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How to do the thing you've been avoiding
- tacocataco 3y agoThink about how much you do for others. Your family, your community, your workplace. You have to make you a priority. Pay yourself first I think is the phrase. What's helped me is making a "shift" for me. Depending on how busy I am, it can be a hour a day all week or if it's slower just pick a single day and hammer it all out. No clocking out early to! :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- podiki 3y agoWhat if the thing I'm avoiding is reading this article about how to do the things I'm avoiding?
- edrxty 3y agoYou're not missing anything, I forced myself to read it knowing that if I put it off I never would. It's just a small amount of rambling about how to write comedy routines. There's really nothing relevant to the HN community in here even if you squint really hard. Aside: maybe people should stop upvoting things hoping someone will summarize the content in the comments?
- safety1st 3y agoGiven the number of people who comment/vote on articles without reading them (everywhere, not just on HN), this seems like a great use case for LLMs. Probably if there was a short summary of every article directly under the title, discussion quality would improve.
- edrxty 3y agoChatgpt coming in with the hot takes: The article explores the concept of reevaluating ideas we consider bad and highlights the importance of questioning our assumptions. The author shares a personal experience of interviewing Jimmy Fallon and initially hesitating to request a follow-up call for additional information. However, when the author finally reached out, Fallon expressed appreciation and saw it as a sign of thoroughness rather than a burden. This interaction made the author question other ideas they had deemed bad. The article suggests asking simple questions to challenge our assumptions: Why do I think it's a bad idea? How do I actually know it's a bad idea? Am I the only one who thinks this? What's the worst that can happen if I'm wrong? The author encourages seeking social information and considering others' experiences before making a decision. They also share a personal realization about asking for favors, discovering that it can strengthen relationships instead of burdening others. The article concludes by encouraging readers to take risks, embrace possibilities, and engage with the world to gain experiences and potentially benefit others. The author also refers to a previous newsletter about focusing on one's strengths rather than trying to do everything.
- drekipus 3y agoCan I get a summary on this please? This is way too long and isn't broken up at all.
- wruza 3y agoTFA talks about untested fears, not lazy/tired procrastination. Advises to test them, because you may see it the wrong way and it’s okay or good.
- edrxty 3y agoFurther reduced... The article encourages questioning ideas deemed bad, sharing a story about Jimmy Fallon appreciating thoroughness. It suggests asking simple questions, seeking social information, and taking risks to gain experiences. It concludes with a reference to a previous newsletter on focusing on strengths.
- raincole 3y ago> Probably if there was a short summary of every article directly under the title, discussion quality would improve. It has been a thing way before ChatGPT on some subreddits (e.g. r/worldnews). I'm not sure how it works, perhaps GPT-3?
- rz2k 3y agoI didn't want to read the article, so I finally did that other thing I didn't want to do. I think that's the secret to doing the thing I'm avoiding; think of something you dread more. Ideally that sacrificial chore is unimportant, or eventually something that can be delegated away or something someone else can be hired to do.
- fhennig 3y ago> It's just a small amount of rambling about how to write comedy routines. Uh .. what? It isn't about this, and your dismissive tone is uncalled for.
- coldtea 3y agoUncalled for? They're right, it's a rambling piece, written as a listicle in an attempt to be some kind of self-help blogger (and promote their book).
- chwa982 3y ago[dead]
- justinator 3y agoUsually the question of why I'm avoiding doing the thing I need to do is answered with "ADHD". Although I did appreciate the post.
- wnkrshm 3y agoYeah, I'm dealing with it at work right now for a deadline. I'm using my entire tool box.
- tailspin2019 3y agoCare to share what some of those tools are? :)
- wnkrshm 3y agoI have a report where the actual project work done is not exactly what was planned, so that's triggering some avoidance. It was hard to start with directly writing the report. So what I did is the classic 'break it down' but with a pinch of artificial compartmentalization from the part triggering the avoidance: I tried to focus only on what was actually done (significant in volume of work) switched to itemizing everything that was done first, not directly working into the report template. I report on each of these items in isolation first, without reference to the plan, which gives me momentum since the pages fill up fast. The last part is sorting the pages into the report template, according to the work items they fit best with. Edit: The idea being that the momentum from the documenting of the work in isolation, will carry me through producing relatively little text referring to the plan. It's not honorable work but it needs doing.
