7 ms·

How to motivate yourself to do a thing you don't want to do

323 points by mooreds 1y ago

willahmad 1y ago
"I will read it after this 15 min short video"
Y_Y 1y ago
Why would you do a thing you didn't ultimately want to do though?
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  So you don't become weak and overweight, for instance.
  - Y_Y 1y ago
    If I hadn't wanted to avoid diet and exercise more than I wanted to not be weak and overweight then we wouldn't be here.
    - stuartjohnson12 1y ago
      Who am I but the average weighted sum of my future preferences? Why should the temporal dimension of my preferences allow them to suppress other preferences?
  - thomastjeffery 1y ago
    I find "not weak and overweight" to be the least compelling way to frame it. There are a lot of positive implications that become obvious when you say you want to be strong and lightweight. While "not weak" is a passive character judgement, "strong" is a constantly available opportunity.
- plemer 1y ago
  I read this as: how you can motivate yourself to do something you're currently not motivated to do but "ultimately" believe is worth doing.
- __turbobrew__ 1y ago
  Necessity. I don’t want to do my taxes every year and I need to force myself to just sit down and do it.
  - giancarlostoro 1y ago
    Or someone else will force you to sit down for questioning ;)
    - __turbobrew__ 1y ago
      Yes, there are a number of things in this life where people with guns show up to your house if you don’t do it.
- jon-wood 1y ago
  Regrettably I need money in order to eat food.
  - task331 1y ago
    so you do want to do it right, because you want to eat
- atoav 1y ago
  Many reasons. Maybe not doing that thing will be bad inthe long run. Maybe you want the fruit of doing that thing, but cannot enjoy doing it right now, etc. A popular example would be sports if you're not very fit. You would obviously have tangible health benefits if you did it, you may look more attractive, you may have more energy both physically and mentally. But since you're a couch potatoe sports is demanding, exhausting and sucks. Would you do more sports it would suck less or you might even find it enjoyable, but you don't and that's where you are. This puts you in the weird spot of wanting a thing but not wanting to do what would get you there, even if the reasons you don't want to do it would vanish if you did it. You can only really overcome this mentally, e.g. by priming yourself in certain ways, or by creating situations where you don't have a choice, because others rely on you, etc.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  This isn't that they don't want to do it, they do, but they don't want the effort involved.
- what_was_it 1y ago
  Yes! This is the real question. I wrote about this (as a tangent, but anyway) recently. https://asemic-horizon.com/2025/07/28/julian/ https://asemic-horizon.com/2025/07/28/julian/ TL;DR "akrasia", procrastination etc. are all forms of ambivalence that are not nearly as "psychological" and individual as usually presented. The nausea is in the world itself.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- nachox999 1y ago
  how to do something when your mind wanna do it because it's rational but your emotions don't because it's painful
- task331 1y ago
  At the end of the day I don't think there is such a thing. If you do I think deep down you want to do it, otherwise you wouldn't.
- Emore 1y ago
  When future-you wishes present-you had done the thing. So in a sense there is a you (future-you) that actually does want to do the thing.
amelius 1y ago
We can learn from people who go to church every Sunday.
- ebiester 1y ago
  I think that's a bit misinformed. Churchgoers get connection to community and most active churchgoers have positive emotional connections to times associated with church. Now, those who go out of obligation and have negative experiences may agree with you, but church services are some of what I miss most from leaving the religion.
  - thomastjeffery 1y ago
    As someone who used to be in the latter group, I wouldn't call it motivation. More like habitual compliance. I have many complaints specific to my experience of dragging myself to church, but the experience itself was incredibly neutral.
mallowdram 1y ago
"How words are post-hoc arbitrary retrofits to actual neural thoughts" A self-help guide about language wholly distinct from thought.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
  I have participated in a company-wide meeting not that long ago and as a corporate veteran of sorts, I have never heard such a high amount of new corporate friendly neologisms in such a short amount of time. Corporate bingo would have been over 3 minutes flat. There is a part of me that is amused, because people saying those words clearly did not believe them ( delivery was very flat ), but it does make me question the future of our language. My initial pet theory was that is going to be more uniform as a result, but now... I am not so certain.
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    I began in animation and shifted to gaming in 2001 where we encountered - against our stated goals of delivery - an audience rejecting both words and narratives (they thanked us yet we weren't at all going for this). So a small team of us stuck together since and we've been unraveling, decrypting how that initial audience craving might work out as a next language. In retrospect it now seems obvious, how the path led here, but then in 2001, it was a complete mystery.
ImPrajyoth 1y ago
You need Drive to get things done. Motivational can only make you start them.
piker 1y ago
I personally draw inspiration from John Carmack. I've understood his approach to be basically just stare at your problem and ignore everything else until you make a little bit of progress. The answer is there.
- terabytest 1y ago
  Sounds like a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. My main issue is to even get myself to sit and stare at the work to be done. It has been really frustrating seeing the lengths I go to, consciously or unconsciously, to procrastinate.
  - koakuma-chan 1y ago
    I used to work a non tech office job, one day it became so unbearable, I was literally falling asleep and was no longer able to bring myself to do the job at all, because of how much mental effort was required for even the smallest things. I stood up and quit.
    - RangerScience 1y ago
      What’d you do after that?
      - koakuma-chan 1y ago
        Endured condemnation from others while simultaneously looking for a proper tech job, took me 8 months to find.
    - ljlolel 1y ago
      What was the job?
      - koakuma-chan 1y ago
        Data entry
    - 1y ago
semiinfinitely 1y ago
> The only way I can convince myself to do it is by finding a suitably engaging show I can distract myself with on my phone while I huff and puff. > Combine the task with something you enjoy. You know what makes cleaning out the garage a lot better? Some good tunes. This motivational advice is deeply misguided. These are very clear examples of "dopamine stacking". The idea is that by combining a stimulating activity (eg watching show/music) with a motivation-requiring activity (eg working out/cleaning) you can get an initial boost in motivation to accomplish the hard task. It works (initially) because the stimulating task (show/music) is giving you a dopamine increase which feels like motivation to complete the hard task. The problem is that if you repeat this behavior with any consistency, your dopamine system quickly adjusts the high activity-combo level of dopamine as a new baseline. Soon not even the dopamine you get from the combination is sufficient to motivate you to accomplish the task. At this point people often seek another short lived dopamine-increasing stimulus to combine into the mix. You can see this pattern in people who exercise only with some combination of pre-workout, caffeine, music, phone scrolling. The off-ramp is learning how to derive dopamine (aka "motivation") from the actual activity itself. further reading: 1. https://youtu.be/PhBQ4riwDj4?si=n-afP-Rj_k7qfATz https://youtu.be/PhBQ4riwDj4?si=n-afP-Rj_k7qfATz
- emil-lp 1y ago
  > further reading: youtube
  - shermantanktop 1y ago
    turn on subtitles, i guess?
    - siva7 1y ago
      it's more about the source, not the format
    - robotnikman 1y ago
      Off topic, but I'm guessing your username references the M4 Sherman tank? Kinda clever and funny.
cjbarber 1y ago
My observation is it's an equation between: 1) reward/incentive/expected good feelings 2) effort/displeasure of doing the thing and the result One way to increase #1 is to make it more socially involved. If you're working on a project solitarily, start going to events and talking about it with people, or write about it online. Humans are massively socially motivated. For #2, one way to address this is with emotional processing. Often something is unpleasant because it reminds of something we didn't like from the past. So really digesting those emotions can allow the expected displeasure to fade because we kind of integrate it into our brains/bodies. But the key for this is that it has to be emotional processing, not intellectual processing.
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  Don’t forget 3) consequences for not doing it
  - idiotsecant 1y ago
    Yes, in my experience the social part of this is not so much the carrot, but the stick. If I don't do this thing, I will look lazy to this person or this person will be disappointed or inconvenienced, etc. Probably not a healthy outlook!
thomastjeffery 1y ago
I have spent my entire life frustrated with the reality that none of this advice actually works for me. This is because motivation was never my problem to begin with: my problem is "executive dysfunction", which is very counterproductively titled ADHD.
- xyzzy9563 1y ago
  Well think of this: if you knew there was $100 million in a dufflebag of gold at the bottom of a pond, would you learn how to put on scuba gear and retrieve it? Perhaps you don't have compelling enough reasons to do things.
  - bobcorponoi 1y ago
    I have a similar issue, I can find motivation to start something but then it spirals into other things. For $100 million I would probably just learn to put on the scuba gear but for instance my mind would go to "I should make my own scuba gear". So for a personal project I start on something and decide I need something else, so then I want to make a tool to help me make that thing and so on. I think it's probably related to a shorter attention span so I'm working on that.
