One of the counterintuitive things that I've learned is that procrastination is often a side-effect of perfectionism -- but in cases where the "perfect" path isn't obvious. It's better to do nothing at all until the perfect path is understood.
Defeating this is a real challenge and requires serious conscious effort. People who have reputation as "doers" often gain it by finding the "good enough" target and driving towards it. Many "do nothings" are really people who have an overdeveloped desire to "do it right" and can't overcome it.
Which is why I am much more productive working on bad code in projects I get thrown into than starting from scratch. People trust me to fix things and add features fast in codebases I have never seen before but are known as being unmaintainable. Pays well by the way. If I have to start from scratch I can only start if I have the perfect picture in my head or it is better to do nothing and go hiking. The perfect picture (almost?) always emerges during hiking/walking though.
> If I have to start from scratch I can only start if I have the perfect picture in my head or it is better to do nothing and go hiking.
People often wonder why I ask not only so many questions but so many detailed ones when we are working on a project from scratch where I possess none of the information and the people asking me to code things for them hold all of that information, know I need it, and yet somehow do not recognize that I can not conjure up a website magically with the knowledge from their heads, or inboxes, or asses -- who really knows?
Ego. You must not be responsible for creating imperfection but you see the creation of another as imperfect and that excuses your imperfect addition to it.
This is exactly why I procrastinate - I needed the perfect solution in my head. But then my work procrastination would spread into other areas in my life. The fix is/was to do all things immediately. Anytime I find my procrastinating I immediately do said thing. Don't want to write bills, stop right now and do the bills. Don't want to go to the gym, go right now. Don't want to work on that project, go start working on that project. It's certainly not easy, but does get easier.
There's also a somewhat hidden emotional/mental toll with procrastination. When I procrastinate it weighs on me and causes stress. I'm reminded of this quote from Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar:
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council, and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
The nature of an insurrection.
I'm also reading a book at the moment about the history of prime numbers. Both Gauss and Reimann were such perfectionists that they didn't publish (not archive) proofs they claimed to have. There is evidence they knew much more than they let on because it wasn't up to their high standards.
Or, IMHO, evidence that both liked to "hide the ladder" - deliberately not publish result A although they were sure of it and thought it important; but instead use that to obtain results F, G and H which they would then publish, to much greater acclaim: since no-one could see how they could possibly have come up with these advanced ideas in the first place. (How to look like a genius.) This works as long as F, G and H don't obviously imply A (but that's very often the case, in fact, the usual case.)
This is a vicious practice because once a discovery is skipped over it can be devilishly hard to discover later on, it's too easy to overlook, since no fresh result people are eager to work with ever points toward it. I think a occult Gauss discovery still inhibits our understanding of quantum mechanics, for example, to this day. I don't offer to support this paragraph at this time, however.
This is exactly my experience too! I've realized it many times and made many amazing things during each of those brief times, but then somehow I forget again and go back to the old habit of "patient perfectionism".
I've found that it especially comes from the knowledge of knowing how much work it'll take to undo something that's done the wrong way, and being afraid of that extra work and wanting to avoid it. But every time I've overcome it, it's been because I finally remember how very little time it'll take to do both the mostly-okay solution now and the better solution later, if I just stop worrying about it.
I've been controlled by it also. I've been "working" on a story to write for maybe 25 years. But it's not "right" so I don't write anything.
On the other hand, getting things out the door has been a major motivator. I'm inspired by the quote "real artists ship" (more than "perfect is the enemy of the good"). If it helps, I'm also try to recite the Dune litany against fear and Gunpei Yokoi's "lateral thinking from withered technology" as mantras to keep me moving forward.
Also listening to mp3s, surfing the web, and remembering how they've displaced nearly every other digital format because they're "good enough" is also a useful reminder.
One hack I’m doing for my procrastination and perfectionism is to tell myself that “I’ll fix it next year”. So if I’ve made repairs on the house and am not satisfied that it’s perfect enough, I tell myself, and make a note to “fix it next year.” Usually, when next year rolls around I’m now ok with it...