- tailspin2019 3y agoSmart! As someone who has similar challenges, this was interesting to read. Edit: Good luck with the report. Just the word "report" makes me convulse :)
- qumpis 3y ago
- justinator 3y agoIs there not a search function on this site?
- justinator 3y agoOr RSS/Atom?
- quickthrower2 3y agoDoesn't seem so, you could visit the home page, click load more a couple of times, then use browser search on page.
- dormento 3y ago> Is there not a search function on this site? Try hn.algolia.com
- Cerpicio 3y agoSearch function on HN? Scroll to the very bottom and there is a search box. It doesn't seem intuitive. It seems like it should be at the top of the page.
- justinator 3y agoNo, on the site where this fine article lives.
- PakG1 3y agoI've read a lot of ideas about how to do the thing I've been avoiding. I'm fairly convinced that the only way to do it is hire someone to get on my case and not let up until I get it done. Pay up front so that I can't get out of it by stopping the payments. If I get a friend or family member to do it, it'll sour the relationship and I don't want that. If I get a machine to do it, I can ignore or turn off the machine and that defeats the purpose. But heck, I'm not gonna spend money on that. So here I am.
- irjustin 3y agoThat works a few times until you burn out. Wouldn't call someone yelling at me a sustainable solution.
- im_down_w_otp 3y agoIf that’s actually a potential solution, then what about going an extra step and paying the person to just do the thing itself?
- PakG1 3y agoRequired knowledge and skills. Required knowledge and skills to get on my case are much easier to find than required knowledge and skills to do the thing I need to do.
- chopete3 3y agoIf you are lucky your spouse is that right person. 24x7x365 of being on the case. It worked for me. The challenge is, I told avoid telling her things that I want to avoid. :)
- dtgriscom 3y agoDanger, Will Robinson! Danger! This sounds like a recipe for resentment on both sides of the relationship.
- valty 3y agoThis actually worked surprisingly well for me. I hadn't gone to the gym in months and it was always a question of: why is this day going to be the day I start? I used this personalized chat-based service, where I said I will pay 1000$ if I don't go tomorrow. Like magic, there was no way I wouldn't go. I also used it for shipping a small side-project in 1 week. I procrastinated for 3 days, and then felt this real panic-inducing pressure 2 days before the deadline which forced an incredible moment of focus (like cramming before an exam). This approach is great when you need ignition from a cold-start to provide that initial momentum which is so important.
- Ilnsk 3y agoxkcd.com/642
- ulnarkressty 3y agoMost of the time it's anxiety. You'd be surprised how easy it is to start doing something when you don't feel any kind of pressure. Getting rid of it is hard work though, sometimes even harder than doing the thing you're procrastinating about. This gives rise to some interesting cost/benefit discussions. Which only serve to increase the anxiety. Enjoy modern life!
- iLoveOncall 3y agoMaybe for you. I have 0 anxiety, it's just lazyness or instant boredom.
- abnercoimbre 3y ago> Getting rid of it is hard work though Getting rid of what, exactly? The pressure? (Currently procrastinating by the way, on very important things that I keep delaying for some unexplained reason.) Modern life indeed.