  - thomastjeffery 1y ago
    Learn how? Almost definitely. Actually do it? That's a lot less certain than you would expect. I would probably start. Since this hypothetical is a pretty simple one-off, I might even manage to generate enough executive functioning to follow through. What I can tell you for certain is that I am still very excited to work on a custom keyboard project that I started 4 years ago. I have all the parts and equipment readily available at home, and plenty of free time. I have not worked on it at all over the past 4 years.
  - doubled112 1y ago
    I do need a compelling reason to do something. I can't figure out how all these people get through what they do without wanting to jump out their office windows, to be honest. Is it fun/interesting? Can I make it fun/interesting? Does it make me or save me money so I can do something fun/interesting? If the answer is no to all of these questions, I'm going to have a bad time. Unfortunately, I'm that simple. I've gotten better at number two over the years, though. Scuba diving sounds fun. I'd probably do it for less.
nashashmi 1y ago
> As you near the end, you can even push yourself a little to wrap it up and get it off your plate. As a person with ADHD, this struck me. I have an easy time continuing something. But an impossible time starting and finishing something. Obviously I am not mentally healthy. But who is this person who is mentally healthy? And what am I missing to being the same way? I think it boils down to being yelled at and penalized and being unable to handle this feedback well enough. I don’t know exactly what I am fearing here. It will be an exploration. > you are both pleased with yourself and a little annoyed that it took you so long to deal with. I am never pleased at the end of a project. I am blame full why I could not do it before.
- WalterSear 1y ago
  What you are missing is that estimates of ADHD heritability vary between 60 and 90%. There's a lots of one can do to overcome and accommodate it, but one of the first steps is to approach neurotypical productivity advice with substantial skepticism: they aren't fighting the fight we are; don't even know that our fight exists.
xyzzy9563 1y ago
The way that works best for me is a 2-step approach: 1. Think about the ultimate goal and why you want to do it. If there isn't a compelling reason, there is no reason to do it, especially if there is short-term pain or annoyance. 2. Take at least one small action towards it per day. This often puts you in the mindset to do more things.
csr86 1y ago
If I remember correctly, a YT video from Andrew Hubermann, talks about rewards and that you should avoid excessive rewards. It can make the actual work even more painful, because your mind is too focused on the reward, instead of trying to enjoy the hard work itself.
hbarka 1y ago
I understand that these heuristics are completely different for people with ADHD. Also the role of dopamine cycles has a big effect on proactiveness.
Arch-TK 1y ago
I can do the things that are hard to start but fine to continue. But sometimes you have a very long slog which is hard to start and hard to continue and hard to finish. That's where the difficulty lies.
incomingpain 1y ago
I just spent a couple weeks hyperfocused on solo building a whole new python project from scratch. Motivation is a skill that needs to be trained. It's a bit counter intuitive, and while your environment needs to be conducive to work. Among the other factors, you dont just gain motivation by having a clean desk.
- duderific 1y ago
  On the other hand, I'd posit that you're much less likely to feel motivated if your desk is messy.
nachox999 1y ago
"just DO IT!!!" -Shia LaBeouf
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  That's what it really boils down to.
- RyanOD 1y ago
  Oddly, I sort of agree. Many times I've put something off for days, but then once I finally get myself over the hump and get working on it, I actually get focused and sort of enjoy the challenge. It's weird, but it's the not the task that is the problem...it's just getting started.
  - duderific 1y ago
    I call this the "Wall of Inertia." Before you walk up to it and face it, it feels 10 feet tall, but once you actually just take it on, it only turned out to be 6 inches tall and you can easily hop over it. But it feeling 10 feet tall is enough to make you avoid it entirely for a long time.
everyone 1y ago
Do what u wanna do. Don't do what u don't wanna do. .. Or at least try, doing otherwise is crazy right?
- jraph 1y ago
  If only.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
siliconc0w 1y ago
For more intellectual endeavors I find if I'm avoiding working on something it can be because I'm being lazy or just don't like the category of work but often it is a good sign it's not quite the right activity for the moment. It may not be well defined enough, or the highest priority, or doubting it is likely to yield the outcome I want. Time of day matters too, in the morning I feel like doing different things than in the afternoon. I can push through and "just do it" if I have to but often it's worth listening to this feeling and picking a task I am motivated to do instead.
jraph 1y ago
Do something quick and crappy. And let your perfectionism fix it. And... here you are gotten started! It can be a single word or a instruction that crashes your program at the location that needs to be worked on. Leave a syntax error for getting started quick tomorrow. Write down what needs to be done before it leaves your head (but don't make it perfectly structured and clean, a few words on a paper on your desk will do). edit: For instance, you'd possibly want to fix the missing "n" in this comment. Make this feeling a tool against your procrastination. edit2: ah, and get the hell out of HN, too.
trjordan 1y ago
Everybody is different, but the biggest reason I struggle with this right now is the pace of modern life. Doing hard things is hard, and that means I won't be thinking about the other stuff I have to do. I'm more apt to miss a text from my family when I'm running or writing a document than when I'm vibe coding, because the effort is all-encompassing. Subconsciously, that's stressful, so I steer away from it. Habits help here, because with enough repetition, I learn that it's OK to disappear for an hour to do the thing. But the real issue is getting the meta-organization of my life right enough that I'm not scared to shut down my ambient executive function for that hour. This shows up as both "I'm too busy to do the hard thing" and "I'm too tired to do the hard thing." Slowing down isn't the answer, but it's been pretty transformative to notice that that's what I'm worried about.
- nicbou 1y ago
  I agree. There's always so much to do just to stay on top of things. Everything from writing to people down to watering plants and updating software. Last summer I went to a festival, and for a week I was unreachable, had no working phone, and had no chores. I could eat by showing my bracelet. I didn't even have the time. It was blissful.
coffeecoders 1y ago
I find it interesting how a lot of this advice overlaps with the same tricks we use in software engineering to tackle big problems. Breaking things into smaller chunks or even gamifying with streaks is basically the human version of agile sprints. Sleep, diet, and stress are like "system dependencies".
gmac 1y ago
See also: https://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ https://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
task331 1y ago
After several years of trying to come up with the perfect way to keep motivation up, I have found there is no such thing. The only thing that matters for me nowadays is this: before I start the task, I admit to myself that it is going to be hard, but I am doing it anyways, so why do it like its a drag? It's pointless and it's a waste of energy.
- task331 1y ago
  Also, I have found that if I don't open myself up to the hard task at hand before I start, a lot of things can happen that deviates myself from doing the task in its optimal form. For example, I can come up with excuses for not doing the task right now, or I can invent other work that is 'more important', or find something to blame while I do the task so I can cope with its difficulty, etc. There is a myriad of things that can be invented to avoid or cope with the pain, but if I am going through this anyway, there is no reason whatsoever to make it more painful that it will already be.
guhcampos 1y ago
Let's all be honest here. I use Vyvanse.
nextworddev 1y ago
Biggest productivity hack is to just avoid working in fields you don’t feel passionate about. If you don’t know what you are passionate about, then just keep trying things passionately
GoldenMonkey 1y ago
Avoid thinking of the pain of the task at hand. Imagine and focus on the reward of these tasks. Lifting weights... imagine the stronger person you will become. Studying for that exam.. picture the career you aspire to. Avoiding that donut... imagine the healthier you. Habit stacking helps to remind one of the task to do. To avoid the struggle of doing them, picture the desired outcome.
- aeve890 1y ago
  >Avoid thinking of the pain of the task at hand >Imagine and focus on the reward of these tasks. IME if you have ADHD those two things are basically the same. Sure, don't think of the pain, but you could ended up stuck in daydreaming about the perfect future where you're healthier, stronger, happier, etc. You can trigger executive dysfunction (mental freeze) either way.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    > Sure, don't think of the pain, but you could ended up stuck in daydreaming about the perfect future where you're healthier, stronger, happier, etc. You can trigger executive dysfunction (mental freeze) either way. This seems extremely relatable. Except instead of "I'm healthier, stronger, happier etc." it's more like "I've accomplished all the things I've thought of accomplishing" (each of which seems well within my grasp, if I could choose).
  - reddit_clone 1y ago
    Mal-adaptive day dreaming! When I read 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' well into my adulthood, I cried.
- dysoco 1y ago
  I've actually read quite the opposite a few times. If you focus on the end-goal you can easily get frustrated once you don't see any results, specially on such long-term goals such as graduating, improving your career or becoming buff by doing exercise. Supposedly it's actually better to just try and find meaning and joy in the process itself, enjoy lifting/studying regardless of the end results. Obviously none of this is an exact science so each person might think different.