I use a slight variation of that: I can't make the thing perfect right now because of unknowns I can turn into knowns only by doing the good enough version, hence trick myself into thinking the "do it" part is part of the "design for the perfect version" part, and generally discover that my initial vision was too broad and that the good enough version I just completed not only is much closer to the goal than I thought but it's more efficient, easily refactorable, and generally nimble, as well as immediately useful. In a way I'm fighting a natural tendency to excessive generalisation with deceitfully self-imposed serendipity.
There is another situation where procrastination kicks in and the above does not work: when I do have some weird, "code smell style" feelings about blind spots in my approach but things need to subconsciously percolate until I get a a-ha moment. In such scenarios I should not work on the thing and do something entirely different as if I try to force myself into it then consciousness and subconsciousness seem to deadlock each other on a shared mutex.
Procrastination is meaning to do something and somehow not getting around to it. Explicitly deciding "I'm not going to work on it until X (or never)" is not procrastination, it's making a decision. It may look the same on the outside - the job does not get done - but it's different emotionally, as in the latter case you get to stop thinking about it.
I think you hit the nail. I'm starting a new experiment. Instead of focusing on "doing", "working" and "perfection"; I focus on "chunking". Or chunk things and let things fix themselves.
Here is an example: I'm learning Chinese. Instead of finding a perfect course, studying rigorously for a set of daily hours; I'm doing it the loose way: Anki for 30-40 minutes per day. Any time of the day. Try to do it every other day though. The odd "easy chinese" videos on Youtube. Usually in the toilet. The odd Cousera courses. Taking a 4H/week local supervised course.
Setting a more realistic goal: To be able to talk average conversational Chinese in two years. Doing that for two years. So far I'm picking in up in two different fields. It should work if I stick to the routine (I keep doing Anki, going to the local course, being engaged in odd videos, maybe start socializing in some chinese communities, etc...)
I think another aspect is setting relatively possible expectation: Instead of trying to learn conversational chinese in an accelerated 3 months course, I'm going for 2 years. Result is the same with the difference that: 1. It is more likely to happen and 2. My life/work/other stuff won't be in a halt until I finish the aggressive chinese course.
I'll report back my experiment results... probably in a couple years though.
While I agree with what you’re saying, I think there’s more to it. It comes down to the person’s take on the “Worse is better” philosophy.
Those who value a creation against the vacuum that exists will push for output. Those who measure a creation against the perfection that could be, do not want to get stuck with the tyranny of “good enough” and will delay for perfection.
Both approaches are right in their own way, and owing to fundamental value differences, neither can convince the other about the “right” way.
I have been asked to write the "skeleton" of the new version of a large software with angular. I don't like web development.
I have started reading the angular tutorial, and you're right that it's emotionally very disturbing. There are many files, some sophisticated design pattern I have no understanding of their existence and utility.
On top of that I don't really understand the mission I have been given.
So I'm doing vague work, with a technology which I don't like and don't really understand the philosophy.
Suffice it to say that I have all the good circumstances to procrastinate. Most troubling thing for me is that I have been in this situation for about 2 months now, I have quickly talked about procrastinating to HR some time ago, and yet nobody is really bugging me. I guess I should try to tell my superior to give me a more concrete work to do, or at least give me precise constraints.
What's even weirder is that I feel bad for being in this position, somehow it makes me vulnerable and sensitive, like I could be judged for slacking, but on the other hand, I'm not being reprimanded or told about it.
Couldn't have said it better. Having high standards isn't bad per se, but you need extreme mentality to get there without getting frustrated then dying along the way, end up nothing.
> procrastination is often a side-effect of perfectionism
this also eerily applies to shipping software. the launch date is repeatedly "put off another day" while trying to build the perfect product with no customers...
little life hack gems we collectively discover is what makes HN great.
Purely anecdotal, but observed over a long period and with many different colleagues:
(1)I see a direct correlation between how much people care about the outcome of something, and procrastination.
People that treat their work as just something they do 9-5 then switch off, are detached from the outcome for the project or the client never procrastinate. People that care do. I think this goes in the direction of the article.
