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Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time

bbc.com

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Re: Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time

#271

Post by adrianmonk »

onion2k wrote: post #37
juskrey wrote: post #33

Procrastination is a BS detector.

If that's true then all my school work and university assignments were BS.

This BS detector has a notoriously high false-positive rate. (Which, furthermore, acts as an enabler for making excuses.)

But it actually does detect BS sometimes. Sometimes it even tells you that your mind is in conflict with itself. In the case of school work, maybe some part of you believes the material is useful to understand, but some other part of you is not convinced.

Sometimes that feeling can even nudge you toward harmonizing those parts of your mind. Which can be nice. (But not always truly necessarily.) For example, my CS degree required a digital circuit design (EE) class that I didn't enjoy at all.

But in hindsight, I am now absolutely convinced of its usefulness and relevance. If I could have been convinced of that while I was taking it, it might have been easier to do the work. Although I wouldn't assume that's a realistic approach because maybe I needed to learn it first and then apply it before I could appreciate why it's useful. Sometimes you need to just power through even though you're not feeling it.

Still, the point is that procrastination served as a kind of an indicator that I felt it was BS. It doesn't necessarily fix anything to know that, but it's not wrong either.

Re: Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time

#272

Post by Allower »

gdubs wrote: post #263

Dr [David] Burns is one of the people who helped popularize Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in his book, “Feeling Good”. It’s cool to see these ideas becoming validated through studies. I’m not very familiar with ACT, but as an offshoot of CBT that includes a mindfulness component, it sounds fascinating. Burns talks about the “do one small thing” strategy in his books, and (anecdotally) it can be very effective. W…

CBT only works if you are a dumbass without questions. As in if you dig deep enough you realize there is no fucking point to doing anything.

Lots of people claim this is "dangerous" thinking, but that only reveals their own inability to find a satisfactory response, their own terror in confronting the reality that their entire life has been nothing but a waste of time, and there is no way it could be anything else.

Everything they thought was important is just as illusory as those deemed unimportant. The foundations of their beliefs are nothing more than hollow tribal chants.

Re: Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time

#273

Post by willidiots »

gdubs wrote: post #263

Dr [David] Burns is one of the people who helped popularize Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in his book, “Feeling Good”. It’s cool to see these ideas becoming validated through studies. I’m not very familiar with ACT, but as an offshoot of CBT that includes a mindfulness component, it sounds fascinating. Burns talks about the “do one small thing” strategy in his books, and (anecdotally) it can be very effective. W…

I spent two years with a fantastic psych in the bay who studied under Burns. She used a combination of 50% ACT, 50% Burns CBT and it was very impactful. Workbooks for homework were The Happiness Trap and the Feeling Good Handbook.

Fundamentally changed my life for the better.

Re: Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time

#274

Post by tra3 »

rafaelvasco wrote: post #251

I recently adopted a timed activity method. I make a list like: Eat, Watch TV, Code, Playing Games, Play Guitar etc. I then allocate a timeframe for each one. Every week night after work I do it like: 30m eating and watching netflix at the same time, 20m hard exercise, 60m guitar, 60m coding, 60m gaming, 60m reading. All timed with my smartphone. This is key. It must be timed with an alarm at the end. There's always…

This is similar to pomodoro technique [0]. I love it because it gets me in "the zone" quickly.

> I recently adopted a timed activity method

I'm not sure how long you'll be able to sustain it, but my experience has been that unstructured free time is absolutely necessary for recreation. If you push yourself too hard, you'll burn out.

Good luck!

[0]: https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique

Re: Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time

#275

Post by qntty »

gdubs wrote: post #263

Dr [David] Burns is one of the people who helped popularize Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in his book, “Feeling Good”. It’s cool to see these ideas becoming validated through studies. I’m not very familiar with ACT, but as an offshoot of CBT that includes a mindfulness component, it sounds fascinating. Burns talks about the “do one small thing” strategy in his books, and (anecdotally) it can be very effective. W…

Ken Burns -> David Burns

Re: Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time

#276

Post by mewpmewp2 »

wtetzner wrote: post #204
INGELRII wrote: post #124

As the society advances and problems are solved for us, we are left with the most central core problem, ourselves. Related to concepts like 'agency', 'impulse control', 'willpower', 'restraint', 'free will', 'delayed gratification' are connected to our status and self image. If you think humans as AI systems, we are facing issues with our reward function. Short term reward seems to overrule long term planning and goa…

Part of the problem is that making the "right" decision requires knowing the future. Sometimes procrastination is actually valuable. I've had many situations where I've been putting something off for a long time, and then eventually it turns out I didn't need to do that thing after all. Doing it would have ended up being a waste of time. The problem is that you can't predict which things are important to do early and…

In my procrastination in 95 percent of cases this is definitely not it. I usually will not find out that I did not have to do this unless I do it. I am talking about entrepreneurship mostly. So just do it to find out asap.

Re: Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time

#277

Post by gdubs »

qntty wrote: post #275
gdubs wrote: post #263

Dr [David] Burns is one of the people who helped popularize Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in his book, “Feeling Good”. It’s cool to see these ideas becoming validated through studies. I’m not very familiar with ACT, but as an offshoot of CBT that includes a mindfulness component, it sounds fascinating. Burns talks about the “do one small thing” strategy in his books, and (anecdotally) it can be very effective. W…

Ken Burns -> David Burns

Fixed, thanks :)

Re: Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time

#278

Post by darod »

Granted all of us have lots of work to do but I'm interested in knowing where others think the line is between procrastination and curiosity. I read HN almost everyday because I feel it keeps me in the know to tech related issues. I also read cnn, nytimes, and a few other industry specific sites. If these reads are time boxed, I imagine it wouldn't be considered procrastination. Yet, if I went back too often then it slowly creeps into that procrastination zone. thoughts?

Re: Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time

#279

Post by mewpmewp2 »

jp555 wrote: post #145
nippoo wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The human "reward function" is likely more complex than current AI - and not always particularly logical (though vaguely correlated to survival of your own genes!) - but it's probably naïve to assume that we're anything more complicated than a very advanced automaton trying to optimise a reward function...

I think it's MUCH more naive to assume we are just a very advanced automaton trying to optimise a reward function. What we don't know is infinitely larger than what we do know.

It seems logical we would be exactly that. This is how we would evolve during natural selection. It all makes sense. What reason would there be to be otherwise? It seems like human, wishful thinking to me that we are more than this. Since people want to think they are more than advanced automaton it is likely that this theory is based on imaginary foundation.

Re: Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time

#280

Post by mewpmewp2 »

INGELRII wrote: post #144
classified wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think humans as AI systems Humans are not "AI" systems but infinitely more complex. Which is why, among other things, humans are capable of driving a car safely while "AI" is not. I for one would feel disgusted with myself if I were to discover that I'm nothing more than the output of a reward function. YMMV.

> I for one would feel disgusted with myself if I were to discover that I'm nothing more than the output of a reward function. YMMV. Very interesting and heavy statement to say in this context. (I think your comment should be upvoted just to bring this honest description of how feelings and self-image interact with our thinking)

Why be disgusted over something that honestly seems pretty obvious. (unless there are delusions in my logic)?

What else could there be other than particles interacting with each other?

And if there are particles interacting with each other how could it be anything else than a reward system? What is the alternative?

Even if there was something non physical like a soul what leads decision making for that soul?

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