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Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination

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Re: Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination

#131

Post by mattlondon »

vinbreau wrote: post #120
isostatic wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the opposite. If my brain has to engage before 10am the day's a waste. If I "ease into the day" then once I've dealt with the world on fire stuff about 11.30 I'll power through and before I know it it's 9PM and I've been massively productive.

This is me as well. My brain is useless until close to lunch time. After lunch I start feeling productive and this feeling begins to steamroll into the evening. When I am allowed to structure my day I don't even plan to start work until 6pm and can maintain great focus from then until 1am. Admittedly I imagine my ADHD has much to do with that and the habits I formed to cope with it as a child.

Interesting. My productivity ends after lunch! It's all downhill from there - lack of focus, easily distracted, silly mistakes, is-it-5pm-yet thoughts etc.

I think it is breaking for lunch that does it. When I didn't have any team mates in my office and I'd just eat at my desk I'd still get good work done after eating. Now I have team mates in the same office as me and we go for a "proper" lunch break - something about stopping and then having to go back to work I guess.

Re: Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination

#132

Post by Infernal »

gepi79 wrote: post #73
notheguyouthink wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Procrastination is the avoidance of activity due to a discomfort/fear/anxiety and subsequent inability to scale the discomfort wall that exists between you and the tasks' completion. Perhaps this is wrong, but I feel like another important (and possibly most common) source of procrastination is not avoidance, but rather simply getting more enjoyment (dopamine/etc) of other activities. Ie, I don't think I have to be…

Maybe there are 2 kinds or conscious expressions of procrastination: - One related to lust for fun. Like you describe. - One related to inhibition, fatigue, powerlessness, dread. You escape work even though you feel bad because you know you should be doing it to avoid an even worse situation. You do something else in the (false) hope to relax and to improve your mood and motivation for the task.

I’m glad you spelled it out like that - I can clearly feel the difference between the two in my own life. The first case, choosing fun, is much rarer and always conscious, e.g. “I can mow the grass tomorrow, but my good friend is only in town today”. I normally have to talk myself into it, because my default is to plow ahead with whatever is in front of me, as long as it is clear what I need to do.

I find the second type of procrastination to be 50x more common in my life, a daily occurrence of painfully trying to find /something/ else to do to avoid the wall of dreaded tasks that I don’t know how to resolve.

Re: Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination

#133

Post by jen729w »

Y_Y wrote: post #129
jen729w wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work from home, sitting next to my partner, and this is responsible for ~80% of our work. No particular order. Late Night Tales Presents Sasha: Scene Delete [0] Ulrich Schnauss & Jonas Munk: Passage [1] Jon Hopkins: Opalescent [2] HVOB & Winston Marshall: Silk [3] Anything at all by HVOB. HVOB is the golden stuff. All of Tycho's albums Any of Tycho's Burning Man mixes on SoundCloud [8] Kiasmos: Blurred [4] Vermont:…

How do you find this?

By now, iTunes is suggesting a lot of stuff to me that I really like. But if you’re starting from zero:

- Find something you like on iTunes, Spotify, whatever.

- Use the ‘start a radio station based on this song’ feature.

- When that plays something you also like, add it to your library. Keep playing it.

- If it’s a single track on an album, just add the album. The wonderful thing about modern streaming services is that you can speculatively add stuff and, if you don’t like it, just remove it. It doesn’t cost you anything! (That’s amazing, by the way.)

- iTunes learns. Keep doing this.

- By now, the Friday morning ‘for you’ playlist also has good stuff. Give that a chance. ‘Love’ the stuff you love. Add the albums with tracks you liked. iTunes keeps learning.

That’s all, really. Just listen to stuff and let the bots figure out what else you might like.

Edit: also find friends or co-workers with similar tastes. Share stuff with them. I get a lot of gold from my mate up in Cairns, just whenever we hear things we send each other the link.

Re: Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination

#136

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

jen729w wrote: post #118
adamcw wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also like to echo this question, always interested in what people listen to while working.