siva7 1y ago
There are millions of articles on the internet about this topic. You can equally feed Chatgpt the submission title and it will give you roughly similiar advice. Forget all this crap: See rather a proper physician and psychologist if you struggle with this problems for a long time to be checked for various conditions.
bena 1y ago
I guess I motivate myself by realizing that taking care of the problem early will be easier than later. By knowing if I don’t get this thing done, it doesn’t get done. That for some tasks “want” doesn’t matter.
rglover 1y ago
Don't. Motivation external to the self will always be ephemeral and fleeting, like a drug (hence the popularity of "motivational" content on YouTube). If you don't have a genuine desire to do the thing, don't do it. Not because you can't do it, but because you lack the internal drive and inspiration to do it (and that may just be right now, not permanently).
- GeorgeTirebiter 1y ago
  Yes, extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. Sometimes, you MUST do a task (taxes, take a driving test, etc). And, yes, the extent that tasks start from intrinsic motivation, you're ahead of the game. For me, this is making habits (personal example: eating less). Habit frees you (mostly) of the need for any sort of 'motivation' - it's just Habit.
tedggh 1y ago
Everyone is different, but here’s my hack that took me from an overweight, mostly sedentary person to a relatively fit 40 miles per week runner and 7 days/week weight lifter. 1) Remove friction. I am also an enthusiast cyclist, but gearing up and getting my bike ready takes time which gives me plenty of opportunities to reconsider that 50 mile ride in 90F heat. In contrast, getting ready for a run takes me 5 minutes so there’s no much time to find excuses. 2) Get it out of the way first time in the morning before breakfast. There’s this extremely positive feeling when you achieve a goal early. I think it makes the rest of your day feel much easier particularly at work. 3) The Pareto principle. 80% easy effort and 20% intense/hard. I am not completely sold on the science but definitely works for me. I don’t get injured often and I recover faster, which allows me to exercise more often. I guess 70-30 would also work but the idea is the same, just go easy most of the time, you’ll get the same benefits without being sore or in pain. 4) Once in a while (twice a year for me) sign up for an event, a 10K, a half iron man, a bike ride, whatever, and tell everyone about it. Some relatives and friends will held you accountable for it. 5) Find a fitness buddy. Ideally it would be someone you spend lots of time with, your spouse, sister or roommate. In my case is my fiance. This also allows for accountability and moral support because you drag each other on those days you are not feeling like exercising. 6) Track your metrics besides weight. Weight is not the best feedback for motivation. There better feedback metrics like Vo2max and HRV. Get a good tracking device that’s reasonably accurate and easy to use and provides you good history. I use Apple Watch but other ones like Coros are good too. 7) Go to bed early. This is the most difficult one for me. I’m trying to put away my phone by 9 pm and switch to reading in Kindle, but man it is hard! 8) Gear. Don’t buy shitty gear to try out an activity and see if you like it. You won’t like it because you are using shitty gear. Invest in gear that is safe, comfortable and of decent quality. It will make the experience much better and you’ll have more chances of sticking with it.
- __turbobrew__ 1y ago
  > 7) Go to bed early. This is the most difficult one for me. I’m trying to put away my phone by 9 pm and switch to reading in Kindle, but man it is hard! It is a lot easier to control when you wake up over when you go to sleep. Set an alarm, always get up when the alarm goes off and eventually you will be tired earlier at night and fall asleep.
brunocalza 1y ago
The idea that you need to motivate yourself to do a thing you don't want to do is an idea that needs deeper investigation. I've caught myself trying to do that a bunch of times. Why the hell I think I need to do this thing in the first place? I totally get things like I have a job and there's a task that needs to get done. But what about outside the job life?
- tedggh 1y ago
  Fitness is hard because there’s very little to zero immediate benefit particularly if you are out of shape. I also think for many things, particularly those related to lifestyles and behaviors, the goal is to do it often enough so that it becomes a habit. Most people probably don’t enjoy brushing their teeth, but we also don’t think much about it, we just do it. I feel the same way with running, I don’t think I enjoy it, certainly not all the time like in winter, but it became a morning routine that is easy to execute.
clickety_clack 1y ago
Speaking from no expertise but my own decades of living, the only way to do things you don’t want to do is to do them. No excuses, no procrastination, no unrelated rewards, just do it. Everything else is a hack based on procrastination, or making you feel good about procrastination. You have to make a contract with yourself, where there is no payoff but that the thing gets done, and then do not break that contract. If you can’t make yourself do big things, make yourself do small things, but do them without fail. If you do that, you will become a different person.
- balfirevic 1y ago
  > the only way to do things you don’t want to do is to do them Do you have anything that's not tautological?
  - clickety_clack 1y ago
    Ha, I mean that’s not the only line I wrote, but a lot of people give themselves the option of not actually doing the thing, or doing something else in hopes that they’ll somehow develop motivation. Anyway there’s lots of other advice here you can take if you’re looking for it.
- GeorgeTirebiter 1y ago
  Same 'speaking from living' and I want to amplify a spark you mention: break down the task into smaller pieces; the size of the piece is how much time you can force yourself to do the task, fully knowing after 5 minutes (10 minutes, whatever) you'd have done that mini-piece. This builds success, power, confidence. Then you can tackle the NEXT piece, etc. Virtuous cycle. ("See, it wasn't THAT bad...maybe even a little fun!") How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
daft_pink 1y ago
I find this is what happens to me. I just back burner things that I don’t want to do and do the easy stuff and after a while I just have a list of all these back burner undoable projects and it’s like the worst thing ever because then I’m not motivated to do anything, because I have to complete all these terrible back burner projects.
pgspaintbrush 1y ago
One fun trick for this is to commit to writing a check to a non profit you dislike / would be embarrassed by if you don't complete your task.
- HankStallone 1y ago
  Interesting, but I think if I can talk myself out of completing the task, I'll be able to talk myself out of writing the punishment check.
pipeline_peak 1y ago
Speaking of motivation, maybe provide a hook instead of expecting your reader to dive head first into your otherwise lukewarm air bike analogy? Why do so many bloggers seem to think we have an infinite length attention span to their personal stories? “This morning I made an omelette, but I forgot eggs so I had to go to the grocery store. On my way to the store my mom called and reminded me of my cousins birthday coming up…” “Now that you’ve read all this, you should be able to sum up the importance of planning ahead!”
- duderific 1y ago
  I think it's a pretty common writing technique to start out with a personal anecdote, so the reader feels like they can relate to the person writing the story. Maybe this particular one didn't draw you in.
AnotherGoodName 1y ago
I do amazingly well in life if i simply remove the 'more desirable things'. As in i uninstall all games and set some manual routes of popular sites to 127.0.0.1 for a while.
simpaticoder 1y ago
Boredom is the key to solving this problem. Exert control over yourself, do not let yourself do anything other than the task. No watching videos, no reading of either web sites or books, no checking the phone, no listening to music. Nothing. Eventually the original task will be a pleasant relief. Basically you're increasing your interest in the activity relative to other tasks rather than trying to increase intrinsic interest in the task.
- Lionga 1y ago
  About as helpful as telling a drug addict to just stop using drugs, ez pz
- aidenn0 1y ago
  This doesn't work for me. As a child, my parents put me in a room with nothing but my math homework. I would preferably (and did) stare at the wall for 3 hours to doing my math homework.
laurent_du 1y ago
I recently found a weird trick to motivate myself to do things I don't want to do. Instead of thinking of the outcome of this task (which I probably don't care much about since I don't want to do it in the first place), I think about the fact that doing things I don't want to do makes me better at doing things I don't want to do, which is a desirable outcome for me. Your mileage may vary.
haunter 1y ago
I need this for language learning
sharpshadow 1y ago
Doing it to distract yourself from the other thing which you want to do even less.
- reddit_clone 1y ago
  This works for me, sometimes. More often than not, the primary task I am not doing becomes a 'keylog' issue, I can't do anything else either. Its just a death spiral.
aquafox 1y ago
Terence Tao uses a trick, I think he calls "structured procrastination": When there is a thing he doesn't want to do, he recalls another thing he doesn't want to do more. This way he's procrastinating on the other thing by doing the not favoured one.
- 1dom 1y ago
  I think that sounds like productive procrastion, it won an Ig-Nobel award. As you say, it's basically finding something you don't want to do even more than the thing you need to do, so you instead procrastinate productively by doing the needful.
photon_garden 1y ago
Also worth considering: just don't do the thing and live with the consequences. You have to apply this with care, but it's worth having in the toolbox.
wilkommen 1y ago
Or maybe, if you don't want to do the thing, that's your true values showing. If it's your true values showing, then you should consider listening, and maybe just don't do the thing at all!
- duderific 1y ago
  That doesn't really work for important things like going to the dentist, keeping healthy etc. The downside of just not doing those things is enormous.
