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At the End of a Procrastinated Day

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Re: At the End of a Procrastinated Day

#21

Post by angkec »

kbatten wrote: post #18
angkec wrote: post #14

Here's a realization that scared me to death that I don't procrastinate any more: The whole life only exists in the current moment. The reason being that the past doesn't exist any more, and the future has yet to come into existence. Hence all my life exists only in the current moment. This leads to the conclusion that if I procrastinate for even a bit moment, I'm wasting away all my life. This is the most scary conc…

It seems to me that working away all your life isn't any better that "wasting away" all your life.

You don't need to work every minute. All you need to do is to not waste it away. So go skiing for a full day is still considered making good use of the current moment than reading reddit. For me, I think not wasting my life away means I'm either contributing to the society by working or I'm making my self a better person by working out, skiing, reading books etc.

Re: At the End of a Procrastinated Day

#22

Post by billpatrianakos »

I'm having one of those days today and I need help! The while week has been that way. It sucks. I know much of my procrastination is due to burnout. I totally burned myself out and now I need to recover. But sometimes recovery isn't an option when you've got deadlines to meet. Sometimes you've got no choice. So now it's off to try to force myself to finish and hope to God I end up with just enough time to take a long enough break to recover.

Re: At the End of a Procrastinated Day

#23

Post by gabaix »

I found a way to reduce procrastination, while enjoying some of it. I alternate a procrastinate day with days of non-procrastination.

For one day, I am allowed to watch as many movies as I want, play chess, do whatever useless and enjoyable I might want. Then I would do variable periods without procrastinating. This could be 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month. It depends on your other priorities, work, family, achievements. During those periods, I have blacklisted the things I usually do when procrastinating. When I go back to my procrastination day, I am very happy since it has been a while I have watched a movie, trailer or play chess.

This is very similar to some drug-addiction techniques, and I found it worked for me very well. If you feel bad and haven't tried that yet, try that and let me know how it went.

Re: At the End of a Procrastinated Day

#24

Post by msutherl »

kapitalx wrote: post #6

For me, procrastination always come from a lack of having a digestible plan of attack. When you find yourself procrastinating, figure out a single next step for your project, one single feature, or one single task in that feature that needs to be done. If you know what your next step in the project is, you'll have this urge to jump back in and do that task. If you can't find that task, then you need to step back and…

Yes, for me this also seems to be the case. Most of my procrastination results from not having scoped out my task load. I overestimate how much work I have to do, get anxious, then engage in various activities to quell the anxiousness in the short term.

Lately what works best is to clean my room, do the dishes, do laundry, etc. – anything productive and meditative – and when I've had a minor success and calmed down, I find it easier to confront my TODO.txt + .reminders and sort everything out.

Re: At the End of a Procrastinated Day

#25

Post by pawelk »

kapitalx wrote: post #6

For me, procrastination always come from a lack of having a digestible plan of attack. When you find yourself procrastinating, figure out a single next step for your project, one single feature, or one single task in that feature that needs to be done. If you know what your next step in the project is, you'll have this urge to jump back in and do that task. If you can't find that task, then you need to step back and…

> If you know what your next step in the project is, you'll have this urge to jump back in and do that task.

For me it is the next interesting and possibly rewarding step. Just simply knowing what's do be done next doesn't cut it for me when I perceive it as a dull task. Even if I know it can be done in a few minutes I tend to avoid even starting to work on it. I have lots of these little boring things piling up for weeks and I know I'm going to have to finish them one day or another, but for the time being I'm here on HN, following work-related links on twitter, exploring stuff or answering stackoverflow questions.

What works for me is finding something interesting, even way outside of the scope of the project. Anything that could make me start to work with the project I should be working on. From there, as soon as I catch the flow, I usually can go to fixing bugs and doing the tasks I have avoided doing for days. I spit code like mad, close a dozen of tickets in an hour, fix things only I knew were broken, doing these final touches here and there. And suddenly even these annoying things start to be highly rewarding, because finishing any of them - and most of them take very little time and effort to complete - makes me feel I've accomplished something and started to dig out of the hole I dug myself in.

