Force myself and time box it. Set up my workspace, pour myself a coffee, listen to classical music, and give myself a hard deadline. Not easy, but I find having the right set up gets me in that mentality to get it done.
Ask HN: How do you force yourself to do boring tasks?
21–30 of 60 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you force yourself to do boring tasks?
#22Amphetamine salts, how else?
Cocaine?
Re: Ask HN: How do you force yourself to do boring tasks?
#23Here is my trick when it comes to documentation or even writing - I record myself doing a voice or video explainer - less daunting than blank page. Assume the audience are not techies... then transcribe it which end up being like editing & fun at the same time.
Re: Ask HN: How do you force yourself to do boring tasks?
#24I have difficulty with tasks that have no clear ending, like documentation. Sometimes it helps to tell people I'm having trouble with it:
Task: "Research and prepare for upcoming feature"
Me: "I'm having trouble with this research task, it feels like the task is to discover and document everything that will be needed to implement the feature, and the easiest way I know of doing this is to actually implement the feature and write down what was needed. I don't know where this thing ends."
Boss: "Just make a list of the existing project dependencies and put it in a Word doc and send it in an email." (Yes, this barely matches the original task description, but this happens often.)
Me: "Ok, I can do that."
Re: Ask HN: How do you force yourself to do boring tasks?
#25Re: Ask HN: How do you force yourself to do boring tasks?
#26Re: Ask HN: How do you force yourself to do boring tasks?
#27If you're anything like me, the hardest part is to get started.
Look at "Getting Things Done". Perhaps you need to dig deeper into what should you do next to get that documentation written?
For example, maybe it's just coming up with the outline. Or one smaller section. Or showing some example codes perhaps.
And as others have said, reward yourself with a treat if/when you complete (some of, all of) the task.
Re: Ask HN: How do you force yourself to do boring tasks?
#28Many people think I'm a work-a-holic. My dirty little secret is that I'm actually very lazy (my wife knows :-). I can't say I have a good strategy, it's just that when I do get into a rare flow state (a few times a week) I can stay there for quite a while and little can distract me (thank you ADD!). But here is what I would say: pick the smallest of tasks that is part of the larger work and convince yourself it's oka…
>This is how I get myself to the gym a few times a week. I don't have a gym membership, but maybe that is a price I should consider paying, as I might be more motivated to not waste money I've paid. While I am able to go outside for long, brisk walks fairly often, I completely neglect the equally important stretching and resistance training (weights) exercises because I find them so boring. Even if I keep it going fo…
This was a huge help for me. It's amazing how my attitude to going to a trainer changed when I paid up front. I was actually getting upset one day when I thought I had gotten less than the hour I paid for. With video workouts and monthly gym memberships, I had never thought of ending a workout early as losing value.
Re: Ask HN: How do you force yourself to do boring tasks?
#29Editing is easier than creating (blank page paralysis). When I wrote my masters thesis I auto-generated 50 pages of Lorem Ipsum, properly formatted, and started editing it. “The title is clearly wrong, I’ll change that. Oh look, the first heading is also wrong, let’s put something else in here. Now the paragraph doesn’t match the heading, better fix that” By the time I get to the paragraph I’m mentally invested and c…
> auto-generated 50 pages of Lorem Ipsum
This seems like a fantastic specialized tool to have in the mental tool box.
Re: Ask HN: How do you force yourself to do boring tasks?
#30Outsource it if you can.
Otherwise I keep my brain entertained by multitasking while doing the boring thing : I’ll play a turn based RPG, or have German lessons or a Knuth lecture playing. Or music.
Theres a fine balance between distracting enough to keep your mind stimulated and engaged, and too distracting so you’re getting nothing done, so keep varying the task until you find one that clicks.
Also time your work, for me these boring tasks are better to do slowly in the evening when I’m tired, so it becomes almost a meditative / wind-down work