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Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

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Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ritalin suppresses some of those deeper emotions. It also gives you additional rewarding feelings for completing tasks here and now. Unless you have ADHD due to genetic factors then imo it's just a mask over the real emotional issue. A very effective and useful one but still a temporary measure.

I view Ritalin and Adderall as a performance enhancer. I have never seen a biological study proving ADHD except perhaps some EEG. Virtually everyone I have known prescribed amphetamines abused them. (Anecdotal warning) And my ex roommate was a large prescriber of Adderall. He would see patients for 3 minutes. He had 3 homes (one an $8m condo) and drove a matte black Lamborghini Aventador. He was way overweight and dr…

There's no "biological proof" of a lot of things that has to do with a brain, and while some people do anything for money - even if their title say "doctor" - ADD/ADHD is still a very, very, real thing.

We might still don't know of if it's really a disability of the mind, or of the society, but for those who suffer it, it doesn't really matter.

The drugs can certainly be used as performance enhancers, but that doesn't change anything. Nitroglycerin can be used as to blow things up, but it's still useful for people with heart disease, and for some I believe there are still few options.

ADHD or ADD for me, is suffering.

Visibly, palpably, in one or several ways.

It's not "some things are hard to do", no. It's not that.

It's trying to do the basic of life, and simply not be able to, no matter how talented you are.

Not for the lack of will power and determination, those are largely irrelevant on this side of the border, they mean something completely different here.

If you ever want anything else out of life than that what your compulsion drives you to do, to get away from the boredom that makes your skin crawl and itch?

You'll believe it'll work this time too, as you have the 3649 times before.

The eternal optimist, still seemingly doomed to fail.

"See a therapist" they say, when it was the therapist who sent me to the psychiatrist.

"You need to try harder", when my body and brain simply stopped working because I tried so hard.

When anyone claim something like ADD/ADHD doesn't exist, I don't really get mad any more.

I think I used to.

Now I feel sad, because that sentiment is common enough that people don't get help when they should.

Instead they pointlessly loose years, or even decades of their lives to their own whims, because some people refuse to believe the accounts of thousands.

Never able to either choose their path, or live as they choose.

Our existence seems to scare people, and our inability to function in society can't easily be discounted without consequence for ones own image of self and what we as humans are, so instead our accounts are discredited.

It's okay if you don't understand how it is. It is hard to understand how someone can be so alike oneself, and yet so different, I've experienced that myself, but from a different perspective.

I will be content if you accept that I write from experience, and that my account is in no way unique, thought I've been told that the way I tell it is.

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#252
post #247
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst is that you procrastinate not only work but rather your own existence because you'll constantly attempt to catch up but just can't. Idea/suggestion: How about the old "delete all your emails" trick: Sell everything you have. Quit your job. Move to another place. Having said/suggested that, I've done this email trick a couple of times and while it works wonders short term - I stop worrying about those high…

Are you Rick Sanchez? I moved to another country some time ago. To me, it was difficult. Starting your social life from scratch is difficult. Learning a new culture, a new language and a new bureaucracy is difficult. Buying everything again is difficult. Upping the difficulty level doesn't solve your procrastination problem, it exacerbates it. To me, this sounds more like running away from your problems than solving…

Agree with all of the above although I've never done it completely myself, I've either had a job waiting or a partner along at the new country, which has helped. And you don't need to be so drastic as to move to a parallel universe, you could just move within your own country.

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#253
This article was really light on facts :)

It's important to recognize that not all 'procrastination' is created equal. Not wanting to do a homework assignment is not the same as putting off asking a girl out on a date.

One is not wanting to do what you're not interested in but feel like you have to, another is wanting to do it but feeling anxious about the outcome.

I'm sure there are many other types too, I haven't given it much thought.

For each type, you need a separate approach. For school assignments for example, what worked for me was figuring out what my end goal is, once I knew, I felt fine getting a slightly above passing grade in classes I felt were not useful for me, and spending more time on classes I was interested in.

I'd still procrastinate but the burden lifted somewhat simply because it takes less work to get a pass-grade than try and get a good grade on every assignment.

