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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

#71

Post by thisiszilff »

zeta0134 wrote: post #41
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?…

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 wh…

I'll bite and say I think it can be pretty personal. I struggled with insomnia-like symptoms for a while (eg, I simply was not tired and could not fall asleep) until I began to experiment with a couple of things. For me the most important where

- waking up at a consistent hour, every day, even the weekends

- no caffeine after noon, ideally not after 11, but I like coffee (individual tolerance will vary, I'm apparently on the sensitive side)

- make sure you're comfortable at night. It's baffling that I didn't realize this sooner, but the trick to falling asleep for me is to just get comfortable enough that I don't really want to move. When you hit that point where you're so comfortable and don't feel the need to move, then drifting off is easy.

- have a planning method to make sure you are organized and offload any thoughts about what needs to happen. I read Getting Things Done and implemented some of the stuff there and that helped a lot in freeing up my mind from worrying - remind yourself, routinely, that whatever you are doing, you'll be able to do it better in the morning

> 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.

That is pretty much where I was. I'd go to sleep at varying hours from 10PM to 5AM, always somehow later each night. Sometimes it would take me very long to fall asleep (ie 2 hrs +) unless I felt very tired. Looking back, it is like I needed to be truly exhausted -- not just sleepy, but exhausted -- to fall asleep and that pushed back my sleep schedule every night a little bit.

It wasn't until I got brutal headaches and brain fog everyday that I made it my top priority and began to take an inventory of everything that got in my way. I still go to bed late (between midnight and 1) though, in part because it lets me do regular social things and still, usually, go to bed on time.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#72

Post by zwkrt »

mrfredward wrote: post #55
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…

>This seems like cheap advice that's trying to get me to buy into a lifestyle in order to sell me things. Funny but I thought the exact opposite. People believe something much more easily when they want it to be true, so the typical sales approach is to tell people what they want to hear. Ridding your life of whatever seems most fun doesn't seem like cheap advice in that regard. On the other hand, I think you're spot…

There’s a second Christian-esque type of self help which states, “you are a broken and pitiful person, your fundamental nature is flawed. Take these steps to salvation.” Jordan Peterson is like this with all his requests to empathize with gulag prison guards and the like.

I think people don’t just like hearing what is good or easy. Sometimes we want to have an incredible cross to bear. It’s the mentality that causes people to commit to overbearing self-regulation, like using pomodoro for the entire day or going on an impossible diet. Self-transformation sells just as much from the mouth of the stern father as it does from the caring mother.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#73

Post by cdiamand »

polote wrote: post #39
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

One of the tricks is to create an environment that doesn't require willpower to avoid distraction. There are plugins that block distractions on your browser. You could sell, or lend out, or put your X-box into storage, etc.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#74

Post by MivLives »

quake wrote: post #43
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.

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 s…

I ended up feeling the same thing as you. I only have the room for one desk, and so the screens/ other stuff had to be shared. After 8 plus hours in my bed room working the last thing I want to do is spend the time before I sleep there too, looking at the same screen. In the before times the urge was much more stronger.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#75

Post by roland35 »

As far as having less super fun things, I found it takes me about 2 days to 1 week to "detox" from addictive distractions, my most recent distraction being the game "Hades" :) Luckily I was about to finally finish that game but I still had to consciously keep it away for a few days before I finally no longer have the temptation.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#76

Post by AussieWog93 »

I think this article conflates productivity with diligence.

The most effective way I've found to improve productivity is to shift focus onto tasks that bring in more money per unit time spent performing them.

Since my daughter was born 7 months ago, I've really only been able to work about 2-3 "full" 8-hour days a week without crashing, and my wife might be able to spend 8-10 hours a week working on the business. However, because we've simply stopped doing tasks that are "work" but don't add greatly to the business's bottom line (for example, we no longer respond to dumb requests from customers, standardise products into a single SKU where possible and shifted our marketing towards eBay's promoted listings rather than building an organic following on social media), we've actually grown slightly.

Diligence and drive are definitely important parts of what makes you productive, but it's not the be all and end all.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#77

Post by softwaredoug »

I just try to accept I go through spurts of inspiration and low energy. Forcing myself to do work when I don’t want to us a recipe for burnout. It’s often unavoidable, when the situation forces it on me. But TBH I’m my own worst enemy: driving myself when I should be in a rest state.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#78

Post by mckirk »

zwkrt wrote: post #72
mrfredward wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This seems like cheap advice that's trying to get me to buy into a lifestyle in order to sell me things. Funny but I thought the exact opposite. People believe something much more easily when they want it to be true, so the typical sales approach is to tell people what they want to hear. Ridding your life of whatever seems most fun doesn't seem like cheap advice in that regard. On the other hand, I think you're spot…

There’s a second Christian-esque type of self help which states, “you are a broken and pitiful person, your fundamental nature is flawed. Take these steps to salvation.” Jordan Peterson is like this with all his requests to empathize with gulag prison guards and the like. I think people don’t just like hearing what is good or easy. Sometimes we want to have an incredible cross to bear. It’s the mentality that causes…

Hmm, I don't quite agree with that characterization of Jordan Peterson. I believe his main point when talking of these prison-guard horror stories is to "embrace your shadow", as in: Realize that you might not be as far away from being dangerous as you would think, if you just thought of yourself as a good person. Considering the numerous crimes against humanity that have been carried out by people as soon as the "veil of civilization" showed a few cracks in the past, I don't think it's an unreasonable aspect of human nature to remind people of.

I believe the concept of the shadow stems from Jung's work, and I admittedly don't know precisely in which context Jung applied it. But ostensibly, being mindful of the dangerous paths one can be lead down if you don't take care to stay in balance seems like a reasonable thing to teach people, without it instantly degenerating into a "you are a sinner and need to atone"-routine (as you seem to see it).

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#79

Post by gspr »

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.

This advice feels, to me, kind of like saying "Are you bored of your limited cooking skills? Eat gray sludge for a while, and you'll love your old mediocre cooking!"

If the solution to being productive is to rid yourself of joys, then screw it, I'll take an unproductive happy life.

Re: How to be more productive without forcing yourself

#80

Post by rchaud »

5600k wrote: post #44
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.

The advice may sound formulaic, but that's because there are only so many ways you can talk about productivity and procrastination. The fundamental issues being addressed are always the same: distractions, instant gratification, poor discipline, lack of measurable goals etc.
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