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Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

695 points by EndXA 3y ago

lifeline82 3y ago
Procrastination or accrasy ? That’s the question? Also when only God is perfect and we are all sinners, this fights better procrastination than when the whole socio-culture is based on the human-god gnosis. Want to fight procrastination: return to church.
ChildOfChaos 3y ago
I agree, procrastination to me seems like an emotional problem, it's not a time management problem. I see a lot of young people these days seem to think they need the right app or secret system to fix there issues, I see them asking questions on reddit blaming the todo list app they are using for not getting things done. The thing to me seems, that doing anything has a high cost, that the mind wants to protect us from that, doing nothing is safer, I think it's that system that comes in to protect us. If we do something, it might be disappointing, it might not be as we expect. Even small things, order something from amazon, you have to wait in to get it, the delivery might get messed up, it might be the wrong thing, it might not work etc, doing something requires more doing, it increases the changes of frustration/annoying things to happen, when doing noting often seems like it doesn't cause much issue. This is perhaps why even the smaller tasks are an issue, because the downsides of not doing it are less apparent. It's no wonder we want to procrastinate. The trick I think is to meditate on the idea of momento mori, as the stoics did, remember your time here is limited and also reflect on the negative of not having done or achieved things, because the mind automatically considers the negative of doing something and wants to protect you from that.
sanroot99 3y ago
Wait but why had a blog in this topic, I found his solution helpful.
belter 3y ago
I would comment on this issue, but I am still thinking about what the best comment would be....
- ramon156 3y ago
  Same, I'll get back to it though
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- justhereforthe 3y ago
  Also, I'm concerned that readers would judge my whole existence and the entire library of my life choices if any part of my (theoretical) comment fails to be... well, perfect.
- gtirloni 3y ago
  You probably want to read the New Oxford Style Manual first. Maybe check a course about writing on Coursera before writing the first draft.
- hoc 3y ago
  bookmarked the thread.
neverrroot 3y ago
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- nottorp 3y ago
  I thought most good intentions are bought up by road construction companies to maintain the highway to hell...
  - neverrroot 3y ago
    The older I grow, the more I see many good intentions at the micro scale hurting the big picture.
sylware 3y ago
As a public open source (yep, open source can be private) programmer (currently x86_64 assembly), and I am very aware of this pitfall. It is very important to move forward in code, because you cannot predict how will actually end up a complex program: you need to have all the (sane) features in to actually know. Since code is all about trade-offs, there is "no perfect". You have to be carefull at avoiding falling into a mental spinning loop about this. Once you have a reasonable minimum of usable features in, publish it. It help breaking such mental loop. For instance, currently writing a printf implementation, and printf specs are already brain damaged by themselves, so I am not looking for perfection, far from it. I did set myself a minimal set of features (full format decoding, hexadecimal and byte strings) before publishing it. Until it does not require the complexity of a compiler, does a good enough job, I'll be happy. Sometimes it is not about perfectionism, but a question of resourses required to achieve something reasonably working: you have a montain to deal with just to get something minimaly working, and you are given a spoon... when you are lucky.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  Pardon the tangent, but could you provide a link to that project? I'm curious to see why something like printf is worth writing in assembly.
  - sylware 3y ago
    As I said in my post, I did not release it yet, and it will be very incomplete. But I am not alone, and some did assembly written printf like functions (gogol). The actual real way to work around the inappropriate complexity of that function is to remove it and switch to a brutal "put string" with string conversion functions (with space allocated on the stack). In the end it would be not that much more work in most cases, then in the end I may not even use my assembly code, but lower some printf function usage to what I said.
    - CoastalCoder 3y ago
      Ah, thanks. I wrongly guessed from your post that this printf was part of some larger, already published OSS project.
st-keller 3y ago
If i can’t have perfectionism without procrastination, i prefer to take both!
LoveMortuus 3y ago
“The fall is worth the climb” -Mike Tyson. I think this is kind of like, if you don't fail, you can't succeed. To be happy, fail. -Me, 2024.
- frereubu 3y ago
  In my more lugubrious moments I prefer Samuel Beckett's "Fail again, fail better".
- differentView 3y ago
  That's just the push I needed to challenge Mike Tyson to a fight.
  - DrBazza 3y ago
    "Everybody has a plan until they're punched in the mouth."
- hartator 3y ago
  Except if the fall kills you. Survivorship bias.
- layer8 3y ago
  It’s very possible, however, to just fail without ever succeeding, and that’s what the perfectionist worries about. The above sounds like an instance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent.
brainzap 3y ago
No advice article ever has the courage to say it: you need friends. Social support and accountability are our main pillars, we are social animals.
- diggan 3y ago
  > Social support and accountability Reminds me of "Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)" - https://sivers.org/zipit https://sivers.org/zipit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7496923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7496923 (74 points | March 30, 2014 | 21 comments)
  - Lyngbakr 3y ago
    That's interesting! Although I haven't invested any thought in it, I would've assumed that announcing plans would have the opposite effect because people are now watching and know what you're trying to achieve, so you'd be more motivated to avoid losing face. Thanks for the article — I'll have to check it out!
    - eloisius 3y ago
      Personally, it would make me feel a burden of shame to have announced a goal and then had a setback, which would become a greater discouragement then just facing a setback if I had not made a big deal about it in the first place.
      - breakingcups 3y ago
        That, and you've skipped ahead and gotten a bit of the social reward for the project without doing it yet. So the reward will be less too.
  - odyssey7 3y ago
    I’ve heard about the paradox of announcing plans before. It is intriguing. In light of the need for community, talking about plans might be seen as a way to search for ideas that could have group buy-in and become something to undertake together. Failure to move forward on those plans would reflect that the group interest just wasn’t there. The mistake would have been in assuming you would have ever pursued the goal independently, the social impulse to share could have been the hint. Shared interests between friends can help individual interests and goals become collective ones. Ecclesiastes: one may be overcome (by the exhaustion of going to the gym), two can defend themselves (against lapsing on their New Year’s resolution). A three-ply cord is not easily broken.
dghughes 3y ago
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- rrr_oh_man 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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147 3y ago
I've struggled with perfectionism procrastination. For example, I've tried in the past to start a weekly newsletter for my blog but was never consistent with it. In the middle of November, I started a daily (M-F) newsletter on topics related to DevOps. I've been consistent with it ever since. The strategies the article outlines that have helped me the most are breaking things down into small pieces and starting small. Also, by making my newsletter daily, it took a lot of pressure off me. I didn't feel like I had to have a "hit" every article like with weekly or monthly cadences. If the article sucked, then tomorrow is a new day with a new article.
jokoon 3y ago
there's nothing wrong with procrastination doctors say people work too much, and there's an epidemic of burnout homo sapiens are not made to work and feel guilty when they don't complete tasks it's a problem of work culture and productivism, nothing else
- getlawgdon 3y ago
  So we are not in fact what we have made ourselves? What are we then? What are we supposed to be?
  - slumberlust 3y ago
    If you can figure out, you'd have bested all of modern philosophy. godspeed!
  - electrondood 3y ago
    We are abstractions, with no substantial reality apart from everything else. And thus, not worth getting hung up on most of the time.
  - jokoon 3y ago
    you cannot turn mammals into efficient obedient workers and expect them to have a sane mental health. we're mammals with inflated brains, anxiety and depression, and it's too soon since we were hunter gatherers living in caves, we barely started working in cubicles and that's a small sample of the population.
sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
„ We need to think about failure differently. I’m not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth. But the way most people interpret this assertion is that mistakes are a necessary evil. Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we’d have no originality). And yet, even as I say that embracing failure is an important part of learning, I also acknowledge that acknowledging this truth is not enough. That’s because failure is painful, and our feelings about this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth. To disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth.“ - Ed Catmull (from the book Creativity Inc.) edit: by way of the marginalian, which is excellent, one of the best sites out there- go read it: https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/05/02/creativity-inc-ed-catmull-book/ https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/05/02/creativity-inc-ed-...
- SeriousM 3y ago
  Failure is just feedback valued as bad. Who we dare to be to value a reaction (inner or extern)?
- jimmydddd 3y ago
  When in high school, I returned home after a ski weekend with friends. When I returned home, my relatives, who didn't ski, asked if I fell at all during the weekend. I remarked that I had, especially while navigating some expert trails. They consoled me saying "that's OK, maybe you'll do better next time." I was confused at first until I realized that they thought of falling as a tragic outcome instead of a natural part of the learning process.
  - sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
    Probably mostly a function of them having no idea what skiing is like. If you never fall you either only use boring routes or ski very slowly - or you are professional skier and have such a breakneck speed you can’t fall (but even then it happens looking at Schumacher)
smugglerFlynn 3y ago