- NoPicklez 3y agoWell that's entirely dependent on the task. For instance, if you have problems submitting your timesheets on time, it could be due to the fact that you're worried about putting too many hours on the budget. If you remove the worry about putting too many hours on the budget, then you might find yourself doing your timesheets on time. The answer to your question lies in the "unexplained reason" which can actually be explained, that's the hard part.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> The answer to your question lies in the "unexplained reason" which can actually be explained, that's the hard part. Having struggled with this for almost 20 years now, with little to show for it, I'd say "'unexplained reason' can actually be explained" seems to belong to the same category as "P != NP can actually be proven". Good luck and Godspeed. Maybe I'm more of a clinical case, but for me, whatever I think the source of anxiety is in any given scenario, it's never that. I can eliminate potential sources one by one, dig in recursively, but it only provides very short-lived feelings of relief, lasting seconds to minutes, before anxiety restarts. To make matters worse, the more I spend time on such investigations, the more anxious I get about not working on the actual thing I wanted/was supposed to. The most accurate model/explanation I have for this is: anxiety always comes, unconditionally; any "reason" behind it is just desperate post-hoc rationalization. The only reliable defense I know of is to be doing something so interesting or stimulating that it captures all of the brain's compute and starves the "anxiety process" entirely. Of course, that process will restart as soon as resources for it become available. > For instance, if you have problems submitting your timesheets on time, it could be due to the fact that you're worried about putting too many hours on the budget. If you remove the worry about putting too many hours on the budget, then you might find yourself doing your timesheets on time. I have problems submitting my timesheets on time. It's mostly because it's a boring, mind-dumbing chore, done using a GUI designed to prove that evil exists in this world. Like all modern timesheet tools, this one resists automation too. It's an annoyance that distracts me from the actual work I'm already behind on thanks to anxiety, and thus compounding the latter. Yes, the task takes maybe 5 minutes. Would, if I could focus. But my focus window for mind-dumbingly boring tasks and routines is around 30 seconds; anything more than that requires ongoing, conscious effort. In reality, those 5 minutes usually turn into one hour, by the end of which I'm all dripping from stress-induced sweating. I mean, I could've done my timesheets for the last two weeks four times over, in the time it took me to write this comment. Yet somehow, this comment is up, and the timesheets are not.
- NKosmatos 3y ago“It’s better to regret things you’ve done, than to regret things you haven’t”
- byproxy 3y agoAs someone who's felt both, I can say that this is absolutely not true. The things I've done and regretted have had real, lasting effects and the things I've regretted not doing are only hypothetical.
- coldtea 3y agoIf only. We regret things we did (some marriage that didn't work out and destroyed our lives, some business decision that was bad, drinking and partying when we should have been getting ahead instead now we're at an AA meeting, spending sprees that left us broke, getting that tribal tattoo in our forehead while drunk, and so on) all the time...
- iopq 3y agoI've been avoiding it because I'm lazy, not because I think it's a bad idea
- jahewson 3y agoLazy is a judgement not an actual state of being.
- notRobot 3y agoCare to explain?
- 331c8c71 3y agoNot doing something is actually neutral because it can happen for healthy reasons as well as not so healthy ones. Labelling someone as "lazy" implies that not doing stuff is wrong and is a moral failure of sorts.
- anthonypasq 3y agono one is lazy for not doing things that are unhealthy
- bheadmaster 3y agoIn my understanding, "lazy" literally means "one who does not do what he ought to". It is completely descriptive, provides absolutely no new information beyond the obvious, and is only used to assign a value judgement to someone. And yet people use it in circular arguments all the time: he is not doing homework because he's lazy. If we expand "lazy" to "does not do what he ought to", we get: he is not doing homework because he does not do what he ought to. So sky is blue because all skies are blue... Not really useful for anything except guilt tripping a person, because laziness is bad.
- newaccount74 3y agoI think there's more to it than that. "Lazy" implies that you don't have a reason for not doing what you ought to do. For example, I might not do something for a myriad of reasons: - I might have more important things to do - I might be ill - I might be missing some prerequisite - I might be resting because I need my energy for something else - Someone told me not to do the thing I ought to do In all of these cases, I'm not doing what I ought to do, but I'm not lazy. Lazy implies that there is nothing preventing me from doing what I ought to do.
- ptato 3y ago>You’re not exploring something. Asking for something. Acting on something. Why? Because it’s a bad idea. No, it's because it is hard. If it is a bad idea, why would I want to do it?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 331c8c71 3y agoIt's actually quite simple for me. I typically don't get any satisfaction from starting and completing tasks I am avoiding. Crossing them off doesn't excite me - not in the least - regardless of all the motivational and time-management pseudoscience around. They simply make me tired and leave me with a feeling that I had wasted my time. It doesn't help either that such tasks are often chores or some kind of bureaucratic bs meaning they are basically in infinite supply. Once you finished with one there will be another one moved unconsiously from "would be nice to do" to "I should be doing this" category.
