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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhd#Signs_and_symptoms
Your story sounds remarkably like my own. I read a thread about ADHD on HN, and realised it was describing me. I found a sympathetic medic who prescribed Provigil, and the change was astonishing. I can now concentrate and produce.
Provigil is very gentle in its effect, not like Ritalin which is the normal prescription for ADHD.
What you need is to somehow get that same level of external "force" on you in this new running-your-own-business environment, where otherwise it is so easy just to slack off.
Let's try a framing technique.
When you think about stopping work to play a game, I want you to very clearly visualise coming to your client empty handed and them firing you. I want you to visualise having no money and not being able to afford all those things you like spending it on. I want you to visualise - again, super clearly - losing the respect of your peers, your family, even strangers you have met on the internet, all because you couldn't just get on with it and do the work and make your business succeed. And why couldn't you? Because you couldn't resist playing a stupid game designed to make someone else money at the expense of your productivity.
Got that horrible and depressing scenario clearly, vividly, and richly painted in your mind?
Now, just as vividly, picture yourself sitting up straight with amazing posture, coding like a damn JEDI, master of your domain, submitter of outstanding work, ahead of deadlines, everyone loves you, this is what you're good at and by god you're owning at it. You're virtuous and awesome, an actual fucking adult, a creator, producer, and earner of real stuff with real value.
You get the idea. Your imagination is a powerful tool which can do a complete hatchet job on the person you deep down don't want to be but seems appealing in the short term, and it can be PR god to the version you aspire to be but somehow don't have the bravery and force of will to become. When you do that, and get these images in your head with enough detail that they seem real, it bleeds into reality and pushes you to becoming one over the other.
Other than that, I got nothing.
The only thing that kind-of works for me is a complete change of setting - when I'm at home I never plan to do any work. All work has to be done in a designated place.
I started this in my colleage years, where I had a serious issue with distractions (like spending 3 months playing DeusEx from 7AM to 2AM) when I should be studying. I solved this by going to the Library and studying there. Sure its a hassle, moving to a secondary location, sure you need to figure out what you need to work there, but it was worth it. You just need to make sure that if you get an urge to game/surf the net/etc.. you get out of there. Sooner or later you'll get trained to automatically start working at the locaiton.
I have a similar setup with my current job - all work needs to be done in the office and the only work I do at home is the stuff that really needs to be done (I'm a cofounder, so it's easier :)). If I were to start all over again, then the first order of business would be to get myself a desk or an office - without that, regardless of how badly I want to do something, I'd be lost.
PS: An additional improvement in an environment is to condition yourself to work with music on your headphones. I started listening to music on my in-ear headphones due to the open-floor nature of the office and it really boosted my productivity (less distractions).
As a side-effect now headphones invoke a Pavlov-reflex, whenever I put them in my ears (sometimes even without anything playing) I start working harder and with more focus. It's also a curse - last time I needed to hack something (with maximum concentration) and found myself franticly searching for my headphones. Before finding them at last, I actually contemplated buying a new set right away.
BTW: We do have a team of people working in our offices and we did outsource quite a lot of stuff out. We found it that it's very common for people to get distracted when working from home and the tasks (even when properly planned) don't get executed. Now we actually prefer to have the outsourcers work in our offices if possible or we demand very hard penalties for missing deadlines (and they still do it!).
Don't feel bad - what you're experiencing is the norm.
This is a really simple way to keep yourself honest. Even if it's partitioned OSes on the same machine it would help.
tldr: gamify your development process and jobify your gaming process. Get good feedback loops going for your programming so you can track progress. Count how much money you are earning for every hour of gaming. Why is gaming more fun than programming? In my opinion, it’s because of 3 reasons: 1. The action-effect feedback cycle is almost instantaneous 2. Your long-term goals are well defined and easy to hold in your…
My current problem is with Civ5. It's hands down the best game I've played. One thing I enjoy doing is building extremely strong economies above anything else. When I'm raking, I notice it doesn't take much to swing in the direction I want to go. When starting out, you can only really increment gold per turn by 1 to max 7. I often wonder is there any of this I can apply to my real life situation? Can I model my income like a civ 5 economy? Maybe I can say x, y and z will increase the amount of £ I receive per day. Perhaps per hour so it's closer to a game.