Lots of tongue in cheek comments for such a very serious issue. Please know that perfectionism is often fear-based and trauma-based. Learning to recognise the underlying fear and trauma, and working through them, will help with both perfectionism and procrastination. In my experience, there are very few quick wins, only long methodical work to get through the underlying issues. The best way to do that is with the help of a mental health professional (should be first # in that article).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
janmarsal 3y ago
A true perfectionist such as myself must go through every social media feed before doing more demanding work. Those unclicked links, notifications and red dots must be cleanced.
- njsubedi 3y ago
  Oh I feel you. I’m here reading your comment because I had something else to do.
devnonymous 3y ago
I have a pet peeve about the term perfectionism - it assumes the target of the idealized 'perfect' state is something other than the absolutely guaranteed limited resource in the world - time. Every self-proclaimed perfectionist should start caring about time as much as they do about the object they are obsessing over. They'll then see the tradeoff in being less of a ^perfectionist^ in that thing and being more ^perfectionist^ about time.
ayhanfuat 3y ago
If you are into the psychological aspects of procrastination, I've found the book Procrastination by Burka and Yuen [1] an amazing read. Perfectionism is one of the themes but apparently there can be multiple, independent sources. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Procrastination-Why-You-What-About/dp/0738211702 https://www.amazon.com/Procrastination-Why-You-What-About/dp...
rq1 3y ago
My take on with procrastination is just start things anyway and then eventually
njsubedi 3y ago
Two tiny hacks changed my lifelong procrastination and people-pleasing nature. 1. Instead of “what will they think?” always ask yourself the alternative question, “what do I want?”. This saves you a lot of time and trouble. Do what you like to see what people will say. Make it a fun game. 2. If something takes less than 2 minutes, just go do it. Make it your “kick”. After few weeks, work your way to turn 2 minutes to 5 then 10 minutes. You will get so much done because of the inertia.
- raindropm 3y ago
  Ah, fellow people-pleaser! For me, what help a lot is reframing feedback, whatever it is, as opportunity for learning, and not something you need to fear, ashamed, or get rid of(to keep face) Embrace it. See it with the eyes of curiosity, and not fear. Still do your best, yes, but not overly anxious about things you can't control, e.g. what people think.
kitsune_ 3y ago
Yeah, or maybe it's "just" ADHD. "Just" in parentheses because it's a horrible condition to have. Russel Barkley with a succinct video on "ADHD as Motivation Deficit Disorder": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR3RJU6838c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR3RJU6838c
- dmvdoug 3y ago
  Nailed it. With a small caveat. It’s more a matter of executive functioning [1], less one of (strictly speaking) motivation (although that is how it often feels, so I understand why that’s used as a kind of shorthand). I can very easily feel and be motivated to accomplish some task, but still fail to make any progress (or even begin) until it’s deadline time. Then comes feelings of guilt and self-loathing because I just can’t seem to get my shit together (despite knowing that that’s a wildly wrong way of framing it). It is horrible. But it’s manageable on most days (and yes, I’m medicated and have been since early adulthood). And honestly, having people in your life who understand your condition and can help pick you up sometimes [2], is a huge part of coping. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions [2] I do not mean do stuff for you. For me, when I’m in that place where I’m so frustrated that the only options are either to primally scream or to sit in the corner and cry, a simple fucking hug is like a miracle drug.
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    > less one of (strictly speaking) motivation FYI, the Russel Barkley video from the grandparent comment is a controversial figure. He presents a lot of his own pet ADHD theories as if they were facts. He's one of the OG internet ADHD influencers, back when ADHD was still commonly stigmatized. Someone I know joked that if you watched enough Russel Barkley videos, anyone could convince themselves they had ADHD.
- layer8 3y ago
  Nope, I don’t have any of the typical ADHD symptoms (inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity — rather the opposite), but still procrastinate to problematic levels due to perfectionism.
wingspar 3y ago
I’ve found some help with perfectionism and procrastination by using procrastination to overcome perfectionism. Get a project to a “good enough” point, then tell myself “I’ll fix it next year”, when I really just want to rip it out and start over. Of course ‘next year’ never comes as later I come to see that the project is totally fine and doesn’t need a re-do.
nixass 3y ago
I'ma perfectionist!
- layer8 3y ago
  Not regarding spelling, apparently. ;)
spintin 3y ago
The reason we fear shipping is that we know there is an absolute truth out there that nobody made any effort to find. ONLY if you ship that eternal fundamental solution have you made anything interesting. Everything is shit, think before you act! It's better to do nothing, than to deliver more shit.
- diggan 3y ago
  > It's better to do nothing, than to deliver more shit. How are you supposed to get better at delivering anything if you won't deliver until you have something "perfect"? Part of the process of getting better is to be shit for a while, while you figuring things out. Common saying when making music is that probably your first 100 songs will be absolutely trash, so better get those out of the door ASAP, so you can get to the good stuff :) Practice is the only way to get better, and your output will probably suck for a while, but we all sucked at one point so it's OK.
  - spintin 3y ago
    I meant do mistakes that you don't ship. And think before you make mistakes you don't plan to ship... I know that it's hard to build the intuition and sharp judgment without failing, but with time anyone can dismiss mistakes in their head. Only money makes you make mistakes because you are 1) pressed for time 2) greedy. Money IS the problem, soon money will be the problem of the past though (energy is the final problem), so that wasted time (most of 4 billion man centuries) is lost forever in a puff of smoke.
francisofascii 3y ago
Is this why some people take a long time to submit a PR? During morning standups, they say the work is nearly done, but the PR never comes.
- layer8 3y ago
  “Nearly done” is sometimes a hidden euphemism for “I feel bad about not having finished this yet, and I fear that others may accordingly look upon me unkindly, so I try to verbally minimize the unfinishedness, and I may yet get lucky and be able to finish it reasonably quickly, so it’s not an outright lie”.
hoc 3y ago
I just saw a simple differentiation between daydreaming (creative/analytic) and detailed planning and execution (productive). Seen that way you'd need to take care to not fall back into that creative-only daydream mode when you actually need/want to be productive. So you would need to steadily remind you to actually continue with concrete execution planning instead of mentally optimizing models (which of course itself is - and feels - productive and maybe even more important/urgent, but not in the ouput-oriented way you'd like/need to achieve in that actual production task). Not sure if it actually helps, but besides that perfectionism and "just do it" issue/solution pair it might be a useful perspective and concrete criterion to keep one focused on the task of finishing. I'll try to include it in the repertoire at least.
submeta 3y ago
Fear of losing control (and the thought of everything blowing up) => Perfectionism => „Let me be 1000% prepared before I start doing it“ => Prepares endlessly => external pressure rises above threshold => fear of consequences creates panick => starts doing the job => creates a reference experience („this was traumatic; next time I need to be prepared to avoid this kind of stress“) => until next „important“ task lands on desk. I tend to think that mostly people with a lot of capacity for creating mental images (who can freak themselves out) are prone to procrastination. Edit: Apparently it is more complex than that. I believe that self-worth also plays a role (fear of not delivering as good as one would like to), also ADHS (jumping to a thousand other things and losing focus). Generally fear plays a role. Meditation helps. Anything that helps to relax (running, breathing exercises).
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I had an instructor for a seminar that I took, keep repeating the phrase “We need to know what 'done' looks like.” Another manager I worked with, said “The #1 feature of this product is 'Ship'.” In the app we’re about to release, we don’t have any schedule pressure. We can release when we want. I found that the rest of the team was in “Perma-Tweak” mode. Lots of “Just one more thing.” I realized that it was never going to ship, so I set an arbitrary date of … today. In true software development tradition, we’ll be late, but not by much. Also, we have a great excuse. The CEO had a baby (ahead of schedule, but the deadline was quite firm).
drtgh 3y ago
In recent years the increase in launching products and updates without in-depth checks and with unfinished features is becoming routine... as if achieving the introduction of low quality products in the market were the goal, under the "productivity" shield. "Productivity", the abstract word that looks as if it were invented by the "flat-earthers" to sell books. Just a drug for to make the clients to pay for being alpha-testers, without remorse. Not easy to talk about perfectionism. In the last decade the threshold changed much, unfortunately. The main problem with this is in the retro-feeding, low quality here, there, affect the time needed for to advance in better products because there are more issues to solve, that of course will be "un-productive" to solve, in loop. Enjoy.
revskill 3y ago
I'm both a procastinator and a perfectionist. I'm happy about that fact, so that i can avoid "useless actions" until i fully understand what to do first. Another word, solving problem before implementation !
- sfn42 3y ago
  I'm similar and I get what you mean, but I'm not sure it's a positive. Some times I waste a lot of time trying to find the perfect solution, can't find it, give up and just do the best I know how to do. Almost always, while doing that, I discover better ways to do things and often this is nå iterative process where I pretty much start over multiple times until I'm happy with the result. I don't think the procrastination is useful. I think it's better to just get started and do anything. That way you learn and make progress.
hartator 3y ago
> One reason why people procrastinate is perfectionism. Is it though? Or is it something nice to tell ourselves? I don’t know if there is correlation here. I have seen poeple procrastinating with no sense of details and the reverse is true too.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  Seems like it. I don't think the correlation described is false. What you're saying about people procrastinating for other reasons, is the difference between the phrase "one reason why people procrastinate is perfectionism" and the phrase "the only reason why people procrastinate is perfectionism". As in, people can procrastinate for any of multiple reasons, and perfectionism is one of those reasons.
- layer8 3y ago
  “One reason” doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a prevailing reason, and there are certainly other reasons.
