Live data from Hacker News

A receipt printer cured my procrastination

laurieherault.com

591–600 of 634 posts

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That matches my experience. “Write the report” will sit in my inbox forever. “Add 10 items to the outline for the report” will usually break the inertia and end up with me finishing the whole thing.

You should try harder, I can easily keep “Add 10 items to the outline for the report” or even "Add 1 item" tasks in my inbox forever.

Oh, I’m great at that. Trust me.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#592
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-...

Right, epiphenols. And despite some BPA-free options there are many alerts about the risks of the replacements. Maybe is time for a cool old style matrix receipt printer using regular paper?

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#593

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 was about to be a little snarky but your comment reminded me to be kind. Thanks. I don't have a receipt printer, what helps me is an A4-sized whiteboard with marker when I feel like I'm falling behind my tasks. Also, to use todos sparingly, so they retain their effectiveness. It's actually quite underrated to forget and let go of tasks; what's important tends to stick around in your head and keep you up at night. T…

> What's I find more interesting, is methods that have worked for someone for years.

From 2020 I use a three column worksheet (Libreoffice in Debian): one row per day. One thin column for the date, the second for pending tasks, the third for the "done" ones. Theoretically I just copy-paste between the "pendings" to the "done", but I also add notes as the day progress, so it is also a kind of personal diary. At the end of the day tasks not achieved get moved to some rows below, and new ones are added as needed. The spreadsheet is configured to start automatically on session login, so I can't forget to see my daily assignment. Not perfect, but (mostly) works for me.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: in those scenarios, do you never have awareness about your need to eat? Or does it occur at some point, but then you decide not to eat at the moment, and after making that decision then you never revisit it? I ask because I often realize I'm hungry or it's time to eat, but I'm too engaged in the task I'm doing and I think "I'll eat a bit later" and then once I've done that the first time I often nev…

How do you get so engage in the tasks you are doing so you forget to eat? I suppose most people here have the opposite issue, we do not engage in the task at all and once we start, we stop doing it after a short while because we find a more interesting things to do such as eating, grab a coffee or reading HN, news etc. We would love to be able to stay on the task and not go and eat.

It's not like this for every task. But for the ones I find interesting, yes, it's nice to be able to focus like this.

Of course there are tradeoffs.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it is important, you will remember it at some point during the day. As someone with ADHD I’ve never found this to be true. I often forget to eat. I’d forget to file my taxes without reminders.

Serious question: in those scenarios, do you never have awareness about your need to eat? Or does it occur at some point, but then you decide not to eat at the moment, and after making that decision then you never revisit it? I ask because I often realize I'm hungry or it's time to eat, but I'm too engaged in the task I'm doing and I think "I'll eat a bit later" and then once I've done that the first time I often nev…

I don't usually forget to eat, but this happens to me all the time for tasks that don't have a physical feedback mechanism.

I missed a doctor's appointment today because I didn't remember to schedule a corresponding "you need to leave the house _now_" alarm to go with the calendar event, which I forgot about because I looked at my calendar once in the morning and the appointment was in the afternoon.

I will remember _some_ tasks if they "are important", but those are typically things that cause me enough anxiety that I just don't ever actually stop thinking about them until they are done. I can't really do reliable just in time recall of tasks unless it is for something I have deeply internalized into a habit.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#597
post #178
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleep until you can’t take it anymore. In less than 12h something will appear more interesting than sleeping.

I find this intensely amusing. In grade school, I got "mono" and dang near literally slept for several days. Granted, being sick is a bit different than being disinterested. My problem is typically more that there are plenty of more interesting things to do than anything I'd like to do right now.

Being picky was never easy.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#598
post #231

This is a topic that's really interesting to me, and I've thought a lot about it. The approach that this guy is taking to break out of the addicting loop of gaming/scrolling/whatever is to try to take the principles that make those things appealing and port them to the things that we know we should be doing. Video games have these short feedback loops and quick rewards, so his idea is to make real life more like a vi…

I have similar ideas from my own experience. I believe that humans have a “set point” for dopamine hits, if you are constantly receiving quick cheap dopamine hits your set point goes higher and you are constantly craving more. Similarly, if you back off the hits it will initially become uncomfortable but your set point will lower and you will not have those cravings. This may be controversial, but I believe a part of…

I was never bored as a kid because I was almost always reading books. I don't think it has had negative effects on me.

Books are not particularly optimized for addiction or dopamine, but social media is. Very intentionally and expertly so.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#599
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am glad to see that I am not the only one doing this :)

I do this too. I can tell from my MonkeyType graph which work periods I felt more demoralized or distracted during.

I sometimes procrastinate by firing up a jupyter notebook and making some visualizations of my MonkeyType data.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#600

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.

Your writing is good - I especially liked the intro about the "game loop" and the flow state.
Post reply on HN