I work from home, sitting next to my partner, and this is responsible for ~80% of our work. No particular order. Late Night Tales Presents Sasha: Scene Delete [0] Ulrich Schnauss & Jonas Munk: Passage [1] Jon Hopkins: Opalescent [2] HVOB & Winston Marshall: Silk [3] Anything at all by HVOB. HVOB is the golden stuff. All of Tycho's albums Any of Tycho's Burning Man mixes on SoundCloud [8] Kiasmos: Blurred [4] Vermont:…

Thank you for this!

Re: Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination

#137

Post by jakebaker »

taylorjacobson wrote: post #105
skriticos2 wrote: post #51

Well, maybe sometimes this happens to me.. "I just go check the headlines on my favorite news sites and then I start my productive day.. and I drink this cup of coffee." .. 2 hours later. "Just this one headline, then I'm ready." .. 2 hours later. "Damn, where did the day go all of a sudden?" Of course the solution is to first do the work and then read the news.. but that's the rational part of my brain speaking - no…

Agreed. In my experience, the core challenge with most tasks is just that we don't spend enough time working on them. I can easily ignore a bot nagging me, and eventually just turn it off. The best solution for me is real-time accountability that forces me to sit down and commit to a real person what I'm about to do RIGHT NOW. I made an app for this called Focusmate ( https://www.focusmate.com ). It's a bit like a st…

Just wanted to say -- Focusmate is amazing. I've used it a ton. I don't know how, but it helps me get into the zone almost immediately. The idea of working with a stranger on the screen seems weird when you first hear about it, but it's amazing how the impact is almost magical.

Re: Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination

#138

Post by nickjj »

haskellandchill wrote: post #92
nickjj wrote: post #22

One thing that helped me with procrastination is to expose it for what it really is. Let's say you wanted to quit smoking (I've done it cold turkey after smoking a pack a day for over 10 years btw). The only real way you'll have a fighting chance to quit without any alternative drugs is to really want to quit. Not "oh man I wish I could stop smoking", but "ok, I'm done with this, I'm ready to stop". If you break down…

What should I be doing? I enjoy meaningful work and have to accept that I may have to take a pay cut to do it. Chasing money got me in a terrible position with “should”. I can’t stomach busy work any more, not when the world is suffering as it is so greatly now.

Your "should" would be different than mine. It's what you want to make of this life.

Jim Carrey had a good quote on this:

"You can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love"

This was after he saw his dad lose his accounting job.

Re: Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination

#139

Post by unicornporn »

mattlondon wrote: post #131
vinbreau wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is me as well. My brain is useless until close to lunch time. After lunch I start feeling productive and this feeling begins to steamroll into the evening. When I am allowed to structure my day I don't even plan to start work until 6pm and can maintain great focus from then until 1am. Admittedly I imagine my ADHD has much to do with that and the habits I formed to cope with it as a child.

Interesting. My productivity ends after lunch! It's all downhill from there - lack of focus, easily distracted, silly mistakes, is-it-5pm-yet thoughts etc. I think it is breaking for lunch that does it. When I didn't have any team mates in my office and I'd just eat at my desk I'd still get good work done after eating. Now I have team mates in the same office as me and we go for a "proper" lunch break - something abo…

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24292-first-physical-... perhaps.

Re: Show HN: Why Do I Procrastinate? – Web MD for Procrastination

#140

Post by Felger »

nickjj wrote: post #78
WhompingWindows wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting comparison between smoking and procrastination. If we examine the neurology of both, we see a dopamine-centric reward system behind task completion, and probably a very small dopamine hit after procrastination. Similarly, nicotine has been shown to affect the very dopaminergic pathways involved in reward/pleasure systems. So, in a very real neurological way, the comparison is apt. I wonder if people who s…

My procrastination is weird. I do freelance web development (solo-solopreneur) and when I take on a contract there's no stopping me from fulfilling it. I will work on it relentlessly until it's done and there will be no urge to do anything else until it's complete. You could even say it's the opposite of procrastination. But when it comes to doing certain things (even things that I like) I can easily talk myself into…

Almost the same situation here.

I cycle between hyperactivity and completely unproductive days. Getting up late being the main key to an unproductive day...

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