avindroth 3y ago
In my experience, perfectionism is crafted post-procrastination. It probably makes no sense, but the mind often does this convoluted thing in order to protect procrastination.
austin-cheney 3y ago
The article hints at psychology and then fails to dive into it. Perfectionism, only when intentionally and cognitively executed in an orderly fashion, is linked to extremely high consciousness and extremely high consciousness when not properly managed is highly correlated with anxiety. The slang for this is anal-retentive. This becomes complicated because anxiety is most typically concerned with high measures of neuroticism but a person can score extremely low in neuroticism and yet still suffer symptoms of anxiety from too high of consciousness when their concerns for orderliness prevents timely accomplishment of a task. That specific set of personalities defines obsessive-compulsive disorder in contrast to anxiety in general. The solution to this is to learn to accept and contribute a wrong outcome, as opposed to taking no action at all, which requires a tremendous amount of careful practice. The ability to accept that solution is even culturally reinforced as identified in one of the Hofstede cultural indexes: uncertainty avoidance.
- machomaster 3y ago
  The solution is to understand that no amount of guilt/regret is going to change the past and that no amount of internal anxiety is going to help the future.
- ShamelessC 3y ago
  > This becomes complicated because anxiety is most typically concerned with high measures of neuroticism but a person can score extremely low in neuroticism and yet still suffer symptoms of anxiety from too high of consciousness when their concerns for orderliness prevents timely accomplishment of a task. That specific set of personalities defines obsessive-compulsive disorder in contrast to anxiety in general. Just to clarify, you're still referring specifically to "perfectionist" personality types? Because last time I checked anxiety is _not_ correlated specifically with any personality traits but rather spans a broad spectrum of personality types.
- exolymph 3y ago
  *conscientiousness, distinct from consciousness :)
  - 3y ago
ghoomketu 3y ago
The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom. This may not work for everyone but for me it works exceptionally. Most often the reason why you don't want to work on something is because you find it too hard, too boring, or too irrelevant. But if you force yourself to be bored for a while, you will eventually crave some mental stimulation. And that's when you can pick up the task you have been avoiding and work on it with renewed interest and focus. Of course, this requires some discipline and self-awareness. You have to resist the temptation of checking your phone, browsing the web, or doing anything else that distracts you from your boredom. Maybe there is some psychological reason for it but I have found this technique to be very effective for overcoming procrastination and getting things done.
- almostnormal 3y ago
  An alternative to boredom is something else more important even less desirable that needs to be done, that drives progress on what is being procastrinated. Unfortunately, it only shifts the problem elsewhere.
  - OldHunter69X 3y ago
    As in, pursue something else that seems even more important, yet less desirable than what we were already considering? Or am I mixing something up?
  - machomaster 3y ago
    This does not solve the issue of procrastination at all. A common myth is that procrastinators are simply lazy people who don't do anything useful. This is not the case. Many procrastinators are super-efficient at working on what they need to do; it's just that they are procrastinating on another useful task/project that objectively should have a priority.
  - IggleSniggle 3y ago
    I call this procasti-working and it is absolutely my most productive space. I don't really see it as a problem though; I might be completing lower-priority tasks, but they would have later become high- or critical-priority tasks; it's ultimately a net win.
bjornsing 3y ago
I’ve long held the belief that procrastination is the rational response in a low return on investment (ROI) situation. This seems to fit nicely into that framework: if significant investment is required, you only value perfect output and are doubtful it can be achieved, then the expected ROI is pretty low.
- IAmGraydon 3y ago
  I think this is right, but it’s really a low predicted ROI. The problem is that we’re pretty bad at accurately predicting.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gherkinnn 3y ago
> For example, perfectionistic students might be so critical of themselves for making mistakes in school assignments, that they will postpone doing homework to avoid dealing with the associated negative emotions. From the very beginning, I skimmed the rest. Surely, this can be reduced to > Avoid dealing with the associated negative emotions. Start there, and work through those emotions.
- yeeeloit 3y ago
  > Start there, and work through those emotions. Do have any advice for how to deal with the associated negative emotions? They seem kind of endless, and I'm not really sure what to do with them. I've tried things like mindfulness, meditation, journaling, talking about them and so on. But they just keep coming back, it's like they can't be resolved. It's quite painful, and I'm at a loss.
hyperthesis 3y ago
https://structuredprocrastination.com/ https://structuredprocrastination.com/
Aurornis 3y ago
I developed a bad case of perfectionism-procrastination after working for a toxic boss. It didn't matter how polished our product was, he'd find a way to tear it apart. When he'd have a bad day, he'd start picking apart a random team's product. "Unbelievable!" he'd say in Slack, dropping a screen recording of the app that showed something we were supposed to be embarrassed about. It could be that the app took 3 seconds to load and show fresh data from his hotel WiFi, or it could be as simple as the UI not matching some directive he gave to the UI designers who failed to update the designs or tell us about the change. He would rant about how disappointing we were. At his worst, he fired some people on the spot for a problem that wasn't even their fault. I quickly learned that the only way to avoid that pain was to not ship anything. The people he liked most were the ones who were operating in hypotheticals: The people who made UI designs in Figma, or the architects who drew nice diagrams about how things would work, or the people who wrote long design documents to hand to other teams. They never shipped anything for him to critique, so he thought they were the geniuses of the company. As long as they could avoid having to actually implement anything, they continued to be favorites. It took me longer than I like to admit to shake that habit when I finally escaped. I found myself delaying shipment, pivoting from design doc to design doc, and trying to operate in that hypothetical space as long as I could. Fortunately I learned to get over it, but it was scary how much that single job could shape a large part of my personality.
- worklaptopacct 3y ago
  I have recognized at some point that I had something similar, but originating in my childhood. Most of the time I would be told to do something vague (e.g. clean your room), and no matter how much did I do, the feedback was usually negative (e.g. "You call this done?"), following with me getting grounded. Eventually, I've developed a mindset that told me that there's no point in trying, because it's impossible to do things properly. This has spread out into personal interests as well - I would give up quickly, because what's the point?
- the_cat_kittles 3y ago
  im still thinking about this because its so fundamental. it applies in almost everything. think about how many times people have called professional athletes stupid or bad. it happens all the time because the mistakes are unambiguous. but the coaches have a much longer grace period before people generally decide they are bad. when a musician messes up a piece everyone cringes and lots of people probably think that person is a failure even though they are playing at a level less than a tenth of one percent of people reach. in any discipline that can be (more or less) directly measured, lots of people perceive the people doing those disciplines to be more incompetent because their mistakes are more easily visible. when someone who is like your old boss (i think a huge percentage of people are) finds themselves in a situation where their mistakes are unambiguous and obvious they panic and have an identity crisis. most people do not live with the accountability of their mistakes like people who make and do things with unambiguous results. it would be great if more people did, but in a way, thats the whole point of those "ideas" / bullshit jobs, to insulate you from your mistakes.
xyzelement 3y ago
Perfectionism is too positive a word for this (“my greatest weakness? I am a perfectionist.) Fear of failure feels more apt. I hesitate starting/taking the next action because I am not confident I can land the goal all the way. IE - I fear trying to do X and not nailing it more than I fear not even trying it in the first place. Like many fears it is usually inappropriate and unhelpful. In reality you are almost always further ahead in life if you try even if you don’t get to the outcome you envisioned.
kthejoker2 3y ago
I probably have a whole personal blog of my own on the topic, dear as it is to my soul. My two main pieces of advice: The bar is very very low, and share your burden quickly. 99 times out of 100 you are way overestimating the value of what you're delivering and people's expectations for it, and underestimating the value of time i.e. shipping quickly. I've turned in so many things I'm not happy with and gotten a "this is great" that now I frequently just send over pseudocode, whiteboard sketches, and bullet point design docs to just get going on the feedback loop. Nobody has ever said "this is so bad we can't use any of it." I also realized I do much better finishing other people's work than starting my own .. and so does almost everyone else. Bringing other people in overcomes "the boredom paradox" of a looming deadline - working with other people has its own challenges, but it is definitely not boring! One specific thing I did that helped a few years ago at my precious company was I told my team, wrote in my email signature, ran a small study group, etc. On grit, procrastination, and "growth mindset" and just made a very intentional effort to tell people how I struggled with this problem. So many people shared the problem! It really gave us a nice community and helped us (and management) recognize some of these issues, lesrn some new techniques, and get better at coaching, setting expectations, and ultimately managing the work. So maybe last piece of advice is be open if you have these issues.
- Noumenon72 3y ago
  > One specific thing I did that helped a few years ago at my precious company was I told my team, wrote in my email signature, ran a small study group, etc. On grit, procrastination, and "growth mindset" and just made a very intentional effort to tell people how I struggled with this problem. What did you write in your email signature?
  - kthejoker2 3y ago
    it was basically just an ad to join our Teams channel where we shared articles and had a book club. "I'm working on my unhealthy perfectionism by developing a growth mindset. Join me!"
- stiglitz 3y ago
