Why I Procrastinate (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Procrastinate (2019)

#101

Post by ianamartin » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 11:15 PM UTC

InvisibleUp wrote: post #84

spawarotti wrote: post #81

TL;DR: "Most people don't have problems with procrastination" I’ve read the article. I would caution against labeling yourself as having ADHD, IMO it is very dangerous. Every high-achieving person I know has major problem with procrastination. I was nodding while reading the article until the ADHD part. Does it mean we all have ADHD? Consider an alternative: our brains have to operate nonstop at near max capacity jus…

Hi, author here. Since I wrote this article, I got professionally diagnosed and treated. Turns out, yeah, I'm doing a lot better now. On most days I don't have these symptoms, I can in fact study for classes and work, while also doing the things I love. I'm getting back into doodling, I've schedules all the appointments I need to, I have a great friend group, etc. etc. It's not perfect, I relapse sometimes, but I'm d…

No one has ADHD. It's an invented problem created for a drug that didn't work out in the 80s.

Your treatment is placebo effect.

You are the same person you've always been. Just fine. Struggling with being human and having a hard time getting things done. Just like everyone else.

We all share that, and we all deal with it in different ways. Good for you for finding something that sometimes works.

Re: Why I Procrastinate (2019)

#102

Post by Thorentis » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 11:19 PM UTC

InvisibleUp wrote: post #84

spawarotti wrote: post #81

TL;DR: "Most people don't have problems with procrastination" I’ve read the article. I would caution against labeling yourself as having ADHD, IMO it is very dangerous. Every high-achieving person I know has major problem with procrastination. I was nodding while reading the article until the ADHD part. Does it mean we all have ADHD? Consider an alternative: our brains have to operate nonstop at near max capacity jus…

Hi, author here. Since I wrote this article, I got professionally diagnosed and treated. Turns out, yeah, I'm doing a lot better now. On most days I don't have these symptoms, I can in fact study for classes and work, while also doing the things I love. I'm getting back into doodling, I've schedules all the appointments I need to, I have a great friend group, etc. etc. It's not perfect, I relapse sometimes, but I'm d…

As I said in my main comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22127841#22133387):

Give up social media (all of it: Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, HN), porn, and TV (including Netflix) for a couple of months. Take up some form of exercise (lifting, running, even pilates or something), and re-evaluate your attention span.

I'm not being flippant. If your therapist hasn't recommended this as at least a starting point to better diagnose you, then you need a better therapist.

Whenever a friend tells me they're depressed, or anxious, or have attention difficulties or whatever, the first thing I ask is "what did you spend most of your time doing last week?". If the answer is "Oh, I found this cool new show and binged it", or "Oh not much, I wasn't motivated to do anything so mostly just scrolling the feed haha" - I immediately sit them down and suggest that maybe those things are the cause and not the symptoms. You aren't depressed, therefore you watch TV and observe other people's lives on Instagram. You are depressed because you do those things with the majority of your waking hours.

Sure, many people suffer from depression, anxiety, etc. for plenty of other reasons they cannot control. But the rates of this in Western countries are skyrocketing. There has to be a better reason for that than "it's just who I am".

Re: Why I Procrastinate (2019)

#103

Post by TooSmugToFail » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 11:23 PM UTC

phillennium wrote: post #87

jlangemeier wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, todo lists and prioritization systems are like mental health yo-yo dieting; I've tried them all, 4 times over and nothing ever sticks. This section spoke to me in the same way, as each time I a new system up (or an old one back up) it works until I have to deal with an emergency day, where even the act of updating the list goes out the window. And then, the next day it's "hey, I made it through yesterday, I d…

Same here. I think what could possibly help us is a to-do list that's explicitly designed for that (e.g., has something like an "emergency mode"). If someone reading this feels the same and would like to hack together something like that, let me know and we could try it together.

Try Roam Research [1], it is awesome.

