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Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term

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Re: Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term

#21

Post by vidarh »

drb311 wrote: post #6

There's an old saying: "If you want something done ask a busy person." Busy people always come through for you. I used to think this was because they were super efficient, super disciplined. But maybe your task is a welcome distraction from something even worse? And besides, everything we do is a distraction from the most looming, vaguest, most intractable deadline of all. The End.

It may be they're super efficient, but more likely in my experience is that they're often super busy because they're bad at saying no.

Re: Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term

#22

Post by rdudek »

hellbanner wrote: post #15

Just fucking do the work. If you spend as much time working as you trying to "hack your brain to be more productive", you would have been more productive. Overthinking about thinking can lead to neuroticism. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142283 http://www.amazon.com/Do-Work-Overcome-Resistance-Your/dp/19...

All this reading is why I procrastinate in the first place! It's like trying to find a solution to a problem that does not exist.

Re: Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term

#23

Post by edw519 »

The trick is to pick the right sorts of projects for the top of the list. The ideal sorts of things have two characteristics, First, they seem to have clear deadlines (but really don’t). Second, they seem awfully important (but really aren’t).

I did this for years. #1 on my list was proving Fermat's Last Theorem. While I didn't do that, I got a thousand other things done.

Alas, someone else has proved Fermat's Last Theorem and now my task list looks like everyone else's.

Re: Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term

#24

Post by luos »

kctess5 wrote: post #7

This sort of strategy has worked quite well for me over the years. It takes a bit of practice to get right, and probably isn't for everyone. For me, it's mostly about knowing the things that I have to do, and just doing them whenever I feel like it. So long as I feel like it some time before the due date, it works out great! In the case where I never feel like it, then I force myself to start with sufficient time bef…

I think I have the same problem.

For example I knew that I want to look for a new room. I couldn't start it because I did not know how much time it would take. This makes it really hard to start.

When I finally started I just said that I'll do it until 8 pm or something. This makes it easy to not stop cause "oh it's only 30 minutes I have to do this then I can go take a shower".

This is why I think techniques like pomodoro can really help someone. It's just hard to start something, and more you do it, more you know what's left. Usually this stops the fear for me.

Re: Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term

#26

Post by gmac »

hellbanner wrote: post #15

Just fucking do the work. If you spend as much time working as you trying to "hack your brain to be more productive", you would have been more productive. Overthinking about thinking can lead to neuroticism. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10142283 http://www.amazon.com/Do-Work-Overcome-Resistance-Your/dp/19...

I take it as more positive than normative.

In other words: here is a description of how it turns out I get (certain) things done; and not: here is a recipe for getting things done.

(It occurred to me to post it this morning because I spent half an hour making a 'retina'/hi-dpi version of the HN voting arrow and emailing it in, on the off-chance it might get used, in preference to about 14 more pressing tasks).

Re: Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term

#28

Post by moron4hire »

I tend to think of my procrastination not as avoiding important work, but work that is of unknown difficulty. If I don't know how hard something is to do, then I can't predict how long it would take. I could budget 15 minutes for it and it could end up taking 4 hours.

That so very rarely ever actually happens, but that is the feeling I get when I stare at my TODO list. The solution is often to create a task just for analyzing the complexity of another task, to be able to break it up into sub tasks.

For example: "do taxes" might be broken into "find receipts", "print forms", "fill out form 1 worksheet", "complete form 1", "mail form 1", etc. The more detailed I can get it, the more space it takes in the TODO list, the more it blocks out other things, and the more it keeps the TODO list from stagnating--which is an important component of motivation for me.

Re: Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term

#29

Post by ZenoArrow »

I do this all the time. I find I have tons of energy to work on projects when I'm putting something else off.

In my experience, the side projects need to have one key trait, they need to be achievable in chunks of a few hours. I don't mind doing work multiple times in a week, but as soon as I'm expected to work on something 5+ hours in a single session I'll switch to do something else. Also, they need to be one off tasks, I don't like repeating myself.

Whilst this may annoy the non-procrastinators, it's just something I've worked out that works for me, though I never gave it a name before. I can still be very productive in short bursts.

To whomever wrote the article, thank you.

Re: Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and Succeed Long-Term

#30

Post by jerf »

edw519 wrote: post #23

The trick is to pick the right sorts of projects for the top of the list. The ideal sorts of things have two characteristics, First, they seem to have clear deadlines (but really don’t). Second, they seem awfully important (but really aren’t). I did this for years. #1 on my list was proving Fermat's Last Theorem. While I didn't do that, I got a thousand other things done. Alas, someone else has proved Fermat's Last T…

Oh, come on, this list is still full: http://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems

:)

If you need help picking, I'm definitely going to go with P =? NP. That seems likely to keep you busy for a long time....

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