I trick my well-developed procrastination skills

I started my first workday today and I prepped for tricking my procrastination skills. I can't post on how it worked out yet (I might do 2 months from now), but here is what I did to trick myself:

- When in the shower, do one yoga stretch to get acquainted with yoga. I do this one [1], but then really really badly. I keep asking myself the question: what do I find fun about this? And relentlessly focus on that. It took a while to develop, but one answer is now: it feels relaxing. And yes, I'm still terrible at it.

- Whenever I walk in and out the door of the living room I have to do one set of weights (8 reps). Again, I ask myself what I find fun about it. Over time, I'm noticing that I like the adrenaline rush. But I first needed to get used to the intensity part of it.

- I'm a bit of an insomniac, so I go to bed around 22:00 (which was 20 minutes ago, hehe) and wake up at 06:00. The reason for this is to have a lot of wiggle room for my insomniac tendencies. Even going to bed a bit too late is much less of an issue ;-)

- When I wake up around 06:00, I reward myself with a morning run (I love running), no one is out on the streets at 6 AM where I'm from.

I am now experimenting with using my positive momentum to get into full workout/stretching routines.

I really like the idea of acquainting myself with topics by having a simple place (shower, living room) and trigger response (end of shower, leaving the living room). I thought of it myself, I never heard anyone about it. And it feels quite unlike doing a "30 day experiment", because I am actively looking for the fun of it.

I hope it works. I got inspired by it by reading Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Everyone has their own system as the author said, so I'd encourage more of us share our systems. As having more systems to read from might be more inspiring to some procrastinators to take action and experiment.

[1] https://www.verywellfit.com/thmb/gliK2-_bmUZk-YpGJRua9YSEtTk...

If the system is working for you...

For me, the source of my procrastination usually falls into one these buckets:

a) Not motivated or interested enough in the work

b) Not feeling mentally sharp

c) Overwhelmed and disorganized

I don't find it useful to spend time building productivity systems, because productivity comes and goes for me based on many factors. That's usually OK. But when I do find myself in a productivity rut, the solutions are usually straightforward:

a) Not motivated? Take a step back and find a new angle on the work that seems appealing. Might require seeking new perspectives from others. In some cases, it will require a competitive angle.

b) Exercise and read more in place of technology time

c) Simple to-do lists, with basic categorization and priority does the trick for me here. This is especially true when leading a team on a project. At its most primitive, this is a spreadsheet with columns for "TODO, category, priority, blocked-by, assigned" etc.

If you have ever used the Franklin Day Planner series of tools you will see the value in this advice. Make a list every evening, prioritize it, check it off during the next day. Everything goes on the list. Rinse and repeat.

I'm not disciplined enough to do all of it but the list making has helped me stay reasonably current.

My approach is to start something exciting to get into the swing of it, and then gradually mix in the less exciting things that nevertheless need to be done. I consider any kind of "inbox zero" or list writing an absurd waste of time. The only list I do is a broad strokes plan for the week, which I email to self at the beginning of the week, but I don't stick super close to it.