Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination

#121

Post by acomar » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 8:11 PM UTC

cutety wrote: post #120

acomar wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt we're talking about the same things. I generally don't have any trouble focusing -- long lectures/tests, projects when I find my flow, etc.. I tend to prefer reading entire books in a single sitting, for example. In fact, if anything my problem goes the other way -- I get way too engrossed and have trouble breaking away. What I'm talking about here is a tendency I've noticed in myself to put off starting thin…

I just want to say that, ADHD is misnamed disorder. I have it, and thought for most of my life I couldn't because although I do have trouble with focus when it comes to boring stuff, if I found something interesting it was all I could focus on. ADHD is just the misregulation of focus, people with ADHD get Hyperfocus ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocus ) and that sounds exactly like what you are describing. If…

Thanks for this, looking through the wikipedia page on Adult ADHD hits a little close to home. Having never been someone prone to hyperactivity, or lacking in attention once it's set to something, I never really thought to look into the disorder. The sleep onset insomnia and disorganization seem especially relevant personally.

Re: Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination

#122

Post by redpanda_ua » Tue, Oct 18, 2016, 10:36 PM UTC

parennoob wrote: post #18

Why does this extension (and similar ones I have used in the past) require permissions to "View and Change data on all websites you visit"? That's mildly concerning at least, and "No way I'm installing this" at best.

Already replied to a similar question:

> I need to read all websites you visit, to check them against your blocked list. I do not save any data outside of local storage on chrome. In fact I am pro-privacy, so I opted out of using chrome.sync, to sync the data between Chromes on different devices. Because it's 3rd party cloud.

> Since I made this extension open-source, you can check if my claims are true here: [link redacted]

> (Sorry for messy code, 1st time real JS development for me, refactoring and documenting is on it's way.)

Re: Show HN: I made a Chrome extension that helps battle impulsive procrastination

#123

Post by whiteandnerdy » Wed, Oct 19, 2016, 9:50 AM UTC

acomar wrote: post #106

jlbribeiro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know your first 2 points too well. Most people would advise you to, calmly, break the task at hand into small tasks/steps. Personally, my problem is that the tasks are too high level (maybe an epic), which makes them overwhelming. By breaking them into easy-to-do-steps that forces you to plan your solution (1st point) and understand the problem (2nd point). You should break them into SMART goals (you've probably he…

> Most people would advise you to, calmly, break the task at hand into small tasks/steps. Yea, this seems to be the biggest takeaway from what everyone is saying here. I've tried to do this in the past and found that I don't do a good job of managing the list -- at some point, I'll just forget to add things to it or mark things off when I'm done; it's easier to just do them, right? But you're right, this is the right…

I had a similar experience, but I think I've cracked this now. For me the two significant changes were developing a friction-free tracking system, and motivating myself to use it reliably.

For the tracking system, I use Bullet Journalling. You might not need the full power of the bullet journal, but I'd recommend whatever system you do use has the following properties: * You have a 'backlog' to-do list and a 'daily' to-do list. * Every day you copy a subset of the backlog into your daily and cross it off the backlog. Tick things off the daily as you do them. * Daily items should take under an hour, or else you need to break them up into smaller tasks (or alternatively specify "two pomodoros of work on X" as an action) * Whenever you want to track something that doesn't have to be done today, add it to the backlog. * Rewrite your daily list every day. This penalises overcommitting. Moving stuff back to the backlog is allowed, as is dropping stuff. * Rewrite your backlog every month so you can garbage-collect stuff you no longer care about. * Use a hardbound journal to contain all your lists. Bits of paper get lost or messy, and computer tracking is much harder to stick to for some reason. (For me my tracking system has to be distinct from the place I do work, so can't be digital)

Motivation:

The thing that really worked for me here was operant conditioning. Every time you tick off a task, eat a small candy (like an M&M). Every day when you write out your dailies, eat a candy. For everything you want to train yourself to do, eat a candy when you do it. Big tasks get two or three candies.

It's kind of depressing that this is more effective than willpower, but it builds good associations and trains your brain to associate productivity with reward, promoting that dopamine kick. If candy isn't a motivator for you, substitute some other small reward - ideally something you don't indulge in otherwise - but make sure the reward comes immediately after the good behaviour or you won't get the reinforcement.

Hope that's helpful. Productivity tips are very individual, so I don't know whether this will work for you or not.