- isolli 3y agoThanks, I wrote almost the exact same thing a few months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34680970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34680970
- coliveira 3y agoThis should be upvoted more. The main reason we avoid doing these bureaucratic things is that they're useless in the long term. They're just part of the games that we play with each other, but it seems that the subconscious is really good at detecting BS and stopping us from doing that.
- hinkley 3y agoTook a long time for my partner to either understand or just give up on policing my chores. She didn’t understand why I would occasionally clean under the fridge or clear cobwebs if the kitchen or the floors were dirty. I’m not going to ever get to the bottom of my task list. You know it, I know it, my seventh grade French teacher knows it. But if I don’t randomly do something from the bottom, then it will be five years and nobody has every dusted the blinds or vacuumed out the car or cleaned the cupboard doors because I sweep and mop the same floors that will be dirty again in ten minutes and call it a day. I won’t clean the car again until the blinds are clear and the freezer has been defrosted, but at least it gets done once in a while.
- IshKebab 3y agoYes! This is why I'm not such a fan of strictly prioritising tasks like P0, P1 etc. It just means that P2 or more are effectively "won't fix".
- fhennig 3y agoWhen I get to a point where I'm second guessing like the author ("Should I follow-up or not?") I try to go with actually listening to what the other person said. In this case, Jimmy said "please follow-up if you have questions" and I'd just assume that that was genuine and so it's fine. And if I called he could still be like "Yeah, we went over time last time, actually I'm sorry I don't have time anymore." And so I also try to communicate in this way, just saying things I mean and if I don't want something, I'll also say that. Makes everything much easier. (I'm German, maybe it's also a cultural thing.)
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoDefinitely a cultural thing, but also has to do with neurodiversity; for some reason, a lot of people speak in riddles, they don't say what they mean and/or they don't mean what they say, and you're left having to make assumptions because if you don't get it, that's somehow your fault? Another factor there is (corporate) politeness and avoiding emotional responses; the amounts of times I've had colleagues go on an angry rant / vent to us (as teammates) over a meeting they just came out of, instead of direct and use that anger during the meeting itself is a lot.
- langsoul-com 3y agoThe article title is pretty false. I didn't walk away understanding how to do the thing you've been avoiding at all. More like, you never know if (bad) things you've been avoiding are actually bad. In fact, people might want you to do said thing. Ie someone who does favours for others should ask back in return, to satisfy the reciprocal nature of most people.
- xigency 3y agoYours is the only comment I see that recognized this. I may have a false consensus, but I feel like everyone either skimmed the article or only read the title. The title reads as if it is about procrastination and completing tasks, but instead TFA discusses exploring activities you would hesitate to do, and asking those around you for insight if it’s a good idea.
- nelox 3y agoI highly recommend these excellent self-directed workshops to help with procrastination: https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/Resources/Looking-After-Yourself/Procrastination https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/Resources/Looking-After-You...
- peddamat 3y agoThis is a really fantastic resource. It's basically the content of every ADHD book distilled into a handful of pdfs. They are a bit dense, but the content is golden.
- alden5 3y agoWoah those look really useful! bookmarks the link thinking "ill do that later"
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoI'll fix my procrastination issues... after a nap.
- gen_greyface 3y agoThanks for sharing this. I'm going to try out the perfectionism workbooks. Also nice that the pdfs have forms to fill stuff in.
- looperhacks 3y agoThis article feels equivalent to "Feeling sad? Just feel happy instead!"
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoKind of, but it came across to me as more of a challenge; "feeling sad? Have you unpacked why you feel sad or are you just wallowing in it?" Is your inaction a rational decision?
- abdussamit 3y agoAren't most articles screaming this anyway?
- TeMPOraL 3y agoIf my inaction was a rational decision, would I be reading an article with a title "How to Do the Thing You've Been Avoiding"? (And no, I haven't unpacked why I feel sad; I tried it a couple times, which is how I discovered my sadness is stored in a bag of holding[0]; in fact, I suspect the bag actually contains within it a portal to hammerspace[1], explaining why it's always full, no matter how much stuff I pull out of it.) -- [0] - https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/4581-bag-of-holding https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/4581-bag-of-holding [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammerspace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammerspace
- marginalia_nu 3y agoAdvice-wise, it's like "Getting fat? Consider looking over what you eat and adding more activity to your days!" It's actually kind of good advice, but it's hard advice, it's hard to actually follow through. If you go see a therapist, it's often the type of stuff they have you do (challenging thought patterns, asking the hard 'why's). And it actually works pretty well, you can do it yourself too, but that's even harder. Speaking as someone who has both successfully lost weight and gone to therapy, btw.
