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Getting Past Procrastination

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Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#171

Post by andoando »

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 still don't believe there is such a thing as a "correct" diagnosis of ADHD as there is no scientific/objective criteria for it in the first place.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#172

Post by martinpw »

apwell23 wrote: post #53
jraph wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 always leave work( for lunch, for home) at failing test . Try to anyways.

Maybe this is implied, but I like to leave with a failing test that I know how to fix. That way I am not brooding on it all evening. Leaving when things are broken and I don't know why is frustrating.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#174

Post by HappMacDonald »

kcoddington wrote: post #164
HappMacDonald wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eff…

While I don't disagree with this approach, it only works for some digital tasks. AI won't clean my house or exercise my body or engage in obligatory social interactions. In these cases, just getting it done by shutting off your brain is often the best way to get it going. Also, it's not all or nothing. You can decide to engage more in the task as it's ongoing, which could contribute to higher quality output. The hard…

Yeah.. for awhile I tried exercising by walking/jogging on a treadmill with headphones watching youtube to keep my brain entertained through the drudgery.. but yeah, one constantly drowns in the noise of being jostled.

For me completely shutting down the brain (when/if I'm even capable of doing so) is just a function that activates sleep. While I haven't tried this while exercising in particular, I have more than learned my lesson from trying it merely standing up and the result is very much falling down.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#175

Post by Caelus9 »

I also found that I was most likely to procrastinate when the goal was too vague and the task was too big. So now I will break the task into super small steps, such as "open a file" or "run a test." It sounds a bit silly, but it really works. Maybe sometimes the brain does not need a motivational speech, but just a gentle push.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#176

Post by Yizahi »

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…

In a certain large part of the population procrastination is a symptom of mental disorder (like for example ADHD etc.), and often a particularly severe one. Dismissing it as a "benefit" is not constructive.

I suspect that you use word procrastination too general, to include all possible cases. If a person is lazy for 5 minutes or for an hour it's not a procrastination. Procrastination is severe case of inability to do something a person wants to do. And before anyone interjects about "duh, work may be unpleasant", it also extends to ALL other spheres of life. Imagine wanting to play a game and literally not being to force yourself to click Start. Or scrolling saved watch list and not picking anything you want to watch. Stuff like that.

Procrastination and related issues is a severe mental disorder and I'm sick and tired of people normalizing it or dismissing as something good or beneficial.

PS: to rephrase all that above - the answer to the question "Why?" is not exclusively something external (like "not interesting") but often an internal one, a chemical disbalance in a person's brain, some brain structures under- or over-developed etc.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#177

Post by Yizahi »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #151
layer8 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's because of fear of failure, as failure is more consequential the more important the task is.

For me it’s inverted. I have a hard time doing anything until failure is a concrete possibility. Then I become incredibly motivated to not fail.

The problem starts later in life, when a person starts misjudging both time/resources needed to rush complete a task and consequences of failing it.

Failing practically anything during the study in the university is a laughing matter. Worst case you have wasted 6 years on partying and got nothing in return, maybe some debt too if it was in the USA. Failing a task later in life may lead to jail time, deportation, divorce, eviction, homelessness etc. So getting familiar with procrastination and letting it get more severe with years is recipe for disaster.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#178

Post by Yizahi »

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…

Now that attitude is just mean to people with ADHD. Attitude like that is one of the reasons why people with ADHD like me, have to needlessly suffer in a society dismissing my mental disorder or pretending it doesn't exist.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#179

Post by Yizahi »

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.

It's not stigmatized, more like reverse. It's "normalized" and neurotypical people just dismiss it outright, as a "play-pretend illness". Also it become a "fashionable" diagnosis. People who don't have it pretend that it brings them closer to a focused genius Sherlock Holmes or similar characters, which is completely wrong in 99.9% of the cases.

Re: Getting Past Procrastination

#180

Post by southernplaces7 »

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.

And how have you overcome this to maintain a functional life? Honestly curious.
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