  >I've turned in so many things I'm not happy with and gotten a "this is great" Great if this feedback is from users; not great if it's from somebody who's just been waiting for you to finish it so that they can sell it. Unfortunately in a big-company environment like the one I work in, the initial and dominant feedback is usually from the latter.
adhrit 3y ago
100 percent. I even procrastinated for 2 minutes to write down this comment
electrondood 3y ago
The most effective antidote to procrastination for me is to get up at 5am. I have literally nothing to do for 4 hours, and I'm awake, and I have loads of energy, and no one else is up, so I may as well just do that thing I've been putting off. Also, literally just starting the task, regardless of how I feel. That works too.
- alexey-salmin 3y ago
  Can't you just read the Twitter feed?
motohagiography 3y ago
Life is harsh, sure, but "perfectionism," is a terrible and over-freighted word for someone stuck in a double bind and suffering as the result of it. Consider the situations from which someone might acquire a pathological fear of some kinds criticism. A huge likelihood is that as the result of submitting to uncertainty they have been: - personally abused and shamed - made the object of sadism or cruelty - humiliated to their peers - had important things taken from them - been isolated - lost an important relationship If you know someone suffering from a bind like that, find a way to tell them that "this is not that," and you can have a big impact on their life.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  I don't understand the purpose of taking a good word "perfectionism" for a pathological fear of criticism and rejection, and replacing it with a random incomplete list of things that might have caused a pathological fear of criticism and rejection.
  - motohagiography 3y ago
    If you consider what the perfectionism is the effect of, it's easier to unwind than just saying, "oh, you're in a hole, you should stop being in a hole." Describing anything as an 'ism' is a thought terminating judgment of it, and not a meaningful abstraction for it that yields information about what it might be caused by. This article might help your understanding as it talks about what concrete thinking is and how to recognize it: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-and-psychopathology/201407/schizophrenia-and-modes-thought https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-and-psychopat...
pessimizer 3y ago
This page seems like a nearly empty site someone put up imitating Hillary Rettig's work, looking for life coaching gigs. https://hillaryrettigproductivity.com/overcome-perfectionism/ https://hillaryrettigproductivity.com/overcome-perfectionism... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13417133-the-7-secrets-of-the-prolific https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13417133-the-7-secrets-o...
- mklepaczewski 3y ago
  The site is full of good information, but I agree it feels too search-engine optimized. It's not well structured for a large portion of the target audience (ADD/ADHD people). Articles are too wordy, there are no article or section summaries, and the number of internal links does not help people focus on the article they read.
deleted 3y ago
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mynameisnoone 3y ago
It's also easy to conflate perfectionism with excellence to rationalize shit work. Excellence is ships good shit but doesn't waste time on unreasonable shit or analysis paralysis. Experimentation, learning, and multiple iterations allow improvements to eventually reach a satisficing threshold good enough to ship.
aatd86 3y ago
It's a correlation, not a causation, in my experience. It's likely that the brain chooses the path of least resistance toward dopamine. Sometimes, just choosing to not be lazy clears it because then not being lazy and doing the darn thing provides enough of a dopamine hit in itself. It can be changed consciously. There is also the fear of the unk own but one has to then know that no matter what, they will figure it out. That can be a self-confidence issue. Related to the first point still.
tamimio 3y ago
Fantastic article, I’m perfectionist to the bones, and as the article states, it does cause procrastination for the “personal” tasks I have (one time it took me 3months to perfect a resume, and the same reason why my personal site is not yet complete), however, for work related, I do not procrastinate but I ended up overworking extra hours from my personal time to perfect the little details about whatever I’m doing, mostly details no one notices except me! > Forgive yourself for past procrastination And this is an important point too, for the personal tasks and especially when some time passes due to procrastination without doing the task, it gets even harder to get back into the tasks simply thinking “if I didn’t procrastinate I would have done by now..” and it demoralizes me more and never start that said task..
pilgrim0 3y ago
People suffer from “perfectionism” as much as everyone else suffer from reductionism.
chmod600 3y ago
One of the best ways for me to avoid procrastinating on task X is to have some other task Y, and to procrastinate on Y by working on X. Obviously this requires some mental gymnastics to eventually complete both X and Y, or to come up with some task Y that feels important but actually is not. But it works great.
bertr4nd 3y ago
I’ve never really thought of my procrastination as coming from perfectionism as applied to the work I’m producing, but on reflection, I realized it often comes from self-disappointment (which is perhaps a form of perfectionism). Eg, I procrastinated on writing my research papers in grad school, but it was because I was disappointed in my ideas (or lack thereof), not because I feared not being able to make the current work sufficiently perfect.
UberFly 3y ago
There is truth that at times procrastination is tied to perfectionism, but I'd wager that the cause of procrastination 9/10 times is that we choose to do something that is more enjoyable to us over something that is less.
- mklepaczewski 3y ago
  That's an oversimplification. What you describe fits the behavior of a hedonistic procrastinator, but people procrastinate for many, many reasons.
- nsagent 3y ago
  I don't know if I'm in the minority or the majority, but I can say my experience definitely doesn't match the view you're invoking. When I procrastinate due to my perfectionism, I pretty much never do something enjoyable instead. Rather, I frequently lament that I don't have enough time for fun activities. When I'm procrastinating in a WFH setup I could easily play video games, watch a show/movie, read a book instead, but don't. It's almost as like a punishment, rather than a reward.
waynesonfire 3y ago
I think I struggle with this as well. I was recently watching an episode of Adam Savage on YouTube and he said something that reasonated with me related to this. He said, it's not about getting it right it's about trying new things.
waynesonfire 3y ago
I think I struggle with this as well. I was recently watching an episode of Adam Savage and he said something that reasonated with me related to this. He said, it's not about getting it right it's about trying new things.
yetanother12345 3y ago
Uhm... I didn't read. And, I'll comment anyway. Sorry if I miss a point or two. I did read the whole thread, though (116 comments as per now). Reason was not "Too long" as I never even clicked the link. It was due to the link title "solvingprocrastination", as that name framed procrastination as a thing that needed to be "solved" somehow. I'm sure that for some, sometimes that is the case. For me, not much so. See, procrastination is a tool. It allows my subconscious to review and analyse a problem field while I keep my conscious self engaged with something else. Preferably solving some other issue. Rarely entertainment. I guess the situations where I'd want to peruse entertainment are not that often situations where I have important stuff to do, but I don't know. (I'm thinking mostly @job here, not leisure time) What I do when faced with a problem that needs a solution, but for some reason or other I have no obvious "attack vector" (just to make a poor pun on the HN site name) it this: I do nothing. That is, I do something of course, especially if it's at $job: I do something else. Go solve some other task. While I do that the part of me that excels in solving really complicated stuff does what it does best. This will not bring me the perfect solution. Most of the time it will not even bring me closer to the solution. All the while I'm doing something else entirely, so I don't even expect progress on the issue I put on the mental parking lot for a while. But, somehow, when I start the task that I postponed, this happens: I really start it. I focus, I get going. Implement things, analyze and break down, and become productive. From square one. Thanks to, I believe, doing nothing for a while.
- yeeeloit 3y ago
  You have no idea what procrastination is.
devhe4d 3y ago
For me usually procrastination happens in two scenarios: - the task is too simple which makes it boring to do - the task is too complex and needs an effort which I don’t want to face so I defer doing it. Best scenario happens when a task is both exciting and is in the scope ( or slightly upper ) of my expertise
danvoell 3y ago
I feel like the term perfectionism should be changed. Most people use it as a crutch. Friend - “I don’t do things bad because I’m a perfectionist. “ when in fact he didn’t do things because he was a “perfectionist”. Just call them non-risk takers.
abathur 3y ago
Maybe it's paradoxical, but I think some combination of working on OSS broadly and using Nix in particular have helped me fight an inclination towards perfectionistic procrastination. I still prefer to build a working prototype in private rather than flail in public, but the relative ease of integrating publicly-available sources means I get immediate leverage from ~publishing everything I depend on. I've had less success extending that to writing, though.
polishdude20 3y ago
I get analysis paralysis which just prevents me from doing anything because I can't decide on the optimal thing to do.
elwell 3y ago
Is it bad that I favorite'd this post so I can read it later?
sirsinsalot 3y ago
Procrastination can be related to perfectionism. And chronic stress. And anxiety. And trauma. And clinical depression. And avoidant behaviour disorders linked to autism and ADHD. can be. It is an important distinction, usually one lost on people selling something (be it a product, themselves, their ego)
stoicfungi 3y ago
I came to terms with procrastination, as if (or it could be) it is a core utility function of our consciousness.
cf1241290841 3y ago
Apparently there was a job interview "trick" a while back that said that perfectionism was a great option to answer a question for your weakness with a strength. I never understood who would think this. A core problem of real world economy is that you never have enough time and need to manage it accordingly. The sad truth is, if you dont compensate you will never finish your task as a perfectionist. You will always get half backed solutions that your boss needs to tear away from your very protesting hands. It requires working on yourself to not do that. A lack of problem appropriate resource management is very much a weakness you need to overcome.
litoE 3y ago
"Procrastination is a good thing. Don't put it off until tomorrow" (Ellen DeGeneres)
lukas099 3y ago
One thing that made this worse for me is that it actually worked for the first 18 years or so of my life. School work was easy enough that I could be a perfectionist and actually get rewarded for it. But now that the work piles up it's a recipe for anxiety and failure.

