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A receipt printer cured my procrastination

laurieherault.com

21–30 of 634 posts

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#21

Author here. It’s my first article. I’m a bit nervous but excited to get your feedback. If you deal with procrastination too, I hope this method helps you like it helped me.

I'm glad you found a method that works for you, and as a fellow small-time blog author I can say I quite enjoyed reading your post.

Sadly, I've tried the task breakdown stuff before and it hasn't helped. It's not even just the fact that I procrastinate doing it, but that even when I manage to do it, it makes no difference.

Anything that requires more than a one off "session" of intellectual work is doomed. Even if I do manage to do some good work for a period of time, I'll undo it later, I cannot stop myself from throwing everything in the bin. If I force myself not to throw it in the bin, my brain refuses to function.

ADHD medication also does nothing to help me. It makes me feel anxious for a bit, gives me a pile of side effects, and that's about it. I've tried increasing the dose and all it did was make the side effects worse (including extremely smelly sweat, for whatever reason).

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy? Helped a little while I was doing it, then I reverted back to normal.

I've even tried the whole accountability thing, but nope. Even if I'm on a call with someone who (like me) commits to do a task, and actually does it, while I committed to do mine, my brain will just tune out and at best I'll be able to do something on autopilot (works for loading up the dishwasher, but not much else).

On the days I manage to burn my willpower to fight it, it drains my energy like Windows 11 does battery on a portable gaming handheld.

Perhaps one day I'll find my own solution and become a multi-millionaire selling a book on it.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#22

I'm going to try and see if this works better for me. The daily printout of "things that need to happen today" is a fun idea, especially if I could keep it by my bed and have it print off when my alarm goes off. Are there any receipt-style printers that can directly print some kind of sticky note? I feel like that would be even more useful since you don't have to keep pins around, though I can see the running cost ge…

As uxamanda said, you can use shipping label printers. Personally, with receipt-style tickets, I print them and make a small stack. I usually go through them in the same order. But I can also use a small clip.

I would be worried that shipping labels might be a bit too sticky haha. I'll shop around and see what my options are

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#23
post #7

Cool idea! I would note there are some known health hazards in handling thermal-paper receipts(BPA/BPS)[1] with your bare hands if you do so often. I don't know much beyond this, I would look into it. [1] https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-...

[deleted]

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#24
I like it! For me, I can confirm that the smaller the task, the less likely it is for me to procrastinate on it. I also didn't know that receipt printers don't need ink, that's cool. On a similar note: me and my partner recently also started using an app that divides up the household chores into small tasks and schedules them for us (e.g. "today you have to vacuum the living room"). For us, this prevents conflicts and also frees the mind of having to keep track of those things.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#25

Author here. It’s my first article. I’m a bit nervous but excited to get your feedback. If you deal with procrastination too, I hope this method helps you like it helped me.

It's a great and well written article. I read all of it, and as a fellow ADHD sufferer, that's rare. :)

My experiences with ADHD align pretty closely with yours. We're of a similar age, but I was only diagnosed recently, and I'm still settling into this, adjusting medication and so on. But just knowing now what's wrong with me, is a game changer. It means I can work with it or around it, instead of being in a state of frustration and despair that I can't function like everyone around me.

In my experience, if I find a task interesting and intellectually stimulating, I can grind away at it for hours and lose track of time. But if it's boring and tedious, it's nearly impossible for me to make any progress at all, unless the consequences for not completing it are severe.

Breaking down tasks is a good idea, and it's something I've thought of myself. Just vacuum the stairs. Just press New Document in LibreOffice and write ONE sentence. Just wipe down the bathroom mirror. I'm not sure I'm ready for a solution as elaborate as yours, though I find the technical aspect of it fascinating, and I might explore it just for that reason.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#26

Author here. It’s my first article. I’m a bit nervous but excited to get your feedback. If you deal with procrastination too, I hope this method helps you like it helped me.

I loved it. I think it perfectly captures the itch that causes procrastination: you had a working solution but it was not good enough for you. You've perfected it but you still have issues with it. You still managed to live with the imperfect version while working on improving it, though. I think that's the part most of us procrastinators fail.

Yes, that’s exactly it! If the system doesn’t work 100% or feels like a hassle, we just abandon it. You’ve summed it up perfectly!

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#27
post #17

I found this tool helpful with breaking things down to as small steps as you need: https://goblin.tools/

Yes, I know that tool, but the user experience really isn’t great. That’s why I made my own. But thanks for the suggestion :)

Oh, I should have read your article further enough!

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As uxamanda said, you can use shipping label printers. Personally, with receipt-style tickets, I print them and make a small stack. I usually go through them in the same order. But I can also use a small clip.

I would be worried that shipping labels might be a bit too sticky haha. I'll shop around and see what my options are

Oh yeah, I don’t think you’ll be able to remove them. If you’re referring to the photo I included in the article, it’s actually just not a good idea. I only stuck the tickets on a vertical surface to get a good photo.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As uxamanda said, you can use shipping label printers. Personally, with receipt-style tickets, I print them and make a small stack. I usually go through them in the same order. But I can also use a small clip.

I would be worried that shipping labels might be a bit too sticky haha. I'll shop around and see what my options are

sticking the shipping label to a sticky note might be the quickest solution

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#30

I'm going to try and see if this works better for me. The daily printout of "things that need to happen today" is a fun idea, especially if I could keep it by my bed and have it print off when my alarm goes off. Are there any receipt-style printers that can directly print some kind of sticky note? I feel like that would be even more useful since you don't have to keep pins around, though I can see the running cost ge…

>directly print some kind of sticky note

It must exist. I noticed at McDonalds (in Denmark), that each item on the tray has a printed label attached that peels off easily, almost like a sticky note.

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