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Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination

davidthorpe.dev

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Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination

#11

Post by solarkraft »

BaitBlock wrote: post #2

[deleted]

Maybe your posts would be more appreciated if you posted them with your personal account and didn't write totally write them like ads. Oh, and if they were more relevant to what's being posted. I don't procrastinate because of clickbait.

I'm afraid that you'll get this account restricted if you continue like this. You're also tarnishing your brand.

Edit: Another notorious project-poster is burtonator, which I also find mildly annoying, but whenever he posts about his project at least it's actually tangentially related to what is being discussed. He's a good bit less over the line than you are, in my opinion.

Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination

#12

Post by eitland »

dt3ft wrote: post #3

Self-discipline is key. Either get better at it, or don't own a smartphone or a computer.

This has been a problem since long before smartphones or even computers. Socializing, gardening, etc. Anything including literally self harming seems to be done by someone somewhere in this world to postpone work.

I had to find a way to deal with procrastination a few years ago and the most important thkng I learned was to banish perfectionism and admit that good results are more likely to emerge from repeated iterations than from carefully acting out a perfect plan made the first day you heard about the project.

Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination

#13

Post by Tepix »

If you're in your home office, don't keep your private phone around. Put it in a separate room, ideally in flight mode and on silent.

On your work phone, remove all distractions.

Fore Firefox, the "impulse blocker" add-on can be helpful.

Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination

#15

Post by jerzyt »

mnky9800n wrote: post #5

I find that a lot of my procrastination comes from the anxiety of the thing I want to start doing not being completed. Literally, because I am worrying that the thing I want to work on is not already completed, I procrastinate from doing it. This is obviously counter productive and creates a feedback loop. Something I'm bad at but seems to work is to have a conversation with myself that sort of comforts me about the…

I see the same on a micro-scale. I have a task that will take an hour of concentrated effort - I'm afraid to start because I know I'll be interrupted. But it accumulates.

Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination

#16

Post by nicklaf »

michaelbrooks wrote: post #6
dt3ft wrote: post #3

Self-discipline is key. Either get better at it, or don't own a smartphone or a computer.

The brain is very good at self-sabotaging when it can't figure out what or how to deal with certain situations though. The best thing to do is figure out why you're procrastinating before trying to fix it.

Paradoxically, I think just acknowledging procrastination as an example of a bad thing, but not the most important one, might work well.

I say this because anxiety around needing to do something important is one possible cause of procrastination in the first place, and yet there is nothing more anxiety-inducing than telling yourself that by procrastinating, you're failing to do the most important things first. Whereas instead, if you only go so far as to make a mental note of it when you catch yourself procrastinating, you'll give yourself a moment to reflect without giving yourself anxiety that perpetuates further procrastination.

Also, you may have a subconscious reason for not doing something. Procrastinating could simply just be your brain's way of letting a better idea about how to do it percolate. That said, forming habits of doing certain unproductive things could be a pointless loss of productivity. Like if you have a habit of checking social media several times a day you might try blocking yourself from that and see how much productivity you've gained. And after all, there are better ways of procrastinating than by checking social media, like going for walks, trying new healthy recipes if you cook, or even cleaning (I actually don't know how many times I've thought of a good solution while cleaning), etc.

Once you've done that, you can think about it in terms of optimizing time spent working vs. time spent in leisure, and acknowledge that the "good" forms of procrastinating are an important form of leisure, which, if you've optimized the ratio well, boost your productivity by restoring mental energy and increasing creativity. Technically this includes sleep as well. :-)

Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination

#17

Post by vitabenes »

> Procrastination is actually my mind trying to tell me something that I’m not attuned enough to realise in the first place.

Yeah, procrastination is a teacher. There's a reason why you or I procrastinate. Sometimes it takes only a couple minutes to figure out.

Regarding the fear part, I find re-framing it to be useful.

Fearing failure? Well, if you haven't started yet, you're already failing. What will you learn, even if you fail?

Fearing endless work? Do you enjoy the process? If not, could you make it more enjoyable?

Fearing judgement or putting something imperfect into the world? 1) We're all imperfect. 2) You can create, try, and fail in private. You don't have to show your first bad attempt to anyone. You can work on it until it's good enough and then show it to someone else.

And about that "break it down" advice, yes it does help, but I prefer to think about it as clarifying.

Clarify the work, identify the unresolved issue, hazy details, decisions not made. What am I ignoring? What's unclear? What's giving me anxiety? Any of those questions help.

Hope that helps a bit.

And as you say in the article that you're looking for more tools for defeating procrastination, I feel obliged to point you to the collection of anti-procrastination tools I've built at deprocrastination.co.

Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination

#18

Post by jerzyt »

michaelbrooks wrote: post #10
mnky9800n wrote: post #5

I find that a lot of my procrastination comes from the anxiety of the thing I want to start doing not being completed. Literally, because I am worrying that the thing I want to work on is not already completed, I procrastinate from doing it. This is obviously counter productive and creates a feedback loop. Something I'm bad at but seems to work is to have a conversation with myself that sort of comforts me about the…

I'm usually very scared of "breaking" something and if there's nothing there to break in the first place, why would I create something that will potentially break at some point. I'm getting better at knowing that this is my issue though and just think to myself "If I break it, I can go back a few steps or just fix the problem as it comes".

That can be another productivity killer. You inherit some app to maintain/modify, and you're afraid to touch it. So you essentially fork the code, start making small tweaks to reassure yourself that you're not breaking anything and it's all good. But at some point you have to take a bigger bite and it's still scary.

Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination

#19

Post by maheart »

I think I've successfully managed to "beat" procrastination by adopting the pomodoro technique. I've shipped software for years now.

What I've come to realise however is that the brain/body can only do so much work in a day. I can program for a few hours a day (on a good day) and then it becomes increasingly more effort to do more coding. Sometimes, depending on the task, I'll be able to switch to another task. However, my point in all of this is, if you have a serious procrastination problem -- find a way to overcome it, but also recognise that your brain/body only has so much "fuel" each day, and you need to decide what to put it towards (e.g. work, hobbies, exercise, study, family, etc).

Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination

#20

Post by shodan666 »

I highly recommend installing following software:

-RescueTime (keeps tracking of all windows, websites, programs during the work hours)

-ManicTime (free and Open Source but lacks good reporting as in RescueTime, on other hand it does work 100% offline)

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