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I started writing a book as a form of procrastination, and after I had written the first (exceptionally bad) draft, suddenly finishing that book rose to the top of the list. Haven't worked on it since.
This is a trick I use: Never release a finished product. All of my releases are WIPs. I feel like Zeno’s Software Engineer.
> Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation. This is also true from my observations but what this writing misses is another much more crucial aspect:…
I’m still a procrastinator, and the meds only solve so much of the problem. They aren’t going to put me in that “optimal” state for 16 hours a day. This article rings so true for procrastination, and I think the technique is still useful. It’s embracing the fact that my ADHD will let me focus on a difficult, but “less important,” task.
Interesting example. I have a weekend class next week and I’m supposed to read a book before it. Once it’s the day before, odds are 99% I won’t read the book. But I can sneak it in now while it feels less important. Ha, take that procrastination!
I started writing a book as a form of procrastination, and after I had written the first (exceptionally bad) draft, suddenly finishing that book rose to the top of the list. Haven't worked on it since.
So that is my advice to you: if you want to do the book, add more things to the top of that list :)
Good luck and mention me on the acknowledgements! xD
I think basically everyone with ADHD discovers this eventually; e.g., > Sympathetic Procrastination Rotor: a technique for Time and Task Management. > To aid in the fight against procrastination, arrange all of your tasks in a cycle, such that the natural opportunity for procrastination is always another task on the roadmap. In this essay I will https://x.com/jmclulow/status/1390544792946237442
> The procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important. This is the reason this method has never really clicked for me, despite coming across the concept in various procrastination blogs. It's the more important tasks that need doing the most, and this method aims to avoid doing those in favour of less important tasks.…
But this is simply not true in the real world. As the author notes, he has papers to grade and a mess of work to do in the evenings. These are important and have deadlines.
But the reality of the matter is that procrastinating them really doesn’t hurt anyone that much, and the benefit of just spending time with students is incredible.
If every problem is deeply important and has to be done yesterday, you wind up stretched very thin. It’s stressful!
I don’t think this is about creating a fake task at the top. It’s more about recognizing that it’s very frequently ok to procrastinate important things if you get value from what you did instead, and aiming to maximize that value. You’re tricking yourself, but in a way that fits how some procrastinators think. As he says, it relies on some level of self-deception.
And it should go without saying that there are obviously exceptions, and that it’s just one tool in the toolbox.
Kind of fitting that this is currently #1 on HN
> The procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important. This is the reason this method has never really clicked for me, despite coming across the concept in various procrastination blogs. It's the more important tasks that need doing the most, and this method aims to avoid doing those in favour of less important tasks.…
It’s not fake importance, it’s just taking advantage of the fact that you want to be seen as dependable and effective to other people.
> The procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important. This is the reason this method has never really clicked for me, despite coming across the concept in various procrastination blogs. It's the more important tasks that need doing the most, and this method aims to avoid doing those in favour of less important tasks.…
Task selection is the tricky bit. It has to actually be important in some dimension. The easiest is something with an amount of social pressure. If someone is waiting for you to do something that you have promised, then it acquires a kind of urgency and importance even if it wouldn’t harm you not to do it in a timely manner. It’s not fake importance, it’s just taking advantage of the fact that you want to be seen as…
I don't agree with this though. If someone is waiting for me to do something that I've promised, and I don't do it, I'm going to suffer the harm of stress, guilt, shame, etc. related to breaking my promise and people thinking I'm unreliable. I think this idea only works if we define "harm" in a very narrow sense to exclude the types of harms that come from the "important" task that we're going to deliberately avoid doing.