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Getting Past Procrastination

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Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#141

Post by growingkittens »

thenoblesunfish wrote: post #132
kriro wrote: post #91

I disagree with the idea that getting past procrastination should (always) be the target. Mostly because I don't think procrastination is inherently bad. There's a lot of stigma attached to procrastination as it's seen as being "unproductive". But I think procrastination can lead to great insights. Your brain is telling you that it is not interested in the current task. The question is: Why? Overworked and needs a br…

This post and similar advice is aimed at people who feel pain from procrastination. You are not one of them, probably. It's not an inherently bad thing, just like any number of things some, not all, people struggle greatly with (drugs, food, etc.).

I would say that the original poster is intimately familiar with procrastination, because they recognize that the underlying cause of most procrastination is a barrier of some sort. Different people have different combinations barriers, so it can be difficult to recognize someone else's experience.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#142

Post by cardanome »

stemlord wrote: post #139
cardanome wrote: post #64

It is normal to struggle with procrastination from time to time but if is a regular occurrence you need to check the actual causes. You might have ADHD. And is is very important to know whether you have it or not because all that advice for neurotypical people will not work for you then. In fact it will harm you. It will make you feel as a failure. You need to figure out how your brain works and only then you will fi…

ADHD is so stigmatized now that you cannot with a straight face tell someone "I have ADD" without getting an eye roll, unfortunately. many won't believe you were correctly diagnosed I've also found that there's no real cure for it. You can take the meds but they'll chip away at your personality and health in other ways.

I used to think that being diagnosed would not change much but for me it did. A lot. Just having more knowledge about myself has been extremely empowering. Even just knowing myself that I have it helps me be kinder to myself.

Also there is ADHD coaching. Having someone who had ADHD themselves coach me through my problems was an absolute game changer.

Maybe that could be an option for you as well. Worked much better that traditional therapy for me personally.

As for medication, well for most people with ADHD it works really well and is worth the relative mild side effect. But that is most, for some it does not work unfortunately. I think it is always worth trying but yeah it is no silver bullet that works for everyone.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#143

Post by cardanome »

owebmaster wrote: post #121
cardanome wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your brain does not work the same way as my brain works. I am sorry, I know this is hard to believe but you will develop some actual emphathy once you accept the fact. General advice for running a marathon will not for for someone who has no legs. I can't will my brain to work differently than it does. I can just learn to cope with my ADHD brain. And you being judgemental about it will not change that.

> Your brain does not work the same way as my brain works. I am sorry, I know this is hard to believe but you will develop some actual emphathy once you accept the fact. I am also sorry but I do have ADHD and I'm no different than any other human being, and so aren't you. Many people just deal with it much better than you, but at least it means it is possible. Nobody said it is easy but people with ADHD have a tenden…

I am sorry but the reality is that most people in this world do not have any executive dysfunction. They can just do things.

They often do not want to do things. They will often choose to do the easy or more pleasant task but they do not have the same struggle someone with ADHD has.

The world is not fair. Yes, you can still achieve your goals with ADHD but you will have to go about it differently. The first step is in accepting yourself and leaning into your strengths and weaknesses.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#144

Post by hirvi74 »

ponector wrote: post #127
kriro wrote: post #91

I disagree with the idea that getting past procrastination should (always) be the target. Mostly because I don't think procrastination is inherently bad. There's a lot of stigma attached to procrastination as it's seen as being "unproductive". But I think procrastination can lead to great insights. Your brain is telling you that it is not interested in the current task. The question is: Why? Overworked and needs a br…

Why? The answer is easy: the work is pointless corporate bullshit. Not sure if it ever going to hit the prod at all. But they pay huge salary and I need money. Turns out nice things are expensive.

I was going to post something similar until I saw your comment. I completely agree. It's difficult to motivate oneself when one knows the work they are doing is actually not worth doing.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#145

Post by hirvi74 »

annie_muss wrote: post #59
imjonse wrote: post #25

"Across a decade working at hypergrowth tech companies like Meta and Pinterest, I constantly struggled with procrastination [...] I was not making progress on the things that mattered." Maybe unless one can really convince themselves that their daily work matters (really matters and not just for their team/company metrics) one is bound to procrastinate as a symptom of some subconscious sense of pointlessness.

When I see stories like this I always wonder "How did you get and keep jobs at meta and Pinterest if you have a procrastination problem?" I procrastinated so badly I could never apply for jobs. And the jobs I did get I lost quickly due to the same procrastination.

