11–20 of 111 posts
Why would you want to force yourself? Life isn't about how much work you can do. If you feel like working, then work. If you don't, then don't work.
I know that I find work fulfilling. However, I don't like starting work. If I took your advice, my life would be far less pleasant (and not only materially).
Why would you want to force yourself? Life isn't about how much work you can do. If you feel like working, then work. If you don't, then don't work.
I have found the Pomodoro Technique ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique ) to be helpful. I can't do it for a whole day, but a short sprint to grind through something is a near, achievable goal. For extended, head-banging frustrations, it's helpful to step away, think about it without the distraction of the screen, and coming back at it with fresh eyes. The time AFK is not to be underestimated: http://ww…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people do not have such a luxury. I cannot arbitrarily decide to ignore my daily duties simply because I don't feel like working. I'd be fired. The same goes if you are a business owner in charge of your working hours. You cannot arbitrarily decide that your client portal outage doesn't matter because you don't feel like working. Your client is going to fire you.
If you get fired, then what? Even if you don't find a new source of income, you're not going to starve. Only a few hundred people starve per year in the U.S. What's the big deal? It's all just psychological issues in your brain. Either way is actually fine.
Regardless on if I would have starved or not, it was the most stressful and horrible time of my life. To say "what is the big deal" to me says you've never actually been in that position.
Thankfully, I eventually found an ok job, and am now taking that ex-girlfriend on an international holiday just to say thank you.
Why would you want to force yourself? Life isn't about how much work you can do. If you feel like working, then work. If you don't, then don't work.
Because of the idea of ultimate goals vs. proximate goals. Greedy algorithms are poor ways of finding happiness. I know that I find work fulfilling. However, I don't like starting work. If I took your advice, my life would be far less pleasant (and not only materially).
E.g. (quoting the article)
> If it is 2pm, then I will stop what I’m doing and start work on the report Bob asked for.
What's the long term goal here? Being in good terms with Bob? Keeping your job? Are those the goals that you should care about?
Why would you want to force yourself? Life isn't about how much work you can do. If you feel like working, then work. If you don't, then don't work.
Where x is normally between 2-10
y is anything
z is normally 10
If you are procrastinating right now, give it a go. Go on twitter or facebook and say if I don't work for 2 hours on Akasha(a project), I will donate $10 to watsi(the charity).
I think when setting goals we hope for some reward in the future, but the brain doesn't value rewards as much as it hate losses(loss aversion). YMMV
What I do is take a task I am avoiding and come up with a small piece of it I can reasonably do as a goal. It might be a task I can do in 15 minutes. It might be something I might need two hours to do.
I then follow that to completion, and then decide whether to bump the rest of the task of and get started on something else or whether to continue.
Usually for the tasks I feel like I don't have a solid grasp on how to do this helps, but I may still bump part of it down the road. For the tasks I am avoiding for administrative reasons or don't feel like, this gets me started.
An important point though is that the bumped task is less intimidating and smaller than it was when I started, meaning it is less likely to happen again.