695 points by EndXA 3y ago

Procrastination or accrasy ? That’s the question? Also when only God is perfect and we are all sinners, this fights better procrastination than when the whole socio-culture is based on the human-god gnosis. Want to fight procrastination: return to church.

ChildOfChaos 3y ago

I agree, procrastination to me seems like an emotional problem, it's not a time management problem. I see a lot of young people these days seem to think they need the right app or secret system to fix there issues, I see them asking questions on reddit blaming the todo list app they are using for not getting things done. The thing to me seems, that doing anything has a high cost, that the mind wants to protect us from that, doing nothing is safer, I think it's that system that comes in to protect us. If we do something, it might be disappointing, it might not be as we expect. Even small things, order something from amazon, you have to wait in to get it, the delivery might get messed up, it might be the wrong thing, it might not work etc, doing something requires more doing, it increases the changes of frustration/annoying things to happen, when doing noting often seems like it doesn't cause much issue. This is perhaps why even the smaller tasks are an issue, because the downsides of not doing it are less apparent. It's no wonder we want to procrastinate. The trick I think is to meditate on the idea of momento mori, as the stoics did, remember your time here is limited and also reflect on the negative of not having done or achieved things, because the mind automatically considers the negative of doing something and wants to protect you from that.

sanroot99 3y ago

Wait but why had a blog in this topic, I found his solution helpful.

belter 3y ago

I would comment on this issue, but I am still thinking about what the best comment would be....

ramon156 3y ago
Same, I'll get back to it though
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
justhereforthe 3y ago
Also, I'm concerned that readers would judge my whole existence and the entire library of my life choices if any part of my (theoretical) comment fails to be... well, perfect.
gtirloni 3y ago
You probably want to read the New Oxford Style Manual first. Maybe check a course about writing on Coursera before writing the first draft.
hoc 3y ago
bookmarked the thread.

neverrroot 3y ago

[flagged]

nottorp 3y ago
I thought most good intentions are bought up by road construction companies to maintain the highway to hell...
- neverrroot 3y ago
  The older I grow, the more I see many good intentions at the micro scale hurting the big picture.

sylware 3y ago

As a public open source (yep, open source can be private) programmer (currently x86_64 assembly), and I am very aware of this pitfall. It is very important to move forward in code, because you cannot predict how will actually end up a complex program: you need to have all the (sane) features in to actually know. Since code is all about trade-offs, there is "no perfect". You have to be carefull at avoiding falling into a mental spinning loop about this. Once you have a reasonable minimum of usable features in, publish it. It help breaking such mental loop. For instance, currently writing a printf implementation, and printf specs are already brain damaged by themselves, so I am not looking for perfection, far from it. I did set myself a minimal set of features (full format decoding, hexadecimal and byte strings) before publishing it. Until it does not require the complexity of a compiler, does a good enough job, I'll be happy. Sometimes it is not about perfectionism, but a question of resourses required to achieve something reasonably working: you have a montain to deal with just to get something minimaly working, and you are given a spoon... when you are lucky.

CoastalCoder 3y ago
Pardon the tangent, but could you provide a link to that project? I'm curious to see why something like printf is worth writing in assembly.
- sylware 3y ago
  As I said in my post, I did not release it yet, and it will be very incomplete. But I am not alone, and some did assembly written printf like functions (gogol). The actual real way to work around the inappropriate complexity of that function is to remove it and switch to a brutal "put string" with string conversion functions (with space allocated on the stack). In the end it would be not that much more work in most cases, then in the end I may not even use my assembly code, but lower some printf function usage to what I said.
  - CoastalCoder 3y ago
    Ah, thanks. I wrongly guessed from your post that this printf was part of some larger, already published OSS project.

st-keller 3y ago

If i can’t have perfectionism without procrastination, i prefer to take both!

LoveMortuus 3y ago

“The fall is worth the climb” -Mike Tyson. I think this is kind of like, if you don't fail, you can't succeed. To be happy, fail. -Me, 2024.

frereubu 3y ago
In my more lugubrious moments I prefer Samuel Beckett's "Fail again, fail better".
differentView 3y ago
That's just the push I needed to challenge Mike Tyson to a fight.
- DrBazza 3y ago
  "Everybody has a plan until they're punched in the mouth."
hartator 3y ago
Except if the fall kills you. Survivorship bias.
layer8 3y ago
It’s very possible, however, to just fail without ever succeeding, and that’s what the perfectionist worries about. The above sounds like an instance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent.

brainzap 3y ago

No advice article ever has the courage to say it: you need friends. Social support and accountability are our main pillars, we are social animals.

diggan 3y ago
> Social support and accountability Reminds me of "Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them (2009)" - https://sivers.org/zipit https://sivers.org/zipit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7496923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7496923 (74 points | March 30, 2014 | 21 comments)
- Lyngbakr 3y ago
  That's interesting! Although I haven't invested any thought in it, I would've assumed that announcing plans would have the opposite effect because people are now watching and know what you're trying to achieve, so you'd be more motivated to avoid losing face. Thanks for the article — I'll have to check it out!
  - eloisius 3y ago
    Personally, it would make me feel a burden of shame to have announced a goal and then had a setback, which would become a greater discouragement then just facing a setback if I had not made a big deal about it in the first place.
    - breakingcups 3y ago
      That, and you've skipped ahead and gotten a bit of the social reward for the project without doing it yet. So the reward will be less too.
- odyssey7 3y ago
  I’ve heard about the paradox of announcing plans before. It is intriguing. In light of the need for community, talking about plans might be seen as a way to search for ideas that could have group buy-in and become something to undertake together. Failure to move forward on those plans would reflect that the group interest just wasn’t there. The mistake would have been in assuming you would have ever pursued the goal independently, the social impulse to share could have been the hint. Shared interests between friends can help individual interests and goals become collective ones. Ecclesiastes: one may be overcome (by the exhaustion of going to the gym), two can defend themselves (against lapsing on their New Year’s resolution). A three-ply cord is not easily broken.

dghughes 3y ago

[flagged]

rrr_oh_man 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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147 3y ago

I've struggled with perfectionism procrastination. For example, I've tried in the past to start a weekly newsletter for my blog but was never consistent with it. In the middle of November, I started a daily (M-F) newsletter on topics related to DevOps. I've been consistent with it ever since. The strategies the article outlines that have helped me the most are breaking things down into small pieces and starting small. Also, by making my newsletter daily, it took a lot of pressure off me. I didn't feel like I had to have a "hit" every article like with weekly or monthly cadences. If the article sucked, then tomorrow is a new day with a new article.

jokoon 3y ago

there's nothing wrong with procrastination doctors say people work too much, and there's an epidemic of burnout homo sapiens are not made to work and feel guilty when they don't complete tasks it's a problem of work culture and productivism, nothing else

getlawgdon 3y ago
So we are not in fact what we have made ourselves? What are we then? What are we supposed to be?
- slumberlust 3y ago
  If you can figure out, you'd have bested all of modern philosophy. godspeed!
- electrondood 3y ago
  We are abstractions, with no substantial reality apart from everything else. And thus, not worth getting hung up on most of the time.
- jokoon 3y ago
  you cannot turn mammals into efficient obedient workers and expect them to have a sane mental health. we're mammals with inflated brains, anxiety and depression, and it's too soon since we were hunter gatherers living in caves, we barely started working in cubicles and that's a small sample of the population.

sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago

„ We need to think about failure differently. I’m not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth. But the way most people interpret this assertion is that mistakes are a necessary evil. Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we’d have no originality). And yet, even as I say that embracing failure is an important part of learning, I also acknowledge that acknowledging this truth is not enough. That’s because failure is painful, and our feelings about this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth. To disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth.“ - Ed Catmull (from the book Creativity Inc.) edit: by way of the marginalian, which is excellent, one of the best sites out there- go read it: https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/05/02/creativity-inc-ed-catmull-book/ https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/05/02/creativity-inc-ed-...

