Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

news.ycombinator.com

81–90 of 308 posts

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#81
I am a lot like you, and I've tried so many things. Tips, tricks, to-do lists, whatever.

The one thing that sticks with me is to first truly understand the value of time. It sounds cheesy but time really is the most valuable resource in the world, and procrastinating is about the worst way to squander it.

Also, even after coming at that conclusion, it's still a struggle, every day. There is not a day when you can magically be not lazy. It will still be there forever, but you can choose to fight it. It's a daily struggle, but absolutely worth it, though.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#82
Working more hours != making use of your gift

This is your 100% capacity. You may be able to work for more hours, but a combination of your life situation (age, salary etc) causes you not to.

Once/if you are fired, that will teach ya.

If you don't like how this sounds then grab that feeling and challenge yourself.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#83
You're now afraid you're not as great as you've always thought (and they've always told you).

By procrastinating, you avoid an honest reckoning of your talents and testing of your limits. You can hold onto the idea of a certain kind of perfection, in yourself and your potential work product, a little longer... and then scramble to do something half-assed at the last minute.

If others then accept your results, you get the thrill of almost-failing but can still entertain the idea you're so great you don't need to put in sustained, honest effort. The essential-you still has the power to get away with things that others can't! (You were probably very good at deceiving your parents and other authority figures as a child.)

If your results are crappy, well, they're crappy only because of the procrastination. The "real you" still has boundless potential and "could be changing the world", it's 'just' the procrastination that's a problem. You're already punishing yourself about that with your internal narrative, and perhaps you even secretly hope others will finally give you negative attention, too -- both for the thrill of actual-failure and the hope of a confrontation that might force improvement.

You do have some awareness of the cycle you're in, and have tried a number of things... but not with consistent follow-through or sustained improvement.

As a single 21-year-old making $130K, you could afford elective psychotherapy. It'd help with rooting out the reasons you enjoy procrastination, and with the follow-through on changing habits. (Much of the advice here is good... but will you have a sustained relationship with the suggesters that helps evaluate progress over months/years? For a price, a therapist can provide that.)

You might also eventually want a more competitive and intimate work environment, someplace where you can't "bullshit your way through most stuff", because others would notice and/or real project failure would follow, rather than just continual muddling-through. (This doesn't necessarily mean over-the-shoulder monitoring or no entertaining diversions... but high-enough demands and close-enough collaboration that clock-killing shirking can't survive.)

Good luck, and be happy you're not this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbjypn9JtKE

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#84
I recommend "The Now Habit" book. I particularly like the "unschedule" trick. Instead of scheduling works and ending up procrastinating, schedule for fun activities instead and fill the unscheduled time with work. I'm not sure about you, but I have flex working hours (I'm a freelancer) so I can get this trick work for me.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Now-Habit-Procrastination-ebook/dp...

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#85

Here is something I wrote on this previously - Once upon a time I thought I was lazy. I'd sit in front of my computer at work with the intention of working but something inside me just wouldn't let me. It would make me feel so guilty and bad but no matter how hard I willed myself to work I just couldn't make it happen. This didn't happen all the time, sometimes I'd get caught up in my job and not have any problems. B…

Thank you for this! Brought some perspective on why I have an intrinsic push to want to fail.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#86
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also helps me to look at this image: http://i.imgur.com/39U4k.png . Each box is one month of your life. There really aren't that many of them.

I'm 30, and just put a layer on top of that marking the boxes that are behind me. Like the OP, I consider myself a chronic under-performer. And you're right. This kind of hits home. What did I fill those boxes with? What do I want to fill the remaining ones with?

Well, gosh, your life is meaningless drivel unless you fill those boxes with stuff! Produce! Nevermind what your wife and kids think of you, nevermind the laughter of your friends, the beauty you saw, the wonders you imagined. All those times you helped out a bum, cooked dinner, played with your niece: meaningless, if it got in the way of putting an achievement into a month-box! Produce! Produce! What are you going to have to etch on your tombstone if you don't have a dozen github URLs?

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#87
post #62

Just do it. Sounds easier than it is, though.

Get another job, with smart people equally smart or smarter then you. Work for a company that makes a product you can relate to. And work at a place the works as a team and follow the work hard and play hard way of thinking. The best place would be an agile environment where there is pair programming, stand ups and a real we do it together feel is , a place where you can learn from your co-workers and they can learn from you. The thing is is that you are not challenged so move to a place that challenge you. You are doing stuff that is to easy for you so you get bored.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#90
The complement of procrastination is wild passion. One who's capable of procrastinating with one sort of things is exactly the type of guy who's capable of getting some other things done if only he does things that call him on a deeper level.

It seems that among the great scores in school you haven't bumped into anything would have ignited that passion in you. That is OK because schools are pretty much designed to kill all passion, and you're so young anyway. There are a lot of people who can't get things done because they aren't smart enough: it's always better to be a procrastinator in comparison.

Procrastination is your way to reject activities that don't mean enough to you.

Nobody procrastinates splitting and carrying wood if the heating of his house depends on it. Your behaviour is effectively saying that reading Hacker News is more meaningful to you than your work. That is a good hint: find work that you would rather do whenever you find yourself procrastinating at your current work.

Another hint: you're suffering because you'd like to care about your work. THat's passion speaking already.

You would like to do lots and lots of good work: you just can't get to it where you're working now. There are a lot of people who would kill for such a talent and go happily abuse the smarts you have so that they could only work for three hours and then go play Patience for the rest of the day.

Also consider that three hours of real work per day is pretty average for the hours of a regular workday.

Other people fake it, too, and work on looking busy, even subconsciously. Yet you can find people at the kitchen all day long, drinking coffee. Or browsing Facebook at their computers. It's all a subtle game where everybody knows that nobody really does productive work all the time but everybody also knows that they're not to admit it, even to each others.

Note that this behaviour is not intentional: it's simply that people aren't generally wired to do creative things for hours in a row, day after day. What people can bear, for example, is 8-hour shifts on the assembly line five days a week numbing your mind, and then consider what even that does to them! Not to mention creative mental work that you can't force like you can force your muscles! I've talked about this with many people and the consensus seems to be that roughly four hours of real work per day means a good day and you're likely to just work the rest of the day wrestling with your guilt because you think you could do more.

Thus, consider the fact what you do during the three hours is that what is important. Not the things you could've achieved, according your imagination, in the other five hours.

Further, if you're working more than eight hours a day, it's no wonder you're super frustrated and trying to get out by procrastinating. You say you do "bullshit" for 7-8 hours and 3 hours of real work, that adds up to 10-11 hours a day. That's a lot of precious time spent for something you could've just done in three hours with much less stress!

Finally, go Watch Office Space. Again. While it's supposed to be mostly funny it just happens that the movie hits the chord on so many levels that it's nearly creeping in its truthfulness.

Post reply on HN