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Productive Procrastination

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Re: Productive Procrastination

#31

Post by embedding-shape »

Chrisszz wrote: post #27
embedding-shape wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still believe the most efficient answer to productivity is not working and lots of resting, never do I reach higher productivity than after being idle for a while.

Yes, I agree, but if you have work to do and a deadline you can't afford resting until you deliver right?

Well, I'd again say you can't afford to not rest in those cases, if you actually need to meet that deadline.

Probably every programmer have experienced the case of "Banged head against issue entire day, after sleeping and waking up the problem was simple". Sometimes, a nap or a walk or doing something else can trigger that same thing, but you skip the whole "banged head against issue entire day" if you do it immediately :)

Re: Productive Procrastination

#33

Post by gobdovan »

vscode-rest wrote: post #29
gobdovan wrote: post #16

I have a few tricks for handling procrastination that are in this ballpark: 1. When I see myself wanting to procrastinate, I ask myself 'If I follow this feeling, will it increase my power (i.e. capacity/agency/utility) or decrease it?'. Then I have a dialogue with myself: Nope, let's refocus, maybe try reading things out loud or draw a diagram or some other perspective change OR Yeah, I should stop for now, do somet…

But how much have you learned about the Origin of Species?

Quite a lot. And I'd say that I process more info by typing than by simply reading. I typed the first edition and got the printed second edition too after.

I always searched videos of what he was exemplifying and found quite amazing material for many (enslaver ants, ants tickling aphids, honeycomb construction). Was super impressed to hear about Darwin's peers which he calls out by name every time, how there were people specialised in breading races, judging what constitutes species.

Was kind of stunned to find out that people didn't know dogs were all the same species, how hard it was even for specialised breeders to identify that their pigeons were changing, since they were not really taking pictures.

How Darwin published a book that was approachable to common folks, how the book was built on mountains of hand-collected data.

There's so, so, so much more I could talk about (tree of life, organs, descendant resemblance happening at the same age, embryology weirdness) but biggest mind-fuck would be the anti-teleological stance he holds. Basically, out of nowhere (although I saw that he read Hume [0]), Darwin figures out that things don't happen 'for a reason'. Things don't live because they're 'better'. All the creatures we see today are simply the things that survived. There's no final goal, no 'ought to be' in the world. We're simply patterns that survive that resemble patterns that happened to survive.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/

Re: Productive Procrastination

#34

Post by senko »

I believe everyone has a different strategy for this, so here’s mine in case it’s useful to someone:

I noticed that when I procrastinate, it still weighs on my mind, often more (cumulatively over time) than the actual discomfort of doing the task in the end. Now whenever I have the chance and enough mental energy, I attack the task immediately, so I don’t have to worry about it. Basically I've trained myself to want to avoid procrastination-induced stress. It only works if I have enough mental energy for the task tho.

The second trick I use, for bigger or more (perceived) challenging things, is saying to myself I’ll just start it and get it rolling today, so I don’t feel bad about completely avoiding it. Sometimes, I get carried away and just complete it, but even if not, it’s still easier to pick it up (a short while later) - a win in any case.

Re: Productive Procrastination

#35

Post by dbdr »

nonameiguess wrote: post #24
andai wrote: post #12

Great article, especially appreciated the graphs. The idea of "keep adding novelty" is probably what separated my successful long term projects from the unsuccessful ones. I previously attributed that to having lots of variety and freedom, but the consequence of those factors was indeed novelty. I want to mention Neil Fiore's excellent book The Now Habit, which is a practical manual on overcoming procrastination. The…

Interesting to effectively see Jean Paul Sartre being brought up here. As verbose as he was, though, I do agree with the framing. Putting aside the fundamental physical paradoxes and incoherence of free will, at the level of subjective experience, every action ever taken is a choice, possibly between extremely shitty options, but a choice nonetheless, and owning that is the only way I've ever found to stay sane about…

> the fundamental physical paradoxes and incoherence of free will

Are those even true? They sure are in classical, Newtonian physics, but are they in modern, e.g. quantum physics? Not saying that one proves free will, but is there an actual hard impossibility?

Re: Productive Procrastination

#36

Post by guilhas »

throwpoaster wrote: post #17

If you struggle with procrastination please get assessed for ADHD. A positive diagnosis is life changing.

Several people on my department got that recently. Clearly in fashon. But it seems just a license to be lazy

If you know you have dificulties you need to work on bettering yourself, small steps, not find a justification or mask it with drugs

And with the widespread addiction of social media, youtube... frequent world crumbling news, boring jobs... most people would qualify for some sort of diagnosis, which is misleading

Re: Productive Procrastination

#37

Post by pxc »

gobdovan wrote: post #16

I have a few tricks for handling procrastination that are in this ballpark: 1. When I see myself wanting to procrastinate, I ask myself 'If I follow this feeling, will it increase my power (i.e. capacity/agency/utility) or decrease it?'. Then I have a dialogue with myself: Nope, let's refocus, maybe try reading things out loud or draw a diagram or some other perspective change OR Yeah, I should stop for now, do somet…

Yes, please share it!

Re: Productive Procrastination

#39

Post by miika »

Sometimes procrastination means I’m not even suppose to do it. Maybe I just overheard an idea that sounded something “I should do” but there is nothing more to it.

How I hack this: I say to myself “I’m never going to do it” and there is an instant feeling if that statement is true or not. Then I either start it right away or let it go.

Re: Productive Procrastination

#40

Post by sebmellen »

gobdovan wrote: post #16

I have a few tricks for handling procrastination that are in this ballpark: 1. When I see myself wanting to procrastinate, I ask myself 'If I follow this feeling, will it increase my power (i.e. capacity/agency/utility) or decrease it?'. Then I have a dialogue with myself: Nope, let's refocus, maybe try reading things out loud or draw a diagram or some other perspective change OR Yeah, I should stop for now, do somet…

Could you share the Tampermoneky script in the gist? Would love that.
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