SeriousM 3y ago
Failure is just feedback valued as bad. Who we dare to be to value a reaction (inner or extern)?
jimmydddd 3y ago
When in high school, I returned home after a ski weekend with friends. When I returned home, my relatives, who didn't ski, asked if I fell at all during the weekend. I remarked that I had, especially while navigating some expert trails. They consoled me saying "that's OK, maybe you'll do better next time." I was confused at first until I realized that they thought of falling as a tragic outcome instead of a natural part of the learning process.
- sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y ago
  Probably mostly a function of them having no idea what skiing is like. If you never fall you either only use boring routes or ski very slowly - or you are professional skier and have such a breakneck speed you can’t fall (but even then it happens looking at Schumacher)

smugglerFlynn 3y ago

Lots of tongue in cheek comments for such a very serious issue. Please know that perfectionism is often fear-based and trauma-based. Learning to recognise the underlying fear and trauma, and working through them, will help with both perfectionism and procrastination. In my experience, there are very few quick wins, only long methodical work to get through the underlying issues. The best way to do that is with the help of a mental health professional (should be first # in that article).

deleted 3y ago
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janmarsal 3y ago

A true perfectionist such as myself must go through every social media feed before doing more demanding work. Those unclicked links, notifications and red dots must be cleanced.

njsubedi 3y ago
Oh I feel you. I’m here reading your comment because I had something else to do.

devnonymous 3y ago

I have a pet peeve about the term perfectionism - it assumes the target of the idealized 'perfect' state is something other than the absolutely guaranteed limited resource in the world - time. Every self-proclaimed perfectionist should start caring about time as much as they do about the object they are obsessing over. They'll then see the tradeoff in being less of a ^perfectionist^ in that thing and being more ^perfectionist^ about time.

ayhanfuat 3y ago

If you are into the psychological aspects of procrastination, I've found the book Procrastination by Burka and Yuen [1] an amazing read. Perfectionism is one of the themes but apparently there can be multiple, independent sources. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Procrastination-Why-You-What-About/dp/0738211702 https://www.amazon.com/Procrastination-Why-You-What-About/dp...

rq1 3y ago

My take on with procrastination is just start things anyway and then eventually

njsubedi 3y ago

Two tiny hacks changed my lifelong procrastination and people-pleasing nature. 1. Instead of “what will they think?” always ask yourself the alternative question, “what do I want?”. This saves you a lot of time and trouble. Do what you like to see what people will say. Make it a fun game. 2. If something takes less than 2 minutes, just go do it. Make it your “kick”. After few weeks, work your way to turn 2 minutes to 5 then 10 minutes. You will get so much done because of the inertia.

raindropm 3y ago
Ah, fellow people-pleaser! For me, what help a lot is reframing feedback, whatever it is, as opportunity for learning, and not something you need to fear, ashamed, or get rid of(to keep face) Embrace it. See it with the eyes of curiosity, and not fear. Still do your best, yes, but not overly anxious about things you can't control, e.g. what people think.

kitsune_ 3y ago

Yeah, or maybe it's "just" ADHD. "Just" in parentheses because it's a horrible condition to have. Russel Barkley with a succinct video on "ADHD as Motivation Deficit Disorder": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR3RJU6838c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR3RJU6838c

dmvdoug 3y ago
Nailed it. With a small caveat. It’s more a matter of executive functioning [1], less one of (strictly speaking) motivation (although that is how it often feels, so I understand why that’s used as a kind of shorthand). I can very easily feel and be motivated to accomplish some task, but still fail to make any progress (or even begin) until it’s deadline time. Then comes feelings of guilt and self-loathing because I just can’t seem to get my shit together (despite knowing that that’s a wildly wrong way of framing it). It is horrible. But it’s manageable on most days (and yes, I’m medicated and have been since early adulthood). And honestly, having people in your life who understand your condition and can help pick you up sometimes [2], is a huge part of coping. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions [2] I do not mean do stuff for you. For me, when I’m in that place where I’m so frustrated that the only options are either to primally scream or to sit in the corner and cry, a simple fucking hug is like a miracle drug.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > less one of (strictly speaking) motivation FYI, the Russel Barkley video from the grandparent comment is a controversial figure. He presents a lot of his own pet ADHD theories as if they were facts. He's one of the OG internet ADHD influencers, back when ADHD was still commonly stigmatized. Someone I know joked that if you watched enough Russel Barkley videos, anyone could convince themselves they had ADHD.
layer8 3y ago
Nope, I don’t have any of the typical ADHD symptoms (inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity — rather the opposite), but still procrastinate to problematic levels due to perfectionism.

wingspar 3y ago

I’ve found some help with perfectionism and procrastination by using procrastination to overcome perfectionism. Get a project to a “good enough” point, then tell myself “I’ll fix it next year”, when I really just want to rip it out and start over. Of course ‘next year’ never comes as later I come to see that the project is totally fine and doesn’t need a re-do.

nixass 3y ago

I'ma perfectionist!

layer8 3y ago
Not regarding spelling, apparently. ;)

spintin 3y ago

The reason we fear shipping is that we know there is an absolute truth out there that nobody made any effort to find. ONLY if you ship that eternal fundamental solution have you made anything interesting. Everything is shit, think before you act! It's better to do nothing, than to deliver more shit.

diggan 3y ago
> It's better to do nothing, than to deliver more shit. How are you supposed to get better at delivering anything if you won't deliver until you have something "perfect"? Part of the process of getting better is to be shit for a while, while you figuring things out. Common saying when making music is that probably your first 100 songs will be absolutely trash, so better get those out of the door ASAP, so you can get to the good stuff :) Practice is the only way to get better, and your output will probably suck for a while, but we all sucked at one point so it's OK.
- spintin 3y ago
  I meant do mistakes that you don't ship. And think before you make mistakes you don't plan to ship... I know that it's hard to build the intuition and sharp judgment without failing, but with time anyone can dismiss mistakes in their head. Only money makes you make mistakes because you are 1) pressed for time 2) greedy. Money IS the problem, soon money will be the problem of the past though (energy is the final problem), so that wasted time (most of 4 billion man centuries) is lost forever in a puff of smoke.

francisofascii 3y ago

Is this why some people take a long time to submit a PR? During morning standups, they say the work is nearly done, but the PR never comes.

layer8 3y ago
“Nearly done” is sometimes a hidden euphemism for “I feel bad about not having finished this yet, and I fear that others may accordingly look upon me unkindly, so I try to verbally minimize the unfinishedness, and I may yet get lucky and be able to finish it reasonably quickly, so it’s not an outright lie”.

hoc 3y ago

I just saw a simple differentiation between daydreaming (creative/analytic) and detailed planning and execution (productive). Seen that way you'd need to take care to not fall back into that creative-only daydream mode when you actually need/want to be productive. So you would need to steadily remind you to actually continue with concrete execution planning instead of mentally optimizing models (which of course itself is - and feels - productive and maybe even more important/urgent, but not in the ouput-oriented way you'd like/need to achieve in that actual production task). Not sure if it actually helps, but besides that perfectionism and "just do it" issue/solution pair it might be a useful perspective and concrete criterion to keep one focused on the task of finishing. I'll try to include it in the repertoire at least.

submeta 3y ago

Fear of losing control (and the thought of everything blowing up) => Perfectionism => „Let me be 1000% prepared before I start doing it“ => Prepares endlessly => external pressure rises above threshold => fear of consequences creates panick => starts doing the job => creates a reference experience („this was traumatic; next time I need to be prepared to avoid this kind of stress“) => until next „important“ task lands on desk. I tend to think that mostly people with a lot of capacity for creating mental images (who can freak themselves out) are prone to procrastination. Edit: Apparently it is more complex than that. I believe that self-worth also plays a role (fear of not delivering as good as one would like to), also ADHS (jumping to a thousand other things and losing focus). Generally fear plays a role. Meditation helps. Anything that helps to relax (running, breathing exercises).

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

I had an instructor for a seminar that I took, keep repeating the phrase “We need to know what 'done' looks like.” Another manager I worked with, said “The #1 feature of this product is 'Ship'.” In the app we’re about to release, we don’t have any schedule pressure. We can release when we want. I found that the rest of the team was in “Perma-Tweak” mode. Lots of “Just one more thing.” I realized that it was never going to ship, so I set an arbitrary date of … today. In true software development tradition, we’ll be late, but not by much. Also, we have a great excuse. The CEO had a baby (ahead of schedule, but the deadline was quite firm).

drtgh 3y ago

In recent years the increase in launching products and updates without in-depth checks and with unfinished features is becoming routine... as if achieving the introduction of low quality products in the market were the goal, under the "productivity" shield. "Productivity", the abstract word that looks as if it were invented by the "flat-earthers" to sell books. Just a drug for to make the clients to pay for being alpha-testers, without remorse. Not easy to talk about perfectionism. In the last decade the threshold changed much, unfortunately. The main problem with this is in the retro-feeding, low quality here, there, affect the time needed for to advance in better products because there are more issues to solve, that of course will be "un-productive" to solve, in loop. Enjoy.

revskill 3y ago

I'm both a procastinator and a perfectionist. I'm happy about that fact, so that i can avoid "useless actions" until i fully understand what to do first. Another word, solving problem before implementation !

sfn42 3y ago
I'm similar and I get what you mean, but I'm not sure it's a positive. Some times I waste a lot of time trying to find the perfect solution, can't find it, give up and just do the best I know how to do. Almost always, while doing that, I discover better ways to do things and often this is nå iterative process where I pretty much start over multiple times until I'm happy with the result. I don't think the procrastination is useful. I think it's better to just get started and do anything. That way you learn and make progress.

hartator 3y ago

> One reason why people procrastinate is perfectionism. Is it though? Or is it something nice to tell ourselves? I don’t know if there is correlation here. I have seen poeple procrastinating with no sense of details and the reverse is true too.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
Seems like it. I don't think the correlation described is false. What you're saying about people procrastinating for other reasons, is the difference between the phrase "one reason why people procrastinate is perfectionism" and the phrase "the only reason why people procrastinate is perfectionism". As in, people can procrastinate for any of multiple reasons, and perfectionism is one of those reasons.
layer8 3y ago
“One reason” doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a prevailing reason, and there are certainly other reasons.

