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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

#41

Post by zeta0134 »

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?…

If you solve this problem, would you share the details? I've been dealing with this for my entire adult life. When I can convince my body to actually sleep when the sun goes down, the day that follows is typically one of my most productive, but I also only seem to get one of those per week or so.

I can work around this by moderating the length of my sleep, ie, allowing myself to go for at least 7.5 hours no matter when I fall, but sometimes IRL obligations get in the way. For most folks working more strict office hours (or god, retail) this is not a workable suggestion. Even then, eventually I'll drift too far, one of the sleep cycles gets shorted, then there's this weird recovery period with some short naps, and surprise now we're waking up at dawn again.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#43

Post by quake »

the_only_law wrote: post #10
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.

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.

I don't have an addiction to games, but I play a lot of them because it's how I keep in touch with my friends from across the country. At the start of COVID/WFH, I was pretty concerned that I'd become a gaming addict. The reason I didn't is one of those smart/dumb oxymorons: I've just been plugging the peripherals from my gaming tower into my work laptop. After a day of work, the absolute last thing I want to do is sit at the same desk staring at the same screen and play games. Even on the weekends, I look at the desk and get this "ugh this feels like work" feeling which has really helped with not playing games in my spare time.

This of course has two huge caveats:

1. I didn't have a gaming addiction in the first place, evidenced by the fact that I have a Nintendo Switch that gets played in short bursts, rather than constantly.

2. I work with embedded systems/hardware, so I need to have an actual workstation area to keep the tools (debugger probes, power supply, oscilloscope, etc) on. The embedded systems curse of always needing more ports has been a pretty effective anchor for keeping my workspace in the same place as my PC, and if it wasn't, then I'd probably get more "I should spend all day today playing games" desires

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#44

Post by 5600k »

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…

I don’t think it’s cheap advice. He may have spent a lot of time writing it.

The only thing I read that was humorous and slightly wrong was the interesting take on meditation: getting bored more often.

I enjoy quiet, so I’d be a “zen master” according to the post, at least for some minutes each day. But those who know me would not confuse me with a zen master.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#45

Post by grenoire »

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?…

I solved this by exercising, it normalised my sleeping patterns drastically compared to what I had in my student days. Now I am 'ready' at 12, and consistently wake up at 8-8:30 in the mornings.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#46

Post by hypertele-Xii »

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?…

It is called Non-24-hour sleep–wake disorder [1], and is very common in blind people. I have it (though not blind). The Wikipedia article suggests some treatments. It's impossible to fix in my experience by forcing myself into a consistent cycle; I'll just grow more and more tired over time until I simply fail to wake to alarm.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#47

Post by adtac »

sixhobbits wrote: post #38
adtac wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Okay, that Wikipedia page reads like a personal biography lol. I probably have this in some mild form. The drift is usually about 20-30 mins for me (I used an hour as an example in my original comment), so it's mostly manageable by shortening my duration of sleep by an hour once or twice a week, but I should get this fixed.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#49

Post by YinglingLight »

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.

"No Music" is tougher than No Carb, No Fap, No Pillow, No Surf. It's insane what waterfall of dopamine we regularly flood ourselves with.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#50

Post by the_only_law »

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…

Unfortunately “a few years is” the upper end of my bound and I have a number of big things I need to tackle within that bound.
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