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Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

solvingprocrastination.com

161–170 of 232 posts

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#161

The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom. This may not work for everyone but for me it works exceptionally. Most often the reason why you don't want to work on something is because you find it too hard, too boring, or too irrelevant. But if you force yourself to be bored for a while, you will eventually crave some mental stimulation. And that's when you can pick up the task you have been avoiding and work…

There are well known psychology experimental results to support your hunch. When the alternative is total lack of mental stimulation, people will perform all kinds of otherwise unattractive activities.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#162
post #158
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were just bullies, then there shouldn't be a preference for hypothetical UI and architecture folks.

Is this true? Are bullies indiscriminate and swing in all directions or do they focus on where the power dynamic benefits them? I feel like I've seen both.

I'd call that the difference between bullies and sociopaths.

At least to me, one of the defining bully characteristics is an inability to moderate their own behavior, even for their own benefit.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#163

Yeah, or maybe it's "just" ADHD. "Just" in parentheses because it's a horrible condition to have. Russel Barkley with a succinct video on "ADHD as Motivation Deficit Disorder": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR3RJU6838c

Procrastination is not a new thing. And ADHD is a pretty rare condition - just look at the diagnosis rate from country to country. The US has the highest one because doctors here are basically legal Speed drug dealers - for children. The author of the Search Engine pod just had a two-parter about his "ADHD": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whyd-i-take-speed-for-... (The history of regulating Speed in the US is…

My personal family experience had been that today in the US it's very hard to get an ADHD diagnosis, at least if the patient is smart and manages to achieve decent school grades.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#164

There is truth that at times procrastination is tied to perfectionism, but I'd wager that the cause of procrastination 9/10 times is that we choose to do something that is more enjoyable to us over something that is less.

That's an oversimplification. What you describe fits the behavior of a hedonistic procrastinator, but people procrastinate for many, many reasons.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#165
post #6

As a public open source (yep, open source can be private) programmer (currently x86_64 assembly), and I am very aware of this pitfall. It is very important to move forward in code, because you cannot predict how will actually end up a complex program: you need to have all the (sane) features in to actually know. Since code is all about trade-offs, there is "no perfect". You have to be carefull at avoiding falling int…

> you have a montain to deal with just to get something minimaly working, and you are given a spoon

The spoon isn't the issue - why does that mountain need moving? The parable is about persistence and determination - necessity is ignored!

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#166
Uhm... I didn't read. And, I'll comment anyway. Sorry if I miss a point or two. I did read the whole thread, though (116 comments as per now).

Reason was not "Too long" as I never even clicked the link. It was due to the link title "solvingprocrastination", as that name framed procrastination as a thing that needed to be "solved" somehow.

I'm sure that for some, sometimes that is the case. For me, not much so.

See, procrastination is a tool. It allows my subconscious to review and analyse a problem field while I keep my conscious self engaged with something else. Preferably solving some other issue. Rarely entertainment. I guess the situations where I'd want to peruse entertainment are not that often situations where I have important stuff to do, but I don't know. (I'm thinking mostly @job here, not leisure time)

What I do when faced with a problem that needs a solution, but for some reason or other I have no obvious "attack vector" (just to make a poor pun on the HN site name) it this: I do nothing. That is, I do something of course, especially if it's at $job: I do something else. Go solve some other task. While I do that the part of me that excels in solving really complicated stuff does what it does best.

This will not bring me the perfect solution. Most of the time it will not even bring me closer to the solution. All the while I'm doing something else entirely, so I don't even expect progress on the issue I put on the mental parking lot for a while.

But, somehow, when I start the task that I postponed, this happens: I really start it. I focus, I get going. Implement things, analyze and break down, and become productive. From square one. Thanks to, I believe, doing nothing for a while.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#167

The article hints at psychology and then fails to dive into it. Perfectionism, only when intentionally and cognitively executed in an orderly fashion, is linked to extremely high consciousness and extremely high consciousness when not properly managed is highly correlated with anxiety. The slang for this is anal-retentive . This becomes complicated because anxiety is most typically concerned with high measures of neu…

*conscientiousness, distinct from consciousness :)

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#168

The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom. This may not work for everyone but for me it works exceptionally. Most often the reason why you don't want to work on something is because you find it too hard, too boring, or too irrelevant. But if you force yourself to be bored for a while, you will eventually crave some mental stimulation. And that's when you can pick up the task you have been avoiding and work…

> The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom. From my experience with young people, the worst procrastinators will often choose boredom over the task they're avoiding. Doing nothing at all is less painful to them than doing the work they're avoiding. This is even more true for the perfectionist procrastinators: They are avoiding some exaggerated hypothetical pain that might come from failing at a task. If th…

Agree with this, from personal experience. The conventional idea of “boredom” doesn’t fit well, because we have everything we need and love already in our head, which makes leaving it painful and staring at a wall for hours a great time. Incidentally my “bad boss” was my father, who had two emotions; Preoccupied and angry.

This is further complicated by things like demand avoidance, ADHD, burnout (autistic people may have difficulty even recognizing that they are chronically stressed and anxious to the point of shutdown, until they just crash completely) or other executive function related pathologies, of which there are likely multiple involved if there is a noticeable problem.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When in high school, I returned home after a ski weekend with friends. When I returned home, my relatives, who didn't ski, asked if I fell at all during the weekend. I remarked that I had, especially while navigating some expert trails. They consoled me saying "that's OK, maybe you'll do better next time." I was confused at first until I realized that they thought of falling as a tragic outcome instead of a natural p…

Probably mostly a function of them having no idea what skiing is like. If you never fall you either only use boring routes or ski very slowly - or you are professional skier and have such a breakneck speed you can’t fall (but even then it happens looking at Schumacher)

Arguably, not falling means you're limiting your progress by not pushing yourself enough. Most likely, not falling means you're a worse skier.

Re: Procrastination is connected to perfectionism

#170

This page seems like a nearly empty site someone put up imitating Hillary Rettig's work, looking for life coaching gigs. https://hillaryrettigproductivity.com/overcome-perfectionism... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13417133-the-7-secrets-o...

The site is full of good information, but I agree it feels too search-engine optimized. It's not well structured for a large portion of the target audience (ADD/ADHD people). Articles are too wordy, there are no article or section summaries, and the number of internal links does not help people focus on the article they read.
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