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Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination
71–80 of 165 posts
Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Any mobile or desktop app you use specifically for this that you'd recommend?
I find that there are so many that you have to just use one for a while and see if you like it (kind of meta, that).
The biggest differentiators are the UI, configurability (of times, alarms, etc.), and for me, oddly, the ability to have/not have a "ticking" sound while it's going. I like it to keep me motivated, others hate it and prefer music. Sometimes I use both.
Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination
#73I 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…
Listened to "Daily Ritual: How artists work" recently and the most common pattern seemed to be, work intensely for 2-4 hours in the morning, most people being finished by 1-2 in the afternoon, then go out for a long walk before doing light admin stuff in the mid-late afternoon. It's also been my observation that this is how I actually want to work. I feel ready and able to tackle anything first thing in the morning,…
I think each one have to find where those 2-4hours lies.
For me they start between 5pm and 6pm.
I can spend the day in front of my screen doing (almost) nothing or admin stuff. And then it kicks on and I’m (a lot more) productive.
The problem is that it’s around the time I have to take care of the kids when my wife can’t...
Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination
#74It's great to see this article at the top of Hacker News, my number one source of procrastination.
Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination
#75There’s actually some science behind procrastination and the steps you can do to beat it: http://nickswan.net/procrastination/
These are my notes from Tim Pychyl’s lecture that was posted on here a few months ago. Link to the YouTube video included in my blog posts. It’s a really good watch.
Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination
#76I wonder how beating procrastination can be bootstrapped. A professional procrastinator will also procrastinate reading this article even though they know it's exactly what they need. For example, I clicked the "how to be ultra spiritual" video in that article and was then curious about other videos made by the same person and pretty soon found myself in the usual procrastinator's state, forgetting the article or the fact that I got to this article in the first place by procrastinating implementing an algorithm that I've been wanting to complete for a couple of weeks and instead checking what's new on HN ...
I guess one needs to get to a certain point of being determined enough to make a strategic change in one's productivity, and the incentives required for such a change are probably specific to each person
Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination
#77Write your distractions down. Look at them at lunch / end of the day (and by then you'll find they don't seem so important).
Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination
#78I 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…
Listened to "Daily Ritual: How artists work" recently and the most common pattern seemed to be, work intensely for 2-4 hours in the morning, most people being finished by 1-2 in the afternoon, then go out for a long walk before doing light admin stuff in the mid-late afternoon. It's also been my observation that this is how I actually want to work. I feel ready and able to tackle anything first thing in the morning,…
What about afternoon/evening people?
I seem to have a pathological inability to get much done before midday/afternoon/evening/night (depending on severity)
I wonder if this is a belief I'm self-reinforcing by identifying as an "evening coder". I mean, I doubt there's a physiological reason for this. It's probably a matter of this being a habit of a lifetime that I've never fought back against hard enough.
Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination
#79If you are have a lot of procrastination problems and if you have always had those problems from an early age, don't dismiss the idea that you may actually have ADHD.
There really isn't adult onset ADHD, but there are a fair number of adults who have undiagnosed ADHD. Take an online screening test and that will tell you if you might want to see somebody about a full test.
This article is talking about the idea that we can train our brains to act like we have ADHD and how to break that brain plasticity cycle, but these techniques would be helpful if you also have ADHD.
Re: Kick the Shit Out of Procrastination
#80Another cruel tip is to put all your procrastination prone Web accounts behind complex login controls (passwords behind 2 factor authentication Lastpass with paranoid settings), and purge your cookies often.
In a similar vein: put your guilty pleasure accounts in a browser that you hate, log yourself out of there. Make fake accounts on your primary browser, so that whenever you have the urge to log in or are accidentally logged in, you find nothing there.
I do this for Facebook. I'm considering to do it for YouTube.