- Don't work at home, it just doesn't work! (for most of us)
- Don't work alone in a room! (so, probably a co-working space for you)
- Do some workout(gym, jogging, biking) after work, min. 2-3 times a week! It will make you feel good and tired, so you won't have much energy left to play any games afterwards. This is also hard if you are doing it alone, you HAVE to find a workout-buddy so you can motivate each other, also it's way harder to cheat on your buddy than to cheat on yourself. Also a great motivation for me: Take a picture of yourself befor or after each workout and track your transformation.
- Define your schedule: e.g. 9-5 is work and after that+weekends is off.
- Don't install any distractions/games on your work-computer. (Get a work-computer if you don't have one)
- Get at least one weekly 'event'(non-work related) you can look forward to. (This can be some TV-Show, meeting a friend, but it should be something that's fun for you other than playing games)
I cannot promise this will help you the same, but it helped me and I'm sure there are lots of other things you can do. What I've learned from talking to others is that solutions to stuff like this are VERY idividual, so be ready to try out a lot of stuff, some might work, many might not, and imho I don't think it matters if the advice is given by some overpaid shrink or some fellow geek. Just: if you try something, give it at least 4 weeks to see if it works.
Start off by recalling that your expectations have to be tuned around what actually happens when you work at home vs. what happens when you have butt-in-chair office hours. You're only going to have a very few "productive" hours each day, where you write code and tests and make visible changes, and they come in unpredictable lumps. Coming into this realization can make you feel extremely guilty at first and make the problem worse if you don't accept it and give yourself realistic schedules to compensate.
You'll get pulled along a lot more with people relationships - clients, teammates, etc. can all motivate you through the boring bottlenecks. And having friends, of course; if you aren't socializing, you can fall apart pretty fast. Let your client know that you underestimated your productivity; you can probably fix things up if you make a schedule that is implicitly planned around what you want out of your life.
The following is just my opinion: This really is an issue of self control. Just commit yourself to doing the work, then do it! If you really cannot do that then it might be helpful to see a counsellor, although I am certainly no expert in that. I think it is common for people to have difficulty getting in to a long sitting of programming, but after a couple of hours things seem to get much easier and the next 8 go by…
You should probably go back to your "well payed job".
Some quick notes about what I have understood:
* I am depressed. I have EVERY symptom of chronic depression listed here: http://www.webmd.com/depression/guide/chronic-depression-dys...
However, I don't know whether I procrastinate because I am depressed, or whether I am depressed because I procrastinate.
* Procrastination is a way of avoiding pain - the effort required in "work".
* Procrastination itself is addictive: it gives instant pleasure instead of the pain of "honest work". And the person procrastinating intellectually knows that it is bad for them, but once they are truly addicted to it, they are unable to stop.
* Procrastination is a habit, and habits can be changed.
* Habits are just patterns of behavior that we have memorized in our sub-conscious minds, so that we don't have to think about performing a certain action, or taking a particular decision, over and over again. It is a labor-saving device for the mind. If we had to think anew about every action we do / every decision we take, we would quickly get tired. But once an action or decision become a habit, we don't have to think about it; it just happens automatically. That's a great energy saver, if the actions / decisions are "good" for us, but can be life-destroying if the actions / decisions are "bad" for us.
* Habits can be changed. First, mentally review what you will do the next time you are in a "moment of choice" - such as sitting in front of your computer. Resolve to do your client work instead of playing a game. Actually visualize doing that: ignoring the urge to play a game, calming yourself until the urge subsides, and then calmly doing the "right thing (TM)" - opening up your IDE and coding.
Next, when you really are in the moment of choice, really do the above. To elaborate: You will feel the urge to fire up a game. At that moment, tell yourself that you have been down that road before, and you know where it leads. Tell yourself that it is ruining your life, and you won't accept it any more. That you will do the "right thing" (TM) no matter what. At this moment, you may have to stop everything and just breathe slowly and deeply until the "urge" to play the game subsides and you are calm again. Once you are calm, it is easy to take the right decision.
The first few times you do this, you may find it difficult, or almost impossible. But trust me, it can be done. And the more often you do thins (calm yourself until you can do the Right Thing), the easier it will become. You see, this will slowly become your new habit, and the old habit will fade away because you will no longer be reinforcing it.
All the best! Write to me: tech.rohit@gmail.com