9 ms·

How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To

328 points by tmbsundar 13y ago

mistercow 13y ago
I guess this is marginally better than your typical motivation article, but not much. I really want our culture to shift in a direction where it's economically feasible to research nootropics and find ones that are seriously effective. As far as I know, the last time someone put a serious effort into researching a pharmacological aid to "drive" was in the 60s when selegiline was discovered, and it worked. Selegiline is now used for Parkinson's. After 40 years they also started using it for depression and dementia. But our society is so averse to transhumanism that not only has that research not been followed up in the last 50 years, but the one drug that does improve motivation is not legally available to non-depressed people with motivation problems.
- pknight 13y ago
  Not to discount research and the potential benefits of drugs for individual use cases, but why fight the symptoms (apparent lack in motivation) with drugs instead of the cause. Why not figure out how to organize things in a way that less people struggle with these kinds of things in the first place.
  - mistercow 13y ago
    Sure, we should still be researching that too, but people have been trying that, and not with all that much success. What works and doesn't work tends to vary wildly from person to person, and at best people tend to find answers that let them scrape by, not answers that really fix the problem. And I think it's quite possible that there isn't an organizational solution. It seems very likely to me that humans have evolved to basically be as lazy as we can get away with. It makes sense as a survival strategy to put in exactly as much effort as it takes to get your basic needs met. For most of us throughout history, this meant working our asses off to subsist. Pushing ourselves further than that would be a dangerous gamble on our resources. So in first world countries today, many people have this problem where we can subsist on relatively little effort, compared to, say, a farmer in 8000 BC. So our motivation scales down to that context. Send someone with that little motivation back to 8000 BC and ask them to start farming, and they'd starve - except that their motivation would probably rescale to fit the new context. And yes, there are those who find motivation easy, who don't have these problems. But I think they are significant outliers. So my point is that I'm not sure we can really ramp up our motivation without finding ways to stress ourselves the hell out. And I don't mean "this report is due tomorrow" stress, but "winter is in one month, and I don't want to die" stress. I'd really rather have the pill that turns me into an outlier.
    - pknight 13y ago
      Motivation is such a complex issue but it's quite apparent that you can't view it in isolation. I don't see how a hypothetical motivation pill will do much better than an anti-depressant drug. What I find interesting though is this stigma around depression, lack of motivation and laziness. There's nothing unbecoming, wrong or unnatural about any of these states. We don't need to stamp it out completely. Winston Churchill had severe depression but he was arguably one of the most productive people in the 20th century. Lazy people often come up with brilliant inventions (in order to do less work). And lack of motivation can often be addressed by life style changes. Maybe for one person the lack of motivation is because the work they engage in isn't meaningful to them. For another person, the work may be meaningful but they are missing connection from other people. The next person might not be leading a healthy lifestyle so they are not providing their body an environment in which they can thrive (not enough nutrients/sun light etc). And yet another person may simply be experiencing a natural oscillation between being motivated and unmotivated. All of these things can be addressed in some way or another. Personally, I found the education system a factor in robbing me of motivation and questioning my drive. I didn't get really motivated about learning until I got out of it and picked topics I was truly curious about. But up until that point I would almost have considered myself as kind of broken because I was doing the bare minimum to pass tests when I could be doing so much more. The only thing that changed for me to tap into my drive was the conditions I set. Now I learn because I'm driven by curiosity and a drive to make things. It would be a pity if people start taking pills without addressing these other things (at least in conjunction). Having said that, for specific treatment alternatives, I think the future is much brighter with neuro/bio feedback technologies. And it's getting cheaper by the year.
      - mistercow 13y ago
        I don't think that there's any reason that it has to be one or the other. It's interesting that you bring up Winston Churchill. He slept less than 6 hours per day, which suggests to me that he likely had a higher dopamine response than normal. That's associated with higher drive, which means Churchill was probably one of the outliers I was talking about.
  - nitrogen 13y ago
    The brain, more than any other part of the body, exists within a complex web of feedback systems that can't be separated into a simple cause and effect So if the problem is environment->thought->neurochemistry->action->environment (picture this as a cyclic directed graph), it might not matter which element of the loop is altered as long as something is done at some point on the cycle.
jaysonelliot 13y ago
I was hoping to see one for my personal bugbear: paralysis of choice. The most common situation for me is to be faced with a list of projects and tasks that are more than I can handle, and doing any one of them means ignoring the others, which are all equally urgent. I know all the GTD and Pomodoro techniques and everything else, but it's in my head where the problem lies. Once I settle in to one specific task, I can focus and get into the zone to finish it. But that first step—committing to which thing I'll do—is the hardest one. Hours can go by while I'm avoiding the question altogether. I can literally feel the anxiety in my chest whenever I try to pick one and start doing it.
- arrel 13y ago
  I get the same problem, and I use my calendar as a weapon against it. If you have three things you need to do, pick one and block a time off on the calendar to focus on it and ignore the other two. After that it's the calendar telling you what to do, not your own self doubting brain.
- thatthatis 13y ago
  In cases like this I use a binary comparison tree: Task a vs task b: if I don't have an opinion about which I should do, I flip a coin. Task c vs task d, task e vs task f, task g vs task h. Then winner ab vs winner cd, winner ef vs winner gh. Then winner abcd vs winner efgh. I almost never make it all the way to the end as by round 2 ive considered the urgency and value of every task and the winner is usually obvious. In the cases where I truly don't have an opinion about any of them, the coin flipping only takes a few seconds and getting started on somehing now is often better than spending the time trying to gather enough evidence to form an opinion. The trick is in forcing relatively easy binary comparisons vs hard absolute or exhaustive evaluations. Our brains have lots of good hardware to make binary and trinary decisions, but we have to use software once we pass 4 or so competing choices. It works for me. Ymmv.
  - pandler 13y ago
