. This is a 100% anti self help approach. Note: I did lose a solid 30 lbs from 200 lbs to 170 lbs. But the problem is that once the contract expires I will likely go back to 185 lbs.. eventually. Likewise, you will never develop natural self discipline with this approach but hey.. it works..
- valgor 5y ago
  Very interesting idea. If you had to pay, who did you pay? My thought is the money would go to charity, but since that is (usually) a good thing then I don't know if paying money for failing is a good enough incentive.
  - heliodor 5y ago
    It would probably be more motivating to give the money to a cause or person you hate.
  - redmaverick 5y ago
    I hired a contractor and I paid him when I failed. You should be hell bent on not paying a dime. Otherwise you are doing it wrong. If it goes for charity then your mind will sniff out an escape route. Instead give it to causes you don't believe in. The goal is to be afraid of failing. You should be kicking yourself and feel the pinch when your hard earned money is going out of pocket. Otherwise you are doing it wrong. Here's the deal. Even when you fail you still will win in the end and that the beauty of this approach. I lost 30 lbs over the course of 4 to 6 months. I lost around $200 - $300 and it definitely stung. But it was worth it for now I have a strong and fit body.
- xerox13ster 5y ago
  It's interesting to me that you mention the "not one person" viewpoint. I am forced through traumatic past experiences to live my life consciously aware of these other "me"s and them of "me", as a result of dissociation. We have to actively communicate with each other internally and work together. Things don't happen if we don't agree on them, or other "me"s will go off and do their own thing and we have to get on the same page to keep that from happening. Lots and lots of therapy. Want to lose weight? I have to have every part of me on board, if one of me doesn't want to and instead wants to eat crap, they can and will and we lose our progress. I can't count the number of times the dev-minded parts of myself resolve to work on X project or leetcode/day only to wake up the next day switched to a different personality that doesn't remember making that resolution, or even know how to work on code. There are parts of me that cannot even comprehend code another part of me has written, but when the part that wrote it comes back it's crystal clear. It has to be communicated among everyone inside that we have the goal to work on X and time has to be given to the parts that want to and can, consciously (if we're even able at the time). There are still other parts with the internal authority to say that X thing will happen and they will show up every day to enforce their expectations. This doesn't happen often, usually in very stressful periods. Any time a part of me wants to make a long term change in my habits, appearance, or behavior it must be put to a quorum majority vote. If there is not a quorum or majority we cannot make the change, or the formation of the habit or new behavior will fail. If we have a quorum but a conflict in what we want to do any given moment, we end up procrastinating. Parts of me can try to make their own routines and habits, or do their own activities if they have time alone, but inevitably if it's against collective will it gets put to an end quickly. We have to have a contract with ourselves to be functional in day to day life. There is no reneging on the contract when we are forced to share a single life in this way. When we agree? It's powerful. Lost 100lbs in 2018, saved up and moved across country in the middle of the pandemic last year, got a new job, a new car, and started moving forward in our career. Also we get to use We/They/Them pronouns which is fun (I like to joke that technically any pronoun could be used for us.)

vitabenes 5y ago

Yep, that works. Problem is, some people aren't willing to commit to that level, so more of a baby steps approach is relevant.

throwaway675309 5y ago

To a point, but you can also create a negative stigma associated with the activity through conditioning using this sort of consequential-based motivation unfortunately. Sometimes when you do something out of fear of a negative consequence it ends up becoming an activity that, while you might become more proficient at it, you might also grow to dislike the activity. (How many children were forced to learn a musical instrument by their parents and as a result hate it)

redmaverick 5y ago
This was my exact initial fear in theory but it doesn't work out that way in practice. Children are forced to learn a musical instrument and it takes away their sense of agency. They will hate both the instrument and the parent. This makes sense. Here. In this case the situation is different. Both the parent and the child is the same person. In my case I was pretty excited because finally I found something that worked and resolved my issues. Once the feeling of accomplishment sets in you will feel pretty happy. Once your mind knows that there is no way out it starts adapting and starts assisting you. That's why the contract should be irreversible.

Falling3 5y ago

Creating accountability is definitely a solid strategy, but I've got to point out that I absolutely procrastinate all of the things you mentioned in your first several paragraphs.

redmaverick 5y ago
This strategy doesn't eliminate procrastination. You still pay the price but it evens out the peaks and valleys of productivity/unproductivity. For ex: You need to spend 3 hours and write a 5 page report that is due on Monday at 9:00 AM. You spend the whole week not working but feeling guilty about not making progress. Then suddenly in the last minute i.e a few hours before the deadline i.e around 5:00 AM to 8:00 AM you start panicking and make progress. You turn in less than stellar report. With a contract based strategy you still procrastinate. But the end result is much better. i.e You need to finish 2 pages by the middle of the week or you pay $25 per missed page. Another 2 pages in the second half of the week. This way you still procrastinate and occasionally you pay the penalty but still you would be done with the essay/ report 2 days in advance rather than the last minute where the consequences are way higher in terms of getting a bad grade/losing scholarship/not graduating/ not getting into a better career etc.
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  For me the monetary based strategy loses its luster because the introduction of money causes you to see the consequences in terms of finances. As in, you start to think that you can just pay the 25 dollars as a subscription fee to skip doing the work for that week, and so long as you don't raise the amount of money you lose, this continues indefinitely. And of course, without a third party, there is nothing obligating you to raise the price for failure. In the end, because the system eventually fails in its purpose of getting you to work, you start to wonder why you're paying a 25 dollar subscription to skip work instead of skipping work free of charge, so you simply cancel the obligation. That's the major problem with setting up timers or schedules or other obligation mechanisms yourself. If they're in your control, you're given as much freedom to remove them as you have to set them up in the first place. If no amount of self-restraint or anti-postcrastination systems can get me to do something I tell myself I want to do, then maybe I either need to have someone force me to do it or realize that what I say I want in life is wrong. Maybe this is because I've been trained so that about the only thing left that's 100% effective for getting intrinsically boring work done is someone else forcing me to do something.

Scarbutt 5y ago

For some people is not that easy, no mater how high the stakes are.

antisthenes 5y ago

Sorry, but I don't buy this. > You don't procrastinate on paying your mortgage right. You do it every month. You don't procrastinate on paying your cellphone bill/internet bill/paying rent etc. Yes, because it is effortless and auto-pay does it for me. What you're really saying is that I don't procrastinate earning money to pay for those things, which is not the same thing as just paying for them. > You don't not show up for work right. Or for meetings right. Showing up for work and procrastinating on some tasks at work is not the same thing. You're doing your point a disservice by painting it in black and white. > Why? Because you have contracts with another party and there are consequences if you miss them. I've had tenants whose stay was conditional on fulfilling certain obligations specified in the rent agreement, aside from paying rent. Even though there were consequences for not doing so, none of them did it and 1 ended up being evicted. > For me I resolved this issue by going into a contract with a third party with consequences if I miss my obligations. This only works because you're already a high-consciety individual. Sure, consequences help in general, but only if you know exactly what the problem is AND if you actually have the flexibility and energy to complete the things you have been procrastinating on.

brailsafe 5y ago

Uh, I procrastinate on or just miss all those deadlines very frequently. The consequences just don't exist or pile up. Sometimes consequences don't impact your(general) likelihood of successfully doing something on time.

quickthrower2 5y ago

Doesn’t work for me. As evidenced by past parking tickets, uncollected rubbish bins and other such things. OTOH my bills are automatically paid for the most part. Has nothing to do with procrastination. Also if you want to focus on some creative work from 9-10 before the stand up, who is going to check you did it “to the contract”? And how do they check?