Regarding the girls situation - I wish somebody had just told me that women in highschool and their 20s are largely looking for novel experiences and somebody they feel comfortable with to do them with, because there is a great deal of uncertainty in their life.

Once you understand that, you can align your needs with theirs and so much of the thinking and trying to figure it out and procrastination goes away.

Long story short - most problems are solved by seeing the bigger picture and having some very simple tactics in place - procrastination is a by-product of those problems, not a 'disease' that needs a treatment and guess what, some amount of procrastination is always going to be present in your life, it's just part of being a human being :)

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#255
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst is that you procrastinate not only work but rather your own existence because you'll constantly attempt to catch up but just can't. Idea/suggestion: How about the old "delete all your emails" trick: Sell everything you have. Quit your job. Move to another place. Having said/suggested that, I've done this email trick a couple of times and while it works wonders short term - I stop worrying about those high…

I experienced a much minuscule version recently when I accidentally closed a browser window full of tabs. It was like letting go. It felt cleansing.

I know what you mean. I currently have 10 windows open, each containing various tabs of stuff I've been researching and I can't wait to get them closed off. I would be fine with an accident but unfortunately I'm too smart for my own good and have setup safeguards for that, like having [SessionBuddy](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/session-buddy/edac...) installed in Chrome (which keeps snapshots of all open tabs and windows with the option of saving/naming/editing windows/sessions).

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#256
post #6

> Randy Pausch, an M.I.T. professor who died of cancer How does this get into the article without basic fact-checking? He was a professor at CMU.

> Randy Pausch, an M.I.T. professor who died of cancer

The piece also referred to his "final lecture," when it wasn't; the lecture was a part of series titled "Last Lectures" (note the capitalization).

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#257
post #73

Words of warning from a not so young (36) chronic procrastinator with a rather messed up life: Take it seriously. I'm not talking about reading HN in your 7th work hour when doing stupid Excel sheets. I'm talking about messing up years and years of your life. I believe it's a symptom of some deeper issues and it won't go away from alone. Lack of sleep, stress, work overload, information overload amplify the effects b…

I'm in the same boat but several years younger. I'm witnessing how I throw my life away and there's nothing I can do.

Nothing works.

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#258
Summary:

"Here's the magic — the next time you face a task that your whole body is screaming, "I don't want to, I don't feel like it," ask yourself: what's the next action? What's the next action I'd need to take to make some progress? Don't break the whole task down. That will be sure to overwhelm you. I think if most of us broke our whole task down, we'd realize that life's too short, you can never get it all done. Instead just say, "What's the next action?" and keep that action as small and as concrete as possible. "

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#259
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I always feel that I "strategically" messed up my life by: Not having a real passion on pretty much anything, but have small impulses for pretty much EVERYTHING. Means that I wasted a lot of hours/days/weeks but didn't gain much. Plus no experience of major positive feedback makes me less and less confident.

Try reducing the scope of your projects, so that you can ride on your impulses. I find it a lot easier to maintain something I use than a half-completed project, so I try to get there as soon as possible. It worked really well for me.

Yeah I can complete anything if it's someone else request, or at least if I can convince myself it will be used by someone else. But I don't work as a programmer so I don't get a lot of those requests.

On the other side, if it's purely from my impulse then I found it difficult to finish it.

Re: Procrastination is driven by our desire to avoid difficult emotions, says expert

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about just doing the dishes, it's about the sum of all the other chores and things you have to do. It's overwhelming in its entirety, not the individual tasks. When they look at the washing up a procrastinator doesn't just see the washing up, they also see that they have to do a laundry, fix the cupboard creak, do a full clean of the cupboards, clean under the fridge, wash the floors, dust the cobwebs, fix t…

> When they look at the washing up a procrastinator doesn't just see the washing up, they also see that they have to do a laundry, fix the cupboard creak, do a full clean of the cupboards, clean under the fridge, wash the floors, dust the cobwebs, fix the dripping tap, take out the recycling, decide what to do with those old jars, etc., etc This reminds me: is there a word to describe a related phenomenon, that I fin…

Yak shaving is a term I use when I run into a chain of tasks.

https://www.hanselman.com/blog/YakShavingDefinedIllGetThatDo...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fnfeuoh4s8

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