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Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

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Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#311

Post by dorchadas »

spurgu wrote: post #236
nisa wrote: post #73

Words of warning from a not so young (36) chronic procrastinator with a rather messed up life: Take it seriously. I'm not talking about reading HN in your 7th work hour when doing stupid Excel sheets. I'm talking about messing up years and years of your life. I believe it's a symptom of some deeper issues and it won't go away from alone. Lack of sleep, stress, work overload, information overload amplify the effects b…

> The worst is that you procrastinate not only work but rather your own existence because you'll constantly attempt to catch up but just can't. Idea/suggestion: How about the old "delete all your emails" trick: Sell everything you have. Quit your job. Move to another place. Having said/suggested that, I've done this email trick a couple of times and while it works wonders short term - I stop worrying about those high…

I've done the latter a few times, or, rather, had a chance to do it a few times do to natural circumstances. The first was going off to college (6 hours from home), where I knew absolutely nobody. It really put things in perspective for me, and allowed me to change some habits I didn't like, and it also brought some mental health issues to light.

The second was when I studied abroad. Completely different culture and everything, allowed me to shift my personality more towards what I wanted to be, though it was sadly only temporary and when I returned back to school I slowly shifted back.

In fact, I've noticed it again. I moved back home after college (to my hometown, etc.) and started teaching at my old high school, and I'm kinda falling back into the same habits I had then, and I feel I'm almost regressing as a person in a sense. I think it's time for another change, though I also think the fact that I'm regressing is because there's some internal issues I haven't fixed.

But, overall, I think moving and taking those leaps are a good chance to get started on fixing some of those issues when you're stuck in a rut and just can't get out of it.

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#312

Post by dorchadas »

Darmody wrote: post #257
nisa wrote: post #73

Words of warning from a not so young (36) chronic procrastinator with a rather messed up life: Take it seriously. I'm not talking about reading HN in your 7th work hour when doing stupid Excel sheets. I'm talking about messing up years and years of your life. I believe it's a symptom of some deeper issues and it won't go away from alone. Lack of sleep, stress, work overload, information overload amplify the effects b…

I'm in the same boat but several years younger. I'm witnessing how I throw my life away and there's nothing I can do. Nothing works.

If it makes you feel any better, know you're not alone there.

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#313

Post by nicbou »

markus_zhang wrote: post #259
nicbou wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try reducing the scope of your projects, so that you can ride on your impulses. I find it a lot easier to maintain something I use than a half-completed project, so I try to get there as soon as possible. It worked really well for me.

Yeah I can complete anything if it's someone else request, or at least if I can convince myself it will be used by someone else. But I don't work as a programmer so I don't get a lot of those requests. On the other side, if it's purely from my impulse then I found it difficult to finish it.

Does it solve a problem you have?

My longest-running projects are all in active use. I maintain them because they are useful to me, and update them to fit my needs.

It's a lot harder to maintain something for an imaginary customer.

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#314

Post by battery423 »

seebetter wrote: post #126
partyboat1586 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ritalin suppresses some of those deeper emotions. It also gives you additional rewarding feelings for completing tasks here and now. Unless you have ADHD due to genetic factors then imo it's just a mask over the real emotional issue. A very effective and useful one but still a temporary measure.

I view Ritalin and Adderall as a performance enhancer. I have never seen a biological study proving ADHD except perhaps some EEG. Virtually everyone I have known prescribed amphetamines abused them. (Anecdotal warning) And my ex roommate was a large prescriber of Adderall. He would see patients for 3 minutes. He had 3 homes (one an $8m condo) and drove a matte black Lamborghini Aventador. He was way overweight and dr…

Does it matter?

If i personally struggle with my mental image of being smart enough to study and i want to but i cant because my grades are shit and i take ritalin and suddenly i can go to university, my life is better of.

Tell me, why can i get glasses but its wrong to take ritalin?

Are glasses Performance enhancers?

What/how do you define 'abused them'?

