I think we all suffer from this dilemma to varying degrees. Side note: I just read an interesting article on addictive behavior. It suggests that absolute addiction is not really as hard to overcome as we previously thought. The problem with addiction is it's a way to bond with something. Bonding is the actual addiction. You can bond with people, drugs, things, behaviors. If you want to overcome a particular addictiv…
"I just read an interesting article on addictive behavior." My take on this is that the OP is simplistically addicted to learning because it's easy and requires little effort and prolongs not having to actually do something. Back in the day of buying books at Barnes and Noble, I found myself doing something similar where I would continue to buy books to learn but never took any action or put off taking action on doin…
Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
191–200 of 224 posts
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Make it visual too. I like the Kanban board for this. The "In progress" field should have a maximum of 2 or 3 items. I am using this one for free! https://kanbanflow.com/ you can queue up lots of tasks to be done in the future. when you go to start a new task, you can compare it against everything else in the list to ensure its truly the top priority. Does that make sense? if not, watch this 5 minute youtube video: h…
In case you haven't heard of it, Trello is another alternative: https://trello.com/ KanbanFlow kind of looks like Trello from the '90s, but it looks like it might have a built-in pomodoro timer and some other neat features.
Does Trello have plugins/add-ons to add some of these features that have worked well for people?
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#193"Whom the gods wish to destroy, they give unlimited resources." In your case, educational resources. It's difficult to say because of the details you omitted, but whatever it is you're trying to do is probably the wrong thing. If you need to cover 4 highly technical subjects in 4 months, then you've made a wrong turn somewhere and you need to stop and re-evaluate things. No matter how important it seems, no matter ho…
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#194Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#195Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#196Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#197I have a related question: I've been a successful consultant, though that's tailed off the last 5 years. A lot of what's in the other thread [1] rings very true. I'm massively torn in all directions, learn for the sake of learning and never have any ideas with whatI want to do with what I learn. HOWEVER... the big difference, and one I have struggled with for years, but more so recently is... "why bother?" to do anyt…
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#198By obligation is the more familiar method for a student: You were told to do your homework and study, now you have to deliver. And then you fear not fulfilling it so you get into a panic at the last minute and scramble to produce the image, if not the reality, of someone who knows what they're doing and learned what they were supposed to learn. Somehow you retain some of that knowledge and so you do become more competent, but you associate the process of getting there with the stressful experience of delivering to a deadline.
Doing it by habit means that there is a part of your time in the day where you do some subset of "important but boring" things, entirely for yourself. Not because somebody told you to. This is the sane way to learn things and also the only one that you can sustain throughout your life.
That is, tomorrow, instead of sitting in your comfort zone at home and watching yet another lecture or skimming yet another blog post, you go out to a coffee shop and you sit there for at least one hour to study "the doing of work." You don't dare get up until you've seen at least a tiny fraction of productivity. Maybe you learned one fact, or you figured out one part of a math problem, or you set up your development environment, or you wrote one important business email. If you accomplish it at the start of the hour, you keep going, you find one more thing to do, and then one more after that, and so on.
This feels horrible in the homework mindset, because the goal there is to minimize effort and maximize output, to procrastinate and then rush to get the grade. Here the goal is akin to going to the gym, to practice putting in effort, to get used to the idea of everyday struggle so that you don't fear it. Here, it does not matter how little your output was, if your effort was good. And if you are frustrated with what you are trying to work on, allow yourself multiple options. You shouldn't do only bicep curls every day, and you shouldn't do the same with intellectual work.
The homework mindset will creep in and say that this free time should be carved up, rebalanced, and associated with deadlines again, in line with whatever goals and values the parents, teachers, or institutions presently uphold, you should be progressing as fast as the course does, but that is not true. You don't know what is efficient, you don't know what is valuable, and you don't know exactly where you're going in the future. You won't progress exactly as fast as any course, you will breeze through some things and be stuck on others. You will have to try to know. Defer to your own motivations in practicing the doing of work, because sitting there dumbfounded by material you cannot bring yourself to engage with is a good way to crush your spirit and make you feel incapable. This is true even if it should lead to failure within your coursework, as that failure, in tandem with knowing that you were actually practicing and learning things each day, will indicate that you were lying to yourself about what you want and why. That is more important than simply maintaining the image of competence.
Try make sure you are actually as healthy as possible. Maybe you are eating or drinking something that makes you unable to focus, or not enough of something else - experiment, try things. Maybe you need to get out so that when you come back, you're excited about what you're doing. There are many things to try. A well-rounded life needs to try as many of them as possible as early as possible.
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#199I have a related question: I've been a successful consultant, though that's tailed off the last 5 years. A lot of what's in the other thread [1] rings very true. I'm massively torn in all directions, learn for the sake of learning and never have any ideas with whatI want to do with what I learn. HOWEVER... the big difference, and one I have struggled with for years, but more so recently is... "why bother?" to do anyt…
Why ask here? Think about what you're asking, maybe there's a better place find your answer.
If you know a better place - do share.
Re: Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma
#200Hi, Michael) "information paralysis" Is that a problem? So, may be it is not? May be it's an opportunity) Let's solve it) Imagine very-very big mindMap (like that, but much bigger http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QCtHZYRX_0w/UcbhaceT4MI/AAAAAAAAAW... ). Imagine, each word in there is a single knowledge. All this knowledges are ether unbounded from each other or bounded in small groups and all placed chaotically. This is how…