    The coin flip works surprisingly well for me, and for the exact reason you stated. Given the choice between two options that I can't decide between, I flip a coin. The actual result of the flip is irrelevant, because I'll invariably know which result I want before the coin even lands. It forces me to make a decision in spite of myself.
habitue 13y ago
What about the super common: "I don't want to work because there's a much more immediate source of dopamine release right here on this page of interesting internet links..."
legohead 13y ago
What about: I am having so much fun doing other things that I don't care enough about what I should be doing? (or replace 'should' with 'know that would make me happier in the long run and also be better for my family')
a3voices 13y ago
Why would you want to force yourself? Life isn't about how much work you can do. If you feel like working, then work. If you don't, then don't work.
- rcfox 13y ago
  Right, and what if I don't feel like working, but I do feel like eating?
  - krapp 13y ago
    You can't eat comfort.
- MiddleClassGuy 13y ago
  Some people do not have such a luxury. I cannot arbitrarily decide to ignore my daily duties simply because I don't feel like working. I'd be fired. The same goes if you are a business owner in charge of your working hours. You cannot arbitrarily decide that your client portal outage doesn't matter because you don't feel like working. Your client is going to fire you.
  - a3voices 13y ago
    If you get fired, then what? Even if you don't find a new source of income, you're not going to starve. Only a few hundred people starve per year in the U.S. What's the big deal? It's all just psychological issues in your brain. Either way is actually fine.
    - MiddleClassGuy 13y ago
      You are correct, most people would not starve; however, losing one's job is not something to be taken lightly. I imagine the following would be a very difficult conversation with your family: "Well, I just didn't quite feel like working today. As a result, I lost my job. You may have to go without many of the things I have previously worked so hard to get for this family, but at least everyone won't starve." EDIT: Also, the issue of hunger in the United States is much more serious than you think. http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hunger-and-poverty-statistics.aspx http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hun...
chaz 13y ago
I have found the Pomodoro Technique (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) to be helpful. I can't do it for a whole day, but a short sprint to grind through something is a near, achievable goal. For extended, head-banging frustrations, it's helpful to step away, think about it without the distraction of the screen, and coming back at it with fresh eyes. The time AFK is not to be underestimated: http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html
- toddmorey 13y ago
  The magic of this technique is that mechanically and reliably takes impossible tasks and makes them actionable. All that's required, you tell yourself, is 20 freaking minutes. I can do that. Anyone can do that. What I usually find is that after the first session, I'm engaged enough to keep going. My emotions have caught up, my determination sets in, and now the desire and confidence to complete the task are strong enough that I rarely need to do more pomodoro sessions.
- Uehreka 13y ago
  Pomodoro saved my butt during my senior year of college. I put off a book report until the last minute and found myself needing to read 5 chapters about medieval Italian republics in 3 hours. I allocated 1 Pomodoro to each chapter, and said that if I hadn't finished the chapter before the end, I would skip to the next one. This forced me to speed read and skip confusing parts (instead of re-reading them 10 times). The report wasn't one of my best, but I wouldn't have finished it at all without the structure I got from Pomodoro. I used the focus booster app for OS X, I highly recommend it: http://www.focusboosterapp.com/ http://www.focusboosterapp.com/
- rtpg 13y ago
  I second this. Usually I get distracted anyways, so I program 8 hours and get it done in 12 or so. It's harder to use when you have a lot of outside constraints in scheduling (you can't really walk out of class for 5 minutes every 30 minutes), but I use it on weekends and when I have a free-ish schedule.
- joelrunyon 13y ago
Fasebook 13y ago
What exactly are you building that building it isn't already its own reward? Oh, really? I see...
- acoyfellow 13y ago
  I'm not sure if I'm misreading this, but your tone sounds quite snarky. That kind of attitude is not exactly the normal tone for comments at HN. So, I appreciate this article, but the content does seem somewhat redundant to HN. Every now and again a new life-hack article will appear, and then talk about Pomodoro, then people posting links to their time saving apps. It's a tested technique, so why not? Maybe it really will help someone today get their project shipped. It's not the worst thing that can happen around here :) I like that the HN community supports constantly trying to be more productive. "Building it" can be hard for people, depending on their background and what "it" is-- and I don't think having a sarcastic oppositional stance is going to encourage or help anyone.
  - Fasebook 13y ago
    Productive doing what exactly? Nevermind that, money!
plcancel 13y ago
Personally, ~80% of the time it's this one: "You are putting something off because you are afraid you will screw it up."
- visakanv 13y ago
  Yes. A baby step in the right direction here is to chunk big things into little things- it's harder to screw up little things.
chegra 13y ago
I said this in another comment, but what works for me is publicly pledging to work for x number of hours on y project or else I give z dollars to some charity. Where x is normally between 2-10 y is anything z is normally 10 If you are procrastinating right now, give it a go. Go on twitter or facebook and say if I don't work for 2 hours on Akasha(a project), I will donate $10 to watsi(the charity). I think when setting goals we hope for some reward in the future, but the brain doesn't value rewards as much as it hate losses(loss aversion). YMMV
- padolsey 13y ago
  I'm not sold on the idea of aligning one's failures with charitable contributions. You'd inevitably learn to feel good at the prospect of not having to yield cash to a good cause. Also, dangling a piece of charity (say, to a watsi patient) and then ripping it away once you 'succeed' seems a bit... unethical.
  - ChristianMarks 13y ago
    Yes, better to allocate the funds to a cause you actively oppose if you fail.
    - bgilroy26 13y ago
      Donating to charity is good and making the donations large enough to be an effective disincentive would be foolhardy. Try rewards rather than punishment. It seems like a sself-made, self-run system using rewards would be simpler and more resilient.
  - trendoid 13y ago
    >You'd inevitably learn to feel good at the prospect of not having to yield cash to a good cause. Are you really saying this is like Pavlov's dog experiment? Since, the money goes for good cause, I think it might not act as a good motivation in the first place to finish the task. But yeah, publicly announcing this stuff can lead to many people comprehending this as unethical.
- 13y ago
einhverfr 13y ago