gabrielsroka 1y ago
Mark Manson recently did a 4-Hour podcast on procrastination https://youtu.be/b77XuGU52To https://youtu.be/b77XuGU52To
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
danielmarkbruce 1y ago
Only doing it once a week is the problem. Good luck making a habit out of that.
lisbbb 1y ago
I bought one of those Concept 2 rowers based on all the hype online. I absolutely, positively HATED rowing. I did it a lot, but I hated it. The rower got sold this summer, it's out of my life. I much prefer my treadmill and I'll probably get a bike at some point. I hated everything about rowing, though.
entslscheia 1y ago
why?
kubav027 1y ago
This is reason I am not doing workouts at home. I hate splitting workout and normal life to separate categories. So I try to integrate physical exercise into daily schedule. I commute by running, cycling or walking paired with public transport. Also I do a lot of walking/running with my small kids. I am able to average 10 km walk per day with two 30 km bicycle rides in hilly terrain and one 5 km run per week. This is without forcing myself to "workout time". If I have time I am also going to bouldering or wall climbing once a week. It works great because I have reasonable physical exercise despite enjoying time with my kids and being an office worker.
Imanari 1y ago
My strategy: actively give yourself permission to just not do the thing, it’s ok! Enjoy your “time off“. This alone sometimes just makes me do the thing eventually kind of out of nowhere.
aucisson_masque 1y ago
À while ago, i went very hard on sport and even though i know before training that it would be hard, i would always reach some point during the training (usually around 40 minutes) where a feel good sensation, kind of god like, happen. And you know, doing something hard when you know you’re going to get the high isn’t so terrible. But at some point it went away and since then I could not ever reach that. I thought it was endorphine or dopamine kicking in, but why it would suddenly stop is weird. That was years ago, still doing lot of sports and tried a few other since then, some I liked more, some I liked less, no difference whatsoever. I’m thinking maybe I’m not pushing myself hard anymore but last summer I climbed Mont ventoux on bicycle 3 times during the same day. As a year old cyclist it was absolutely exhausting yet nothing at all. Just glad the suffering ended. Also checked my hormones, everything fine. That’s weird but I’m just wondering if that happened to someone else.
Madmallard 1y ago
"The pattern often goes like this: Before you start, it feels daunting, and the prospect lingers in the back of your mind. You know it needs to be done, but you really, really don’t feel like it. You leave it until it starts to loom larger and larger. When you finally convince yourself to start, it’s not what you want to be doing, but it’s generally fine. It’s often not even as bad as you thought it would be, and it feels good to make progress. As you near the end, you can even push yourself a little to wrap it up and get it off your plate. When it’s over, you feel relieved, like a weight has been taken off your shoulders, and you are both pleased with yourself and a little annoyed that it took you so long to deal with." This is never really my experience. If it's something I really don't like doing, even when I'm doing it I hate it every step of the way and it just gets worse and worse overtime. Otherwise I would want to do it to at least some extent. In which case, yeah I would eventually be able to muster motivation and push through.
jll29 1y ago
I'll keep it short, to avoid spending too much time on HN when other stuff should be prioritized, so apologies for repeating things that others have already said. ;-) What I do is three things from the OP, and one extra thing: - break down things into chunks (divide and conquer is what computer scientists are trained to apply) - reward yourself (after each mini-step, I grab some chocolate, after certain time units, I will make a short break, and after the complete session if I'm satisfied with what I have achieved, I might order myself a book from my online wish list ;-). - The third and most important part is start by picking a small and easy task. In many cases, the problem is easier to solve and less painful to complete than it appeared before starting to tackle it; once you're on it, things get easier and you may soon enter the flow and then things start to fly & rapid progress may ensue. I circle around the hard parts fixing a bunch of easy things that I know are easily and immediately solvable. Going around Mount Everest and depleting bits from all sides, suddenly it's not that big and scary anymore, and I have already understand bits from different parts, so my mental model of the problem as a whole approaches what's left of the real Mount Everest, not a huge mountain behind a wall of fog. Curiously, I'm successful with that technique, and I have a friend whom I also consider successful who does it the other way round: he starts with the carved-out core problem, and once he knows how to solve that, the rest is just code writing approaching boilerplate-level. And before that, he does not bother with addressing all the other stuff, the "mere periphery". I call my method outside-in and his method inside-out. In theory, I appreciate his method, but in practice, my method makes me more productive, because even on a very bad day (say, a zero flow, mega-unproductive day, which happens, but thankfully not that often), I can write a logger or a test harness, and once I've done any of these easy bits, the dopapine reward will motivate me to solve harder parts & because I've started to write code or whatever it is I need to do that I was postponing/dragging out, I'll be more likely in the zone and will be able to do the harder bits of it. BTW, don't confuse the *order* of doing things with the kind of *abstraction* in software architecture (where I would consider myself a top-down thinking person that consciously combines top-down and bottum up approaches to ensure the pieces fits together and each piece can be build). The two are related, but not the same thing.
ge96 1y ago
My day job writing code I play a techno/rave playlist to get in the mood. Has to be something I already know. Kangluenster in this case.
- ge96 1y ago
  *Klangkuenstler The 2 I listen to are: HOR Berlin and secret rave on YT
globalnode 1y ago
just do it is the only way forward. perhaps helped by breaking things up into smaller chunks (pomodoro's perhaps). action precedes and creates motivation.
chasing0entropy 1y ago
Remember the Tetrapharmacos - three part cure to life. 1. Things that make you happy are easy to otain. 2. Things that are painful are relatively brief. The greater the pain, the shorter the duration. 3. Don't fear god. This doesn't mean don't fear consequences - it means don't live life afraid of what will come.
aidenn0 1y ago
Step #1 is a significant amount of mental effort; how do I motivate myself to do that?
plantwallshoe 1y ago
My trick lately has been to allow myself to do nothing. If I don’t want to do the task, that’s fine. I’m allowed to sit at my desk and do exactly nothing for as long as I want. No hackernews, no snack breaks, no bill paying, no online shopping, etc. I just sit there and do nothing. Eventually the thing I need to do becomes the most interesting thing in my orbit and I do it. Sometimes I sit there for 15 minutes doing nothing before the task I don’t want to do becomes interesting enough.
- showsover 1y ago
  That sounds like a great way to limit the procrastination for many things while at the same time include a bit of mindfulness (i.e. sitting still with your thoughts).
- esperent 1y ago
  This sounds very much like the first steps towards a mindfulness practice. Which will probably be good for many aspects of your life, but not necessarily procrastination, as doing (and thinking) nothing becomes a goal in itself.
amzin 1y ago
Professional procrastinator here. All the tips in the post are common knowledge and, sadly, not very good (especially in the long run). The only thing that works for many people is to skip the motivation part and embrace the rather uncomfortable principle of "action before motivation." The flow state will come. I believe it arises independently of motivation. Motivation just tricks us into believing that everything we do should bring joy. It will — but not right now; we need to dive in first.
- cowboylowrez 1y ago
  yeah its sort of the no pain no gain approach but I like it. my best hack is time logging. I feel that if I specifically label breaks or procrastination or production failures, I at least feel like I'm more in control. I like the act of blogging about it though, it never fails to pick me up knowing I'm not alone with suffering from procrastination and I am always happy to read thoughts about it.
mcv 1y ago
I actively did some crossfit a couple of years ago. It's not my thing at all (when I exercise at all, I tend towards obscure martial arts), and I absolutely hated it, but at some point I went 3 times a week, and I still don't entirely grasp how I managed that. One thing that certainly helped is that after a couple of months, I really started to feel the impact. My back muscles in particular felt like steel cables at some point, and my posture significantly improved. Then Covid hit and now I'm a weakling again. I'm trying to get some regularity in going to the gym at least twice a week. Monday was my first time in months. But the biggest step is making it part of your routine. Make it something you do without even having to think about it. Once you allow yourself to question it, the discipline breaks.
CommenterPerson 1y ago
This is about the only thing that works for me. "3. Break it into smaller chunks" Most of the rest seem like tricks to con myself, and I am really bad at that!
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scotty79 1y ago
> You know it needs to be done, but you really, really don’t feel like it. You leave it until it starts to loom larger and larger. When you finally convince yourself to start, it’s not what you want to be doing, but it’s generally fine. It’s often not even as bad as you thought it would be, and it feels good to make progress. For me it still feels terrible long after I start. It takes much longer than few minutes before I stop feeling like somebody was tearing away my skin.
scotty79 1y ago
Try to scare yourself about not doing it. Try to frame not doing it as clear and present danger.