(2) People that are stronger at analysis,able to grasp complex systems and the effects of changes, are much more likely to suffer from procrastination than those that are less apt at this.
This is often confused with perfectionism. In my experience procrastinators are not looking for perfection, but are looking for a course of action that will have a reduced negative outcome. This would be in line with the general 'loss-aversion' [1] bias from psychology.
Tangent: Procrastination is often presented as a symptom of depression, but my personal feeling is that the causation is reversed. Procrastination is a symptom looking for but not finding good solutions. As such it is a lot more likely to be encountered in engaged, intelligent people. Depression can be a consequence of the stress built up overtime by that process. So you are not procrastinating because you are depressed, procrastination is a precursor to depression
> People that treat their work as just something they do 9-5 then switch off, are detached from the outcome for the project or the client never procrastinate.
Yeah, I noticed that too, and always was surprised about it. I've never seen a detached 9-5er procrastinate. In the field of programming, the only procrastinators I know are those who show some actual interest in the field beyond getting their paycheck.
> Procrastination is often presented as a symptom of depression, but my personal feeling is that the causation is reversed. Depression can be a consequence of the stress built up overtime by that process.
That... resonates. It seems that it's usually prolonged procrastination that destroys me emotionally, not bad emotional state causing me to procrastinate.
The essential question, then, is how to not-care enough to avoid procrastination while caring enough to produce sufficiently high-quality work to avoid career stagnation...
I'm definitely a procrastinator. I've noticed three things. First, I get bored with tasks, so I make things exciting by putting them off until the pressure mounts. Second, I have a hard time actually finishing something and being content with it. Papers in school, for example, where I could easily turn an essay into a life-long project, constantly tweaking it, or of course in software with feature creep. Third, I dread the frustration that will come from inevitable disappointment in the outcome.
The only thing that has helped me is to break tasks down and use Pomodoros to track time. It creates some accountability and sense of progress that, I guess, provides enough pressure to motivate me. For the disappointment, I just have to remind myself that it almost always takes three tries to get something really right and try to focus on taking satisfaction in learning from errors rather than focusing on the sense of disappointment.
I think that's a pretty good rule to incorporate for many cases. After three effortful tries stop working on it no matter what. Learn from it and move on to the next one. I like to remind myself of pottery and quantity over quality [1].
Doesn't this article itself kind of undercut the study by showing that the brain can be altered through behaviors? What I am asking is, is the amygdala larger in procrastinators causing them to procrastinate, or did it grow BECAUSE they procrastinated? A leads to B, or A & B go together.
As an aside, I'd love to procrastinate significantly. It doesn't make me happy anymore. I've read the books, read the articles, tried the Pomodoro Technique, nothing. I don't think I have ADHD, since I can concentrate fine, just never on what I am meant to be concentrating on.
Have you ruled out the inattentive ADHD variant? It generally doesn't come with the impulsive hyperactivity that normal ADHD comes with. People with it are generally able to focus on activities that are highly stimulating for them (often obsessively), but have a hard time focusing attention on less stimulating activities.
Like many health issues (mental or otherwise), its a matter of degree.
Everyone can relate to the experience of lacking the focus to perform an un-stimulating task, and to the experience of procrastination - and so that often leads to the kind of blasé reaction you offer here (no offense). This is a very harmful kind of attitude.
Everyone can relate to the feeling of being sad too - that doesn't mean we're all suffering from depression. Most people can relate to the experience of drinking too much. But they aren't all alcoholics.
It's when the degree of such behaviors/states-of-mind become so prevalent and unshakable as to be destructive and harmful in a person's life, that they become disorders.
This is 100% true. A functioning and reasonably healthy person can exhibit or be affected by anything in the DSM5 - from hearing voices (God) to alcohol consumption (social lube) to compulsiveness (hard working).
It's only when that person can no longer function in a healthy way that it becomes a mental disorder.
And for many of us we slip in and out of it.
Even activities that are risky, drinking or skydiving, can be a part of a healthy and functional person.
