Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma

Do NOT start to read books / weblogs to solve "productivity problems". Biggest bullshit you could do right now. This will only increase your overload. Not all of these books are bad, but read them later, it will not help you right now. Instead do this:

YOUR MISSION (ONE WEEK SPECIAL OPS):

-> STOP USING THE COMPUTER FOR ONE WEEK - START RIGHT NOW.

No exception. Be absolutely strict about it. It is only one week - it might change your life, so no exception, not one single minute. Send emails now about being offline for one week to most important people. CLOSE ALL BROWSER TABS before shutting down the computer and then put your computer into a wardrobe or in a place you can not see it. Hide it.

-> Calm down your neurons.

Sleep a lot. DO NOT WATCH TV. Do not read any books. Eat very good, this means healthy, not much. Eat lots of vitamines, fruits, salad, etc., no toxic waste like meat from industrial production (too many hormons and medics), no sugar, no alcohol, no drugs. Spend much time with things that let you feel physically good, e.g. taking a bath, massage, sports, etc. Go outside, walk, move your body, WASTE TIME sitting on some sunny place doing nothing. Do some meditation or just sit down and try not to control your brain, just let your ideas flow like clouds in the sky.

-> you will feel better after two days, but DO NOT TOUCH THE COMPUTER AND DO NOT WATCH TV. Do not read books. Go on with relaxing and feeling good. If you start feeling an urge to "do something", go out and move your body or ask your girlfriend what she would like to do.

-> After the week passed, you will realize that you are still alive and that you did not miss anything. You do not need a computer to have a good life. Interesting experience, try it yourself.

-> Now write down what you want to achieve the next week and what exact task you want to accomplish, just a few words are ok, but this will be your plan for the week and you must follow it strictly. Before startig the computer again, write down what exact task you want to solve with it.

-> Stop using the internet like a news paper or a tv show. Stop visiting this site. Stop using any social networks, twitter, reddit, imgur, whatever. Only do things you need for accomplishing your task.

-> Start using the internet as a place where you can look up things, when you hit a wall and need some specific information.

-> Still stop watching TV. It will help a lot. From time to time download some interesting movie or documentary, but absolutely avoid being radiated with an non-controllable unidirectional information stream.

You are now in a special condition and there is much more to explore about this state of mind, but you have to control your input very strictly. Be aware of the dangers and you will succeed. Good Luck!

As I've switched, I've noticed the motivations have changed. The last 20% of any project is un-fun work. All the excitement is gone and all that is left is tedium. This is when your eyes start wandering to other projects.

It's addiction. You are addicted to the fun part, and when it's no longer fun you start looking for you fix somewhere else. The trick is to change your addiction. Force yourself to finish a project. Get addicted to the sense of accomplishment instead of being addicted to learning something new and exciting. If you only care about the learning and not the doing, you'll end up reading wikipedia all day, every day.

If the topics are roughly of the same difficulty, divide it up in to 5 weeks each, and that's it. When the time's up, move on. If you need to, you can move back and forth between the 4 topics for a little variety, but remember context switching does come with a cost.

It would probably be helpful to list all the other things you want to do, but can't, as a way of reinforcing to yourself that for the next 5 months, you're not doing those things. You can pick up on that list afterward... but when you do, make sure you keep up the same discipline: pick a few topics, decide to do them and devote focused time to them, and decide to leave the others on the list and not do them until you've finished with your current working set.

It's really hard to let go of a lot of things that we want to do and learn. I experience this pretty often, too, and I'll admit I'm not always good at following the above advice. But you have to be realistic about the quantity of time you have. Deciding what to do also means deciding what not to do, which is just as important.

HN: "I suggest you read these books, blogs and articles: ..."

Something (personal experience?) tells me that this will only make the too-much stuff to focus on worse.. :-)