I've been coming up and using various GTD systems for a better part of the last two decades. I'd be slipping in and out of different setups, tools, solutions, systems... Some would stick for years, the others I'd abandon pretty quickly.

All of them worked for me to a degree, and were very helpful in keeping me organised and efficient, but never did I find a perfect setup that I'd be perfectly comfortable and happy with.

I guess the most useful thing I learned from all these years and years of trying to get a system in place and trying to get organised is to be perfectly comfortable with changing the systems as I go along. Keep experimenting. Keep what works for you, discard what doesn't.

For a long time I've been using a combination of a Trello based implementation of a GTD-gone-wild kind of a todo list (with the centerpiece being week-by-week daily todos) and an Evernote based journal that I kept surprisingly consistently almost every day for years.

A few months ago, I got in one of those overwhelmingly busy crises, which made me drop the journal. Rather than daily, I'd do it occasionally. To an extent it was a relief, and I rationalised the hiatus by thinking in terms of the benefit from the valuable extra time that I could spend on other work, but I quickly realised that I lost an important information repository I could comfortably and consistently rely on.

And then I stumbled upon Roam Research (RR). The experience was so great that I started keeping a daily journal again. Went from 'nah, I'm not writing shit' mode to an almost obsessive 'gotta record everything' in an instant. And I'm actually enjoying it.

I've ditched Evernote (I still have all my old data there), and I did not think twice, cause I got used to evolving my system without looking back if I find something that i feel works better.

At the moment I'm still using Trello for tasks, but the todos are so easy and natural to do in RR that I'm increasingly using it for my tasks, and finding that I am having to open Trello less and less.

RR is so powerful and flexible and natural and easy, that I am genuinely excited about a prospect of evolving my next system on it. I have a sense this one will stick for a while.

There's a very helpful article on Medium, written by a guy that's quite serious about getting the most out of RR. I'll try to find it and link it below.

[1] https://roamresearch.com/

Re: Why I Procrastinate (2019)

#104

Post by durpleDrank » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 11:32 PM UTC

fireontheroad wrote: post #17

aequitas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use this to your advantage to create peace of mind as I found out. The mechanism you describe is what is the basis for the "Getting things done" framework. You learn your brain to "trust" the "authority" so it can let go of all loose ends that keep your brain busy (like stuff it needs to remember, like appointment, paying a bill, fixing something in the house, etc). But if you are able to trick your brain in…

I have ADD, and I can speak to the GTD framework being an extremely useful tool. In my case I use Trello to run what I call my "Digital Brain". I use a typical kanban wip system (Backlog, Today, Blocked, Done) to organize pretty much all task-related things in my life and it works extremely well. Once I know its on the trello board, I know I don't have to worry about keeping it in my head anymore, and that gives me a…

" ... I don't have to worry about keeping ..."

This is key. I don't care if I miss a few weeks because of being lazy. I know my life/future/path/journey is ready to start again when I get tired of being disorganized.

Re: Why I Procrastinate (2019)

#105

Post by elfexec » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 11:38 PM UTC

"A brand new day and

A brand new HN post on

Procrastination"

I'm starting to see a pattern here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22125883

Re: Why I Procrastinate (2019)

#106

Post by rootusrootus » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 11:45 PM UTC

hashkb wrote: post #78

rootusrootus wrote: post #4

It's like this guy has been inside my head. Sometimes I feel exactly he same way, do the same things (well, not Twitter), with the same thoughts and results. There have been times when I refresh HN and say "you're not even enjoying this, why do you keep looking?"

It's not a guy.

I use "guy" generically, I don't read content with gender in mind unless it is pertinent. She did not express a preference (or I missed it).

Re: Why I Procrastinate (2019)

#107

Post by tikhonj » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 11:51 PM UTC

erobbins wrote: post #68

It's like a brain dump from my head. I can 100% identify with everything this guy says. I've been fighting this since I can remember, certainly over 20 years. I thought I was the only one who never looked at grades/feedback/whatever. I'd probably be a CTO or a successful startup founder by now if I'd had a solution early in life. As it is I've done OK but it's always a struggle because work by its very nature is doin…

> ...work by its very nature is doing something you don't want to do because they're paying you...