The one thing I find that works with nearly all these is reasonably simple. It may be a broader solution than the Pomodoro Technique but it borrows some of the same focus. What I do is take a task I am avoiding and come up with a small piece of it I can reasonably do as a goal. It might be a task I can do in 15 minutes. It might be something I might need two hours to do. I then follow that to completion, and then decide whether to bump the rest of the task of and get started on something else or whether to continue. Usually for the tasks I feel like I don't have a solid grasp on how to do this helps, but I may still bump part of it down the road. For the tasks I am avoiding for administrative reasons or don't feel like, this gets me started. An important point though is that the bumped task is less intimidating and smaller than it was when I started, meaning it is less likely to happen again.
asdashopping 13y ago
I have suffered from depression for years and it is destroying my life. I read articles like this and think that what they're saying sounds like a great idea, and then proceed to completely ignore it. I have tried multiple types of antidepressants and found the side effects unbearable. They didn't make me feel happy, they made me feel nothing. I have tried CBT and regular therapy, both of which have failed because I was unable to motivate myself to actually go. Maybe it is just a matter of changing how I think, but it's hard to change how you think when you don't even feel in control of your own thoughts. No matter how hard I try, I always fall back into the same patterns. I don't why I'm writing this here. I don't know what else to do.
- icu 13y ago
  Hi, from my own experience getting out of depression and then later helping a friend out of it I firmly believe you can get out of depression if you want to. Wanting to get out of depression is the hard part because you got to be willing to do what is necessary. You are closer than you think to getting out of depression when you say, "Maybe it is just a matter of changing how I think." It is that. You are also right about it being hard and how easy it is to fall back into the same patterns. He's what I've done and what I got my friend to do: break out of your daily routine. I know this sounds like advice that isn't that different than what the other commentators have posted but it's because they are partly correct. The missing part is to incrementally break out of your daily routine by incorporating small changes as you go along. So what do I mean? Well try walking/driving a different way home even if it takes longer. Go to a different supermarket for food. Listen to a different radio station. Even if you hate a certain genre of music try listening to it and listen to it for longer than what you would normally trial it out for. Go to a different café or restaurant. Eat or cook new food you have never considered trying. If you can, try to do stuff you wouldn't ever 'normally do.' The trick here is to not overwhelm yourself with too many changes too quickly or to try things that are really hard for you. This way you can actually keep to the incremental changes you are making and you don't fall back into your old patterns. Keep sticking to these changes as you make them. Soon you will find that they will start to stack and you start to feeling new feelings. As you are going along try to stretch your routine to do ever different things. Don't rush, and don't beat yourself up. If all you can do is one thing then do that until you can do the next thing. All the best and you can make it.
sheff 13y ago
Another very simple thing I use when procrastination strikes is Seth Roberts Magic Dots technique. ( http://blog.sethroberts.net/category/procrastination/magic-dots/ http://blog.sethroberts.net/category/procrastination/magic-d... ) He came up with it based on reinforcement studies in pigeons. There are more details on the linked page, but basically whilst working you just put a dot on a piece of paper every 6 minutes in the shape of a square, then join all the dots with a line. Something about doing this essentially meaningless thing improves motivation and throughput for me.
enscr 13y ago
All these sound interesting to read but none are really practical when it comes to implementing. To a large part, when things have to happen, somehow circumstances contrive you to accomplish it. These 'techniques' are rarely ground breaking for the true-to-the-spirit procrastinator. What works without fail is peer pressure or a stinging comment. Disclaimer : Personal experience, may not be generalizable.
- visakanv 13y ago
  I was watching Trainspotting with my wife the other day and it both amused and troubled at how the drug addicts' behavior reminded me of how I typically procrastinate. People vastly underestimate how elaborate, nuanced and complex the procrastinator mind can be.
  - nickthemagicman 13y ago
    Made me laugh but it's so true.
nathell 13y ago
There are problems with all three techniques. The problem with adopting a prevention focus is that it doesn't work. Or, rather, it might work when the fear of failure is the only fear at stake, but -- at least for me -- it seldom is. For example, one might have thoughts like "I really need to be doing this, otherwise it might be too late ... hang on, it already might be too late ... I really should check ... but what if it's already too late? I'd feel awful ... no, let's not feel awful, let's check sometime later." Poof, thought gone until next time. When you suffer from GAD or any other psychological disorder involving anxiety, about the only thing you can do is understand your fears and your reactions to them, and take small steps towards reinterpretation. Fighting anxiety with inducing more anxiety is not going to work. The problem with ignoring your feelings is that it's much easier said than done. Good luck ignoring the urge of turning off the alarm clock when you're not even half-conscious, you feel dizzy, sleepy and have headaches. While in #3 the author advises to "embrace the fact that your willpower is limited," here he seems to forget all about it. In situations like getting up in the morning, techniques involving subconsciousness like [1] are more likely to work. We are more feeling-driven than we think ourselves to be, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Those feelings are there for a reason, and ignoring them might just not work. Indeed, the author acknowledges that "on some level you need to be committed to what you are doing" and I think when he says "ignore not feeling like doing something," he actually means "_trick_ your mind into starting feeling like doing that." The problem with using if-then planning is that for some people, it's all too easy to change the decision, even if it's already been done; the unconscious mind keeps re-examining the decision and re-pondering the issue at hand. So when the time comes, you end up re-considering the decision instead of deliberating what to do. That's not exactly the same thing, but it still eats up willpower. [1]: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right-away-when-your-alarm-goes-off/ http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right...
- read 13y ago
  Some of what you say doesn't contradict the author. You might also have an incomplete understanding of some others. (1) A prevention and a promotion focus are two types of focus people have a disposition to. You can't adopt a prevention focus if you are promotion inclined. Maybe you, personally, work better with tasks requiring a promotion focus. (2) The technique you mention does not contradict the author. I agree with you though that often tricking your mind into starting something works wonders. You can't ignore that having a process is tremendous help. Murakami describes his writing process as an extremely rigid daily routine: he wakes up at 4 a.m. every day and writes for five to six hours, exercises in the early afternoon, and then reads or listens to music before his 9 p.m. bed time. Murakami adds: “I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.” (3) Have you tried writing down your if-then plans? Because there's a huge difference in outcome between saying you will do something and writing down you will do something. Writing makes you commit. It keeps the unconscious mind away from sabotaging your decision. If you're wondering why 3% of Harvard graduates make ten times more than the remaining 97% combined it's because they didn't just think of their plans but instead wrote them down. http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-as-much-as-the-other-97-combined http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/why-3-of-harvard-...
