I've found that the things I procrastinate most are things that have high "activation energy", for lack of a better term. Getting off my computer, getting to my car, and driving to the gym takes a lot of up front willpower, even if I find the actual working out enjoyable (or at least tolerable). The approach that I take to resembling a functional adult is to make small adjustments to my routine that significantly cut down on that activation energy. To use the gym example, I started showering at the gym. Every day, after work I go to the gym to shower. Some days I don't have the energy or time to work out, but I always show up, grab my gym bag from my car, go to the locker room, and shower.
That way, it's not a question of "do I have the energy today to go to the gym and workout?", it's just "do I have the energy today to workout while I'm at the gym anyway?", which is a much lower bar.
I do this as well. I do almost all of my writing in coffee shops or any place that will let a dog with a laptop hide in a corner. I'm When I'm able to leave the house, I'll hang out somewhere. Writing doesn't have to happen. Tonight, I'm on HN instead of prepping my D&D game. :)
My version of this is to have a kettlebell at my feet in my office. I'll naturally bump into it a couple times a day usually, and I go "oh why not" and pick it up and do a couple quick exercises with it.
Another way to do things that have high activation energy is to have pets you love that will get excited at a specific time of day and be very disappointed if you don't follow through with it (take them on a walk). I've gone many times when I feel like I didn't have the energy just because they deserve it and I don't want to let them down.
Congrats you have somewhat hacked your ADHD or similar mental issue.
It's related to executive functioning and is limited so lowering the bar like you do works well however those tricks usually decay over time or become habit at which point one is not thinking actively anyways.
> Is there a failure mode from having too much willpower?
Yes.
I was a terribly undisciplined child and carried much of that with me into college and early adulthood, so I spent over a decade doing "self discipline workouts".
I'm happy to report that it worked: I now have the ability to tell myself "you need to do X" and I will indeed do X. No matter how unpleasant. No matter how long it takes.
I'm unhappy to report that it worked: I can willpower myself into burnout easily and only notice how unhealthy I was being when I force myself (or my partner gently forces me) to take a vacation.
Overall I'm happy with the tradeoff, but it is possible to become an incredibly unhealthy version of yourself by overcorrecting on procrastination.
Reminds me of an article I read about some people who were unhappy in their careers as doctors. Basically, they had such strong willpower that they were able to force themselves to do all the years of hard work and studying to become doctors while over riding all of their feelings of not liking the profession. Basically, they were victims of their ability to over ride their feelings to achieve any goal they had set.
This is so interesting but not sure if this is healthy. For things that really bring you benefit in the end like gym it seems reasonable. With hating your profession and overriding it can IMO cause some serious mental issues but maybe I am wrong.
Hah this sounds familiar. My life is a series of waves of high productivity and career growth, followed by troughs of burnout and depression. I just don’t know if I’m wired to be hyper productive, or if anyone is, really.
You don't have to buy it at all, though. It's free!
Looks like OP explained his system below, but it's really just an instantiation of The General System:
1. Try something.
2. If it worked, go back to step 1, and try to do better.
3. If it didn't work, go back to Step 1, and try to do better.
(There are some tricky parts to the system, like defining "works" and "better" — but on the other hand, everyone has to define those for themselves anyway.)
Also, FWIW, "failure" might not be the most useful way to frame whatever's happening for you. Sometimes, I like to say instead, "an embarrassingly high price to pay for learning a simple lesson... but at least I've learned it now."
(Usually, when I frame it that way, it also becomes clear that I passed up many earlier opportunities to buy the lesson for a much cheaper price. And that's sort of a nice realization, too, because it restores a fair bit of agency.)
I used (and use) a similar approach to develop the habit of writing everyday.
For example, if I'm scheduled to write for 3 hours and I feel too much resistance, I write for less time. Maybe 2 hours. If I'm super resistant, I invoke the 'nuclear option' and write for no more than 30 mins, or even less.
Much more important than hitting some predetermined target is writing everyday no matter what. To be forthright, it's not particularly difficult once I get going. The writer in me wants to write; that guy just needs a little coaxing sometimes.