And everyone anecdotes about how they "beat" that by doing some random activity, life is long. Keep beating it, but don't judge those that are affected by it. Just wait a decade and you very well may be the same situation. Life is all about kindness, however you can be kind, do it.
I suggest the following as this has worked well for me in the past.
Make a list of things that interest you, that you want to get done, and break each one down into a set of smaller tasks necessary to get that thing done. It doesn't have to be perfect initially, just make the initial list over the course of a day and rank order the tasks by how easy you think they will be to accomplish.
The next morning pick one task off the top of the list and either work on that task or think about how to better define the task to make it easier, this will often involve breaking it further down into smaller tasks. Some of the tasks will be easier to work on in sets, and some will be dependent on others. You can also pick a different task if you want, it is totally up to you.
As you finish a task, move it to the bottom of the list, mark it as complete, and make notes on what you did and additional paths to pursue. Typically this step will inspire additional things that you would like to get done, so add those as new tasks to the top of the list and reorder those tasks at the end of the day.
To make this easy for yourself, you will need to reserve 20-30 minutes at the end of each day to update the list, marking and describing accomplished tasks, adding new ones, and sorting the list.
Windows Sticky Notes is the perfect thing for this as it auto-saves (still backup though) has minimal editing features and is always there for you :)
Instead why not try the advice given in the article , that mindfulness meditation can be effectively used to reduce the emotional response of the mind and thereby reduce procrastination.
The trick is that while you are procrastinating you add items to the list, or add more detail to the existing items, so that they are easier to get started on. Maybe you could call that taking a break from procrastinating :)
That could be a boring job, incipient burnout, high functioning ADHD, mild depression, and any number of other things. You might want to spend some time with a therapist to dig into it, if you care to resolve it.
Hyper focus is a trait of ADHD, which seems counter intuitive, as you imagine that ADHD means you can't concentrate on anything, which is not at all true.
ADHD is somewhat misleadingly named. It often isn't truly a deficit of attention but that the focus is itself misfocused ironically. Attention Control Deficit Disorder perhaps?
Meditation is a word that doesn't mean anything in particular. Mindfulness meditation is a branding, that has to do with the practice of awareness and concentration techniques.
That isn't by itself enough to effectively regulate emotion in oneself. You need to cultivate the habit of checking on yourself (how am I? right now? and just before?), understanding what is needed and making the adjustment. All three parts have to fire, or it won't work.
Mindfulness is the first part, awareness is the second, but then you need to actually go ahead and change how you feel, and for that you'll need some breathing exercise or medication. Eating right and exercising helps a lot with this.
What helps me from procrastinating is writing excruciating detailed notes on tasks breaking them down to the smallest detail. Then all I have to do is sit down and start coding. It helps me a lot because my mind stays focused on the task at hand without the need to start analyzing things which most times means I lose focus. Furthermore, nothing seems daunting when you compartmentalize it, which I guess is the reason most of us procrastinate in the first place.
The one thing that really does the trick though is to get something out there and start having paying customers. Then you know that if you procrastinate you'll lose them and that the best motive to do the work that anyone can find.
The detailed notes is one of the principles of Getting Things Done (GTD). I started using it to help me with procrastination and it is really effective.
I love the extensive note taking. I began doing it in high school; I just write down every single word in a textbook or video about what I will be learn in class the next few days. It makes class so much more engaging and the homework is way easier, so I don’t want to put it off as much. I highly recommend it if you have the time.
Another HN procrastination topic, yay! I'm late to the discussion, but maybe someone will still answer:
I've been a procrastinator for as long as I remember, and have the following problem I struggle with: whenever I try to force myself to do a task - like any task that isn't fun or just following curiosity - I feel this strong emotional block. The more I force myself, the stronger it gets, quite often turning into powerful anxiety, and sometimes even physical pain. Usually the mental pain itself is powerful enough to dumb me down to the level I am not smart enough to complete the task at hand (perils of working with one's head instead of hands...), which means the work won't get done anyway.
