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A receipt printer cured my procrastination

laurieherault.com

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Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#121

Post by homefree »

al_borland wrote: post #95
jvanderbot wrote: post #65

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun . And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation t…

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to s…

Yubikey nanos are the way out of that specific problem

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#122

Post by dgb23 »

orangebread wrote: post #98

I truly appreciate how well thought out this post is. However, it's one of those things where if you didn't have motivation in the first place, it's not going to work. I've tried atomic habits. I've tried different ideas from social media of grouping rooms and things into piles to sort. Sure, I'll get it done... eventually. But no amount of gamification will motivate me to put this much effort into habitual cleaning.…

If you can, actively examine your thoughts/emotions and dissect them from a distance so to speak, when you feel stuck and have trouble to reach for motivation.

There's a power in simply accepting that it's just a feeling, whether you're tired, motivated, hungry... The feeling that you want instead, is a sort of disassociation. The stronger the feeling, the harder it will be. And then you just do the thing you need to do despite lacking motivation or being tired or whatever.

There's something liberating about it that is a bit difficult to put into words. Like "fuck it, I'm going to do it anyway". Sounds a bit stupid, but it's not entirely wrong.

However it's not a magic trick, but rather a kind of thought muscle you can try to train so to speak. It works for me increasingly, despite being quite terrible at this kind of thing. Or rather two muscles: One is creating a distance/objectivity to your feeling or state of mind, the other is to start the action. Sometimes the second part is almost automatic once you do the first part well from my experience.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#124

Post by losthobbies »

Great read. I'm sure I have some undiagnosed ADHD and I suffer from getting stuck into to work or executive dysfunction...the tactile effect of pulling the receipt paper down and chucking it in the bin must feel very satisfying.

Kinda like those chefs working the plating section. Order up!

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#125

Post by laurieherault »

netaustin wrote: post #51

Having not thought about it at this level, the feedback loop explains why my Bullet Journal works well for me. I can write down any task and break it down to any level of detail without worrying about software, which is nice, and I get a nice little reward when I cross off a bullet. I have used post-its in this way in the past and found that it's more effective than the bullet journal if I need a real kick in the pan…

I also had good results with bullet journaling, but I had consistency issues. The advantage of the ticket printer is that it is much quicker to print. But I also have the advantage of working from home, so I do not need two separate systems.

Thank you for your very interesting message!

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#126

Post by kamaal »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #104
jvanderbot wrote: post #65

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun . And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation t…

I often trick myself imagining life is a game that throws boring or difficult tasks (boredom often equals difficult ) at me that I need to survive. It often helps because I I can picture finishing these things as rewards that help me get to the next "level". It was particularly helpful getting beyond difficult times (many bad events coinciding). Not sure if this can be transferred to others, or if it works because of…

This stops working after a while. The real deal is you begin the realise the 'points' you accumulate playing this game can't be redeemed to do something fun or satisfying. This game begins to appear totally pointless as you age(Points are less useful as you age, and dying with lots of points means time and effort was spent to acquire a thing that can't be spent now). Which causes even more procrastination.

I think humans crave freedom and free time, with good health more than anything else. This frees you up to care about doing things which we feel more rewarding and fun.

Several times you are better off skipping the drills and rituals and just focus on making lots of money as quickly as possible. And of course competing to accumulate more money just for the heck of it is equally demotivating as well. Focus what you want from the money and that is likely to move you along better use of your time and effort.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#127

Post by worldsayshi »

Sanzig wrote: post #108
al_borland wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to s…

Hmm. I wonder if there would be a market for a super simple TOTP authentication device with an e-paper display. Kind of like those RSA tokens with the LCDs, but more modern and able to hold any number of TOTP credentials. Getting the credentials loaded could be a bit of a pain without a camera for QR code scanning. Easiest solution would be via Bluetooth to a companion app, which you would probably want anyway for pe…

I would love this, but only if it also successfully implemented a few disparate authentication protocols that essentially do the same things (prove identity) but are regrettably proprietary - like the de facto standard electronic ID in Sweden, BankID.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#128

Post by dckx »

al_borland wrote: post #95
jvanderbot wrote: post #65

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun . And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation t…

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to s…

> However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone.

Why not save the secret on your laptop and generate the OTP on your laptop?

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#129

Post by ofjcihen »

Great article and great system.

A little out of scope since the article wasn’t about the finer points of ADHD but I’ve always wondered if we’re being disingenuously hard on ourselves by labeling it a disorder.

So many people show the symptoms and they’ve only gotten worse as the world has become more complicated that it seems less like a problem with the individual and more like an natural effect of putting what are essentially still caveman brains in a world of flashing lights, vibrating phones and notification noises.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#130

Post by laurieherault »

orangebread wrote: post #98

I truly appreciate how well thought out this post is. However, it's one of those things where if you didn't have motivation in the first place, it's not going to work. I've tried atomic habits. I've tried different ideas from social media of grouping rooms and things into piles to sort. Sure, I'll get it done... eventually. But no amount of gamification will motivate me to put this much effort into habitual cleaning.…

Actually, my method works even with very very very little motivation. The idea is that having a list of easy, routine micro-tasks ready in the morning gives you momentum. Even on a day when I have no motivation at all, I still reach a basic, acceptable level of productivity.

I even gave an example in my article about this for initial cleaning, specifically with emails. We usually wait for a day when we feel motivated to sort everything out, but that day never comes, and we end up never doing the task. The idea is to have one micro-task every day, like processing a maximum of five emails. Or even five separate tasks of one email each. And on a day when you really have no motivation, you just push yourself to handle one overdue email.

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