31–40 of 165 posts
I found that the bigger and more open ended the task is, the quicker I fizzle out and get distracted. The key for me is to get to some quicker reward point. For example I am currently working on an electronic toy project, and my current goal is to only test the music generation. Anything bigger gets hard to focus!
> On my iPhone I move every single application into a folder named “.”. I then move that onto the second screen. My phone dock has four apps: Phone, Headspace, Things and SMS: Yawn. When I read these minimalism tips I always wonder if people giving this advice ever had a real job or if their job is actually giving people minimalism advice. Good luck trying to justify being the only one without Skype/Slack/Gmail
> On my iPhone I move every single application into a folder named “.”. I then move that onto the second screen. My phone dock has four apps: Phone, Headspace, Things and SMS: Yawn. When I read these minimalism tips I always wonder if people giving this advice ever had a real job or if their job is actually giving people minimalism advice. Good luck trying to justify being the only one without Skype/Slack/Gmail
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. Howev…
Says one of the first commenters. Are you sure what you are doing here now is not procrastination?
Procrastination is a very delicate problem. I mostly embraced it. As long as I'm procrastinating good things by doing other good things, it works pretty well. It also helps to do things you like. I'm still on my smartphone 90% of the day and sleeping until 12 every day, btw.
I have come to see it as having a parallel in extrovert/introvert - for many introverts interacting with people is just fine, but it cannot be a marathon - we have to recharge after that. Interaction is very brain energy consuming in such scenarios.
Similarly, procrastination is something similar on a different time scale. I can be intensively 'productive' for a long time (2-3 days or so), but then I have to do nothing or, in some rare cases, something else that does not involve, I am guessing, that part of the brain. Rinse repeat.
Then I stop working because I did realize I can use something else that will be smarter and more efficient in the long run, So then my mind goes: OK! lets start working on that, and there the endless cycle begins. Because when I start working on the thing that will make the first thing better I also realize a day or two in, that this is stupid and I need to get back to the original thing but I can't do it because X is not as efficient as Y would have been. Then I try to think of something else for Y. So in a sense I'm stuck in a cycle where I try to improve and get my self to write less code before the project even has taken off in a meaningful way. It's just like in devops when people try to scale something before you have the users... which doesn't even make sense. And I'm guilty of that as well.
Anything you do, you choose to do so. Even the things that seem like you have no choice. You do.
You dont HAVE to eat. The consequence is that at some point your body doesnt get what it needs but you have the power to choose to not to eat.
You dont have to work on your project. But each choice has a consequence nonetheless.
So in short. What worked for me is realizing that EVERYTHING is a choice. You have to think back from the consequence and then choose what happens if you do something now vs you do something later
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. Howev…
There are six steps in the original technique:
1. Decide on the task to be done.
2. Set the pomodoro timer (traditionally to 25 minutes).
3. Work on the task.
4. End work when the timer rings and put a checkmark on a piece of paper.
5. If you have fewer than four checkmarks, take a short break (3–5 minutes), then go to step 2.
6. After four pomodoros, take a longer break (15–30 minutes), reset your checkmark count to zero, then go to step 1.
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. Howev…
pomodoro also works for me, I've had weeks of doing almost nothing, after I started simple 25 min bits with pauses, for some reason it can go on forever.
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. Howev…
> I think I've successfully managed to "beat" procrastination by adopting the pomodoro technique. Says one of the first commenters. Are you sure what you are doing here now is not procrastination?