Is this normal? Is this just lack of discipline, as some would suggest? Does lack of discipline manifest itself with debilitating levels of anxiety? Do people here, who overcame procrastination, suffered from something similar at the beginning and don't suffer from it now?
I ask because I've tried the usual tricks - from pomodoros, through commitment schemes (hello Beeminder), imagination exercises, GTD, DeepWork planning, edw519's A/B mode of work... and everything eventually lost to the emotional pain. It's a small miracle that I'm able to get enough stuff done to make ends meet, but I look at how much more I could be doing if I weren't procrastinating that hard, and the very thought of years wasted makes me feel bad.
If I remember https://sideways-view.com/2017/02/19/the-monkey-and-the-mach... right, it suggests that this sort of problem comes down to a misalignment or mistrust between your conscious agency and the rest of your brain -- that is, the 'deliberator' and the 'monkey'. If whatever you're doing isn't getting the monkey enough bananas over time, it doesn't care how effective you are at getting Zorkmids or whatever such nonsense you consciously value (nonsense from the POV of the monkey), and it will intervene. The most obvious intervention feels like I-don't-wanna -- find something else to do -- anything else.
Tactical interventions ultimately fail because the monkey, not the deliberator, has its hands on the levers. The monkey can learn that letting the deliberator do its thing and earn zorkmids will ultimately also bring in plenty of bananas, but that has to be true for it to work in the long run.
(I may be adding a few of my own thoughts about how this monkey-and-machine business applies to procrastination -- I don't remember if those were on that long page.)
That was quite a good read, thanks! Among the couple of insights, the concept of getting two conflicting optimization systems to agree by making them trade was something... new to me, at least expressed in that form.
No, it’s not a lack of discipline, it’s not normal, and I think you answered your own question why with your last sentence. It sounds like when you first start a task, you subconsciously decide how likely you are to complete it, based on how fun and interesting it is. For boring tasks, you figure there’s no way to finish it, and that will make you feel bad, and that causes the emotional pain now. The more you push yourself, the worse you feel that you are putting in all this effort and will still end in failure.
A suggestion: do the smallest part right now and then look at that as a success. Meaning, don’t worry about planning the whole thing out, with pomodoros and imagination exercises. Those are hurting you because they are keeping your focus on what your mind perceives as a huge mountain of work. Instead, ask yourself, “what is the most stupidly small thing I can do right now?” Have a task to write a new website? First task is to log into your laptop. Once that’s done, next stupidly small thing? Open your text editor. Start with ‘<html>hello</html>’ saved in “index.html”. Keep just doing to most obvious, tiny thing.
Then afterwards, the hardest but most important part: perspective. Don’t look at how much more you could have done if you weren’t procrastinating —- look at how much you got done over a baseline of doing nothing. Hey, I got rails stood up saying “hello world”, but with postgres behind it and it all checked into git. That’s several more things done than if I had done nothing at all. Go me!
Have you tried meditation? It sounds like you are over identifying with your thoughts & emotions. Putting some distance between them and the observer (the third eye, so to speak) has allowed me to recognize something as being anxiety inducing, but not have a panic attack over it. Also, try to reframe things that terrify you as challenges. It changes the narrative from victim to hero.
I also enjoyed reading "the war of art" and still find solace in its musings when I am faced with resistance.
I timebox and listen to music. Put on some deep gritty blues and sometimes freestyle along for fun. Then just do it.
You're not going to escape the pain, but you can control its duration usually ("OK, I'll do this for 5/10/20/40 minutes then I promise myself a break")
Ever read "The Now Habit"? It talks about the angst & guilt from being a perfectionist about execution. At the end of the day if you are providing yourself and/or family a living, then that is quite a good thing.
On a spiritual note, I find the more I pray and study the Bible, the less I am burdened (anxious) about the outcome of things with no eternal consequences.
> You're not going to escape the pain, but you can control its duration usually ("OK, I'll do this for 5/10/20/40 minutes then I promise myself a break")
Tried that, and - like many tricks - worked for a while. Eventually ended up in a state where starting something is nigh-impossible, but if I somehow manage to do it and survive 15 minutes, then things flow well for the next couple hours.
