Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit.

sciam.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 50 posts

Re: Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit.

#7

Post by shaunxcode »

The only time I find myself procrastinating is when I am not working on something meaningful or "new" (to me). Thus I use the technique of having my procrastination actually be more productive than trudging through the mundane. i.e. if I am working on something rote or repetitious yet it HAS to be done that way (deadlines, client spec etc.) I spend my procrastination time implementing a class, a library, a syntax, dsl.. language.. .some more clever way of tackling the problem in the future. I will seriously do the boring stuff and then beneath in a comment block write my musing version of a syntax that I wish I could have used instead which later on I may try and implement etc.

Re: Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit.

#8

Post by pavelludiq »

My personal problem is focus. I have no problem with procrastination, other that the side effect of not being able to focus for a long time. The last few days I've been thinking a lot about my habits and the way i work, trying to find an answer to my problem. Since then I've redefined that problem from "how to cure procrastination" to "how to be more productive in general". This redefinition helped a little bit, because now i have a general strategy. I simply have to train my self to focus. Its like learning to touch type, or edit in vim, its hard in the beginning, but then, after repetition of the proces your subconscious kicks in and you learn to focus. The specific tactics are the standard anti-procrastination tricks, unplugging my internet, eliminating as many distractions as possible, make work a little bit more interesting, reward your self for good work, at least try to focus for some amount of time, etc. I've managed to get to 3 hours of focused work(by work i mean either code, read a book or write a long blog post, and edit it a few times), and i hope to improve. Its been only a few days since i started doing this. I would like other ideas and suggestions. I've also found out that i need procrastinotion, some of my best ideas came when i spend the whole day not working, good thing i write them down, but I've realized very few, which is what I'm trying to fix.
Post reply on HN