avindroth 3y ago

In my experience, perfectionism is crafted post-procrastination. It probably makes no sense, but the mind often does this convoluted thing in order to protect procrastination.

austin-cheney 3y ago

The article hints at psychology and then fails to dive into it. Perfectionism, only when intentionally and cognitively executed in an orderly fashion, is linked to extremely high consciousness and extremely high consciousness when not properly managed is highly correlated with anxiety. The slang for this is anal-retentive. This becomes complicated because anxiety is most typically concerned with high measures of neuroticism but a person can score extremely low in neuroticism and yet still suffer symptoms of anxiety from too high of consciousness when their concerns for orderliness prevents timely accomplishment of a task. That specific set of personalities defines obsessive-compulsive disorder in contrast to anxiety in general. The solution to this is to learn to accept and contribute a wrong outcome, as opposed to taking no action at all, which requires a tremendous amount of careful practice. The ability to accept that solution is even culturally reinforced as identified in one of the Hofstede cultural indexes: uncertainty avoidance.

machomaster 3y ago
The solution is to understand that no amount of guilt/regret is going to change the past and that no amount of internal anxiety is going to help the future.
ShamelessC 3y ago
> This becomes complicated because anxiety is most typically concerned with high measures of neuroticism but a person can score extremely low in neuroticism and yet still suffer symptoms of anxiety from too high of consciousness when their concerns for orderliness prevents timely accomplishment of a task. That specific set of personalities defines obsessive-compulsive disorder in contrast to anxiety in general. Just to clarify, you're still referring specifically to "perfectionist" personality types? Because last time I checked anxiety is _not_ correlated specifically with any personality traits but rather spans a broad spectrum of personality types.
exolymph 3y ago
*conscientiousness, distinct from consciousness :)
- 3y ago

ghoomketu 3y ago

The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom. This may not work for everyone but for me it works exceptionally. Most often the reason why you don't want to work on something is because you find it too hard, too boring, or too irrelevant. But if you force yourself to be bored for a while, you will eventually crave some mental stimulation. And that's when you can pick up the task you have been avoiding and work on it with renewed interest and focus. Of course, this requires some discipline and self-awareness. You have to resist the temptation of checking your phone, browsing the web, or doing anything else that distracts you from your boredom. Maybe there is some psychological reason for it but I have found this technique to be very effective for overcoming procrastination and getting things done.

almostnormal 3y ago
An alternative to boredom is something else more important even less desirable that needs to be done, that drives progress on what is being procastrinated. Unfortunately, it only shifts the problem elsewhere.
- OldHunter69X 3y ago
  As in, pursue something else that seems even more important, yet less desirable than what we were already considering? Or am I mixing something up?
- machomaster 3y ago
  This does not solve the issue of procrastination at all. A common myth is that procrastinators are simply lazy people who don't do anything useful. This is not the case. Many procrastinators are super-efficient at working on what they need to do; it's just that they are procrastinating on another useful task/project that objectively should have a priority.
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  I call this procasti-working and it is absolutely my most productive space. I don't really see it as a problem though; I might be completing lower-priority tasks, but they would have later become high- or critical-priority tasks; it's ultimately a net win.

bjornsing 3y ago

I’ve long held the belief that procrastination is the rational response in a low return on investment (ROI) situation. This seems to fit nicely into that framework: if significant investment is required, you only value perfect output and are doubtful it can be achieved, then the expected ROI is pretty low.

IAmGraydon 3y ago
I think this is right, but it’s really a low predicted ROI. The problem is that we’re pretty bad at accurately predicting.
deleted 3y ago
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gherkinnn 3y ago

> For example, perfectionistic students might be so critical of themselves for making mistakes in school assignments, that they will postpone doing homework to avoid dealing with the associated negative emotions. From the very beginning, I skimmed the rest. Surely, this can be reduced to > Avoid dealing with the associated negative emotions. Start there, and work through those emotions.

yeeeloit 3y ago
> Start there, and work through those emotions. Do have any advice for how to deal with the associated negative emotions? They seem kind of endless, and I'm not really sure what to do with them. I've tried things like mindfulness, meditation, journaling, talking about them and so on. But they just keep coming back, it's like they can't be resolved. It's quite painful, and I'm at a loss.

hyperthesis 3y ago

https://structuredprocrastination.com/ https://structuredprocrastination.com/

Aurornis 3y ago

I developed a bad case of perfectionism-procrastination after working for a toxic boss. It didn't matter how polished our product was, he'd find a way to tear it apart. When he'd have a bad day, he'd start picking apart a random team's product. "Unbelievable!" he'd say in Slack, dropping a screen recording of the app that showed something we were supposed to be embarrassed about. It could be that the app took 3 seconds to load and show fresh data from his hotel WiFi, or it could be as simple as the UI not matching some directive he gave to the UI designers who failed to update the designs or tell us about the change. He would rant about how disappointing we were. At his worst, he fired some people on the spot for a problem that wasn't even their fault. I quickly learned that the only way to avoid that pain was to not ship anything. The people he liked most were the ones who were operating in hypotheticals: The people who made UI designs in Figma, or the architects who drew nice diagrams about how things would work, or the people who wrote long design documents to hand to other teams. They never shipped anything for him to critique, so he thought they were the geniuses of the company. As long as they could avoid having to actually implement anything, they continued to be favorites. It took me longer than I like to admit to shake that habit when I finally escaped. I found myself delaying shipment, pivoting from design doc to design doc, and trying to operate in that hypothetical space as long as I could. Fortunately I learned to get over it, but it was scary how much that single job could shape a large part of my personality.

worklaptopacct 3y ago
I have recognized at some point that I had something similar, but originating in my childhood. Most of the time I would be told to do something vague (e.g. clean your room), and no matter how much did I do, the feedback was usually negative (e.g. "You call this done?"), following with me getting grounded. Eventually, I've developed a mindset that told me that there's no point in trying, because it's impossible to do things properly. This has spread out into personal interests as well - I would give up quickly, because what's the point?
the_cat_kittles 3y ago
im still thinking about this because its so fundamental. it applies in almost everything. think about how many times people have called professional athletes stupid or bad. it happens all the time because the mistakes are unambiguous. but the coaches have a much longer grace period before people generally decide they are bad. when a musician messes up a piece everyone cringes and lots of people probably think that person is a failure even though they are playing at a level less than a tenth of one percent of people reach. in any discipline that can be (more or less) directly measured, lots of people perceive the people doing those disciplines to be more incompetent because their mistakes are more easily visible. when someone who is like your old boss (i think a huge percentage of people are) finds themselves in a situation where their mistakes are unambiguous and obvious they panic and have an identity crisis. most people do not live with the accountability of their mistakes like people who make and do things with unambiguous results. it would be great if more people did, but in a way, thats the whole point of those "ideas" / bullshit jobs, to insulate you from your mistakes.

xyzelement 3y ago

Perfectionism is too positive a word for this (“my greatest weakness? I am a perfectionist.) Fear of failure feels more apt. I hesitate starting/taking the next action because I am not confident I can land the goal all the way. IE - I fear trying to do X and not nailing it more than I fear not even trying it in the first place. Like many fears it is usually inappropriate and unhelpful. In reality you are almost always further ahead in life if you try even if you don’t get to the outcome you envisioned.

kthejoker2 3y ago

I probably have a whole personal blog of my own on the topic, dear as it is to my soul. My two main pieces of advice: The bar is very very low, and share your burden quickly. 99 times out of 100 you are way overestimating the value of what you're delivering and people's expectations for it, and underestimating the value of time i.e. shipping quickly. I've turned in so many things I'm not happy with and gotten a "this is great" that now I frequently just send over pseudocode, whiteboard sketches, and bullet point design docs to just get going on the feedback loop. Nobody has ever said "this is so bad we can't use any of it." I also realized I do much better finishing other people's work than starting my own .. and so does almost everyone else. Bringing other people in overcomes "the boredom paradox" of a looming deadline - working with other people has its own challenges, but it is definitely not boring! One specific thing I did that helped a few years ago at my precious company was I told my team, wrote in my email signature, ran a small study group, etc. On grit, procrastination, and "growth mindset" and just made a very intentional effort to tell people how I struggled with this problem. So many people shared the problem! It really gave us a nice community and helped us (and management) recognize some of these issues, lesrn some new techniques, and get better at coaching, setting expectations, and ultimately managing the work. So maybe last piece of advice is be open if you have these issues.