323 points by mooreds 1y ago

willahmad 1y ago

"I will read it after this 15 min short video"

Y_Y 1y ago

Why would you do a thing you didn't ultimately want to do though?

actionfromafar 1y ago
So you don't become weak and overweight, for instance.
- Y_Y 1y ago
  If I hadn't wanted to avoid diet and exercise more than I wanted to not be weak and overweight then we wouldn't be here.
  - stuartjohnson12 1y ago
    Who am I but the average weighted sum of my future preferences? Why should the temporal dimension of my preferences allow them to suppress other preferences?
- thomastjeffery 1y ago
  I find "not weak and overweight" to be the least compelling way to frame it. There are a lot of positive implications that become obvious when you say you want to be strong and lightweight. While "not weak" is a passive character judgement, "strong" is a constantly available opportunity.
plemer 1y ago
I read this as: how you can motivate yourself to do something you're currently not motivated to do but "ultimately" believe is worth doing.
__turbobrew__ 1y ago
Necessity. I don’t want to do my taxes every year and I need to force myself to just sit down and do it.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  Or someone else will force you to sit down for questioning ;)
  - __turbobrew__ 1y ago
    Yes, there are a number of things in this life where people with guns show up to your house if you don’t do it.
jon-wood 1y ago
Regrettably I need money in order to eat food.
- task331 1y ago
  so you do want to do it right, because you want to eat
atoav 1y ago
Many reasons. Maybe not doing that thing will be bad inthe long run. Maybe you want the fruit of doing that thing, but cannot enjoy doing it right now, etc. A popular example would be sports if you're not very fit. You would obviously have tangible health benefits if you did it, you may look more attractive, you may have more energy both physically and mentally. But since you're a couch potatoe sports is demanding, exhausting and sucks. Would you do more sports it would suck less or you might even find it enjoyable, but you don't and that's where you are. This puts you in the weird spot of wanting a thing but not wanting to do what would get you there, even if the reasons you don't want to do it would vanish if you did it. You can only really overcome this mentally, e.g. by priming yourself in certain ways, or by creating situations where you don't have a choice, because others rely on you, etc.
giancarlostoro 1y ago
This isn't that they don't want to do it, they do, but they don't want the effort involved.
what_was_it 1y ago
Yes! This is the real question. I wrote about this (as a tangent, but anyway) recently. https://asemic-horizon.com/2025/07/28/julian/ https://asemic-horizon.com/2025/07/28/julian/ TL;DR "akrasia", procrastination etc. are all forms of ambivalence that are not nearly as "psychological" and individual as usually presented. The nausea is in the world itself.
deleted 1y ago
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nachox999 1y ago
how to do something when your mind wanna do it because it's rational but your emotions don't because it's painful
task331 1y ago
At the end of the day I don't think there is such a thing. If you do I think deep down you want to do it, otherwise you wouldn't.
Emore 1y ago
When future-you wishes present-you had done the thing. So in a sense there is a you (future-you) that actually does want to do the thing.

amelius 1y ago

We can learn from people who go to church every Sunday.

ebiester 1y ago
I think that's a bit misinformed. Churchgoers get connection to community and most active churchgoers have positive emotional connections to times associated with church. Now, those who go out of obligation and have negative experiences may agree with you, but church services are some of what I miss most from leaving the religion.
- thomastjeffery 1y ago
  As someone who used to be in the latter group, I wouldn't call it motivation. More like habitual compliance. I have many complaints specific to my experience of dragging myself to church, but the experience itself was incredibly neutral.

mallowdram 1y ago

"How words are post-hoc arbitrary retrofits to actual neural thoughts" A self-help guide about language wholly distinct from thought.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
I have participated in a company-wide meeting not that long ago and as a corporate veteran of sorts, I have never heard such a high amount of new corporate friendly neologisms in such a short amount of time. Corporate bingo would have been over 3 minutes flat. There is a part of me that is amused, because people saying those words clearly did not believe them ( delivery was very flat ), but it does make me question the future of our language. My initial pet theory was that is going to be more uniform as a result, but now... I am not so certain.
- mallowdram 1y ago
  I began in animation and shifted to gaming in 2001 where we encountered - against our stated goals of delivery - an audience rejecting both words and narratives (they thanked us yet we weren't at all going for this). So a small team of us stuck together since and we've been unraveling, decrypting how that initial audience craving might work out as a next language. In retrospect it now seems obvious, how the path led here, but then in 2001, it was a complete mystery.

ImPrajyoth 1y ago

You need Drive to get things done. Motivational can only make you start them.

piker 1y ago

I personally draw inspiration from John Carmack. I've understood his approach to be basically just stare at your problem and ignore everything else until you make a little bit of progress. The answer is there.

terabytest 1y ago
Sounds like a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. My main issue is to even get myself to sit and stare at the work to be done. It has been really frustrating seeing the lengths I go to, consciously or unconsciously, to procrastinate.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  I used to work a non tech office job, one day it became so unbearable, I was literally falling asleep and was no longer able to bring myself to do the job at all, because of how much mental effort was required for even the smallest things. I stood up and quit.
  - RangerScience 1y ago
    What’d you do after that?
    - koakuma-chan 1y ago
      Endured condemnation from others while simultaneously looking for a proper tech job, took me 8 months to find.
  - ljlolel 1y ago
    What was the job?
    - koakuma-chan 1y ago
      Data entry
  - 1y ago

semiinfinitely 1y ago

> The only way I can convince myself to do it is by finding a suitably engaging show I can distract myself with on my phone while I huff and puff. > Combine the task with something you enjoy. You know what makes cleaning out the garage a lot better? Some good tunes. This motivational advice is deeply misguided. These are very clear examples of "dopamine stacking". The idea is that by combining a stimulating activity (eg watching show/music) with a motivation-requiring activity (eg working out/cleaning) you can get an initial boost in motivation to accomplish the hard task. It works (initially) because the stimulating task (show/music) is giving you a dopamine increase which feels like motivation to complete the hard task. The problem is that if you repeat this behavior with any consistency, your dopamine system quickly adjusts the high activity-combo level of dopamine as a new baseline. Soon not even the dopamine you get from the combination is sufficient to motivate you to accomplish the task. At this point people often seek another short lived dopamine-increasing stimulus to combine into the mix. You can see this pattern in people who exercise only with some combination of pre-workout, caffeine, music, phone scrolling. The off-ramp is learning how to derive dopamine (aka "motivation") from the actual activity itself. further reading: 1. https://youtu.be/PhBQ4riwDj4?si=n-afP-Rj_k7qfATz https://youtu.be/PhBQ4riwDj4?si=n-afP-Rj_k7qfATz

emil-lp 1y ago
> further reading: youtube
- shermantanktop 1y ago
  turn on subtitles, i guess?
  - siva7 1y ago
    it's more about the source, not the format
  - robotnikman 1y ago
    Off topic, but I'm guessing your username references the M4 Sherman tank? Kinda clever and funny.

cjbarber 1y ago

My observation is it's an equation between: 1) reward/incentive/expected good feelings 2) effort/displeasure of doing the thing and the result One way to increase #1 is to make it more socially involved. If you're working on a project solitarily, start going to events and talking about it with people, or write about it online. Humans are massively socially motivated. For #2, one way to address this is with emotional processing. Often something is unpleasant because it reminds of something we didn't like from the past. So really digesting those emotions can allow the expected displeasure to fade because we kind of integrate it into our brains/bodies. But the key for this is that it has to be emotional processing, not intellectual processing.