nothiggs 13y ago
Simply ignoring your feelings to get a job done is just a tactic, and IMHO, not a very good one as it is not sustainable. You should always want to do what you are doing; not necessarily in the sense that this is what you would like to be doing for the rest of your life, but in the sense of recognising that this unpleasant task will get you closer to that something you would like to do the rest of your life. I think the best method to get something done is to first have a clear vision and passion for the bigger picture. Then, understand how this unpleasant task gets you nearer to the goal of that bigger picture that you want. If it does, you won't need to ignore your feelings. On the contrary; your feelings will push you to do it. If it doesn't, there's a good chance you should be doing something else.
edw519 13y ago
What's next? "How to Make Yourself Have Sex When You Just Don't Want To" "How to Make Yourself Eat Krispy Kremes When You Just Don't Want To" "How to Make Yourself Love You Children When You Just Don't Want To" Here's a dirty little secret: You should have an emotional attachment to your work similar to the emotional attachment you have to having sex, eating Krispy Kremes, loving your children, or whatever else is your thing. Others should have to drag you kicking and screaming away from your work. If you "just don't want to work" then the wrong question to ask is: "How can I make myself work when I just don't want to?" The right question is: "What the hell am I doing working on something that I just don't want to work on it the first place and what should I really be working on?" Find the answer to the second question and you will never encounter the first question again.
- super-serial 13y ago
  That's the reason I've started 10 projects and finished 0 in the last year. I did awesome for the first few weeks starting a project, but then I don't "feel like" finishing. Since I'm releasing nothing... I decided to take on smaller and smaller projects. Instead of making a mobile app, I'm now making a small plugin to release on CodeCanyon.net. I put all the CSS for the demo and the actual plugin in the same file to begin with, and now I don't "feel like" separating the demo's CSS in a separate file because it's frustrating and boring. I'd rather code new things than mess with this stupid CSS on a project that probably won't sell, that took way longer than it should have. But this time I said I'm not doing any other project until I've finished this one. And now I've done absolutely nothing for 2 weeks(except my part-time job), and procrastinated by watching TV shows and studying Japanese. As someone who always changes their opinion on "what should I really be working on" - I think I need something more than "asking the right questions." I'm still not sure what that is, but I'm hoping that one day I will find it.
- matwood 13y ago
  The problem with your line of thought is no matter how much you love something there are going to be parts you hate. There is a reason it is called work. I love creating software, but I certainly did not love it when I spent a day debugging a tx deadlock in our test harness last week. Did I want to fix it instead of working on something else? Not really, but I did it anyway because it is my job.
leeoniya 13y ago
what works for me, at least in getting through difficult software grinds is commit to some deadline and a presentation of progress to a friend or better yet several friends at once.
seeingfurther 13y ago
I'll read this later.
callum85 13y ago
I think this is terrible advice. I got much better at motivation over the last year by thinking in exactly the opposite way from what this article recommends. I accepted that I had virtually no willpower, and that I wasn't just going to just magically develop some, and that I didn't need it anyway. Instead I needed to get more skilled at 'coaxing' myself into doing things – at steering my feelings into more constructive areas, and then letting my desires drive my actions. I applied my tiny amount of willpower to this 'steering', rather than trying to use it to drag myself kicking and screaming into doing things, which it clearly is not powerful enough to do. It worked, and I'm much happier. You can't "just" do stuff if you don't feel like it, as this article suggests. That's completely unsustainable. Any approach amounting to "just fucking do it" is going to last only as along as that little glimmer of resolve lasts, which is obviously short term. Instead you need to break down the wall between your gut desires and your cerebral strategies, and make those two parts of yourself acknowledge each other and collaborate.
- skunkworks 13y ago
  This is really interesting and I'd like to hear more about your approach. What is your inner monologue like when you're integrating the two opposing forces?
- eaurouge 13y ago
  You can't "just" do stuff if you don't feel like it, as this article suggests. And yet every morning, millions of people get up and go to work to do a job they really don't feel like doing. People still do back-breaking work just so they can put food on the table. I'm not saying it's a recipe for happiness but people have been doing stuff they don't enjoy for millennia. And even in present day, only some of us can afford to choose when, where and what to work on.
  - gedrap 13y ago
    This. Sometimes, I feel really guilty when I 'don't feel like working', although I know that hour worked is hour paid (working from home), and my hourly rate is the same as my dad's daily rate in a sweat shop in Lithuania. We have such a luxury and we fail to understand that.
chubot 13y ago
This is kind of funny as I just started reading "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Kahnemann. In those terms, this article is very much about "type 2" processes, which is conscious and slow monitoring of the more intuitive type 1 processes. A consequence is that following this advice will result in "ego depletion". By exerting your willpower in one area, you deplete a common store of it, and thus you're more likely to overeat, act lazily, think lazily, etc. in other areas. I think this probably manifests in people who work too hard getting fat, since they don't want to watch what they eat or exercise (if those things require willpower; for some people may not) Note that "conscious willpower" is the opposite of a "flow state". And flow is what is necessary to write good software. Like all things, there has to be a balance. You have to exert your willpower, and all new things involve this pain, but you can also set your life up so it isn't a constant problem.
jaibot 13y ago
I'm working on a way to shame yourself into doing it. http://powershame.com http://powershame.com
datawander 13y ago
Until I see hard data supporting one way or another, it's all bunk and personal anecdote. Though I will comment and say I do like the one about "just show up" rather than waiting for being in the mood.

