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Ask HN: Does procrastination advice help you?

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Re: Ask HN: Does procrastination advice help you?

#41

Post by alfonsodev »

jzb wrote: post #22

Procrastination may be a symptom of a lot of things - anxiety, ADHD, etc. Nobody on HN is going to be able to diagnose you, though - you should probably talk to someone who can actually diagnose you and possibly prescribe treatment if your experiences with procrastination are having a negative impact on your life. Do you procrastinate about everything? Specific things? If you're just procrastinating about specific th…

I believe the most useful framing is exactly this one. Frame it as a problem of negative emotion regulation and management.

The second one in parallel as a physical problem as not getting good sleep, nutrient deficiencies, lack of exercise etc.

Both are interconnected.

Re: Ask HN: Does procrastination advice help you?

#42

Post by daft_pink »

Thing that have helped me:

* Flow Club, a virtual coworking space (it really help me realize how unrealistic I am with time). Lots of people with ADHD love this service * Social Anxiety medication * Journaling 750 words per day * Using a todo list manager that only shows me the most important or relevant tasks (omnifocus). There is no perfect todolist manager though and I’ve gone through a lot * This survey of productivity methods: https://todoist.com/productivity-methods (eat the frog was best for me, people are different) * Trying to get more sleep * Identify when I’m just asking too much and identifying better goals * Switching medical providers if their advice isn’t working * Getting a rigorous test diagnosis from a psychologist. People said I had ADHD but a battery of neurological tests showed high functioning autism. * Reading books like learned optimism and when panic attacks from top psychology professors * This youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2EEnJedcYU&t=22s It’s for students, but he’s right that many times procrastination is an emotion management problem

When I get stuck, i find that one of two methods really helps: * Breaking my todo list into smaller tasks * Filling out a daily mood log from when panic attacks to determine the negative thoughts

Things that haven’t helped much at all: * Talk therapy - you generally have to find someone good and I felt we just spend time talking about nice things and never got into anything useful, they just don’t want to offend you. So hard to find a good provider and I saw quite a few and it was a big waste of time. They either used some modality that didn’t fit or weren’t very good. * GTD and long todo lists. I find that I just end up doing the tasks that I’m not avoiding and get done everything but what I want to get done. * Watching endless youtube videos or reading books about beating procrastination

Re: Ask HN: Does procrastination advice help you?

#43

Post by kypro »

No, they don't help if you're referring to "productivity hack" content.

Procrastination imo is far more related to your neurology – most of which is beyond your control.

I can't speak for others here but in my own life depression isn't really a demotivator unless I feel my circumstances are out of my control (which is rare), otherwise feeling crap about something is probably one of my single largest motivators to fix it.

I don't have ADHD so can't speak to that.

What works to some degree for me personally is just considering my brain's reward system. This will sound weird, but personally I find taking a bunch of caffeine exclusively when I'm do things I want to be motivated to do works very well at keeping me motivated to do that activity.

Caffeine is an easy way to give you a boost of dopamine so if you can associate that with an activity you'll just find you're just naturally drawn to that activity. I'd also recommend L-Tyrosine and L-Dopa if you want to get a bit more experimentative, however you'll need to be careful about how regularly you use these. Artificially boosting your dopamine levels can demotivate if it's not done in a targeted and infrequent way.

The other thing I try to avoid is negative emotions during activities I want to be motivated to do. If I associate a person / thing / place with a lot of negative emotions I find I disengage with time. Specifically stress is probably my biggest negative demotivating emotion.

The effects are subtle and take time, but they definitely work. I hear nicotine gum is amazing for productive too if you use it very infrequently. I've not tried it myself though because I'm not sure I'd be able to regulate myself.

I doubt any of this is going to help much if you're naturally a lazy person though. It just helps me a bit, although I've never had much of issue with procrastination anyway.

Re: Ask HN: Does procrastination advice help you?

#45

Post by EricMausler »

bun_terminator wrote: post #21
blinding-streak wrote: post #18

Do a test for sleep apnea. I didn't realize I had apnea but my dad and brother had it, so I did a sleep test. Turns out I had severe apnea. I suffered from massive procrastination and focus problems in the couple years leading up to the test. Once I got a CPAP machine to sleep better, it made a profound change in my life. Mental acuity, productivity, mood, everything was far better. Sleep is no joke. For about a mont…

I read this all the time. But man, CPAP machines are so ridiculous. That's a high barrier to take for treatment. I wish there was a better way

I will always advocate for testing for and treating sleep apnea. Awareness has improved a lot but it was wildly undiagnosed 10ish years ago[1]

I use a different treatment, a medical grade mouthpiece basically. I needed to get wisdom teeth removed for it to align properly. Part of my daily hygiene routine now is keeping this thing clean

If I could go back in time, I would still get it as soon as possible because it gives me life and I would honestly ____ myself if I had to go back to living with untreated sleep apnea.

It's not even a 100% fix for me. I may try cpap again.

And my case was technically mild, waking up 6 times per hour during the night via choking on sleep.

It's non-negotiable to treat it imo. Having any treatment available at all is a miracle.

There's lots of causes for tiredness, so it may not be apnea, but if it is you should treat it.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19186102/

Re: Ask HN: Does procrastination advice help you?

