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> it's starting to really gnaw at me Good. One concrete suggestion: Develop the following habit. Whenever you are confronted with an unpleasant task X, there

> it's starting to really gnaw at me Good. One concrete suggestion: Develop the following habit. Whenever you are confronted with an unpleasant task X, there is a moment where your mind starts searching for other, more pleasant things to do. This is the moment where you have to implant the habit of asking - not yourself, but an imaginary judge: "If I defer task X, will it become easier later?". For some tasks, this may be true (e.g. taking out the trash is easier when you're heading outside for work anyway). For most, it's not. Use this question as an arbiter and follow its verdict. And when you completed an annoying task, rejoice in the feeling of relief and accomplishment (maybe not the task itself was hard, but overcoming the unpleasantry was), and remind yourself of this feeling the next time. Rinse and repeat. One more abstract suggestion: You have probably heard it a thousand times from your teachers, parents etc. - "You could accomplish so MUCH, if just you would STRIVE for it..." You believe it yourself, talking about your "full capacity". But it's not true. Or at least it's the wrong perspective, allowing for wishful thinking. The current state you are in - that is your full capacity. More you do not know, because more you have never tried. Or, more drastically: More you do not have, because more you have never proved. Maybe that's even the reason you are not improving your chore-handling abilities after all (if you allow me this unfounded speculation): You are afraid of hitting your limit (a.k.a. failing) to soon, realizing that you're not that capable after all. Luckily, there is no such thing as a fixed, inate capacity. Your capacity will definitely improve when you start taking yourself seriously and stop generously sparing yourself the chores. Prove it to yourself what you really can do. It always risky to advise a person you never met, so take this with a grain of salt. Hopefully it's useful to you.

skrebbel 13y ago
> > it's starting to really gnaw at me > Good. I'm not sure whether that is good at all. Of course, we're all different, but what worked for me was quite the opposite of this: I learned to accept myself the way I am. Like you, I've grown up being the smartest of the class. Other people had to sweat and I could just sit it all through. A result was decent grades and a complete lack of discipline. If I'd be me, but with more discipline, I'd probably be doing my work better and faster. Maybe I'd be more successful, by some measure of "success". But that's not me. That's somebody else. In fact, that somebody else doesn't exist. With my "lack of discipline" come other traits that most super-structured people don't have. Creativity comes to mind. I'm also very well informed because I look around on the net a lot for stuff that interests me, such as open source libraries. My colleagues are often amazed that I know these things - all they know is what they learned in that .NET 4.5 class half a year ago. I'm sure you recognize this, becausr you wrote something along similar lines in a comment further down this thread. This is you. People are willing to pay you a big salary for something that you only effectively work on around 3 hours a day. That's nice. There's nothing wrong with that. Other people work harder than you, maybe you work smarter than some. There's a chance that there's someone out there who's just a smart as you, just as creative, and also very disciplined. I doubt it, but that's possible. Accept that. You were the smartest guy in your class, but you're not the best-performing person in the world. That's fine. Nobody's perfect, and neither are you. Once you accept this, once you embrace your lack of discipline, you can let it work for you. Yeah, yeah, some days maybe you didn't work on that thing you said you were going to work on during the morning stand up, but you might've very well done something much more valuable. It's very difficult to grow if you're completely unhappy with where you are now. Try to be happy about what you got (difficult, I know), and then continue. It'll be easier.
- mduerksen 13y ago
  Your work-life is only one area where self-discipline comes into play. If you are content with just earning enough money for living, that's fine. I agree with you on that. But a lack of self-discipline might hurt you in areas which are much more serious. If you keep avoiding hard talks with your spouse, eventually you will have a problem. If you do projects or activities with friends and always shy away from the unpleasant or dirty work, you're not being a friend they can trust to really go the extra mile with them. You will lose good friends over this. I personally have grieved a good friend over this. If you never put any planning and execution effort into your family activities, there won't be any. If you always keep away from doing mundane things like dentist visits, grocery shopping, regular house cleaning, your kids will suffer for your laziness. And, maybe the worst: If your kids happen to not be overly gifted easy-achievers, and you do not teach your kids that most goods things have to worked hard for, then you have denied them a lesson their future life will depend on.
  - tonyedgecombe 13y ago
    I don't think the OP said his kids are starving, in fact he mentioned he's only 21 so most likely doesn't have any. I think you are jumping to too many conclusions here.
  - Millennium 13y ago
    There is another thing to consider: if he's putting so little time at work actually doing work, odds are his employers will not be so keen on continuing to pay him that much money. "Just being who he is" is not an excuse they will accept, nor, really, should they. That's the ruthlessly-pragmatic reason to not "accept this side of who he is": nobody else is going to, especially not the people who pay him.
    - danenania 13y ago
      It depends. A gifted and creative programmer may be able to accomplish in 3 hours what takes an average programmer 10, or by coming up with a creative approach to a problem, may be able to accomplish in 3 hours what an average programmer simply cannot do at all. So while a manager may dislike that they perceive someone to be slacking off, it doesn't necessarily mean the person isn't providing a lot of value to the company. Value produced and hours worked are fairly loosely correlated for knowledge workers. If you were running a startup, would you rather have 12 focused hours per day from a mediocre programmer or 2 from Linus Torvalds?
gtrubetskoy 13y ago
It's a great suggestion, but it presumes that task X is well defined. I think that a major source of "procrastination" (in quotes, because it's the good kind of p.) is that we do not know what to do next. I call it "the next smallest step". Do I need to read the documentation/book/google so that I can get a better idea on why this may be failing, or should I fire up the debugger? Why not just check HN instead?
weisser 13y ago
>"If I defer task X, will it become easier later?" Delaying pain definitely creates more. Luckily for me this only extends to what's in my fridge: http://blog.ideasthenlemonade.com/post/54016639958/delaying-pain-just-creates-more http://blog.ideasthenlemonade.com/post/54016639958/delaying-...

