Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to overcome resistance to work

dextronet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 54 posts

Re: How to overcome resistance to work

#41

Post by heretohelp »

newbie12 wrote: post #19
heretohelp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step 4: Burnout, depression, homelessness The above is the advice of an amateur who hasn't actually had to tackle work in a self-motivated manner whether the OP fits that mold or not. Moderation and focusing on what is actionable is how you keep rolling.

This is spot on. After four years as an independent, burnout is a huge issue. I'm 1/3 as productive as when I started down this path.

I hit burnout and was less productive for a long time.

It's taken about five years, but I'm almost back to full productivity. I'm basically back to normal, or better, in my day-to-day work, but I still have almost nothing in the way of progress on side projects compared to before.

Advice:

1. Pace yourself, get some work done, then go make coffee/food, or in my case, go for a motorcycle ride/work out at the gym.

2. Exercise. Hard. No walking on the treadmill shit. Start strength training and do sprints for conditioning/cardio. Our bodies weren't meant to languish in front of a computer and tend to throw a snit-fit if you don't satisfy them.

3. Have a hobby/hobbies that don't involve a computer. As stated before, for me these are strength training and the motorcycle.

4. Read a lot.

5. Focus on actionable, bite-sized amounts of work. Don't think about macro, long-term, or broad scope stuff. You'll just get overwhelmed. Let the dopamine hits come rapid-fire as you check things off in quick-succession throughout the day.

With that, I'm off to ride in the mountains.

Good luck.

Re: How to overcome resistance to work

#42

Post by gareim »

einhverfr wrote: post #28

My approach is horribly more complicated and involves a set of two TODO lists. The first is my immediate list, and always has 12 items on it (4 harder ones and 8 faster tasks). 3 tasks (1 hard and 2 fast) are always marked as current works in progress. 3 more are listed as next up. The next six I choose freely from to promote when I complete a task. Then I have my mid-range to-do. Tasks usually stay here for days to…

I don't have ADD, but this is absolutely true for me. I prefer seeing exactly what I need to do and having the freedom to tackle components of them one at a time.

With that said, are you using any special applications for your TODO list? I've been looking for a good one (I'm on Linux) that fits my workflow better, but so far, I keep going back to RTM which isn't exactly the most optimized for me.

I want something that is a desktop application that also syncs with Android/iOS that is lightweight and at my fingertips. I want it easily editable and possibly with a checklist rather than just deleting finished items. I want the list to be rearrangeable rather than static. If anyone knows of a good TODO application, please let me know!

Re: How to overcome resistance to work

#43

Post by gareim »

einhverfr wrote: post #28

My approach is horribly more complicated and involves a set of two TODO lists. The first is my immediate list, and always has 12 items on it (4 harder ones and 8 faster tasks). 3 tasks (1 hard and 2 fast) are always marked as current works in progress. 3 more are listed as next up. The next six I choose freely from to promote when I complete a task. Then I have my mid-range to-do. Tasks usually stay here for days to…

I don't have ADD, but this is absolutely true for me. I prefer seeing exactly what I need to do and having the freedom to tackle components of them one at a time.

With that said, are you using any special applications for your TODO list? I've been looking for a good one (I'm on Linux) that fits my workflow better, but so far, I keep going back to RTM which isn't exactly the most optimized for me.

I want something that is a desktop application that also syncs with Android/iOS that is lightweight and at my fingertips. I want it easily editable and possibly with a checklist rather than just deleting finished items. I want the list to be rearrangeable rather than static. If anyone knows of a good TODO application, please let me know!

Re: How to overcome resistance to work

#44

Post by gareim »

barik wrote: post #31

This is great advice for overcoming procrastination and I use it daily. It has significantly improved the way that I work. I think I learned of the trick from GTD, or possibly Pragmatic Thinking and Learning. A TODO list by itself isn't helpful for me -- in fact, in can increase my procrastination by seeing a giant list of tasks because it's just so overwhelming. What has worked is coupling the task with the next imm…

I don't have ADD, but this is absolutely true for me. I prefer seeing exactly what I need to do and having the freedom to tackle components one at a time.

With that said, are you using any special applications for your TODO list? I've been looking for a good one (I'm on Linux) that fits my workflow better, but so far, I keep going back to RTM which isn't exactly the most optimized for me.