#46

Post by FranklinMaillot »

jzb wrote: post #22

Procrastination may be a symptom of a lot of things - anxiety, ADHD, etc. Nobody on HN is going to be able to diagnose you, though - you should probably talk to someone who can actually diagnose you and possibly prescribe treatment if your experiences with procrastination are having a negative impact on your life. Do you procrastinate about everything? Specific things? If you're just procrastinating about specific th…

This is probably the best advice.

My therapist helped me first acknowledge that it would be a long process to overcome procrastination and to stop being too harsh on myself. Then, I tried to do the smallest possible step that I was capable of doing towards the task I was procrastinating on. This could be as tiny as just sitting at my desk for a few seconds. The next day I would sit for a little longer. Then I would just open the file I was supposed to work on, etc. That's where the therapist was very helpful to me, she helped me overcome the guilt of doing something so ridiculously insignificant and be satisfied with it, while at the same time treating the deeper roots of the problem.

Re: Ask HN: Does procrastination advice help you?

#47

Post by juancn »

alfonsodev wrote: post #33
juancn wrote: post #29

Procrastination can be bad if pathological, but it's a great heuristic in the absence of information (close to optimal). I think people over think it, causing excessive anxiety to themselves. Why is it a good evolved strategy? Because of uncertainty: If something is due at some deadline in the future, the further we're from that deadline, the larger the chance that whatever the task is won't be necessary. So waiting…

Sounds good except it doesn’t apply in the worse cases, which are the ones where there zero uncertainty that the task will have severe negative consequences if not done on time. Meaning, hard deadlines for mandatory projects, at work, school or life. I respect your take, because generalizing advice is always impossible and at some surface level I agree. I’d investigate more on the poor emotional management and regula…

Yeah, if there are pathological conditions (e.g. depression) my advise doesn't really apply.

What I see is a push to make procrastination look like a character flaw and trying to sell "solutions" to it. Even to the point of using ADHD medication to increase focus, training courses, etc.

This causes a lot of anxiety and pressure to perform in otherwise healthy individuals.

As if procrastination is THE reason you don't succeed (and why daddy doesn't love you), and if you could just fix it, all your dreams will become true.

Success is (in my experience) more about luck and prioritization.

Luck because there are a lot of things you don't control, and prioritization because most things don't really matter, and learning to focus your energy in the ones that do, will take you a long way.

Re: Ask HN: Does procrastination advice help you?

#48

Post by aeblyve »

I am pleased that the majority of advice here seems to be attacking the problem as what it is, a materialist (as in, having to do with matter) one, and not a moral failure (a spiritual one).

I think the best thing you can do is treat this as a problem of maximizing biological energy -- you "want" to do something, but your brain doesn't comply. The brain is a metabolically intense organ, consuming by far the most energy by weight of any in the body. Its weight makes up 2% of the body's, but its energy consumption is 20% of the body's. Therefore, any subclinical disruptions in bodily energy are felt here first. Therapies supporting mitochondrial efficiency and easy digestion should therefore be considered. While stress can and does improve energy production in the short term, it does so at the cost of general efficiency and lifespan. This is part of why powerful stimulants can successfully treat ADHD.

I have personally had great success applying the ideas of one Ray Peat. Glucose metabolism is more energetically favorable than fatty acid oxidation. At the same time, consumption of starches promotes bacterial endotoxin production. Therefore, the maligned simple sugars are preferred to starch -- milk and fruit juice over rice and bread, occasional ice cream[1]. Muscle meat is balanced with gelatin or collagenous tissue. Dietary PUFA is kept to a minimum: strictly no seed oils, and limit the non-ruminant animals and cold water fish, like chicken (no ability to hydrogenate dietary fat), and salmon (its unsaturated oils allow it to not freeze up solid in the ocean, but oxidize rapidly in your metabolically active tissues).

raypeat.com

[1]https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/05/ice-cre...

Re: Ask HN: Does procrastination advice help you?

#49

Post by JohnDeHope »

> Does procrastination advice help you?

Yes. I listened to Mel Robbins' book "The Five Second Rule" and it did help me. https://www.melrobbins.com/5secondrule

> Is this a sign of depression or ADHD?

No, it's just that you have a particular set of skills, and you have a certain set of priorities. If you had different skills, or different priorities, then your behavior would be different.

Re: Ask HN: Does procrastination advice help you?

#50

Post by littlelady »

Lots of things correlate to procrastination, including ADHD and depression.

Some procrastination techniques have helped me, lots haven’t, even more only work some of the time. I generally have to swap things out to keep it fresh.

I’ve collected helpful techniques in a sort of Personal User’s Manual[1] and tried to sort them by what I perceive to be the problem, e. g. perfectionism, anxiety/fear, overwhelm. I also have a list of resources (physical, mental, people,…) that I go through to see if one of those can help me.

My idea is similar to The Anti-Planner by Dani Danovan[2], which I personally haven’t tried yet, but have heard great things about.

If wished, I’d be happy to share specifics. I wanted to keep it semi-brief since I’m on mobile.

[1] https://add.org/tadd-2019-your-personal-owners-manual-pom-wh...

[2] https://anti-planner.com/shop/the-anti-planner-how-to-get-sh...

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