I made similar comments on this site alluding to how when I went into this field, I thought I was going to be working with passionate people that truly cared about the craft. I was met with the rude reality that none of my coworkers care about this craft in the slightest, and it is all merely just an ends to a means for them. Now, I do not necessarily blame my coworkers. Passion is not really within one's control.

For the sake of analogy, I feel like I wanted to be a photographer and take beautiful and artistic pictures, but in reality, I just take school pictures for a living.

Now, I do believe there are passionate jobs with passionate programmers out there, but:

1. I do not know where nor with whom one would even find such roles.

2. My lack of skill would be more burdensome than helpful for such teams. I'm not new either. I've been at this game for over a decade now.

So, I am stuck in this procrastination loop -- I lack the skills to better my situation, but I also feel so far behind that I, at some level, believe I am incapable of ever being able to find/retain such a job.

Long story short, I am not sure what your particular reasons are for procrastinating, but brother/sister, I don't blame you one bit for it.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#147

Post by HappMacDonald »

Kiro wrote: post #116
kriro wrote: post #91

I disagree with the idea that getting past procrastination should (always) be the target. Mostly because I don't think procrastination is inherently bad. There's a lot of stigma attached to procrastination as it's seen as being "unproductive". But I think procrastination can lead to great insights. Your brain is telling you that it is not interested in the current task. The question is: Why? Overworked and needs a br…

That's nice and all but when your procrastination prevents you from doing anything at all for months it doesn't really feel like it's a good thing.

One can model procrastination as a reaction to some form of mental pain. Doing the work hurts one in some way, so one subconsciously finds excuses to do something else instead.

But pain is a valuable signal, and often learning and resolving the root cause of the pain can be more valuable than reaching for the oxycodone to power past it.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#148

Post by HappMacDonald »

tejohnso wrote: post #113
kriro wrote: post #91

I disagree with the idea that getting past procrastination should (always) be the target. Mostly because I don't think procrastination is inherently bad. There's a lot of stigma attached to procrastination as it's seen as being "unproductive". But I think procrastination can lead to great insights. Your brain is telling you that it is not interested in the current task. The question is: Why? Overworked and needs a br…

> Your brain is telling you that it is not interested in the current task. The question is: Why? I think for a lot of us it's something like: Because it's nonsense busywork that I don't care about. Procrastinating isn't going to help, and it is absolutely bad because it leads to uncompleted tasks and that leads to financial distress. I need to get it done regardless of whether it's going to provide a dopamine hit or…

I find that shutting off one's brain and just slogging through a task leads to work quality on a par with AI slop.

So if one really is as uninterested in the quality of the output as you suggest, perhaps it might actually be better to dump the problem into Claude/Gemini/Cleverbot and just copy/paste/act upon the results verbatim and then mark the checkbox as "done" and move on.

For me personally, the pain of such efforts is ordinarily from making sure that the output is correct when the input is largely guesswork or speculation that always leads to hunting through a morass of poor documentation of some library or seeking a workaround to some irritating problem or rolling the dice on what the risk to various decisions might prove to be over the future: "eh, duct tape this and it ought to hold".

And most notably that doing more of this work correlates to an exponential rise in the volume of similar work that will be required down the road to maintain the same results.

Those are often exactly the time one would be best served by taking a step back and questioning the entire framework that supports the busywork in question. Perhaps starting from scratch or making some huge change would reduce the garbage portions of the effort and keep them from further proliferating?

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#149

Post by devrandoom »

jraph wrote: post #24
rented_mule wrote: post #6

> Action leads to motivation, not the other way around. I've found this to be very true. A trick I found that made this easier for me is to leave a trivial task to start tomorrow with, often with notes to remind myself what to do. Ideally the trivial task is on the way to something bigger, not finishing something. That gets me into my editor, gets me running the code / tests / etc., and gives me a trivially easy way…

Yep. When there are no clear tasks, I sometime leave a syntax error at the place work should continue tomorrow. This is quite effective. It can make the answer to the "Where was I?" question immediate instead of taking a few seconds and this is one fewer barrier.

I've done that too. Especially if I have to stop working, but I'm in the middle of something. There are no compilation errors or tests failing but the feature isn't completed.

Introducing a syntax error is like a saved game, portal back in time. I'll come back to it tomorrow and it'll take me max one minute to reload the context into my brain.

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