Imagine yourself starting, not finishing • Hacker News Board

Re: Imagine yourself starting, not finishing

#31

Post by white-flame » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 8:18 PM UTC

codezero wrote: post #30

white-flame wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a procrastinator, I can tell you that mine has NOTHING to do with anxiety, or the fear of failure, or the scope of the task at hand. There is similar projection in this article, that anybody dealing with procrastination is struggling with overcoming fear. While I can certainly force myself into doing things better as I'm older and sick of the failures that procrastination leads to, I've not heard much useful advic…

Yep, I made the comment to call out anxiety as a factor many people are unaware of. It does not mean everyone who procrastinates has clinical anxiety, but if one finds themselves often unable to make progress or having a decreased quality of life from failures, it doesn't hurt to get a professional opinion.

Well, the statement "but it's important to remember that procrastination is a form of anxiety" is much more absolute than that. Putting people under broad umbrella terms certainly can be counterproductive to dealing with individual issues.

Re: Imagine yourself starting, not finishing

#32

Post by Avshalom » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 8:19 PM UTC

ralfd wrote: post #22

codezero wrote: post #19

I say this on most threads about procrastination, but it's important to remember that chronic procrastination can be an indication of anxiety, not just a temporary state of mind. If you suffer from this kind of anxiety and not just a moment of distraction, you should see a professional, they really can help fix things long term and improve your quality of life.

I have to do laundry this weekend, and it is a very easy task: I just have to gather my cloth, go into the basement, put them in the machine and after two hours hang them up to dry. I don't fear the task. It is not giving me anxiety. I still read reddit and hacker news instead of doing it.

Not to try and armchair psychologist here but one of the things that reddit and hn have going for them is that there is no commitment there. Laundry is a whole damn thing, you've gotta be there in an hour or two to hang stuff up, then you eventually have to take it down, and you probably want to fold it (even if you don't (like me) some part of you says you're supposed to)... None of this hard and there lots of non active time but it's still committing to a course for the next X hours. Refreshing your email doesn't commit you to anything.

and again, not saying I know you or that you have anxiety but: it's inside that instinctive avoidance of commitment that the anxiety can hide without ever making you actually aware of itself.

Re: Imagine yourself starting, not finishing

#33

Post by codezero » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 8:23 PM UTC

white-flame wrote: post #31

codezero wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I made the comment to call out anxiety as a factor many people are unaware of. It does not mean everyone who procrastinates has clinical anxiety, but if one finds themselves often unable to make progress or having a decreased quality of life from failures, it doesn't hurt to get a professional opinion.

Well, the statement "but it's important to remember that procrastination is a form of anxiety" is much more absolute than that. Putting people under broad umbrella terms certainly can be counterproductive to dealing with individual issues.

That wasn't my intention. I've edited the original comment.

Re: Imagine yourself starting, not finishing

#34

Post by white-flame » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 8:32 PM UTC

codezero wrote: post #33

white-flame wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the statement "but it's important to remember that procrastination is a form of anxiety" is much more absolute than that. Putting people under broad umbrella terms certainly can be counterproductive to dealing with individual issues.

That wasn't my intention. I've edited the original comment.

As a pedantic as I am :-), editing "procrastination" into "chronic procrastination" while leaving it absolute simply gets into the technical definitions of the terms (especially "anxiety"), and how agreeable the formal psych terms are to the common populace.

In general lay terms, "anxiety" is associated with fear-type responses, not disinterest. A lack of stress indicators would tend to indicate a lack of anxiety. A begrudging compliance when breaking through procrastination is not overcoming anxiety, but overcoming disinterest. A post-response to getting something done being "Fine, it's done, did I really have to do that?" is not indicative of overcoming fear or anxiety, because fear and anxiety are about future unknowns and would be relieved ex post facto, while procrastination still is disgruntled at having had to do it. I would present all of these as informal disagreements to blanketly equating even chronic procrastination with anxiety, as the latter tends to be understood.

Of course, that's in full acknowledgement that behavioral medicine tends to use ridiculously broad terms that tend to lead to overdiagnosis and overmedication issues we're currently dealing with (especially in schools), and they might use "anxiety" far more broadly than I am above.

Re: Imagine yourself starting, not finishing

#35

Post by codezero » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 8:42 PM UTC

white-flame wrote: post #34

codezero wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't my intention. I've edited the original comment.

As a pedantic as I am :-), editing "procrastination" into "chronic procrastination" while leaving it absolute simply gets into the technical definitions of the terms (especially "anxiety"), and how agreeable the formal psych terms are to the common populace. In general lay terms, "anxiety" is associated with fear-type responses, not disinterest. A lack of stress indicators would tend to indicate a lack of anxiety. A…

Regardless of the semantics of how procrastination is defined, any behavior that affects your quality of life is one which is worth discussing with a professional to get actionable third party advice.

Re: Imagine yourself starting, not finishing

#36

Post by dang » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 9:34 PM UTC

jasonkostempski wrote: post #13

With that title and URL I though it was going to be a thinly veiled attempt at the Shia LaBeouf equivelant of a Rickroll. The message turned out to be pretty much the same.

It's actually not that bad as far as baity self-help posts go. We changed the title to the weird trick, uh, mind hack. I think that helps a fair bit.

Re: Imagine yourself starting, not finishing

#37

Post by redmaverick » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 9:55 PM UTC

Mindfulness (for 45 mins to 1 hr) helps a lot in combating procrastination. The catch is that if you are a procrastinator, you will procrastinate on trying to meditate also.

Re: Imagine yourself starting, not finishing

#38

Post by fabled_giraffe » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 9:58 PM UTC

redmaverick wrote: post #37

Mindfulness (for 45 mins to 1 hr) helps a lot in combating procrastination. The catch is that if you are a procrastinator, you will procrastinate on trying to meditate also.

Beyond procrastination, for those of us that have trouble focusing, this sort of thing is no joke.

In 30 seconds, we can go from fully intending to do something that we should do to better ourselves to reading HN submissions and commenting on them.

Re: Imagine yourself starting, not finishing

#39

Post by onion2k » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 10:08 PM UTC

redmaverick wrote: post #37

Mindfulness (for 45 mins to 1 hr) helps a lot in combating procrastination. The catch is that if you are a procrastinator, you will procrastinate on trying to meditate also.

It is impossible to procrastinate if you practice mindfulness meditation for 45 mins to 1 hr.

There's plenty of good research in to the benefits of mindfulness meditation, but I've never seen anything go quite that far.

Re: Imagine yourself starting, not finishing

#40

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Jun 18, 2016, 10:12 PM UTC

fabled_giraffe wrote: post #38

redmaverick wrote: post #37

Mindfulness (for 45 mins to 1 hr) helps a lot in combating procrastination. The catch is that if you are a procrastinator, you will procrastinate on trying to meditate also.

Beyond procrastination, for those of us that have trouble focusing, this sort of thing is no joke. In 30 seconds, we can go from fully intending to do something that we should do to better ourselves to reading HN submissions and commenting on them.

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