Forgeties79 1y ago
Don’t forget 3) consequences for not doing it
- idiotsecant 1y ago
  Yes, in my experience the social part of this is not so much the carrot, but the stick. If I don't do this thing, I will look lazy to this person or this person will be disappointed or inconvenienced, etc. Probably not a healthy outlook!

thomastjeffery 1y ago

I have spent my entire life frustrated with the reality that none of this advice actually works for me. This is because motivation was never my problem to begin with: my problem is "executive dysfunction", which is very counterproductively titled ADHD.

xyzzy9563 1y ago
Well think of this: if you knew there was $100 million in a dufflebag of gold at the bottom of a pond, would you learn how to put on scuba gear and retrieve it? Perhaps you don't have compelling enough reasons to do things.
- bobcorponoi 1y ago
  I have a similar issue, I can find motivation to start something but then it spirals into other things. For $100 million I would probably just learn to put on the scuba gear but for instance my mind would go to "I should make my own scuba gear". So for a personal project I start on something and decide I need something else, so then I want to make a tool to help me make that thing and so on. I think it's probably related to a shorter attention span so I'm working on that.
- thomastjeffery 1y ago
  Learn how? Almost definitely. Actually do it? That's a lot less certain than you would expect. I would probably start. Since this hypothetical is a pretty simple one-off, I might even manage to generate enough executive functioning to follow through. What I can tell you for certain is that I am still very excited to work on a custom keyboard project that I started 4 years ago. I have all the parts and equipment readily available at home, and plenty of free time. I have not worked on it at all over the past 4 years.
- doubled112 1y ago
  I do need a compelling reason to do something. I can't figure out how all these people get through what they do without wanting to jump out their office windows, to be honest. Is it fun/interesting? Can I make it fun/interesting? Does it make me or save me money so I can do something fun/interesting? If the answer is no to all of these questions, I'm going to have a bad time. Unfortunately, I'm that simple. I've gotten better at number two over the years, though. Scuba diving sounds fun. I'd probably do it for less.

nashashmi 1y ago

> As you near the end, you can even push yourself a little to wrap it up and get it off your plate. As a person with ADHD, this struck me. I have an easy time continuing something. But an impossible time starting and finishing something. Obviously I am not mentally healthy. But who is this person who is mentally healthy? And what am I missing to being the same way? I think it boils down to being yelled at and penalized and being unable to handle this feedback well enough. I don’t know exactly what I am fearing here. It will be an exploration. > you are both pleased with yourself and a little annoyed that it took you so long to deal with. I am never pleased at the end of a project. I am blame full why I could not do it before.

WalterSear 1y ago
What you are missing is that estimates of ADHD heritability vary between 60 and 90%. There's a lots of one can do to overcome and accommodate it, but one of the first steps is to approach neurotypical productivity advice with substantial skepticism: they aren't fighting the fight we are; don't even know that our fight exists.

xyzzy9563 1y ago

The way that works best for me is a 2-step approach: 1. Think about the ultimate goal and why you want to do it. If there isn't a compelling reason, there is no reason to do it, especially if there is short-term pain or annoyance. 2. Take at least one small action towards it per day. This often puts you in the mindset to do more things.

csr86 1y ago

If I remember correctly, a YT video from Andrew Hubermann, talks about rewards and that you should avoid excessive rewards. It can make the actual work even more painful, because your mind is too focused on the reward, instead of trying to enjoy the hard work itself.

hbarka 1y ago

I understand that these heuristics are completely different for people with ADHD. Also the role of dopamine cycles has a big effect on proactiveness.

Arch-TK 1y ago

I can do the things that are hard to start but fine to continue. But sometimes you have a very long slog which is hard to start and hard to continue and hard to finish. That's where the difficulty lies.

incomingpain 1y ago

I just spent a couple weeks hyperfocused on solo building a whole new python project from scratch. Motivation is a skill that needs to be trained. It's a bit counter intuitive, and while your environment needs to be conducive to work. Among the other factors, you dont just gain motivation by having a clean desk.

duderific 1y ago
On the other hand, I'd posit that you're much less likely to feel motivated if your desk is messy.

nachox999 1y ago

"just DO IT!!!" -Shia LaBeouf

SoftTalker 1y ago
That's what it really boils down to.
RyanOD 1y ago
Oddly, I sort of agree. Many times I've put something off for days, but then once I finally get myself over the hump and get working on it, I actually get focused and sort of enjoy the challenge. It's weird, but it's the not the task that is the problem...it's just getting started.
- duderific 1y ago
  I call this the "Wall of Inertia." Before you walk up to it and face it, it feels 10 feet tall, but once you actually just take it on, it only turned out to be 6 inches tall and you can easily hop over it. But it feeling 10 feet tall is enough to make you avoid it entirely for a long time.

everyone 1y ago

Do what u wanna do. Don't do what u don't wanna do. .. Or at least try, doing otherwise is crazy right?

jraph 1y ago
If only.

deleted 1y ago

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siliconc0w 1y ago

For more intellectual endeavors I find if I'm avoiding working on something it can be because I'm being lazy or just don't like the category of work but often it is a good sign it's not quite the right activity for the moment. It may not be well defined enough, or the highest priority, or doubting it is likely to yield the outcome I want. Time of day matters too, in the morning I feel like doing different things than in the afternoon. I can push through and "just do it" if I have to but often it's worth listening to this feeling and picking a task I am motivated to do instead.

jraph 1y ago

Do something quick and crappy. And let your perfectionism fix it. And... here you are gotten started! It can be a single word or a instruction that crashes your program at the location that needs to be worked on. Leave a syntax error for getting started quick tomorrow. Write down what needs to be done before it leaves your head (but don't make it perfectly structured and clean, a few words on a paper on your desk will do). edit: For instance, you'd possibly want to fix the missing "n" in this comment. Make this feeling a tool against your procrastination. edit2: ah, and get the hell out of HN, too.

trjordan 1y ago

Everybody is different, but the biggest reason I struggle with this right now is the pace of modern life. Doing hard things is hard, and that means I won't be thinking about the other stuff I have to do. I'm more apt to miss a text from my family when I'm running or writing a document than when I'm vibe coding, because the effort is all-encompassing. Subconsciously, that's stressful, so I steer away from it. Habits help here, because with enough repetition, I learn that it's OK to disappear for an hour to do the thing. But the real issue is getting the meta-organization of my life right enough that I'm not scared to shut down my ambient executive function for that hour. This shows up as both "I'm too busy to do the hard thing" and "I'm too tired to do the hard thing." Slowing down isn't the answer, but it's been pretty transformative to notice that that's what I'm worried about.

nicbou 1y ago
I agree. There's always so much to do just to stay on top of things. Everything from writing to people down to watering plants and updating software. Last summer I went to a festival, and for a week I was unreachable, had no working phone, and had no chores. I could eat by showing my bracelet. I didn't even have the time. It was blissful.

coffeecoders 1y ago

I find it interesting how a lot of this advice overlaps with the same tricks we use in software engineering to tackle big problems. Breaking things into smaller chunks or even gamifying with streaks is basically the human version of agile sprints. Sleep, diet, and stress are like "system dependencies".

gmac 1y ago

See also: https://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ https://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

task331 1y ago

After several years of trying to come up with the perfect way to keep motivation up, I have found there is no such thing. The only thing that matters for me nowadays is this: before I start the task, I admit to myself that it is going to be hard, but I am doing it anyways, so why do it like its a drag? It's pointless and it's a waste of energy.

task331 1y ago
Also, I have found that if I don't open myself up to the hard task at hand before I start, a lot of things can happen that deviates myself from doing the task in its optimal form. For example, I can come up with excuses for not doing the task right now, or I can invent other work that is 'more important', or find something to blame while I do the task so I can cope with its difficulty, etc. There is a myriad of things that can be invented to avoid or cope with the pain, but if I am going through this anyway, there is no reason whatsoever to make it more painful that it will already be.

guhcampos 1y ago

Let's all be honest here. I use Vyvanse.

nextworddev 1y ago

Biggest productivity hack is to just avoid working in fields you don’t feel passionate about. If you don’t know what you are passionate about, then just keep trying things passionately

GoldenMonkey 1y ago

Avoid thinking of the pain of the task at hand. Imagine and focus on the reward of these tasks. Lifting weights... imagine the stronger person you will become. Studying for that exam.. picture the career you aspire to. Avoiding that donut... imagine the healthier you. Habit stacking helps to remind one of the task to do. To avoid the struggle of doing them, picture the desired outcome.

aeve890 1y ago
>Avoid thinking of the pain of the task at hand >Imagine and focus on the reward of these tasks. IME if you have ADHD those two things are basically the same. Sure, don't think of the pain, but you could ended up stuck in daydreaming about the perfect future where you're healthier, stronger, happier, etc. You can trigger executive dysfunction (mental freeze) either way.
- zahlman 1y ago
  > Sure, don't think of the pain, but you could ended up stuck in daydreaming about the perfect future where you're healthier, stronger, happier, etc. You can trigger executive dysfunction (mental freeze) either way. This seems extremely relatable. Except instead of "I'm healthier, stronger, happier etc." it's more like "I've accomplished all the things I've thought of accomplishing" (each of which seems well within my grasp, if I could choose).
- reddit_clone 1y ago
  Mal-adaptive day dreaming! When I read 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' well into my adulthood, I cried.
dysoco 1y ago
I've actually read quite the opposite a few times. If you focus on the end-goal you can easily get frustrated once you don't see any results, specially on such long-term goals such as graduating, improving your career or becoming buff by doing exercise. Supposedly it's actually better to just try and find meaning and joy in the process itself, enjoy lifting/studying regardless of the end results. Obviously none of this is an exact science so each person might think different.

siva7 1y ago

There are millions of articles on the internet about this topic. You can equally feed Chatgpt the submission title and it will give you roughly similiar advice. Forget all this crap: See rather a proper physician and psychologist if you struggle with this problems for a long time to be checked for various conditions.

bena 1y ago

I guess I motivate myself by realizing that taking care of the problem early will be easier than later. By knowing if I don’t get this thing done, it doesn’t get done. That for some tasks “want” doesn’t matter.

rglover 1y ago

Don't. Motivation external to the self will always be ephemeral and fleeting, like a drug (hence the popularity of "motivational" content on YouTube). If you don't have a genuine desire to do the thing, don't do it. Not because you can't do it, but because you lack the internal drive and inspiration to do it (and that may just be right now, not permanently).