- npunt 3y agoThe article is more about motivating through excitement than motivating through insight (I call this 'puppy motivation' vs 'insight motivation'). I sometimes have the same reaction to things - I remember once being baffled at the lack of insight in a writing course I was taking, only to begrudgingly admit it was motivating me anyway even tho it was pretty stupid... like a puppy wanting to play. At least for me I think the root of that comes from a closed mode vs open mode way of thinking [1]. When in closed mode we'll only accept new information whereas in open mode we can be playful and accepting new motivation. Different content demands different states of mind. [1] John Cleese's video on creativity is worth a watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g
- bjarneh 3y ago> he (Jimmy Fallon) is exactly like you’d expect — warm, genuine, thoughtful Hmm, not really what I expected to be honest.
- RaiausderDose 3y agomr fake laugh is genuine. ok, maybe he's different irl.
- cuttysnark 3y agoIt's his brand, though—of course he'd be that way for an interviewer. Which leads to the next slightly annoying bit—author was reluctant to follow up because Jimmy Fallon is a celebrity, which isn't said explicitly but is essentially the crux of the whole article. Apart from that, "Hey, ya never know" is not terrible advice, but it's also a lottery slogan.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- black_13 3y ago[dead]
- SSchick 3y agoBeen avoiding to read this post all day :) (No seriously I avoided it so I can avoid doing the things I've been avoiding)
- ninesnines 3y agoI used to get quite a lot of anxiety with replying to emails, which was absolute nonsense. I would procrastinate and then it would become this huge monster I needed to deal with because on top of the email now I had to apologize for my tardiness. This problem extrapolated to many parts of my life, and I had to fix it. Now, I always try to read emails, especially ones I am scared of, quickly. As you do it you will have less of a negative connotation with the whole thing. You can even give yourself a snack after or something, but getting started is key.
- kristjank 3y agoThis strikes me as very reductive. Anxiety or executive disorder is usually a better description for a lot of my deadline problems than simply thinking it's a bad idea. Ruminating on the process that makes me anxious about some great task usually makes it worse.
- saagarjha 3y agoStep one, log off from this site?
- mr_gibbins 3y agoWhen I procrastinate, it stems from the thought, 'I don't really want to do this (right now|at all)'. So one way to jump that hurdle is consider the consequences of not doing it, and how that makes me feel. For example, learning French. I would like to speak French. The consequence of not putting in the hours conjugating verbs means I will not be able to speak French. That makes me sad. I consider that sadness, and conclude I would prefer to spend the next hour reinforcing my knowledge of the passe compose of avoir. That is better than feeling sad. Some consequences are not obvious, but cumulative. I don't really want to go to the stand-up meeting. What happens if I don't go today? Probably not much. But what happens if I don't go for the rest of the week, or my attendance is patchy? It'll be noticed, and I'll have to explain why I am not on the calls. The thought of the explanation makes me uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than going to the calls. Therefore I go to the calls. Where this technique is powerful is that it enables me to filter out those activities where there is no obvious consequence of not doing the thing, which means the activities that remain on my daily list are generally pretty important.
- prox 3y agoJust to help you out on speaking French, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_française https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_française is pretty good. They have in person classes and you learn quickly with just a few hours a week!
- mr_gibbins 3y agoThank you, this is news to me, I've been using the 'Learn French with Alexa' series on YT, plus a French dictionary and some magazines etc. I'll check it out!
- prox 3y agoGreat! The nice thing is that the teachers are often French and you can make friends and practice the language at the same time.
- P-Nuts 3y ago
- Prcmaker 3y agoWe say it more morning than not at work: Eat the green frog.
- dtgriscom 3y agoHaving trouble parsing this... explain?
