When you have to work, disconnect your Ethernet cable.
Better yet, get 2 computers and put them in separate rooms.
Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?
21–30 of 64 posts
Re: Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?
#22Take an Adderall pill one time every day for two days. Heh. You'll work like a machine from that point forward.
No. No drugs, please. My problem are my habits. I do not have a disease.
"No. No drugs, please. My problem are my habits. I do not have a disease."
Drugs are not just for disease.
Is it possible that your habits come (to whatever extent) from neuropharmacology?
If you have a dopamine imbalance, can will power alone overcome it?
Re: Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?
#23My mind works exactly the same way. Best thing for me is to commit to a deadline and have consequences if I miss. Involve third parties somehow (angel investors or get it approved as a school project). Make a deal with another entrepreneur where you owe him money if you miss your deadline. If you don't produce, don't fool yourself - you're not an entrepreneur just a dreamer.
> If you don't produce, don't fool yourself - you're not an entrepreneur just a dreamer.
I think I ought to write that down.
Re: Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?
#24Re: Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?
#25It depends what works for you. In my experience the first thing you need is motivation. Without you have nothing to drive you and all the will in the world will get you nowhere.
Here is something that helped me: http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/03/the-cult-of-d...
Seriously though, find your motivation and all else will fall into place...
Re: Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?
#26It depends what works for you. In my experience the first thing you need is motivation. Without you have nothing to drive you and all the will in the world will get you nowhere.
Here is something that helped me: http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/03/the-cult-of-d...
Seriously though, find your motivation and all else will fall into place...
Re: Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?
#27External deadlines and accountability. I tell people what I'm doing. Then if I fail to do it I have the guilt of disappointing them on top of my own frustration at inertia. It's more or less cured the latter. :p
Re: Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?
#28Take an Adderall pill one time every day for two days. Heh. You'll work like a machine from that point forward.
Didn't work for me, at an initial low dose (5 mg). I found my mind "slipping off of things". It was "on to the next thing" before I'd really thought through the current thing. I "just sent" some emails and did some other things that, upon reflection, were not good choices.
I cut the low starting dose in half, and that helped; at that level, "pause and check" still has enough control to keep me from disregarding consequences.
I'm a bit hesitant to share this, but I'm curious whether anyone else here has had a similar reaction. You can email me if you don't want it out in public (pseudonymous email address, presumably).
Re: Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?
#29I hope you would find the following links useful at least in some ways. PG's Brilliant Essay: http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html How to Procrastinate Like Leonardo da Vinci: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=zs61txc4kwr4kd1q1rj... Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=procrastinating-again Letter to a Young Procrastinator: http://www.slate.com/id/2190918/…
From pg's essay: One reason is that you may not get any reward in the forseeable future.
I find it helps to spend some time laying out a plan of attack that will yield results along the way - like an adventurer laying out a route with ports/oases/base-camps for reprovisioning - and ruthlessly cutting out nice-to-have features that don't contribute (while keeping some nice-to-have features that do contribute). A side-effect of getting results is that they act as a check on whether you are on the right track. There's still the basic fear, of "will I ever get to the end"; the cure for that is to clarify the mission. If things get confusing, step back and simplify, because that is the way to move forward.
And laying out the approach actually also begins the journey (because I think about the issues I'll encounter), without feeling like it, so it is easier to start on this than on the task itself. So this is one way to overcome procrastination, and get started: "I'll just have a little daydream about the cool little outcomes along the way"
Re: Ask Entrepreneurs: Productivity tips for a chronic procrastinator?
#30Instead of aiming to do 1 thing and failing to do it, aim to do 20 things and accept that 5 of them will slip. Do that and basically shift to whatever you feel like doing at the time (with the only caveat that it should be relatively productive stuff - ie. not "play WoW", more like "write a blog post" or "design a new homepage"). You probably will still get stuff done just before the deadline when it has a hard deadl…
Funny, that's exactly the opposite of what I would suggest: Work on only the most important thing and nothing else. It's helped me maintain focus no matter how crazy things get. pg says it much better here: http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html "What's the best thing you could be working on, and why aren't you?" Just goes to show you: Ask 2 hackers a question and get 3 answers. You'll just have to figure out…
Yeah, I read and applied that advice many times, but in the long run, I've found it to have some really nasty side-effects.
Unless I'm doing something obviously unproductive (e.g. watch TV or play a game), I'm rarely sitting there doing nothing for ages. The only time when this happens, consistently, is precisely when I tell myself "This is what I have to do, above all other things" and it just so happens that that one thing is something that I just don't want to work on or think about right now.
The "Number 1 priority" trick works for a while, and while it's working, it's great - but once you hit one of those snags, a whole day can vanish without a trace or any output. The only time "Number 1 priority" works reliably for me is when there is an imminent deadline and I cannot not do it. Any form of artificial "I'm going to do only this today" has a high probability of reducing my overall output instead of increasing it.
When, instead, I tell myself "I can do any of these 20 things, or even anything else I can think of", suddenly I run through things at a really rapid rate - especially if I know that in that list is one task that I just don't want to do... it's like I'll do all the other stuff just to avoid doing that one task.
So, anyway, not just different people, but different techniques - both work, superficially, imho - i've just found that the "focus on one thing" approach hits some terrible snags every once in a while that devalue it on the whole...