I emphasize with this, and work certainly has this aspect, but I think there's a better way to think about it: the nature of work is doing something valuable to somebody else for money. You don't get money for doing something you dislike and, crucially, people will still pay you to do useful things even if you enjoy them!

The practical upside is that it is possible to find work you enjoy. There is nothing wrong with prioritizing this as much as you are able, and you shouldn't feel guilty once you do find work you enjoy. It's easy to internalize a Puritan "work as penance" point of view living in the US, but I think it's not a useful (or accurate) way to think about it.

Of course, none of this changes your conclusion—if you feel this way, you should get some help. And, hell, even if you don't feel these things, chatting with a therapist will probably have a healthy effect on your life.

Re: Why I Procrastinate (2019)

#108

Post by tikhonj » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

3minus1 wrote: post #18

> I'm really prone to letting my thoughts get off on the worst tangents, and it will take a while to get myself back on track Sometimes I'll be listening to an audiobook and I'll start thinking about something else. By rewinding the audiobook I can figure out how long the distraction was (could be over a minute). It also amazes me how I have no recollection of the portions of the audiobook that were playing while I w…

Happens to me with audiobooks, physical books, movies... even in-person conversations. The latter can be awkward, but I've gotten pretty good at guessing what I missed, or asking reasonable questions to get myself back on track :).

Re: Why I Procrastinate (2019)

#109

Post by kempbellt » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 11:57 PM UTC

tiglionabbit wrote: post #90

kleborp wrote: post #6

The post linked within this post was really illuminating for me: https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html The section on why notecards and todo lists have never worked for him (and for me) was particularly salient: "The problem with "systems" is that they are authorities. They have to be. If you decide "I'll prioritize things with a stack of notecards" then you are telling yourself the following: "The notecards replace m…

Definitely right. Sometimes I look at notes I made for myself, telling myself what to do, and then ultimately rebel against my past self because I don't want to do what I'm telling myself to do. Systems are better when they're an augmentation of your memory that you can appreciate. For example, I always put events in my google calendar so I can remember when they are and catch overlaps early. I've had a bad relations…

This is painfully relatable.

"Screw you (me). You don't know what now is like. This is a priority now."

Re: Why I Procrastinate (2019)

#110

Post by InvisibleUp » Fri, Jan 24, 2020, 12:00 AM UTC

Thorentis wrote: post #102

InvisibleUp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, author here. Since I wrote this article, I got professionally diagnosed and treated. Turns out, yeah, I'm doing a lot better now. On most days I don't have these symptoms, I can in fact study for classes and work, while also doing the things I love. I'm getting back into doodling, I've schedules all the appointments I need to, I have a great friend group, etc. etc. It's not perfect, I relapse sometimes, but I'm d…

As I said in my main comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22127841#22133387 ): Give up social media (all of it: Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, HN), porn, and TV (including Netflix) for a couple of months. Take up some form of exercise (lifting, running, even pilates or something), and re-evaluate your attention span. I'm not being flippant. If your therapist hasn't recommended this as at least a starting point…

I'll bite.

- I don't watch TV, and I don't have a Netflix account

- I'm asexual. I don't consume porn.

- I tried taking a social media break in the past. It didn't fix anything. I would just either nap or stare at the wall while my thoughts raced in circles.

- I bike and walk long distances on a regular basis.

I understand you're trying to help but I'm not you. My brain works differently than yours. Maybe the rates in Western countries are skyrocketing because more people are learning this is a thing they have.

Apologies if I'm being flippant, but it's very important to understand that not everyone is the same. Some people need therapy or medication or surgery or etc. to be at their best. That's not a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with treatments that are known and proven to resolve a set of symptoms that you have.