328 points by tmbsundar 13y ago

I guess this is marginally better than your typical motivation article, but not much. I really want our culture to shift in a direction where it's economically feasible to research nootropics and find ones that are seriously effective. As far as I know, the last time someone put a serious effort into researching a pharmacological aid to "drive" was in the 60s when selegiline was discovered, and it worked. Selegiline is now used for Parkinson's. After 40 years they also started using it for depression and dementia. But our society is so averse to transhumanism that not only has that research not been followed up in the last 50 years, but the one drug that does improve motivation is not legally available to non-depressed people with motivation problems.

pknight 13y ago
Not to discount research and the potential benefits of drugs for individual use cases, but why fight the symptoms (apparent lack in motivation) with drugs instead of the cause. Why not figure out how to organize things in a way that less people struggle with these kinds of things in the first place.
- mistercow 13y ago
  Sure, we should still be researching that too, but people have been trying that, and not with all that much success. What works and doesn't work tends to vary wildly from person to person, and at best people tend to find answers that let them scrape by, not answers that really fix the problem. And I think it's quite possible that there isn't an organizational solution. It seems very likely to me that humans have evolved to basically be as lazy as we can get away with. It makes sense as a survival strategy to put in exactly as much effort as it takes to get your basic needs met. For most of us throughout history, this meant working our asses off to subsist. Pushing ourselves further than that would be a dangerous gamble on our resources. So in first world countries today, many people have this problem where we can subsist on relatively little effort, compared to, say, a farmer in 8000 BC. So our motivation scales down to that context. Send someone with that little motivation back to 8000 BC and ask them to start farming, and they'd starve - except that their motivation would probably rescale to fit the new context. And yes, there are those who find motivation easy, who don't have these problems. But I think they are significant outliers. So my point is that I'm not sure we can really ramp up our motivation without finding ways to stress ourselves the hell out. And I don't mean "this report is due tomorrow" stress, but "winter is in one month, and I don't want to die" stress. I'd really rather have the pill that turns me into an outlier.
  - pknight 13y ago
    Motivation is such a complex issue but it's quite apparent that you can't view it in isolation. I don't see how a hypothetical motivation pill will do much better than an anti-depressant drug. What I find interesting though is this stigma around depression, lack of motivation and laziness. There's nothing unbecoming, wrong or unnatural about any of these states. We don't need to stamp it out completely. Winston Churchill had severe depression but he was arguably one of the most productive people in the 20th century. Lazy people often come up with brilliant inventions (in order to do less work). And lack of motivation can often be addressed by life style changes. Maybe for one person the lack of motivation is because the work they engage in isn't meaningful to them. For another person, the work may be meaningful but they are missing connection from other people. The next person might not be leading a healthy lifestyle so they are not providing their body an environment in which they can thrive (not enough nutrients/sun light etc). And yet another person may simply be experiencing a natural oscillation between being motivated and unmotivated. All of these things can be addressed in some way or another. Personally, I found the education system a factor in robbing me of motivation and questioning my drive. I didn't get really motivated about learning until I got out of it and picked topics I was truly curious about. But up until that point I would almost have considered myself as kind of broken because I was doing the bare minimum to pass tests when I could be doing so much more. The only thing that changed for me to tap into my drive was the conditions I set. Now I learn because I'm driven by curiosity and a drive to make things. It would be a pity if people start taking pills without addressing these other things (at least in conjunction). Having said that, for specific treatment alternatives, I think the future is much brighter with neuro/bio feedback technologies. And it's getting cheaper by the year.
    - mistercow 13y ago
      I don't think that there's any reason that it has to be one or the other. It's interesting that you bring up Winston Churchill. He slept less than 6 hours per day, which suggests to me that he likely had a higher dopamine response than normal. That's associated with higher drive, which means Churchill was probably one of the outliers I was talking about.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  The brain, more than any other part of the body, exists within a complex web of feedback systems that can't be separated into a simple cause and effect So if the problem is environment->thought->neurochemistry->action->environment (picture this as a cyclic directed graph), it might not matter which element of the loop is altered as long as something is done at some point on the cycle.

jaysonelliot 13y ago

I was hoping to see one for my personal bugbear: paralysis of choice. The most common situation for me is to be faced with a list of projects and tasks that are more than I can handle, and doing any one of them means ignoring the others, which are all equally urgent. I know all the GTD and Pomodoro techniques and everything else, but it's in my head where the problem lies. Once I settle in to one specific task, I can focus and get into the zone to finish it. But that first step—committing to which thing I'll do—is the hardest one. Hours can go by while I'm avoiding the question altogether. I can literally feel the anxiety in my chest whenever I try to pick one and start doing it.

arrel 13y ago
I get the same problem, and I use my calendar as a weapon against it. If you have three things you need to do, pick one and block a time off on the calendar to focus on it and ignore the other two. After that it's the calendar telling you what to do, not your own self doubting brain.
thatthatis 13y ago
In cases like this I use a binary comparison tree: Task a vs task b: if I don't have an opinion about which I should do, I flip a coin. Task c vs task d, task e vs task f, task g vs task h. Then winner ab vs winner cd, winner ef vs winner gh. Then winner abcd vs winner efgh. I almost never make it all the way to the end as by round 2 ive considered the urgency and value of every task and the winner is usually obvious. In the cases where I truly don't have an opinion about any of them, the coin flipping only takes a few seconds and getting started on somehing now is often better than spending the time trying to gather enough evidence to form an opinion. The trick is in forcing relatively easy binary comparisons vs hard absolute or exhaustive evaluations. Our brains have lots of good hardware to make binary and trinary decisions, but we have to use software once we pass 4 or so competing choices. It works for me. Ymmv.
- pandler 13y ago
  The coin flip works surprisingly well for me, and for the exact reason you stated. Given the choice between two options that I can't decide between, I flip a coin. The actual result of the flip is irrelevant, because I'll invariably know which result I want before the coin even lands. It forces me to make a decision in spite of myself.