- Prcmaker 3y agoIf you get to work one day, and there's a frog on your desk, and a job assigned to you to eat the frog, you're going to have to get it done. You can let it sit there and sit there there, but sooner or later you're going to have to eat the frog. Might as well get that job done with and move one to the next, more enjoyable, thing. We don't eat frogs at work, but we do get many a job you'd rather put off to later.
- retskrad 3y agoI think people who procrastinate haven't developed project management skills. It's crucial to teach kids from an early age to break down tasks and map it out until the next deadline, wether it be an essay or a test. This way the anxiety greatly diminishes because doing even small amount of work each day will lead to great results over time.
- JaneLovesDotNet 3y agoI have found LLMs quite useful in fighting procrastination. For myself, procrastination is usually caused by the fear of how painful it is to get up and running on a new project or task. Asking an LLM to start the work gets the annoying bits out of the way. Even if it does most of it incorrectly, at least you've built momentum, and then you can take over from there.
- toddmatthews 3y agoHow does an LLM help you do the dishes?
- Gareth321 3y ago"LLM start deleting my files at random until I confirm the dishes are done."
- AQuantized 3y agoI managed to progress a long standing side project because of this psychology. Asking ChatGPT how to do what I think is the next step is easy, and it generally spits out a coherent if questionable solution. Finding the issues with its implementation gets me into the mindset to continue working on the problem.
- Tade0 3y agoPsychiatrists explain this as an evolutionary mechanism keeping us from expending energy on tasks which, in our caveman mind's view, have low probability of success. Most modern activities are beyond the mind's capabilities in terms of assessing whether it's worth it, so it usually defaults to "no". One way around it is to imagine the feeling of having this off your back. I found that it helps somewhat.
- ChildOfChaos 3y agoI feel like this article has completely the wrong headline. This is not about doing what you are avoiding, it's about considering the thing you think is stupid, is actually something you should do. Avoiding the thing is more about, knowing you should do something, but still not doing it anyway.
- kylegalbraith 3y agoThis was a very insightful read that I think helps people think about stepping outside of their comfort zones.
- ozim 3y agoFor getting back to Jimmy - I have the feeling that a lot of people default to "don't bother other people, they are busy with their lives" soo many of my friends or acquittances rarely call me or try to get in touch. Of course maybe they just don't like me :D But usually I just get over my "don't bother others" inner block and I call a friend or family member and then we setup a meeting for a lunch or just some longer catch up call usually - so in the end they also want or like me enough that we meet after all. But still initial hurdle has to be overcome.
- znpy 3y agoHow NOT to do the thing you've been avoiding: procrastinate by reading the "How to do the thing you've been avoiding" article and reading comments.
- xyzelement 3y agoBeen working on this a lot. For most of my life I thought - I am great on a crisis / hard problems, and performing well under pressure, bad at consistently doing small things without anyone looking. Like all such self identification, it's a bullshit excuse. Then I thought that I am just adrenaline driven. What excites me gets crushed. What just needs to get done sometime, doesn't. (I am "high functioning" - manager in FAANG, multiple graduate degrees, father of 2) Lately a coach helped me realize. What I don't have is a deliberate practice of giving myself time to sort out the urgent from important. Literally reserving uninterrupted time on the calendar to prioritize and think about what to do (vs, do) The outcome is this allows me to get excited about things I would have previously been dreading. Eg - "man, I gotta call X contractor to get a quote" is a drag. Giving myself a chance to reframe it like "I am really excited about upgrading our backyard so the kids can play there better. Calling X is the first step to that, can't wait to do it" It changes it from annoying task to a part of an exciting project. Because if I wasn't excited about the project then the phone call isn't necessary anyway. Becoming more religious and developing gratitude has helped. Waking up every morning and recognizing that my children, wife, home, career are all an incredible gift. And all that work around them is a blessing too - to become a better person etc. Really changes your perspective. I am working on it!
- nkotov 3y agoI really loved the last part.
- 93po 3y agoForcing myself to have time away from devices in general every single day and not do anything is very, very productive. I can use this time to think about whatever I want, and it often helps motivate me to get off my ass and be productive after I get tired of sitting there and feeling bored.