I want something that is a desktop application that also syncs with Android/iOS that is lightweight and at my fingertips. I want it easily editable and possibly with a checklist rather than just deleting finished items. I want the list to be rearrangeable rather than static. If anyone knows of a good TODO application, please let me know!

Re: How to overcome resistance to work

#45

Post by jiggy2011 »

capex wrote: post #27
planetguy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I stopped working tomorrow, it would be months before anyone even noticed. Probably much longer before they got around to stopping my pay. This doesn't help with motivation at all. This doesn't help with motivation. You folks who are living on the edge of starvation have it easy!

"You folks who are living on the edge of starvation have it easy!" Where did you assume that from?

I think it's a joke.

Re: How to overcome resistance to work

#46

Post by raheemm »

Revisor wrote: post #33
raheemm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good suggestion. I use a spreadsheet to monitor the # of hours worked each day and my goal is to keep that on an upwards trend. Its based on Seinfeld's 'dont break the chain' tactic. This has worked the best for me.

Is the number of work hours really what you want to increase?

That's a really good question. I thought about this and for now its a fair metric. I want to reach 8 working hours a day. Once I hit that goal consistently, I'll have to look for a better metric.

Re: How to overcome resistance to work

#47

Post by dredmorbius »

Revisor wrote: post #33
raheemm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good suggestion. I use a spreadsheet to monitor the # of hours worked each day and my goal is to keep that on an upwards trend. Its based on Seinfeld's 'dont break the chain' tactic. This has worked the best for me.

Is the number of work hours really what you want to increase?

It suffers from what a lot of metrics offer: it's easily measured, easily gamed, and not particularly correlated with output.

I'd say it's probably useful to measure, but also key to keep in mind when you're warming a seat just to move that number up, rather than actually getting things done.

Including other measures of work output would be a very good modification.

Re: How to overcome resistance to work

#48

Post by dredmorbius »

NB/offtopic: this page design is horrible.

On mobile, there's a "social sidebar" which hovers over the text, as others have noted, to the left side of the page, obscuring the first word or so of each line, in a manner that it cannot be dismissed.

Reading with NoScript enabled on Iceweasel, the text is squeezed into a narrow 2-3 character column to the far right of the page.

My solution is to disable stylesheets and read the page unstyled.

Distractions such as this take a great deal away from actually being able to access content.

Re: How to overcome resistance to work

#49

Post by krrrh »

stephengillie wrote: post #5
raheemm wrote: post #3

I quit my job 6 months ago to travel and learn programming. And the greatest personal frustration has been staying productive in a work-from-anywhere, no-boss environment. What I've realized is that discipline is not only about buckling down, but also about using mental hacks such as the ones listed in this article. Its also been helpful to realize that transitioning productivity from a cubicle to a self-directed pat…

There's something to be said for the ceremony of grooming for work, travelling to your workplace, interacting with coworkers, during approximately the same time each day. Work is the "2nd space" in the Starbuck's "3rd space" advertisements. Have you tried working in the same seat at a library or other public place each weekday?

Whoa, I had no idea that Starbucks was explicitly owning the term 3rd space/place in its advertising. If anyone's interested in the aademic source of this model of places there's a nice intro in this economist article. Cmd-f for 'third places' http://www.economist.com/node/10950463

Re: How to overcome resistance to work

#50

Post by einhverfr »

gareim wrote: post #42
einhverfr wrote: post #28

My approach is horribly more complicated and involves a set of two TODO lists. The first is my immediate list, and always has 12 items on it (4 harder ones and 8 faster tasks). 3 tasks (1 hard and 2 fast) are always marked as current works in progress. 3 more are listed as next up. The next six I choose freely from to promote when I complete a task. Then I have my mid-range to-do. Tasks usually stay here for days to…

I don't have ADD, but this is absolutely true for me. I prefer seeing exactly what I need to do and having the freedom to tackle components of them one at a time. With that said, are you using any special applications for your TODO list? I've been looking for a good one (I'm on Linux) that fits my workflow better, but so far, I keep going back to RTM which isn't exactly the most optimized for me. I want something tha…

I am using gedit. I would use vim but doing more visual copy/paste seems to work better for me here.
Post reply on HN