GeorgeTirebiter 1y ago
Yes, extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. Sometimes, you MUST do a task (taxes, take a driving test, etc). And, yes, the extent that tasks start from intrinsic motivation, you're ahead of the game. For me, this is making habits (personal example: eating less). Habit frees you (mostly) of the need for any sort of 'motivation' - it's just Habit.

tedggh 1y ago

Everyone is different, but here’s my hack that took me from an overweight, mostly sedentary person to a relatively fit 40 miles per week runner and 7 days/week weight lifter. 1) Remove friction. I am also an enthusiast cyclist, but gearing up and getting my bike ready takes time which gives me plenty of opportunities to reconsider that 50 mile ride in 90F heat. In contrast, getting ready for a run takes me 5 minutes so there’s no much time to find excuses. 2) Get it out of the way first time in the morning before breakfast. There’s this extremely positive feeling when you achieve a goal early. I think it makes the rest of your day feel much easier particularly at work. 3) The Pareto principle. 80% easy effort and 20% intense/hard. I am not completely sold on the science but definitely works for me. I don’t get injured often and I recover faster, which allows me to exercise more often. I guess 70-30 would also work but the idea is the same, just go easy most of the time, you’ll get the same benefits without being sore or in pain. 4) Once in a while (twice a year for me) sign up for an event, a 10K, a half iron man, a bike ride, whatever, and tell everyone about it. Some relatives and friends will held you accountable for it. 5) Find a fitness buddy. Ideally it would be someone you spend lots of time with, your spouse, sister or roommate. In my case is my fiance. This also allows for accountability and moral support because you drag each other on those days you are not feeling like exercising. 6) Track your metrics besides weight. Weight is not the best feedback for motivation. There better feedback metrics like Vo2max and HRV. Get a good tracking device that’s reasonably accurate and easy to use and provides you good history. I use Apple Watch but other ones like Coros are good too. 7) Go to bed early. This is the most difficult one for me. I’m trying to put away my phone by 9 pm and switch to reading in Kindle, but man it is hard! 8) Gear. Don’t buy shitty gear to try out an activity and see if you like it. You won’t like it because you are using shitty gear. Invest in gear that is safe, comfortable and of decent quality. It will make the experience much better and you’ll have more chances of sticking with it.

__turbobrew__ 1y ago
> 7) Go to bed early. This is the most difficult one for me. I’m trying to put away my phone by 9 pm and switch to reading in Kindle, but man it is hard! It is a lot easier to control when you wake up over when you go to sleep. Set an alarm, always get up when the alarm goes off and eventually you will be tired earlier at night and fall asleep.

brunocalza 1y ago

The idea that you need to motivate yourself to do a thing you don't want to do is an idea that needs deeper investigation. I've caught myself trying to do that a bunch of times. Why the hell I think I need to do this thing in the first place? I totally get things like I have a job and there's a task that needs to get done. But what about outside the job life?

tedggh 1y ago
Fitness is hard because there’s very little to zero immediate benefit particularly if you are out of shape. I also think for many things, particularly those related to lifestyles and behaviors, the goal is to do it often enough so that it becomes a habit. Most people probably don’t enjoy brushing their teeth, but we also don’t think much about it, we just do it. I feel the same way with running, I don’t think I enjoy it, certainly not all the time like in winter, but it became a morning routine that is easy to execute.

clickety_clack 1y ago

Speaking from no expertise but my own decades of living, the only way to do things you don’t want to do is to do them. No excuses, no procrastination, no unrelated rewards, just do it. Everything else is a hack based on procrastination, or making you feel good about procrastination. You have to make a contract with yourself, where there is no payoff but that the thing gets done, and then do not break that contract. If you can’t make yourself do big things, make yourself do small things, but do them without fail. If you do that, you will become a different person.

balfirevic 1y ago
> the only way to do things you don’t want to do is to do them Do you have anything that's not tautological?
- clickety_clack 1y ago
  Ha, I mean that’s not the only line I wrote, but a lot of people give themselves the option of not actually doing the thing, or doing something else in hopes that they’ll somehow develop motivation. Anyway there’s lots of other advice here you can take if you’re looking for it.
GeorgeTirebiter 1y ago
Same 'speaking from living' and I want to amplify a spark you mention: break down the task into smaller pieces; the size of the piece is how much time you can force yourself to do the task, fully knowing after 5 minutes (10 minutes, whatever) you'd have done that mini-piece. This builds success, power, confidence. Then you can tackle the NEXT piece, etc. Virtuous cycle. ("See, it wasn't THAT bad...maybe even a little fun!") How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

daft_pink 1y ago

I find this is what happens to me. I just back burner things that I don’t want to do and do the easy stuff and after a while I just have a list of all these back burner undoable projects and it’s like the worst thing ever because then I’m not motivated to do anything, because I have to complete all these terrible back burner projects.

pgspaintbrush 1y ago

One fun trick for this is to commit to writing a check to a non profit you dislike / would be embarrassed by if you don't complete your task.

HankStallone 1y ago
Interesting, but I think if I can talk myself out of completing the task, I'll be able to talk myself out of writing the punishment check.

pipeline_peak 1y ago

Speaking of motivation, maybe provide a hook instead of expecting your reader to dive head first into your otherwise lukewarm air bike analogy? Why do so many bloggers seem to think we have an infinite length attention span to their personal stories? “This morning I made an omelette, but I forgot eggs so I had to go to the grocery store. On my way to the store my mom called and reminded me of my cousins birthday coming up…” “Now that you’ve read all this, you should be able to sum up the importance of planning ahead!”

duderific 1y ago
I think it's a pretty common writing technique to start out with a personal anecdote, so the reader feels like they can relate to the person writing the story. Maybe this particular one didn't draw you in.

AnotherGoodName 1y ago

I do amazingly well in life if i simply remove the 'more desirable things'. As in i uninstall all games and set some manual routes of popular sites to 127.0.0.1 for a while.

simpaticoder 1y ago

Boredom is the key to solving this problem. Exert control over yourself, do not let yourself do anything other than the task. No watching videos, no reading of either web sites or books, no checking the phone, no listening to music. Nothing. Eventually the original task will be a pleasant relief. Basically you're increasing your interest in the activity relative to other tasks rather than trying to increase intrinsic interest in the task.

Lionga 1y ago
About as helpful as telling a drug addict to just stop using drugs, ez pz
aidenn0 1y ago
This doesn't work for me. As a child, my parents put me in a room with nothing but my math homework. I would preferably (and did) stare at the wall for 3 hours to doing my math homework.

laurent_du 1y ago

I recently found a weird trick to motivate myself to do things I don't want to do. Instead of thinking of the outcome of this task (which I probably don't care much about since I don't want to do it in the first place), I think about the fact that doing things I don't want to do makes me better at doing things I don't want to do, which is a desirable outcome for me. Your mileage may vary.

haunter 1y ago

I need this for language learning

sharpshadow 1y ago

Doing it to distract yourself from the other thing which you want to do even less.

reddit_clone 1y ago
This works for me, sometimes. More often than not, the primary task I am not doing becomes a 'keylog' issue, I can't do anything else either. Its just a death spiral.

aquafox 1y ago

Terence Tao uses a trick, I think he calls "structured procrastination": When there is a thing he doesn't want to do, he recalls another thing he doesn't want to do more. This way he's procrastinating on the other thing by doing the not favoured one.

