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There's no such thing as procrastination. There's definitely depression and the reason why many people "procrastinate" is because accomplishing tasks simply doe

There's no such thing as procrastination. There's definitely depression and the reason why many people "procrastinate" is because accomplishing tasks simply does not produce any feelings of reward in their brains. Otherwise the natural aspect of wanting to do work would have kicked in and with it the loop of work hard -> reward cycle. Every single thing I've learned about productivity is wrong. If you ever go down the rabbit hole of productivity or battling procrastination the odds are that something else is very wrong.

chrsig 4y ago
As a person on the extreme end of the ADHD spectrum, this is a interesting take to me. From a strict definition point of view: > pro·cras·ti·nate > /prəˈkrastəˌnāt/ > verb > delay or postpone action; put off doing something. I'm not sure if I agree with your assessment. That is, procrastination has no implication of why the action was postponed, merely that it is. Procrastination is a symptom of depression, ADHD, and other disorders that impact productivity -- the actions do in fact get postponed. The neurological process driving the postponement is irrelevant to the classification. I think perhaps a better phrasing may be "there's no such thing as laziness" -- laziness being an attributed cause of procrastination. There's generally a reason other than laziness, but society likes to dismiss those excuses and instead insist that the person themselves willfully choses to procrastinate. This is of course incredibly unhelpful in every regard, but society loves a good opportunity to shame people outside a standard deviation of typical.
- hinkley 4y ago
  When you explain apologies to children, it often comes down to explaining to them that it doesn't matter what their internal narrative is, it matters what the other person's internal narrative is. Yes, you didn't mean to hit Sally with a stick, and yet here we are, with one crying child, and you, protesting your innocence. You need to apologize. Even if it was an accident. Similarly, you can avoid doing a task because you are mortgaging future you to deal with something you don't want to, or you can simply forget that it needs to get done. The motivation is different, but the outcome for the person who expected that you made a fancy dinner reservation you keep forgetting to make until after the last responsible moment is the same. I think in part this is a big factor of tension around The Last Responsible Moment with respect to Agile and YAGNI. People know themselves or their coworkers better than the author does. The last responsible moment is quite a bit earlier than you'd think, once you factor in not only queuing theory but also illness and distraction. You're not being responsible if you haven't accounted for predictable failure modes, Parkinson's Law, and some extra buffer into the equation for Hofstadler's Law, and then some extra buffer into the equation for <checks notes> Hofstadler's Law, and some extra buffer into the equation for Hofstadler's Law... For my money, you should tackle a task when it pisses you off. You will never be this motivated again. But I will qualify that advice by saying that one of my favorite passtimes is to invent Plan B and sometimes Plan C in my head, so at any given moment if you ask me to fix something, odds are at least 50/50 I have a coherent solution tucked away in the back of my head somewhere, instead of just throwing bullshit at the problem until it looks different, so YMMV.
swatcoder 4y ago
Depression may be the only way procrastination surfaces for you, but it’s not the only way for others. For one example, someone who knows themselves to do certain work well under pressure and even get a thrill from it, and who has many interests that “pay rewards” available to them at any time, may choose to procrastinate on work until there’s enough pressure to trigger that special lovely “no time to waste” flow state. There’s no depression there, no lack of reward triggers, just a priority sort and a special extra reward for working in a certain pressured mode. But it still looks like procrastination from the outside and still raises some inner dissonance over risk management and social conformity that make people fret over it as a strategy.

chrsig 4y ago

As a person on the extreme end of the ADHD spectrum, this is a interesting take to me. From a strict definition point of view: > pro·cras·ti·nate > /prəˈkrastəˌnāt/ > verb > delay or postpone action; put off doing something. I'm not sure if I agree with your assessment. That is, procrastination has no implication of why the action was postponed, merely that it is. Procrastination is a symptom of depression, ADHD, and other disorders that impact productivity -- the actions do in fact get postponed. The neurological process driving the postponement is irrelevant to the classification. I think perhaps a better phrasing may be "there's no such thing as laziness" -- laziness being an attributed cause of procrastination. There's generally a reason other than laziness, but society likes to dismiss those excuses and instead insist that the person themselves willfully choses to procrastinate. This is of course incredibly unhelpful in every regard, but society loves a good opportunity to shame people outside a standard deviation of typical.

hinkley 4y ago
When you explain apologies to children, it often comes down to explaining to them that it doesn't matter what their internal narrative is, it matters what the other person's internal narrative is. Yes, you didn't mean to hit Sally with a stick, and yet here we are, with one crying child, and you, protesting your innocence. You need to apologize. Even if it was an accident. Similarly, you can avoid doing a task because you are mortgaging future you to deal with something you don't want to, or you can simply forget that it needs to get done. The motivation is different, but the outcome for the person who expected that you made a fancy dinner reservation you keep forgetting to make until after the last responsible moment is the same. I think in part this is a big factor of tension around The Last Responsible Moment with respect to Agile and YAGNI. People know themselves or their coworkers better than the author does. The last responsible moment is quite a bit earlier than you'd think, once you factor in not only queuing theory but also illness and distraction. You're not being responsible if you haven't accounted for predictable failure modes, Parkinson's Law, and some extra buffer into the equation for Hofstadler's Law, and then some extra buffer into the equation for <checks notes> Hofstadler's Law, and some extra buffer into the equation for Hofstadler's Law... For my money, you should tackle a task when it pisses you off. You will never be this motivated again. But I will qualify that advice by saying that one of my favorite passtimes is to invent Plan B and sometimes Plan C in my head, so at any given moment if you ask me to fix something, odds are at least 50/50 I have a coherent solution tucked away in the back of my head somewhere, instead of just throwing bullshit at the problem until it looks different, so YMMV.

swatcoder 4y ago

Depression may be the only way procrastination surfaces for you, but it’s not the only way for others. For one example, someone who knows themselves to do certain work well under pressure and even get a thrill from it, and who has many interests that “pay rewards” available to them at any time, may choose to procrastinate on work until there’s enough pressure to trigger that special lovely “no time to waste” flow state. There’s no depression there, no lack of reward triggers, just a priority sort and a special extra reward for working in a certain pressured mode. But it still looks like procrastination from the outside and still raises some inner dissonance over risk management and social conformity that make people fret over it as a strategy.