habitue 13y ago

What about the super common: "I don't want to work because there's a much more immediate source of dopamine release right here on this page of interesting internet links..."

legohead 13y ago

What about: I am having so much fun doing other things that I don't care enough about what I should be doing? (or replace 'should' with 'know that would make me happier in the long run and also be better for my family')

a3voices 13y ago

Why would you want to force yourself? Life isn't about how much work you can do. If you feel like working, then work. If you don't, then don't work.

rcfox 13y ago
Right, and what if I don't feel like working, but I do feel like eating?
- krapp 13y ago
  You can't eat comfort.
MiddleClassGuy 13y ago
Some people do not have such a luxury. I cannot arbitrarily decide to ignore my daily duties simply because I don't feel like working. I'd be fired. The same goes if you are a business owner in charge of your working hours. You cannot arbitrarily decide that your client portal outage doesn't matter because you don't feel like working. Your client is going to fire you.
- a3voices 13y ago
  If you get fired, then what? Even if you don't find a new source of income, you're not going to starve. Only a few hundred people starve per year in the U.S. What's the big deal? It's all just psychological issues in your brain. Either way is actually fine.
  - MiddleClassGuy 13y ago
    You are correct, most people would not starve; however, losing one's job is not something to be taken lightly. I imagine the following would be a very difficult conversation with your family: "Well, I just didn't quite feel like working today. As a result, I lost my job. You may have to go without many of the things I have previously worked so hard to get for this family, but at least everyone won't starve." EDIT: Also, the issue of hunger in the United States is much more serious than you think. http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hunger-and-poverty-statistics.aspx http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hun...

chaz 13y ago

I have found the Pomodoro Technique (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) to be helpful. I can't do it for a whole day, but a short sprint to grind through something is a near, achievable goal. For extended, head-banging frustrations, it's helpful to step away, think about it without the distraction of the screen, and coming back at it with fresh eyes. The time AFK is not to be underestimated: http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html

toddmorey 13y ago
The magic of this technique is that mechanically and reliably takes impossible tasks and makes them actionable. All that's required, you tell yourself, is 20 freaking minutes. I can do that. Anyone can do that. What I usually find is that after the first session, I'm engaged enough to keep going. My emotions have caught up, my determination sets in, and now the desire and confidence to complete the task are strong enough that I rarely need to do more pomodoro sessions.
Uehreka 13y ago
Pomodoro saved my butt during my senior year of college. I put off a book report until the last minute and found myself needing to read 5 chapters about medieval Italian republics in 3 hours. I allocated 1 Pomodoro to each chapter, and said that if I hadn't finished the chapter before the end, I would skip to the next one. This forced me to speed read and skip confusing parts (instead of re-reading them 10 times). The report wasn't one of my best, but I wouldn't have finished it at all without the structure I got from Pomodoro. I used the focus booster app for OS X, I highly recommend it: http://www.focusboosterapp.com/ http://www.focusboosterapp.com/
rtpg 13y ago
I second this. Usually I get distracted anyways, so I program 8 hours and get it done in 12 or so. It's harder to use when you have a lot of outside constraints in scheduling (you can't really walk out of class for 5 minutes every 30 minutes), but I use it on weekends and when I have a free-ish schedule.
joelrunyon 13y ago

Fasebook 13y ago

What exactly are you building that building it isn't already its own reward? Oh, really? I see...

acoyfellow 13y ago
I'm not sure if I'm misreading this, but your tone sounds quite snarky. That kind of attitude is not exactly the normal tone for comments at HN. So, I appreciate this article, but the content does seem somewhat redundant to HN. Every now and again a new life-hack article will appear, and then talk about Pomodoro, then people posting links to their time saving apps. It's a tested technique, so why not? Maybe it really will help someone today get their project shipped. It's not the worst thing that can happen around here :) I like that the HN community supports constantly trying to be more productive. "Building it" can be hard for people, depending on their background and what "it" is-- and I don't think having a sarcastic oppositional stance is going to encourage or help anyone.
- Fasebook 13y ago
  Productive doing what exactly? Nevermind that, money!

plcancel 13y ago

Personally, ~80% of the time it's this one: "You are putting something off because you are afraid you will screw it up."

visakanv 13y ago
Yes. A baby step in the right direction here is to chunk big things into little things- it's harder to screw up little things.

chegra 13y ago

I said this in another comment, but what works for me is publicly pledging to work for x number of hours on y project or else I give z dollars to some charity. Where x is normally between 2-10 y is anything z is normally 10 If you are procrastinating right now, give it a go. Go on twitter or facebook and say if I don't work for 2 hours on Akasha(a project), I will donate $10 to watsi(the charity). I think when setting goals we hope for some reward in the future, but the brain doesn't value rewards as much as it hate losses(loss aversion). YMMV

padolsey 13y ago
I'm not sold on the idea of aligning one's failures with charitable contributions. You'd inevitably learn to feel good at the prospect of not having to yield cash to a good cause. Also, dangling a piece of charity (say, to a watsi patient) and then ripping it away once you 'succeed' seems a bit... unethical.
- ChristianMarks 13y ago
  Yes, better to allocate the funds to a cause you actively oppose if you fail.
  - bgilroy26 13y ago
    Donating to charity is good and making the donations large enough to be an effective disincentive would be foolhardy. Try rewards rather than punishment. It seems like a sself-made, self-run system using rewards would be simpler and more resilient.
- trendoid 13y ago
  >You'd inevitably learn to feel good at the prospect of not having to yield cash to a good cause. Are you really saying this is like Pavlov's dog experiment? Since, the money goes for good cause, I think it might not act as a good motivation in the first place to finish the task. But yeah, publicly announcing this stuff can lead to many people comprehending this as unethical.
13y ago

einhverfr 13y ago

The one thing I find that works with nearly all these is reasonably simple. It may be a broader solution than the Pomodoro Technique but it borrows some of the same focus. What I do is take a task I am avoiding and come up with a small piece of it I can reasonably do as a goal. It might be a task I can do in 15 minutes. It might be something I might need two hours to do. I then follow that to completion, and then decide whether to bump the rest of the task of and get started on something else or whether to continue. Usually for the tasks I feel like I don't have a solid grasp on how to do this helps, but I may still bump part of it down the road. For the tasks I am avoiding for administrative reasons or don't feel like, this gets me started. An important point though is that the bumped task is less intimidating and smaller than it was when I started, meaning it is less likely to happen again.

