16 ms·
How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go
- n1ghtmare_ 13y agoI couldn't help but think I'm procrastinating while reading it (+ reading the comments) ... Ahhhh !!! I better get back to work !
- markyc 13y agouu, a lifehacker article! :)
- exizt88 13y agoAny article on procrastination that contains a to-do list is a procrastination-feeding item itself.
- dhon_ 13y agoOn a side note, I just listened to this audiobook "The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing" http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Procrastination-Lollygagging-Postponing/dp/0761171673 http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Procrastination-Lollygagging-P... A humorous take on working with procrastination, not against it. Short, but highly recommended.
- praptak 13y agoIn the same vein: structured procrastination. http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
- contr-error 13y agoYes, more precisely, it's the (audio)book's author's webpage ;-) The book presents an attainable ideal to strive towards as a procrastinator, instead of a lofty hyper-productive pipe dream. In any case, it's a fun read and an interesting take on living with akrasia.
- pgsch 13y agoI will read it later
- prostoalex 13y agoThe Now Habit is also good reading on the subject of procrastination http://lifehacker.com/5658620/the-now-habit-overcoming-procrastination-and-enjoying-guilt+free-play http://lifehacker.com/5658620/the-now-habit-overcoming-procr...
- Flimm 13y agoI found the Procrastination Equation to be a better read. The Now Habit can be summed up as "don't be a perfectionist", whereas the Procrastination Equation says there are three types of procrastinators, and perfectionism isn't actually what causes most procrastination. The latter book is much better sourced and more thorough: there are loads of footnotes where you can look up the studies and the articles he's citing.
- thelogos 13y agoI feel like procrastinating is such a common human condition that it's really not about you but about the work you're putting off. When I was in college, I would put off doing lab reports until 6am in the morning. Watch youtube, surf the web for 30 minutes and actually work for 5 minutes. But there was a reason. It was boring drudgery. Now that I get to work on my own project, I code almost all day. When I eat, I think about my code. When I brush my teeth I think about my code. Before I fall asleep, I think about code. My code is the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning. I usually can't wait to finish breakfast and start working. So much for that ADHD diagnosis.
- pekk 13y agoWould it be safe to guess that this project is not something you are doing for pay at work?
- thelogos 13y agoIt's a personal project, an attempt at passive income. It can't be help that there's a lot of boring work in the world and somebody has to do them. Personally,I think those kind of work rarely pays adequate dividend in the end. But hey, we all have to eat.
- yason 13y agoThe word "work" is too often confused with "paid work to do boring things, because nobody would do them for fun" these days. And then people wonder why everyone is procrastinating at work.
- dscrd 13y agoMy son's got an ADHD diagnosis and he seems like you. Whatever is slightly uninteresting is terribly difficult for him to focus on but if there's something interesting, he can maintain perfect focus for hours. I imagine it might be days if he wasn't interrupted.
- 13y ago
- obilgic 13y agoIts all about Time Value of Happiness
- sv3nss0n 13y agoI wouldn't have read this article if I were not procrastinating...
- neotrinity 13y agoYou stole the words from my thought .. damn you !!
- mynameisasecret 13y agoMark Twain nailed it: "Never put off until tomorrow what you can put off until the day AFTER tomorrow."
- agumonkey 13y agoLeft recursion -- noam chomsky
- dvirsky 13y agoWelp, those were a good 2 minutes of procrastination
- hackaflocka 13y agoPomodoro really works.
- esalman 13y agoProcrastination comes from lack of motivation. Address that first.
- Lionga 13y agoProcrastination comes from many reasons. Motivation can be one of them but often it is not the reason
- codezero 13y agoWhoa, sorry, read up about procrastination, it has nothing to do with lack of motivation and often has much more to do with anxiety and failure to account for long term negative consequences versus short term positive gains.
- Ma8ee 13y agoI'm sorry, but you just have no idea what you are talking about.
- atmosx 13y agoNo, that's false.
- jwdunne 13y agoHrm I thought this was true at first. Spending lots of time consuming materials on how to increase my motivation, etc. Nothing worked! But then, why would it? I'm obviously motivated to do what I want to do or else I wouldn't be trying so many different ways to stop putting off! The best results I've had have been from a) just doing and b) reducing anxieties. Nothing I have tried has been sustainable but I still keep trying. If I wasn't motivated, why would I keep trying?
- pekk 13y agoIt is always possible that one wants to have done something, but does not wish to actually be doing it. So one has difficulty starting, and if one starts one has difficulty following through, but one still keeps trying to start. Or, better yet, starts doing other things which don't really cause forward progress but which seem like they might eventually - like reading motivation books
- Jun8 13y agoYou may want to not waste time reading this but instead use that time to read pg's essay on similar ideas, "How to Do What You Love" (http://paulgraham.com/love.html http://paulgraham.com/love.html), which, if I had the power, I would have millions of copies printed and have every kid in the world read it. It explains (at least) two simple ideas very effectively: 1. The work versus fun dichotomy is taught very early: "The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn't—for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun." 2. To compare two activities, you have to compare the area under their utility/fun vs. time curves. "But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn't mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month. Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something."
- berrypicker 13y agoIf you're interested in something more scholarly, read John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism.
- crististm 13y agoActually, reading any article about conquering procrastination is better than doing actual work :) (but this article is good and short and it reminded me that your focus should be not on the immediate but on the long term)
- efkztw 13y agoJust finished reading the essay, and one of his points about professors struck a chord with my personal experience back in college. It always felt like the classes that seem to offer the least "financial return" in the real world (i.e. theology, philosophy, or some obscure liberal arts subject) usually end up to be the ones with better qualified and more enthusiastic professors.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- willvarfar 13y agoWas I the only one expecting it to be a fun play on words and be about embracing golang?