It sounds like you aren't toning your willpower. I am similarly disposed. It is a constant struggle.
I found that the more I have left things "unfinished" or "waiting on" clarity or resource, the dreaderer it feels to approach anything at all in my life. That has to go.
Finish things. Dox and wrap them up for later, if you have to. Don't leave things out, do make the bed, if something takes 15 minutes do it right now and forget, all that jazz.
The first three weeks of that are excruciating, and you should expect them to be. But the benefits will keep you going after day one. Just keep a tally of what's been done on any given date, and don't make it hard for yourself by putting off preparing for something until it's actually needed. Running shoes for tomorrow morning go by the door. Tonight.
Where I struggle most with procrastination is when making talks or writing academic papers. I rarely or never procrastinate on coding. I think the key difference is emotional: if I’m writing something for a computer it just had to work. If I’m writing something for a human it has to be judged interesting or worthwhile according to some nebulous criteria that exists in the minds of the readers.
I find procrastination is like trying the walk a cat. The cat rebels, making it as difficult as possible. The cat being your inner child. Ask it what it wants, apologize to it for being a tyrant, offer it some rewards and then don't you dare skimp on the deal. It'll turn more dog-like.
"Heal the boy and the man will appear" -Tony Robbins
Emotions are involved, but is it the root cause of procrastination ?
My understanding is that fear related emotions are closer to the root cause. Fear of failure, fear of imperfection, fear of wasting time and energy, fear to be rejected, ...
I don't think that emotions like Anger, love or sadness are root causes.
Fear can worsen through time with new painful experiences. But fear can also be tamed.
One way is by adopting the development mindset. Failure is normal when we learn and practice. It is through practicing, and thus some failures, that we get better. No one is borned perfect at something. (See Dr. Dweck's book "Mindset").
Another way is by analyzing and identifying the root cause of fears. I could for instance fear to go in kitchens. That would be very disabling. By searching the root cause, I could find out that I got burned by touching an oven when I was a toddler. Or I could deduce that the kitchen is not dangerous in itself. Only the sharp knives and a hot oven are dangerous. One can then enter the kitchen and avoid the real dangers. Etc.
I don't think it's fear as much as being spoiled. Sure a student dreads failing an exam, but there's a lot of machinery starting up every time that fear is invoked, to find apologies and calm, soothing prospects on how it's going to work out eventually. That machinery existing, not even running through to a satisfying result, is comforting enough to overrule the fear. The oversized emotional attachment the article mentions must relate to the activities done instead of the thing which apparently too little emotion is attached. What is called Fear of Missing Out.
I'd love to avoid drugs. My very limited experience hints at meditation (just the simple calm, slow, breathing exercise, thoughtless relaxation nothing more) is very potent. Not enough though but more than enough to keep digging this trail.
Try taichi or qigong. They can teach you to meditate while standing up, which makes it a lot more practical in daily life. Just having something invisible you can do ('work on your standing') in place of fidgeting or getting stressed out when get stuck waiting for something is remarkably effective.
Anxiety and trauma tend to manifest in disassociating your mind from your body. Working to bridge that gap can help a lot in dealing with uncomfortable situations.
Also, just stoop to bribing yourself. If I finish doing my taxes today I'll get those headphones or the fancy chocolates or my favorite ice cream. Lots of small wins, even contrived ones, gives you confidence for bigger ones. I have done this small annoying thing ten times. I can do this moderately annoying thing twice.
I did taichi in college (part of a wushu class) and it was damn amazing.
i did the self bribing, it works but not a lot. Hard to be judge and party. For bureaucracy I'm often more proactive to use the system against itself, namely giving them willfully stupid forms so they curate the required data, fill half of it and give me clear directions for the remaining part.
I did start to think on sleeping, but nothing very precise. Just a regard toward the 90min cycle thing. Which means I try to jump into sleep cycle when they occur (instead of delaying by browsing) and try to get out of bed after a full cycle.
Try Glycine. Your body needs huge amounts of it anyway to make proteins, so little help before hard work will be handy. Or eat more meat or other proteins in easy to digest form.