asdashopping 13y ago

I have suffered from depression for years and it is destroying my life. I read articles like this and think that what they're saying sounds like a great idea, and then proceed to completely ignore it. I have tried multiple types of antidepressants and found the side effects unbearable. They didn't make me feel happy, they made me feel nothing. I have tried CBT and regular therapy, both of which have failed because I was unable to motivate myself to actually go. Maybe it is just a matter of changing how I think, but it's hard to change how you think when you don't even feel in control of your own thoughts. No matter how hard I try, I always fall back into the same patterns. I don't why I'm writing this here. I don't know what else to do.

icu 13y ago
Hi, from my own experience getting out of depression and then later helping a friend out of it I firmly believe you can get out of depression if you want to. Wanting to get out of depression is the hard part because you got to be willing to do what is necessary. You are closer than you think to getting out of depression when you say, "Maybe it is just a matter of changing how I think." It is that. You are also right about it being hard and how easy it is to fall back into the same patterns. He's what I've done and what I got my friend to do: break out of your daily routine. I know this sounds like advice that isn't that different than what the other commentators have posted but it's because they are partly correct. The missing part is to incrementally break out of your daily routine by incorporating small changes as you go along. So what do I mean? Well try walking/driving a different way home even if it takes longer. Go to a different supermarket for food. Listen to a different radio station. Even if you hate a certain genre of music try listening to it and listen to it for longer than what you would normally trial it out for. Go to a different café or restaurant. Eat or cook new food you have never considered trying. If you can, try to do stuff you wouldn't ever 'normally do.' The trick here is to not overwhelm yourself with too many changes too quickly or to try things that are really hard for you. This way you can actually keep to the incremental changes you are making and you don't fall back into your old patterns. Keep sticking to these changes as you make them. Soon you will find that they will start to stack and you start to feeling new feelings. As you are going along try to stretch your routine to do ever different things. Don't rush, and don't beat yourself up. If all you can do is one thing then do that until you can do the next thing. All the best and you can make it.

sheff 13y ago

Another very simple thing I use when procrastination strikes is Seth Roberts Magic Dots technique. ( http://blog.sethroberts.net/category/procrastination/magic-dots/ http://blog.sethroberts.net/category/procrastination/magic-d... ) He came up with it based on reinforcement studies in pigeons. There are more details on the linked page, but basically whilst working you just put a dot on a piece of paper every 6 minutes in the shape of a square, then join all the dots with a line. Something about doing this essentially meaningless thing improves motivation and throughput for me.

enscr 13y ago

All these sound interesting to read but none are really practical when it comes to implementing. To a large part, when things have to happen, somehow circumstances contrive you to accomplish it. These 'techniques' are rarely ground breaking for the true-to-the-spirit procrastinator. What works without fail is peer pressure or a stinging comment. Disclaimer : Personal experience, may not be generalizable.

visakanv 13y ago
I was watching Trainspotting with my wife the other day and it both amused and troubled at how the drug addicts' behavior reminded me of how I typically procrastinate. People vastly underestimate how elaborate, nuanced and complex the procrastinator mind can be.
- nickthemagicman 13y ago
  Made me laugh but it's so true.

nathell 13y ago

There are problems with all three techniques. The problem with adopting a prevention focus is that it doesn't work. Or, rather, it might work when the fear of failure is the only fear at stake, but -- at least for me -- it seldom is. For example, one might have thoughts like "I really need to be doing this, otherwise it might be too late ... hang on, it already might be too late ... I really should check ... but what if it's already too late? I'd feel awful ... no, let's not feel awful, let's check sometime later." Poof, thought gone until next time. When you suffer from GAD or any other psychological disorder involving anxiety, about the only thing you can do is understand your fears and your reactions to them, and take small steps towards reinterpretation. Fighting anxiety with inducing more anxiety is not going to work. The problem with ignoring your feelings is that it's much easier said than done. Good luck ignoring the urge of turning off the alarm clock when you're not even half-conscious, you feel dizzy, sleepy and have headaches. While in #3 the author advises to "embrace the fact that your willpower is limited," here he seems to forget all about it. In situations like getting up in the morning, techniques involving subconsciousness like [1] are more likely to work. We are more feeling-driven than we think ourselves to be, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Those feelings are there for a reason, and ignoring them might just not work. Indeed, the author acknowledges that "on some level you need to be committed to what you are doing" and I think when he says "ignore not feeling like doing something," he actually means "_trick_ your mind into starting feeling like doing that." The problem with using if-then planning is that for some people, it's all too easy to change the decision, even if it's already been done; the unconscious mind keeps re-examining the decision and re-pondering the issue at hand. So when the time comes, you end up re-considering the decision instead of deliberating what to do. That's not exactly the same thing, but it still eats up willpower. [1]: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right-away-when-your-alarm-goes-off/ http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right...

read 13y ago
Some of what you say doesn't contradict the author. You might also have an incomplete understanding of some others. (1) A prevention and a promotion focus are two types of focus people have a disposition to. You can't adopt a prevention focus if you are promotion inclined. Maybe you, personally, work better with tasks requiring a promotion focus. (2) The technique you mention does not contradict the author. I agree with you though that often tricking your mind into starting something works wonders. You can't ignore that having a process is tremendous help. Murakami describes his writing process as an extremely rigid daily routine: he wakes up at 4 a.m. every day and writes for five to six hours, exercises in the early afternoon, and then reads or listens to music before his 9 p.m. bed time. Murakami adds: “I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.” (3) Have you tried writing down your if-then plans? Because there's a huge difference in outcome between saying you will do something and writing down you will do something. Writing makes you commit. It keeps the unconscious mind away from sabotaging your decision. If you're wondering why 3% of Harvard graduates make ten times more than the remaining 97% combined it's because they didn't just think of their plans but instead wrote them down. http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-as-much-as-the-other-97-combined http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/why-3-of-harvard-...