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#315

Post by battery423 »

partyboat1586 wrote: post #119
battery423 wrote: post #107

Ritalin. Yepp went from a very bad grade to a very good grade. You can't tell me its about 'avoiding negative emotions' if i have prepared my learning desk with everything i need, cleaned it, etc. then i open the book and i literlay can't learn. That wall is much easier to break with ritalin. Is that shitty? Probably. Is it healthy? Probably not. But it brought me much further then before and i'm pretty sure that thr…

Ritalin suppresses some of those deeper emotions. It also gives you additional rewarding feelings for completing tasks here and now. Unless you have ADHD due to genetic factors then imo it's just a mask over the real emotional issue. A very effective and useful one but still a temporary measure.

I wouldn't say its just temprary.

I'm not taking ritalin every day anymore. I did that when i was going to school etc. and i do still see habits/behaviours i got through ritalin.

Stuff like cleaning up everything and reorganizing it.

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#316

Post by mercer »

TimSchumann wrote: post #77

Just came here to post a link to his podcast. https://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/iprocrastinate-podcast... He hasn't been very active with it in the last 3+ years, but it was a great listen.

Maybe he'll get to making another episode later...

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#317

Post by markus_zhang »

nicbou wrote: post #313
markus_zhang wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I can complete anything if it's someone else request, or at least if I can convince myself it will be used by someone else. But I don't work as a programmer so I don't get a lot of those requests. On the other side, if it's purely from my impulse then I found it difficult to finish it.

Does it solve a problem you have? My longest-running projects are all in active use. I maintain them because they are useful to me, and update them to fit my needs. It's a lot harder to maintain something for an imaginary customer.

>My longest-running projects are all in active use. I maintain them because they are useful to me, and update them to fit my needs.

This makes sense. A lot side projects (that are not for others but just for me) only spinned from semi-interest, not for active use. This could be the reason. Someone has to use it.

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#318

Post by Darmody »

dorchadas wrote: post #312
Darmody wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat but several years younger. I'm witnessing how I throw my life away and there's nothing I can do. Nothing works.

If it makes you feel any better, know you're not alone there.

It doesn't actually. Finding a solution for us would make me feel way better.

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#319

Post by vlasev »

unethical_ban wrote: post #124
nisa wrote: post #73

Words of warning from a not so young (36) chronic procrastinator with a rather messed up life: Take it seriously. I'm not talking about reading HN in your 7th work hour when doing stupid Excel sheets. I'm talking about messing up years and years of your life. I believe it's a symptom of some deeper issues and it won't go away from alone. Lack of sleep, stress, work overload, information overload amplify the effects b…

I hear you. For me, it is a feeling like you said, of never being able to catch up. Like with debt, for years, I would just keep spending on my credit cards. I tried consolidating several times, and finally, I have used a 401k loan against myself to consolidate. My student loans and car loan are paid off, and I have When something seems hopeless, or too much to overcome, I think the mind says "fuck it", and wants to…

I felt this comment!

I racked up plenty of debt during my school years and it only increased after that for no good reason. I felt overwhelmed most of the time and the marginal increases in debt didn't feel like much. So my debt grew another 30%, which for me was a lot.

I've finally got a handle on my debt and I'm paying it off, but this turn of events only came about after a lot of suffering and feeling awful about my debt. It took years to smarten up and realize the pain of limiting myself in my purchases is less than the pain of having the debt hanging over my head.

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#320

Post by vlasev »

throwaway_66786 wrote: post #181
nisa wrote: post #73

Words of warning from a not so young (36) chronic procrastinator with a rather messed up life: Take it seriously. I'm not talking about reading HN in your 7th work hour when doing stupid Excel sheets. I'm talking about messing up years and years of your life. I believe it's a symptom of some deeper issues and it won't go away from alone. Lack of sleep, stress, work overload, information overload amplify the effects b…

> I believe it's a symptom of some deeper issues and it won't go away from alone. [...] Simple things start to become complicated and you are in a constant negative feedback loop. +1 I neglected this, thought that I could force myself to work, instead of seeking help. I did 100h weeks after all, I'd always get stuff done. I quit my job, started looking for more rewarding things to do, finally had time to do things ri…

> spending 3 days on a task that was supposed to take 5-15 minutes. Then a simple coding exercise (2-3h) took me a week, because I couldn't focus,

I hope I'm not too intrusive, but did you happen to quit some sort of addictive substances before that, like caffeine, nicotine, etc? Did you happen to go through a breakup or something? Or was it a super random, out of the blue kind of thing?

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