- hueving 13y agoYeah, perfect title, just add a couple more words... "How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go Garbage Collect"
- GFischer 13y agoThat sounds like a randomly generated title from the HN Headline Generator :) https://github.com/sursh/markov-hacker-news https://github.com/sursh/markov-hacker-news or www.blarworld.net/hackernewsgen.html
- ibuildthings 13y agoI do empathize with the original article a lot. I used to have/still have a strong fear of failing, especially in intellectual tasks. According to my own introspection this is primary angst that caused/causes me to procrastinate. There are two major references I often go back when I find myself paralyzed. One being an advise I got from one of my PhD advisors: All creative tasks might appear that it requires enormous amount of courage and effort. But usually it is more like a kitchen sink heaped with a lot of unwashed dishes. Chances are that once you wash one dish, you will end up cleaning the full lot; and you often get a strange form of pleasure while you are performing the task. The other one is this essay http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~psargent/Mills_Intell_Craft.pdf http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~psargent/Mills_Intell_Craft.pdf on intellectual craftsmanship by Wright Mills. I do now a days actively collect memories of pure immersion and pleasure I experienced while my craft got exposed and exploited to its potential. The thought of me improving as a craftsman, coupled with these memories is a powerful self motivator to me. The shit feeling I gets when I waste my time is another reference. One of the potent lessons was also that craft can be improved only by dedicating time ( which is pleasurable); and by disassociating the end result and fears. The toughest part is to replay this logic while I find myself slipping into vortex of non productivity, but that is something I can work on and probably in my control.
- TheSOB888 13y agoI just have to say, I love washing dishes. I was convinced by Leo (the author) to start trying to enjoy myself while washing dishes, and now I love it. I don't even use the dishwasher anymore.
- d--b 13y agoCould you let go writing useless articles?
- exo762 13y agoHerman Hesse's pop Buddhism is strong in this one.
- apunic 13y agoThere's no relation between 'procrastination' and 'letting go'. Procrastination is pretty much normal, everyone procrastinated once entire days on HN/Netflix/... There are easy cures and proven techniques against procrastination and not a single one is mentioned in this write-up.
- adcoelho 13y agoProcrastination is often caused by the urge to find a small comfort to escape discomfort. Checking your email account in the middle of a difficult task, checking the news, etc. Letting go of this urges helps you stop procrastinating. There are no practical methods explained in this article but the main idea is a solid one that may help people overcome this problem.
- hopfog 13y agoFor me, the single most efficient anti-procrastination technique has been Don't Break The Chain. I have a few tasks that I need to complete _every day_ and the point is that the longer the streak is the bigger the incentive will be to continue. It also creates a clear routine which helps a lot on the psychological level (anyone who is into physical training of some sort knows how important this is). I usually break it up in "do X for Y minutes" and timebox it to 1 hour. Right now it's "read a book for 15 minutes, clean the house for 15 minutes and code on a side-project for 25 minutes". I also have a shorter version for busy days which is basically "read two pages, do one chore and complete a trivial task on the side-project" but as long as I do something it's fine.
- ronaldx 13y ago"Don't Break The Chain" can be dangerous on its own. Whenever I do break the chain, I feel unmotivated to start the chain again (especially if I've done a good job, because it seems overwhelming to pick it up again from the start of the chain). I've had to move on from Don't Break The Chain to being positive about making consistent progress. I would say Don't Break The Chain is great for a fixed-length, short-to-medium-term task, rather than instilling permanent habits.
- randlet 13y agoYou can make your chain more coarse than daily. For example, for me it's a lot easier to commit to doing something 5 days a week rather every single day so my chain links are measured in units of weeks rather than days. You don't need to beat yourself up about missing a day or two here and there.
- mhartl 13y agoAgreed. The solution I like is http://beeminder.com/ http://beeminder.com/.
- beamer99 13y agoI use a variation of this technique. I spend X minutes doing Y. Where X is 5 minutes. The 25 minutes of the Pomodoro is too long to focus on one thing. I have a very very short attention span and I found 5 minutes to be the optimal timebox for me. Anything longer and I get bored. Now I have clock which doesn't increment in minutes but 5minute units. It's the only way I can make sense of the passage of time. At the end of the timebox I do a 30sec review where I assess how I executed the task. Did I spend most of the time searching for information and organising material or did I spend it purely executing. I find with highly skilled people they spend most of they're time executing. If I spent most of it searching for stuff, I'd mark it as a delay due to organisation, if I was searching on how to do the task I would mark it is 'upskill', then I'd move onto the next thing. After a few hours patterns start to emerge around similar tasks. If a lot of related items were marked 'org' I'd then exploit them for automation or create them as templates for resuse. All the 'upskill' marked tasks would be condensed into a learning task at a more convenient task. The idea around all of this was to progressively become more organised and more skilled so that when performing a task, I would purely be executing and not faffing about. It's a bit convoluted but it is a system that has worked terribly well since late last year and it's made me twice as productive at work, and smarter at what I do. There are times though where I wish I could be like people around me who are able to focus on thing for half an hour or more but we all have to play the hand we've been dealt and mine is a chronic lack of focus.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- mathattack 13y agoThe author had me until he talked about giving up beer. :-) Seriously, though, I think getting rid of the distractions on the fringe of our lives is important. For me it was getting rid of the TV. That doesn't always link to killing procrastination (I'm on here, aren't I?) but it does create a lot more time for being in the flow.
- hkon 13y agoIf you like the concept of letting go. Jamie Smart goes deeper about explaining the concept in his book, Clarity.