nothiggs 13y ago

Simply ignoring your feelings to get a job done is just a tactic, and IMHO, not a very good one as it is not sustainable. You should always want to do what you are doing; not necessarily in the sense that this is what you would like to be doing for the rest of your life, but in the sense of recognising that this unpleasant task will get you closer to that something you would like to do the rest of your life. I think the best method to get something done is to first have a clear vision and passion for the bigger picture. Then, understand how this unpleasant task gets you nearer to the goal of that bigger picture that you want. If it does, you won't need to ignore your feelings. On the contrary; your feelings will push you to do it. If it doesn't, there's a good chance you should be doing something else.

edw519 13y ago

What's next? "How to Make Yourself Have Sex When You Just Don't Want To" "How to Make Yourself Eat Krispy Kremes When You Just Don't Want To" "How to Make Yourself Love You Children When You Just Don't Want To" Here's a dirty little secret: You should have an emotional attachment to your work similar to the emotional attachment you have to having sex, eating Krispy Kremes, loving your children, or whatever else is your thing. Others should have to drag you kicking and screaming away from your work. If you "just don't want to work" then the wrong question to ask is: "How can I make myself work when I just don't want to?" The right question is: "What the hell am I doing working on something that I just don't want to work on it the first place and what should I really be working on?" Find the answer to the second question and you will never encounter the first question again.

super-serial 13y ago
That's the reason I've started 10 projects and finished 0 in the last year. I did awesome for the first few weeks starting a project, but then I don't "feel like" finishing. Since I'm releasing nothing... I decided to take on smaller and smaller projects. Instead of making a mobile app, I'm now making a small plugin to release on CodeCanyon.net. I put all the CSS for the demo and the actual plugin in the same file to begin with, and now I don't "feel like" separating the demo's CSS in a separate file because it's frustrating and boring. I'd rather code new things than mess with this stupid CSS on a project that probably won't sell, that took way longer than it should have. But this time I said I'm not doing any other project until I've finished this one. And now I've done absolutely nothing for 2 weeks(except my part-time job), and procrastinated by watching TV shows and studying Japanese. As someone who always changes their opinion on "what should I really be working on" - I think I need something more than "asking the right questions." I'm still not sure what that is, but I'm hoping that one day I will find it.
matwood 13y ago
The problem with your line of thought is no matter how much you love something there are going to be parts you hate. There is a reason it is called work. I love creating software, but I certainly did not love it when I spent a day debugging a tx deadlock in our test harness last week. Did I want to fix it instead of working on something else? Not really, but I did it anyway because it is my job.

leeoniya 13y ago

what works for me, at least in getting through difficult software grinds is commit to some deadline and a presentation of progress to a friend or better yet several friends at once.

seeingfurther 13y ago

I'll read this later.

callum85 13y ago

I think this is terrible advice. I got much better at motivation over the last year by thinking in exactly the opposite way from what this article recommends. I accepted that I had virtually no willpower, and that I wasn't just going to just magically develop some, and that I didn't need it anyway. Instead I needed to get more skilled at 'coaxing' myself into doing things – at steering my feelings into more constructive areas, and then letting my desires drive my actions. I applied my tiny amount of willpower to this 'steering', rather than trying to use it to drag myself kicking and screaming into doing things, which it clearly is not powerful enough to do. It worked, and I'm much happier. You can't "just" do stuff if you don't feel like it, as this article suggests. That's completely unsustainable. Any approach amounting to "just fucking do it" is going to last only as along as that little glimmer of resolve lasts, which is obviously short term. Instead you need to break down the wall between your gut desires and your cerebral strategies, and make those two parts of yourself acknowledge each other and collaborate.

skunkworks 13y ago
This is really interesting and I'd like to hear more about your approach. What is your inner monologue like when you're integrating the two opposing forces?
eaurouge 13y ago
You can't "just" do stuff if you don't feel like it, as this article suggests. And yet every morning, millions of people get up and go to work to do a job they really don't feel like doing. People still do back-breaking work just so they can put food on the table. I'm not saying it's a recipe for happiness but people have been doing stuff they don't enjoy for millennia. And even in present day, only some of us can afford to choose when, where and what to work on.
- gedrap 13y ago
  This. Sometimes, I feel really guilty when I 'don't feel like working', although I know that hour worked is hour paid (working from home), and my hourly rate is the same as my dad's daily rate in a sweat shop in Lithuania. We have such a luxury and we fail to understand that.

chubot 13y ago

This is kind of funny as I just started reading "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Kahnemann. In those terms, this article is very much about "type 2" processes, which is conscious and slow monitoring of the more intuitive type 1 processes. A consequence is that following this advice will result in "ego depletion". By exerting your willpower in one area, you deplete a common store of it, and thus you're more likely to overeat, act lazily, think lazily, etc. in other areas. I think this probably manifests in people who work too hard getting fat, since they don't want to watch what they eat or exercise (if those things require willpower; for some people may not) Note that "conscious willpower" is the opposite of a "flow state". And flow is what is necessary to write good software. Like all things, there has to be a balance. You have to exert your willpower, and all new things involve this pain, but you can also set your life up so it isn't a constant problem.

jaibot 13y ago

I'm working on a way to shame yourself into doing it. http://powershame.com http://powershame.com

datawander 13y ago

Until I see hard data supporting one way or another, it's all bunk and personal anecdote. Though I will comment and say I do like the one about "just show up" rather than waiting for being in the mood.