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How to be more productive without forcing yourself

deprocrastination.co

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Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#31

Post by lupire »

Zealotux wrote: post #12
the_only_law wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider selling my expensive gaming PC if whatever I replaced it with had a reasonable similar CPU. Not sure if I can get that from any type of laptop though at least not without paying more than I paid for my PC. Also I kinda need PCIe lanes.

Amusingly, I had just built myself a pretty expensive gaming PC right before selling it all, and then got myself a second-hand 2015 MBP. I'd say the newest M1 MBP are worth the money, my metric shifted from raw performance/$ to experience/$. And honestly, I will gladly sacrifice some CPU power just to keep myself away from gaming.

I don't understand this. People who are addicted to games won't play any non-intensive games, like League of Legends (or Which is the lower spec one) or speed chess ?

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#32

Post by lupire »

faeyanpiraat wrote: post #29
PaulKeeble wrote: post #7

New years resolutions and other big changes tend not to work very well because they are big changes and we are very bad at big changes. Probably the most important piece of information I needed to make lasting changes to how I spent my day was the combined knowledge and idea: 1) I ran on habits for most of my day 2) I could change about 1% of my day every month Doing small changes continuously results in a big change…

Earning 1% every month on your investments would yield a ridiculous amount, like the wealth of the entire world in 3 years or something. So even if it sounds like a small goal, getting better by any amount could suffice.

No , 1%/month is 43% in 3 years.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#34

Post by 0wis »

vitabenes wrote: post #3
0wis wrote: post #2

Great article. It helped me go back to work. I feel like the world would be a much better place with less procrastination. It feels like a premise for great work. However, I feel much of actual content of the subject feel like scam or bullshit. Beside this site and waitbutwhy.com, what are the other legit initiatives on the subject ?

Thank you for the comment! There are some good books like The Now Habit by Neil Fiore or The Procrastinator's Digest by Tim Pychil, and good articles like the one on waitbutwhy, but information on procrastination is mostly scattered about. There aren't many projects focusing solely on it.

Thank you for the reply ! And if you are behind this project, thanks for it. I will surely dig into this gem site this weekend and maybe try your program one day ! And I add these two books on top of my ever too long reading list.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#35

Post by faeyanpiraat »

lupire wrote: post #32
faeyanpiraat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earning 1% every month on your investments would yield a ridiculous amount, like the wealth of the entire world in 3 years or something. So even if it sounds like a small goal, getting better by any amount could suffice.

No , 1%/month is 43% in 3 years.

You are right, I must be misremembering something, let me think about it..

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#36

Post by adtac »

peach45 wrote: post #23

This seems like cheap advice that's trying to get me to buy into a lifestyle in order to sell me things. "Have less exposure towards super fun things". "Get bored". These describe the same general concept as dopamine fasting. The third bullet point can be reduced to "focus on what you have to do, until you can focus on it" which is circular. I'm not buying in. Maybe I'm getting old but "failure to start" is starting…

re sleep: is it common for sleep schedules to "drift"? I'll sleep at 11pm on one night naturally and wake up refreshed at 7am in the morning the next day, but I won't naturally go to sleep until 12am that night. This leads to a 8am wake up time the next day. You can see how this will quickly lead to an bad sleeping pattern.

is it possible to fix this with a few weeks of consistently sleeping at the same time somehow? will I eventually sleep at the same time naturally? or will this take months of "forcing" myself to sleep (as ridiculous as that sounds)?

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#37

Post by kejaed »

taneq wrote: post #11
Zealotux wrote: post #6

Good summary of what procrastination essentially is: an emotional problem, rarely about "laziness" or time management. Readjusting your dopamine sensitivity will most likely solve most of it, trading my expensive gaming PC for a Macbook Pro probably was the biggest game-changing (pun not intended) event of my life so far, and greatly improved my relation to work and life in general.

All very true. Without diminishing this suggestion, though, I feel it's worth pointing out that some people can't just 'readjust their dopamine sensitivity' by changing some things in their environment. If you have chronic issues with regulating attention and they're strongly impacting you in multiple areas, seeing a professional could change your life.

Do you have any specific type of professional to suggest?

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#38

Post by sixhobbits »

adtac wrote: post #36
peach45 wrote: post #23

This seems like cheap advice that's trying to get me to buy into a lifestyle in order to sell me things. "Have less exposure towards super fun things". "Get bored". These describe the same general concept as dopamine fasting. The third bullet point can be reduced to "focus on what you have to do, until you can focus on it" which is circular. I'm not buying in. Maybe I'm getting old but "failure to start" is starting…

re sleep: is it common for sleep schedules to "drift"? I'll sleep at 11pm on one night naturally and wake up refreshed at 7am in the morning the next day, but I won't naturally go to sleep until 12am that night. This leads to a 8am wake up time the next day. You can see how this will quickly lead to an bad sleeping pattern. is it possible to fix this with a few weeks of consistently sleeping at the same time somehow?…

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#39

Post by polote »

cdiamand wrote: post #18

1. Have less exposure towards super fun things I cannot emphasize enough how powerful this is. If you're struggling to focus on your work/projects, try living a bland existence like a monk for a while. You won't be able to stop thinking about working.

> Have less exposure towards super fun things

If that is not "forcing yourself" I don't know what "forcing yourself" means

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#40

Post by pca006132 »

Sometimes I just wonder, is the frequent burnt-out we see for programmers caused by not having a fast feedback loop.

For me, I feel excited when doing performance tuning work, front-end stuff etc. However, I would quickly become bored after working on work that take more than 5 days or so, even if I love the subject. Although I'm not really into TDD, but I think sometimes using TDD could help you get some more feedback when you work on some abstract stuff. (Although writing the tests could be boring for the beginning...)

I would argue that having no expectation on the first-draft may not be the best way to be more productive. Having some concrete goals or metrics could be beneficial if you can get the feedback-loop working. Under-defined, subjective goals could be bad as achieving the goal may seem never-ending if you want perfection. (at least for me)

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