Procrastinatory Doom Loops

> Deep procrastination is a distressing affliction. Students who suffer from it lose the ability to start school work. Deadlines pass and they hand nothing in. Professors provide special extensions, but the students still can’t bring themselves to do the work. And so on.

> One way to understand deep procrastination, therefore, is as a rejection of an ambiguous, abstract answer to the key question of why you’re going through the mental strain required by the college experience.

https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2011/07/15/how-to-cure-deep-...

His solutions involve mindset refocusing (diving into the why's of the goal that is being procrastinated on), which I think I've seen in another anti-procrastination guide posted somewhere on HN before recently, and seem to be a bit cursory.

The other two blog entries about it:

https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2009/02/16/the-danger-of-dee...

https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2010/04/29/the-upside-of-dee...

In fact I’d say the clearest indicator of ADHD is a surplus of motivation coupled with a dearth of execution. You know you want it, but you can’t do it, despite being acutely aware of your day-to-day actions fucking it up. This is what medication helps with in my experience.

I remember teaming up with a former colleague at a point where their SRI had just kicked in, and my motivation was down the drain. I felt they were doing me a huge favor, and they felt the same way back. Pair programming is, so far, the only certain cure to my procrastination. I'll certainly work when not pair programming, but pair programming will make me give 100% for 12+ hours simply because of the commitment to another person, and the reward of continuous socialising.

One idea that stuck with me both for myself and in a team setting:

Fear of failure and how it is overcome: at one point the book tells the reader to imagine walking across a 2x4 beam or something laying on the ground, then walking across the same beam between two highrise towers. The first is really simple, the second is something most of us would never do if we could avoid it even if we knew the beam is perfectly safe. Now the author ask the reader to imagine being stuck at the top of the high rise with a fire raging below and coming closer. Most can probably now imagine themselves crossing the beam in some way, if nothing else by sitting on their butts inching themselves across. This is a someone who has a pathological fear of failure when a deadline is looming. Last the author asks the reader to imagine walking the same beam between the same two highrises but now there is no fire and there is a perfect safety net directly below it. Most people could probably do this, many would even enjoy it. This is a challenging job with a "safety net" where failing is safe.

I realize Neil Fiore didn't come up with this, this goes further back, see for example https://medium.com/s/radical-spirits/the-man-who-helped-the-...

... but the book is were I learned about this example.