Then the work day is over, or a distraction comes, I go to a meeting etc, and the next five minute task turns into countless hours of procrastination, followed by finding that itch to scratch which puts me back on the track again.

tl;dr: I have to buid elaborate scenarios to lure me into doing anything tangentially related to the project (but funny/rewarding/explorative) from where I can move to the real, but somehow boring tasks.

Re: At the End of a Procrastinated Day

#26

Post by firichapo »

I find that procrastination, at least in my personal case, is strongly correlated to the amount of work I have pending. I tend to procrastinate when I a light work load. I find that I can focus on task when there is a heavy load. Well, at least now days, back when I was a student it was quite a different story and I guess I changed because of that experience.

Re: At the End of a Procrastinated Day

#27

Post by plebu »

kapitalx wrote: post #6

For me, procrastination always come from a lack of having a digestible plan of attack. When you find yourself procrastinating, figure out a single next step for your project, one single feature, or one single task in that feature that needs to be done. If you know what your next step in the project is, you'll have this urge to jump back in and do that task. If you can't find that task, then you need to step back and…

I agree. Procrastination is caused by a lack of vision.

Here are some painless quick-wins:

1. Make a list of things you would like to accomplish the following day BEFORE you go to bed. Prioritize it. Then close your eyes and visualize the next day. Start from the moment you wake up. Wakeup -> Bathroom -> Coffee -> Get Dressed -> Check email -> Commits to GitHub -> etc... Visualize everything. Watch the following day like a movie in your head. Do it every night.

When you wake up you'll know exactly what to do. You'll feel focused and ready to make things happen for yourself.

2. Set goals. Make plans. What would you like to achieve in day? One week? One month? How about in the next 10 minutes? I'm sure there is something you have been putting off that you could accomplish in 10 min. Just work hard for the next 10 minutes.

Start now. Right now. Ok, Go. 10 minutes. That's it.

3. Oh, you are still reading? Well, watch these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1WC6hNTONg (procrastination) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi_zx40B9S4 (vision)

Re: At the End of a Procrastinated Day

#28

Post by 3pt14159 »

perlpimp wrote: post #20

I have been fighting somewhat winning battle with procrastination and it sums up to a few things, key ones are: - get a good nights sleep, having less then 8 hours of sleep lowers your IQ and therefore doing complex and rewarding work its a catch 22, you go home feeling bad fret go to bed late. - make a plan before you go to sleep for the next day, visualize, conceptualize results in your head - feel the accomplished…

Honestly I find my IQ to be a hindrance for all but the most difficult coding. Getting a night of 4 or 5 hours (half the mornings waking up naturally) does wonders for my productivity.

Most of the time I'm not actually working on the math part of what I do (building data analysis applications), I'm working on the glue code. Glue code is terribly boring, but less so when your mind doesn't have the energy to think about more complicated things. Also, TDD really helps because it makes it feel more like a game where dots are XP tokens, but still. Also being sleepy makes me more likely to just say "$#%@ it, I'll just roll it in C" rather than trying to reduce an O(n3) to a O(nlog(n)).

Hmmm. After writing all that out, I came to the realization I need a vacation.

Re: At the End of a Procrastinated Day

#30

Post by msutherl »

angkec wrote: post #14

Here's a realization that scared me to death that I don't procrastinate any more: The whole life only exists in the current moment. The reason being that the past doesn't exist any more, and the future has yet to come into existence. Hence all my life exists only in the current moment. This leads to the conclusion that if I procrastinate for even a bit moment, I'm wasting away all my life. This is the most scary conc…

I've spent some time trying to impress this thought into my mind – likewise Steve Jobs' daily reminder that you are going to die – but I just can't make myself care. The issue for me is that wasting away is really quite nice in the present moment. I really do enjoy procrastinating. Sure, I don't enjoy tit as much as doing things that I love when I'm not worrying about something else subconsciously, but it's so much easier to just drown it out. Why not?

After some thought and experimentation, I came to the conclusion that I need external motivation to kick me out of this cycle. Internal motivation doesn't work for me. The things that works better than anything else is setting up my tasks so that other people are dependent on me finishing them.

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