Noumenon72 3y ago
> One specific thing I did that helped a few years ago at my precious company was I told my team, wrote in my email signature, ran a small study group, etc. On grit, procrastination, and "growth mindset" and just made a very intentional effort to tell people how I struggled with this problem. What did you write in your email signature?
- kthejoker2 3y ago
  it was basically just an ad to join our Teams channel where we shared articles and had a book club. "I'm working on my unhealthy perfectionism by developing a growth mindset. Join me!"
stiglitz 3y ago
>I've turned in so many things I'm not happy with and gotten a "this is great" Great if this feedback is from users; not great if it's from somebody who's just been waiting for you to finish it so that they can sell it. Unfortunately in a big-company environment like the one I work in, the initial and dominant feedback is usually from the latter.

adhrit 3y ago

100 percent. I even procrastinated for 2 minutes to write down this comment

electrondood 3y ago

The most effective antidote to procrastination for me is to get up at 5am. I have literally nothing to do for 4 hours, and I'm awake, and I have loads of energy, and no one else is up, so I may as well just do that thing I've been putting off. Also, literally just starting the task, regardless of how I feel. That works too.

alexey-salmin 3y ago
Can't you just read the Twitter feed?

motohagiography 3y ago

Life is harsh, sure, but "perfectionism," is a terrible and over-freighted word for someone stuck in a double bind and suffering as the result of it. Consider the situations from which someone might acquire a pathological fear of some kinds criticism. A huge likelihood is that as the result of submitting to uncertainty they have been: - personally abused and shamed - made the object of sadism or cruelty - humiliated to their peers - had important things taken from them - been isolated - lost an important relationship If you know someone suffering from a bind like that, find a way to tell them that "this is not that," and you can have a big impact on their life.

pessimizer 3y ago
I don't understand the purpose of taking a good word "perfectionism" for a pathological fear of criticism and rejection, and replacing it with a random incomplete list of things that might have caused a pathological fear of criticism and rejection.
- motohagiography 3y ago
  If you consider what the perfectionism is the effect of, it's easier to unwind than just saying, "oh, you're in a hole, you should stop being in a hole." Describing anything as an 'ism' is a thought terminating judgment of it, and not a meaningful abstraction for it that yields information about what it might be caused by. This article might help your understanding as it talks about what concrete thinking is and how to recognize it: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-and-psychopathology/201407/schizophrenia-and-modes-thought https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-and-psychopat...

pessimizer 3y ago

This page seems like a nearly empty site someone put up imitating Hillary Rettig's work, looking for life coaching gigs. https://hillaryrettigproductivity.com/overcome-perfectionism/ https://hillaryrettigproductivity.com/overcome-perfectionism... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13417133-the-7-secrets-of-the-prolific https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13417133-the-7-secrets-o...

mklepaczewski 3y ago
The site is full of good information, but I agree it feels too search-engine optimized. It's not well structured for a large portion of the target audience (ADD/ADHD people). Articles are too wordy, there are no article or section summaries, and the number of internal links does not help people focus on the article they read.

deleted 3y ago

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mynameisnoone 3y ago

It's also easy to conflate perfectionism with excellence to rationalize shit work. Excellence is ships good shit but doesn't waste time on unreasonable shit or analysis paralysis. Experimentation, learning, and multiple iterations allow improvements to eventually reach a satisficing threshold good enough to ship.

aatd86 3y ago

It's a correlation, not a causation, in my experience. It's likely that the brain chooses the path of least resistance toward dopamine. Sometimes, just choosing to not be lazy clears it because then not being lazy and doing the darn thing provides enough of a dopamine hit in itself. It can be changed consciously. There is also the fear of the unk own but one has to then know that no matter what, they will figure it out. That can be a self-confidence issue. Related to the first point still.

tamimio 3y ago

Fantastic article, I’m perfectionist to the bones, and as the article states, it does cause procrastination for the “personal” tasks I have (one time it took me 3months to perfect a resume, and the same reason why my personal site is not yet complete), however, for work related, I do not procrastinate but I ended up overworking extra hours from my personal time to perfect the little details about whatever I’m doing, mostly details no one notices except me! > Forgive yourself for past procrastination And this is an important point too, for the personal tasks and especially when some time passes due to procrastination without doing the task, it gets even harder to get back into the tasks simply thinking “if I didn’t procrastinate I would have done by now..” and it demoralizes me more and never start that said task..

pilgrim0 3y ago

People suffer from “perfectionism” as much as everyone else suffer from reductionism.

chmod600 3y ago

One of the best ways for me to avoid procrastinating on task X is to have some other task Y, and to procrastinate on Y by working on X. Obviously this requires some mental gymnastics to eventually complete both X and Y, or to come up with some task Y that feels important but actually is not. But it works great.

bertr4nd 3y ago

I’ve never really thought of my procrastination as coming from perfectionism as applied to the work I’m producing, but on reflection, I realized it often comes from self-disappointment (which is perhaps a form of perfectionism). Eg, I procrastinated on writing my research papers in grad school, but it was because I was disappointed in my ideas (or lack thereof), not because I feared not being able to make the current work sufficiently perfect.

UberFly 3y ago

There is truth that at times procrastination is tied to perfectionism, but I'd wager that the cause of procrastination 9/10 times is that we choose to do something that is more enjoyable to us over something that is less.

mklepaczewski 3y ago
That's an oversimplification. What you describe fits the behavior of a hedonistic procrastinator, but people procrastinate for many, many reasons.
nsagent 3y ago
I don't know if I'm in the minority or the majority, but I can say my experience definitely doesn't match the view you're invoking. When I procrastinate due to my perfectionism, I pretty much never do something enjoyable instead. Rather, I frequently lament that I don't have enough time for fun activities. When I'm procrastinating in a WFH setup I could easily play video games, watch a show/movie, read a book instead, but don't. It's almost as like a punishment, rather than a reward.

waynesonfire 3y ago

I think I struggle with this as well. I was recently watching an episode of Adam Savage on YouTube and he said something that reasonated with me related to this. He said, it's not about getting it right it's about trying new things.

waynesonfire 3y ago

I think I struggle with this as well. I was recently watching an episode of Adam Savage and he said something that reasonated with me related to this. He said, it's not about getting it right it's about trying new things.

yetanother12345 3y ago

Uhm... I didn't read. And, I'll comment anyway. Sorry if I miss a point or two. I did read the whole thread, though (116 comments as per now). Reason was not "Too long" as I never even clicked the link. It was due to the link title "solvingprocrastination", as that name framed procrastination as a thing that needed to be "solved" somehow. I'm sure that for some, sometimes that is the case. For me, not much so. See, procrastination is a tool. It allows my subconscious to review and analyse a problem field while I keep my conscious self engaged with something else. Preferably solving some other issue. Rarely entertainment. I guess the situations where I'd want to peruse entertainment are not that often situations where I have important stuff to do, but I don't know. (I'm thinking mostly @job here, not leisure time) What I do when faced with a problem that needs a solution, but for some reason or other I have no obvious "attack vector" (just to make a poor pun on the HN site name) it this: I do nothing. That is, I do something of course, especially if it's at $job: I do something else. Go solve some other task. While I do that the part of me that excels in solving really complicated stuff does what it does best. This will not bring me the perfect solution. Most of the time it will not even bring me closer to the solution. All the while I'm doing something else entirely, so I don't even expect progress on the issue I put on the mental parking lot for a while. But, somehow, when I start the task that I postponed, this happens: I really start it. I focus, I get going. Implement things, analyze and break down, and become productive. From square one. Thanks to, I believe, doing nothing for a while.

yeeeloit 3y ago
You have no idea what procrastination is.

devhe4d 3y ago

For me usually procrastination happens in two scenarios: - the task is too simple which makes it boring to do - the task is too complex and needs an effort which I don’t want to face so I defer doing it. Best scenario happens when a task is both exciting and is in the scope ( or slightly upper ) of my expertise

danvoell 3y ago

I feel like the term perfectionism should be changed. Most people use it as a crutch. Friend - “I don’t do things bad because I’m a perfectionist. “ when in fact he didn’t do things because he was a “perfectionist”. Just call them non-risk takers.

abathur 3y ago

Maybe it's paradoxical, but I think some combination of working on OSS broadly and using Nix in particular have helped me fight an inclination towards perfectionistic procrastination. I still prefer to build a working prototype in private rather than flail in public, but the relative ease of integrating publicly-available sources means I get immediate leverage from ~publishing everything I depend on. I've had less success extending that to writing, though.

polishdude20 3y ago

I get analysis paralysis which just prevents me from doing anything because I can't decide on the optimal thing to do.

elwell 3y ago

Is it bad that I favorite'd this post so I can read it later?

sirsinsalot 3y ago

Procrastination can be related to perfectionism. And chronic stress. And anxiety. And trauma. And clinical depression. And avoidant behaviour disorders linked to autism and ADHD. can be. It is an important distinction, usually one lost on people selling something (be it a product, themselves, their ego)

stoicfungi 3y ago

I came to terms with procrastination, as if (or it could be) it is a core utility function of our consciousness.

cf1241290841 3y ago

Apparently there was a job interview "trick" a while back that said that perfectionism was a great option to answer a question for your weakness with a strength. I never understood who would think this. A core problem of real world economy is that you never have enough time and need to manage it accordingly. The sad truth is, if you dont compensate you will never finish your task as a perfectionist. You will always get half backed solutions that your boss needs to tear away from your very protesting hands. It requires working on yourself to not do that. A lack of problem appropriate resource management is very much a weakness you need to overcome.

litoE 3y ago

"Procrastination is a good thing. Don't put it off until tomorrow" (Ellen DeGeneres)

lukas099 3y ago

One thing that made this worse for me is that it actually worked for the first 18 years or so of my life. School work was easy enough that I could be a perfectionist and actually get rewarded for it. But now that the work piles up it's a recipe for anxiety and failure.