1dom 1y ago
I think that sounds like productive procrastion, it won an Ig-Nobel award. As you say, it's basically finding something you don't want to do even more than the thing you need to do, so you instead procrastinate productively by doing the needful.

photon_garden 1y ago

Also worth considering: just don't do the thing and live with the consequences. You have to apply this with care, but it's worth having in the toolbox.

wilkommen 1y ago

Or maybe, if you don't want to do the thing, that's your true values showing. If it's your true values showing, then you should consider listening, and maybe just don't do the thing at all!

duderific 1y ago
That doesn't really work for important things like going to the dentist, keeping healthy etc. The downside of just not doing those things is enormous.

gabrielsroka 1y ago

Mark Manson recently did a 4-Hour podcast on procrastination https://youtu.be/b77XuGU52To https://youtu.be/b77XuGU52To

deleted 1y ago
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danielmarkbruce 1y ago

Only doing it once a week is the problem. Good luck making a habit out of that.

lisbbb 1y ago

I bought one of those Concept 2 rowers based on all the hype online. I absolutely, positively HATED rowing. I did it a lot, but I hated it. The rower got sold this summer, it's out of my life. I much prefer my treadmill and I'll probably get a bike at some point. I hated everything about rowing, though.

entslscheia 1y ago

why?

kubav027 1y ago

This is reason I am not doing workouts at home. I hate splitting workout and normal life to separate categories. So I try to integrate physical exercise into daily schedule. I commute by running, cycling or walking paired with public transport. Also I do a lot of walking/running with my small kids. I am able to average 10 km walk per day with two 30 km bicycle rides in hilly terrain and one 5 km run per week. This is without forcing myself to "workout time". If I have time I am also going to bouldering or wall climbing once a week. It works great because I have reasonable physical exercise despite enjoying time with my kids and being an office worker.

Imanari 1y ago

My strategy: actively give yourself permission to just not do the thing, it’s ok! Enjoy your “time off“. This alone sometimes just makes me do the thing eventually kind of out of nowhere.

aucisson_masque 1y ago

À while ago, i went very hard on sport and even though i know before training that it would be hard, i would always reach some point during the training (usually around 40 minutes) where a feel good sensation, kind of god like, happen. And you know, doing something hard when you know you’re going to get the high isn’t so terrible. But at some point it went away and since then I could not ever reach that. I thought it was endorphine or dopamine kicking in, but why it would suddenly stop is weird. That was years ago, still doing lot of sports and tried a few other since then, some I liked more, some I liked less, no difference whatsoever. I’m thinking maybe I’m not pushing myself hard anymore but last summer I climbed Mont ventoux on bicycle 3 times during the same day. As a year old cyclist it was absolutely exhausting yet nothing at all. Just glad the suffering ended. Also checked my hormones, everything fine. That’s weird but I’m just wondering if that happened to someone else.

Madmallard 1y ago

"The pattern often goes like this: Before you start, it feels daunting, and the prospect lingers in the back of your mind. You know it needs to be done, but you really, really don’t feel like it. You leave it until it starts to loom larger and larger. When you finally convince yourself to start, it’s not what you want to be doing, but it’s generally fine. It’s often not even as bad as you thought it would be, and it feels good to make progress. As you near the end, you can even push yourself a little to wrap it up and get it off your plate. When it’s over, you feel relieved, like a weight has been taken off your shoulders, and you are both pleased with yourself and a little annoyed that it took you so long to deal with." This is never really my experience. If it's something I really don't like doing, even when I'm doing it I hate it every step of the way and it just gets worse and worse overtime. Otherwise I would want to do it to at least some extent. In which case, yeah I would eventually be able to muster motivation and push through.

jll29 1y ago

I'll keep it short, to avoid spending too much time on HN when other stuff should be prioritized, so apologies for repeating things that others have already said. ;-) What I do is three things from the OP, and one extra thing: - break down things into chunks (divide and conquer is what computer scientists are trained to apply) - reward yourself (after each mini-step, I grab some chocolate, after certain time units, I will make a short break, and after the complete session if I'm satisfied with what I have achieved, I might order myself a book from my online wish list ;-). - The third and most important part is start by picking a small and easy task. In many cases, the problem is easier to solve and less painful to complete than it appeared before starting to tackle it; once you're on it, things get easier and you may soon enter the flow and then things start to fly & rapid progress may ensue. I circle around the hard parts fixing a bunch of easy things that I know are easily and immediately solvable. Going around Mount Everest and depleting bits from all sides, suddenly it's not that big and scary anymore, and I have already understand bits from different parts, so my mental model of the problem as a whole approaches what's left of the real Mount Everest, not a huge mountain behind a wall of fog. Curiously, I'm successful with that technique, and I have a friend whom I also consider successful who does it the other way round: he starts with the carved-out core problem, and once he knows how to solve that, the rest is just code writing approaching boilerplate-level. And before that, he does not bother with addressing all the other stuff, the "mere periphery". I call my method outside-in and his method inside-out. In theory, I appreciate his method, but in practice, my method makes me more productive, because even on a very bad day (say, a zero flow, mega-unproductive day, which happens, but thankfully not that often), I can write a logger or a test harness, and once I've done any of these easy bits, the dopapine reward will motivate me to solve harder parts & because I've started to write code or whatever it is I need to do that I was postponing/dragging out, I'll be more likely in the zone and will be able to do the harder bits of it. BTW, don't confuse the *order* of doing things with the kind of *abstraction* in software architecture (where I would consider myself a top-down thinking person that consciously combines top-down and bottum up approaches to ensure the pieces fits together and each piece can be build). The two are related, but not the same thing.

ge96 1y ago

My day job writing code I play a techno/rave playlist to get in the mood. Has to be something I already know. Kangluenster in this case.

ge96 1y ago
*Klangkuenstler The 2 I listen to are: HOR Berlin and secret rave on YT

globalnode 1y ago

just do it is the only way forward. perhaps helped by breaking things up into smaller chunks (pomodoro's perhaps). action precedes and creates motivation.

chasing0entropy 1y ago

Remember the Tetrapharmacos - three part cure to life. 1. Things that make you happy are easy to otain. 2. Things that are painful are relatively brief. The greater the pain, the shorter the duration. 3. Don't fear god. This doesn't mean don't fear consequences - it means don't live life afraid of what will come.

aidenn0 1y ago

Step #1 is a significant amount of mental effort; how do I motivate myself to do that?

plantwallshoe 1y ago

My trick lately has been to allow myself to do nothing. If I don’t want to do the task, that’s fine. I’m allowed to sit at my desk and do exactly nothing for as long as I want. No hackernews, no snack breaks, no bill paying, no online shopping, etc. I just sit there and do nothing. Eventually the thing I need to do becomes the most interesting thing in my orbit and I do it. Sometimes I sit there for 15 minutes doing nothing before the task I don’t want to do becomes interesting enough.

showsover 1y ago
That sounds like a great way to limit the procrastination for many things while at the same time include a bit of mindfulness (i.e. sitting still with your thoughts).
esperent 1y ago
This sounds very much like the first steps towards a mindfulness practice. Which will probably be good for many aspects of your life, but not necessarily procrastination, as doing (and thinking) nothing becomes a goal in itself.

amzin 1y ago

Professional procrastinator here. All the tips in the post are common knowledge and, sadly, not very good (especially in the long run). The only thing that works for many people is to skip the motivation part and embrace the rather uncomfortable principle of "action before motivation." The flow state will come. I believe it arises independently of motivation. Motivation just tricks us into believing that everything we do should bring joy. It will — but not right now; we need to dive in first.

cowboylowrez 1y ago
yeah its sort of the no pain no gain approach but I like it. my best hack is time logging. I feel that if I specifically label breaks or procrastination or production failures, I at least feel like I'm more in control. I like the act of blogging about it though, it never fails to pick me up knowing I'm not alone with suffering from procrastination and I am always happy to read thoughts about it.

mcv 1y ago

I actively did some crossfit a couple of years ago. It's not my thing at all (when I exercise at all, I tend towards obscure martial arts), and I absolutely hated it, but at some point I went 3 times a week, and I still don't entirely grasp how I managed that. One thing that certainly helped is that after a couple of months, I really started to feel the impact. My back muscles in particular felt like steel cables at some point, and my posture significantly improved. Then Covid hit and now I'm a weakling again. I'm trying to get some regularity in going to the gym at least twice a week. Monday was my first time in months. But the biggest step is making it part of your routine. Make it something you do without even having to think about it. Once you allow yourself to question it, the discipline breaks.

CommenterPerson 1y ago

This is about the only thing that works for me. "3. Break it into smaller chunks" Most of the rest seem like tricks to con myself, and I am really bad at that!

deleted 1y ago

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scotty79 1y ago

> You know it needs to be done, but you really, really don’t feel like it. You leave it until it starts to loom larger and larger. When you finally convince yourself to start, it’s not what you want to be doing, but it’s generally fine. It’s often not even as bad as you thought it would be, and it feels good to make progress. For me it still feels terrible long after I start. It takes much longer than few minutes before I stop feeling like somebody was tearing away my skin.

scotty79 1y ago

Try to scare yourself about not doing it. Try to frame not doing it as clear and present danger.