Not drugs, but I would recommend Neil Fiore's "Power of Now" because it really helps understand and address some of the psychological underpinnings of procrastination.
I don't think it's so much the tolerance that leads one to abuse Adderall, but rather the confidence Adderall gives you. Can't speak for other amphetamine formulations though, just Adderall IR generic brand.
I think abuse can come in two forms; intentional abuse, which is what we think of as abuse, and unintentional abuse, where during the titration period, when you first get on the medication, you titrate it too high, but this feels like the right amount. I think the latter situation happened to me due to life circumstances. The Adderall I was taking was too much in combination with the lack of sleep, because I took too many credit hours and was staying up in the library or bar studying. Diet probably was less than stellar as well.
The too much level for me as 30mg / day split into 2x 15mg morning and later afternoon / early evening. If I ever go back on Adderall (assuming I can ever find a doctor that takes new patients on medicaid and doesn't make you wait months to see them), I would take 15mg / day split into 2x 7.5mg
On a side note, recently I read something about adderall and neurotoxicity caused by some oxidation reaction, which apparently has been exhibited in very high doses in experiments. Apparently Ritalin doesn't have such neurotoxic effects according to that article. I think there was also something in there about combining ritalin with adderall, which causes the ritalin to counteract the neurotoxic effects of the adderall or something. I think it said that Adderall causes more neurotransmitter to be produced, while ritalin limits uptake of said neurotransmitter.
Tolerance levels off pretty quick, and goes back down with short breaks.
I’m pretty sure addiction is very rare, and not comparable with other prescription narcotics.
I’m not sure what you consider abuse. I guess college kids use it to help them get homework done, which sounds like a congruent context to me; only without the doctor approval. Taking too much has direct and uncomfortable side effects, at least for me. Whenever a I took adderall, I was extra careful to never accidentally taking an extra dose after doing so once on accident.
For me at least, one of the biggest causes is writing and part of that is having multiple experiences of asking for help and being told to “just write the thing” or “stop overthinking it” in response to my questions. I’ve gotten much better since developing the confidence to say to myself “no really. I need to get the answer to this question.”
So if you are procrastinating, consider the possibility that your subconscious still remembers that you need some information but some other part of you is blocking you from getting it.
Seconding this recommendation. I just read "The War of Art" and "Do the work" (another book by the same author), and I wish I'd read them earlier. As a bonus, these books are a great example of how to write without fluff.
I often don't want to write any code before I can think of a good solution, but at the same time I can't come up with a good solution until I've tried a bunch of bad solutions.
People who were procrastinators and have found a trick or technique that has worked in the long run and have who have made lots of progress please share
The closing lines: "You do have the time. You just need to make it." are demonstrably false.
One cannot simultaneously conduct Nobel-caliber research, train as a top-tier professional athlete, be deeply involved with running a serious business, and spend a fulfilling/requisite amount of time with family. There is not enough time.
For me, the critical part of dealing with procrastination/perfectionism has been mastering, and executing upon, prioritization.
The rest of the tips in the article are useful, but that last one, I couldn't abide (and hence have been delayed by ~5 minutes doing the things I want to do today).
At the same time, I look back on how much time I wasted by constantly moving the goalpost for any given project, or even about what projects I should spend my time on. And a ton of this was due to me worrying about how to make money, and which projects would make the most money, and all kinds of useless questions like that.
But historically, the projects of mine that got the most positive feedback and have the most users, are ones I did purely because I wanted to, because I saw a need and knew how to fill it and knew it would be an interesting and satisfying challenge.
So the other night I decided to go back to that. I've got a super cool new app that will make Mjolnir/Hydra/Phoenix/AppGrid look like stone age tools, that I plan to dedicate serious time to. I've also started re-typesetting a very fascinating public domain book printed in 1885, which I found on archive.org, and got Tesseract to do most of the work for me last night in about an hour flat.