- boredumb 3y agoAs someone who is also manager as well, this last year i've allocated myself 30 minutes a week for myself to go through jira and notes from meetings throughout the week and really prioritize and scrutinize what's in motion and what's in the near term hopper and it has saved me countless hours of scrambling and rushing around to clarify things now that I have them clarified in my head every week. I mention this because as someone who loves writing code and building solutions who migrated into management roles, this was the thing I would actively procrastinate doing in lieu of "fun" stuff like writing code and collaborating with the team on various problems. This may be more directed to developers who move into management, but the advice itself is good for everyone - dedicate time to organize, prioritize and really clarify to yourself what is going on - weekly/monthly/whatever your schedules look like.
- jfeif 3y agoHey all! I'm the author of this newsletter -- thanks to whoever posted it! Really appreciate all the thoughtful commentary.
- jimmaswell 3y agoI did the things I was avoiding by finally getting an adhd diagnosis and stimulant medication. Life changing so far, so much easier to do what I want in personal and work life.
- purpleblue 3y agoIf this were Reddit, I would expect dozens of Shia LeBoeuf "Just Do It!" memes right now.
- athenot 3y agoMany of the comments here are about procrastination (and are all very good contributions to the topic). However the article is more about expanding our thinking and challenging limitations that are self-imposed, which then prevent us from taking certain actions that can be highly significant (if not downright pivotal) for the goals we're pursuing in life. Personally, one of my favorite phrases is "what if?", in a dreamy, anticipatory mindest of wondering what might be possible. Sometimes this allows me to see that an "evident" limitation can indeed be overcome.
- podiki 3y agoWhenever I see anything about procrastination I always go back to the classic: https://structuredprocrastination.com/ https://structuredprocrastination.com/
- Ecoste 3y agoThis article is basically weaponizing surplus-enjoyment towards getting things done. Pretty cool :)
- rambojohnson 3y agowhy was this article difficult to read? it's cadence/structure is all over the place...
- GuB-42 3y agoThis article is not about procrastination, it is not about challenging your preconception of what is a bad idea. For example, you need to do the dishes, and you don't. This is procrastination, you know it is a good idea to do the dishes, that it has to be done eventually, etc... But the article is more about say, finally using that dishwasher despite having some preconceived idea that it is bad at its job.
- Ecoste 3y agoThese types of articles act as a kick-starter to reflecting about your own thought-patterns and antagonisms. I'm sure you've read articles or watched videos precisely about procrastination etc. just like this article -- and it did nothing to help you with your own procrastination (and the other millions of people that are procrastinating). Every such article has a goal of "be happier" "be less anxious" "stop procrastinating" etc. but what they're essentially saying is "be happy", or "don't procrastinate" etc. After stating the overall trite, they go into personal details about what worked for them to address the trite. However the details are usually highly personal and won't work for you or anyone really who doesn't have the same belief (system/thought pattern/mentality/personality) as the author. In fact the author mentioned this himself in the article by pointing out that not everyone thinks the same as you (So then: why are you telling us about the implementation details of the solution to the trite instead of really drilling into what thinking led for the implementation to be effective?) At which point do you stop drilling into your meta-thinking? It's hard to know, and it's hard to drill-down as well and as you drill-down things become more personal and not applicable to a general audience.
- pythonbase 3y agoMy mantra to do the things I have been avoiding is simple; Eat that Frog!!
- ultra_nick 3y agoFinishing homework before a deadline is a great idea, everyone agrees, and it'll cause career issues if your grades slip too much. However, most people still struggle to motivate themselves to do it. Useless. A better tip is to at least review or read boring work everyday until it's done. Tasks are easier to start if you planned them the day before and don't need to think to start.
- lifebeyondfife 3y agoWait, But Why? has a fascinating series of posts on this. https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti... I bought the 52x90 poster where each square is a week of your life. I've filled in significant events. It helps me ensure I keep working on making those events coming.
- JoeDaDude 3y agoAlison Stout from Bell Tone Synth Works, a synthesizer repair shop, shows the guts and theory of operation of the Mellotron, along with some restoration and repair tips if you own one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByD8gH7kYxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByD8gH7kYxs