skrebbel 13y ago

> > it's starting to really gnaw at me > Good. I'm not sure whether that is good at all. Of course, we're all different, but what worked for me was quite the opposite of this: I learned to accept myself the way I am. Like you, I've grown up being the smartest of the class. Other people had to sweat and I could just sit it all through. A result was decent grades and a complete lack of discipline. If I'd be me, but with more discipline, I'd probably be doing my work better and faster. Maybe I'd be more successful, by some measure of "success". But that's not me. That's somebody else. In fact, that somebody else doesn't exist. With my "lack of discipline" come other traits that most super-structured people don't have. Creativity comes to mind. I'm also very well informed because I look around on the net a lot for stuff that interests me, such as open source libraries. My colleagues are often amazed that I know these things - all they know is what they learned in that .NET 4.5 class half a year ago. I'm sure you recognize this, becausr you wrote something along similar lines in a comment further down this thread. This is you. People are willing to pay you a big salary for something that you only effectively work on around 3 hours a day. That's nice. There's nothing wrong with that. Other people work harder than you, maybe you work smarter than some. There's a chance that there's someone out there who's just a smart as you, just as creative, and also very disciplined. I doubt it, but that's possible. Accept that. You were the smartest guy in your class, but you're not the best-performing person in the world. That's fine. Nobody's perfect, and neither are you. Once you accept this, once you embrace your lack of discipline, you can let it work for you. Yeah, yeah, some days maybe you didn't work on that thing you said you were going to work on during the morning stand up, but you might've very well done something much more valuable. It's very difficult to grow if you're completely unhappy with where you are now. Try to be happy about what you got (difficult, I know), and then continue. It'll be easier.

mduerksen 13y ago
Your work-life is only one area where self-discipline comes into play. If you are content with just earning enough money for living, that's fine. I agree with you on that. But a lack of self-discipline might hurt you in areas which are much more serious. If you keep avoiding hard talks with your spouse, eventually you will have a problem. If you do projects or activities with friends and always shy away from the unpleasant or dirty work, you're not being a friend they can trust to really go the extra mile with them. You will lose good friends over this. I personally have grieved a good friend over this. If you never put any planning and execution effort into your family activities, there won't be any. If you always keep away from doing mundane things like dentist visits, grocery shopping, regular house cleaning, your kids will suffer for your laziness. And, maybe the worst: If your kids happen to not be overly gifted easy-achievers, and you do not teach your kids that most goods things have to worked hard for, then you have denied them a lesson their future life will depend on.
- tonyedgecombe 13y ago
  I don't think the OP said his kids are starving, in fact he mentioned he's only 21 so most likely doesn't have any. I think you are jumping to too many conclusions here.
- Millennium 13y ago
  There is another thing to consider: if he's putting so little time at work actually doing work, odds are his employers will not be so keen on continuing to pay him that much money. "Just being who he is" is not an excuse they will accept, nor, really, should they. That's the ruthlessly-pragmatic reason to not "accept this side of who he is": nobody else is going to, especially not the people who pay him.
  - danenania 13y ago
    It depends. A gifted and creative programmer may be able to accomplish in 3 hours what takes an average programmer 10, or by coming up with a creative approach to a problem, may be able to accomplish in 3 hours what an average programmer simply cannot do at all. So while a manager may dislike that they perceive someone to be slacking off, it doesn't necessarily mean the person isn't providing a lot of value to the company. Value produced and hours worked are fairly loosely correlated for knowledge workers. If you were running a startup, would you rather have 12 focused hours per day from a mediocre programmer or 2 from Linus Torvalds?

gtrubetskoy 13y ago

It's a great suggestion, but it presumes that task X is well defined. I think that a major source of "procrastination" (in quotes, because it's the good kind of p.) is that we do not know what to do next. I call it "the next smallest step". Do I need to read the documentation/book/google so that I can get a better idea on why this may be failing, or should I fire up the debugger? Why not just check HN instead?

weisser 13y ago

>"If I defer task X, will it become easier later?" Delaying pain definitely creates more. Luckily for me this only extends to what's in my fridge: http://blog.ideasthenlemonade.com/post/54016639958/delaying-pain-just-creates-more http://blog.ideasthenlemonade.com/post/54016639958/delaying-...