So yeah, I can get a lot of really cool stuff done in a very short amount of time, as long as I stop worrying so much about how things will be provided for me and trust in Divine Providence to take care of that. That's how all those other cool projects were made anyway, so I have even more evidence against my worrying and overthinking it.
There's a lot to be said for a "keep moving" approach to project work. I'm a worrier with a perfectionist streak, but I do better with multiple projects because I ruminate less on each one: If I cycle through them over the course of a day, I forget what I was worried about and just focus on accomplishing something I had put in the to-do, which levels things out and lets me do more work at less than 100% when it's called for. When I do work at 100% it means I'm destroying myself trying to calculate every possible option. The 100% work only needs to come out some of the time.
Same, the course I took in college 'just for fun' ended up being how I got my first real job after graduation. And I did my best work for my previous employer when I deliberately focused on satisfying my own curiosity.
The article is about procrastination. If someone is simultaneously trying to do all the things you mentioned, and the only problem is that there's not enough time to do all of them (of course), then they likely don't term it procrastination. By definition, procrastination is about when one has the time but is unable to do the things one wants to do.
Procrastination can actually manifest in seeing that there's so much to do, but not enough time, then feeling overwhelmed and paralyzed by perceived effort and/or consequences and/or required decision/choice, and thus doing nothing. I know this situation all too well myself. The GP totall is speaking about procrastination :)
I'm not going to say it's possible to do all those things at once, but I will say that the 80/20 effect is real and can be leveraged for some extremely serious productivity if you let it guide you.
It's not just a question of making the time, but also making the time count.
Fair point. So far I haven't found the underlying papers (Google isn't great at turning up papers I know I've read about in books, it turns out..) however the Internet's non-scholarly literature on the subject consistency identifies procrastination as essentially an anxiety disorder, not one of poor time management skills. e.g. :
One of the leading researchers in this field is Tim Pychyl. I learned most about the subject by reading his books and listening to all his podcast interviews with fellow researchers. It is possible the papers I'm thinking of are listed on his group's web site. The paper titles tend to be hard to parse, unfortunately:
TL;DR Emotions are somewhat studied in terms of how to deal with them, check Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Check out Feeling Good by Burns[1], there are specific chapters addressing perfectionism. And his podcast on this topic "“I don’t feel like doing it!” Quick Cure for Procrastinators""[2] (suggest to find it on iTunes[3]/Spotify to listen with 1.5x speed, episode 053)
I'm going through a stage in my life when I don't enjoy doing things anymore. Obviously, if a task is considered somewhat hard and I know I will barely enjoy it, there is very little internal emotional support (motivation?) for doing it, thus procrastination.
I did an exercise from the book which was to list tasks I did during the day and mark a satisfaction rate as well as an efficiency rate. All the tasks are like 10% satisfaction, 99% efficiency. Seems like a mismatch. Then I asked myself a question "What would a person who does useful and efficient things tell himself to feel that miserable? What would he think about?".
I got the following, which goes really deep into my internal motivations and fears:
"All these tasks are worth nothing. I shouldn't be happy with them because I can forget that I don't grow and don't accomplish much in general. I may end up being a silly guy who only chills and has fun but in fact, has nothing meaningful going in his life. I shouldn't forget that things are not that good at the moment and it's too early to relax, to enjoy small accomplishments. A person becomes weak if he always enjoys what's going on around."
So if you experience a huge mismatch between satisfaction and efficiency (paradoxically I naturally have lots of fun doing things I am like 0% efficient in because I don't know yet how perfect result looks like), I suggest you to ask the same question "what thoughts could make a person that miserable?".
After listing advantages of believing the above and deep appreciation of my beliefs, it became clear that some of them are crazy self-sadistic. Even though they have the best intentions in the universe (making my life better) what they in fact achieved was getting me to the verge of having suicidal thoughts. And now I am doing exercises mentioned in the book and the podcast to give up these beliefs.
Defeating this is a real challenge and requires serious conscious effort. People who have reputation as "doers" often gain it by finding the "good enough" target and driving towards it. Many "do nothings" are really people who have an overdeveloped desire to "do it right" and can't overcome it.
It's absolutely a matter of emotional control.