I learned of the 'nuclear option' from an unfortunately titled book by Jerrold Mundis called 'Break Writer's Block Now'. The title is pretty cheesy but the book is gold. It's designed to be read (and applied) over an afternoon, perhaps 3-4 hours. It works. The proof is me. I've been a professional screenwriter for several years now as a result of daily effort.
I guess the most important thing I've learned is that punishment doesn't work (at least for me). But gentle, consistent practice does.
This advice is gold. It's not just about writing. Anything you want to accomplish long term, you need a consistent "at least a little step every day" approach. No matter if it's a new language or fitness goals or learning an instrument or whatnot. A step every day. Consistency is key. It doesn't help to make one big chunk of time once in a full moon.
Time aggregate is a huge leverage and immensely undervalued.
Yes, I've definitely read and used them both. I think your understanding of the difference is well-conceived.
There's some conceptual stuff in the Mundis book that provides a framework for understanding the why of his approach, but the majority of it is a 'Do this' and 'If this happens, do this' type of pragmatic approach.
What I found is if I followed the book's suggestions, I got a lot of writing done. That simple. Same for a good friend who is a comics artist, except for the obvious fact that he draws.
I found the Pressfield book somewhat useful but the simple fact is, I just don't turn to it anymore. I didn't find it skillful to anthropomorphize an abstract concept like 'Resistance' that I had to wake up and defeat everday. I think it's possible to have a really productive and fulfilling creative life without thinking of it like some kind of a daily fight.
I return to the Mundis book time and time again.
Finding the way into a healthy self-discipline is such a personal and creative act. The process that ultimate worked best for me is to give an approach a sustained trial (30 days or so) and then reflect on how it went. Assess and try again. After going through a lot stuff that didn't work (for me), I found the thing that did.
how does it work though? sounds like you are being rewarded for not holding your own end of the promise (next day you do less challenging thing). I'm not saying punishment should work better but curious how it works.
> sounds like you are being rewarded for not holding your own end of the promise
That's a risk, but I find that overall I pick things just hard enough to be challenging but just easy enough to make myself do. Then I do those things consistently until they become my new baseline and I increase the challenge. (2 pushups, 10, 20 pushups + putting on jogging shoes, ...).
The big idea is to pick things that you're almost certain you'll do. Falling back to smaller promises should be the exception.
> curious how it works.
Slowly, with lots of restarts, but the advantage of this method is that no matter how many times you fall off the wagon (and no matter how far you fall) you have something simple to start again.
Starting over at the proverbial "1 pushup" after you've spent time and effort building it up to so much more than that definitely sucks, but it's far better than other alternatives I've tried (such as waiting until I have the massive motivation needed to restart from exactly where I stopped).
Edit: I think it works for me because it slowly builds up self trust, which then becomes a positive feedback loop.
I can corroborate this method and perspective on why it might work. With a backstory similar to yours but earlier in the journey to transformation / success, I’ve found that locking in “wins” and completing the cycle of intent to follow-through turned out to be much more valuable and helpful than I ever imagined when I was slogging through the long era of seeking change but preemptively dismissing all visible paths.
Thanks for sharing and thanks for putting possible future obstacles / challenges on my radar!
Pretty good article and I especially like the end:
> There’s also the non-solution: Give up, reduce your ambitions, and stop calling it procrastination. The only thing worse than not doing the thing is not doing the thing and also beating yourself up about it forever. You weren’t designed to overpower Jim all the time, so don’t expect to.
As someone with executive impairment severe enough I can’t function without medication, it’s obvious the presented model of procrastination has gaps and the non-solution is a necessary addition to the equation that’s often omitted.
It has been very hard to accept my body or mind failing me is not procrastination and I’m glad it’s being mentioned. All of the procrastination strategies presented are still very necessary. They just don’t work as well for me.
The important thing is to find what works for you. The article is a good place to start.
Edit: as a side note, I think the ADHD being associated with schizophrenia is due whatever causes schizophrenia initially presenting as ADHD. Related, a lot of bipolar children have been initially diagnosed with ADHD for the that reason.
This person tells the truth. If you’re procrastinating a task so hard that it has entered the realm of the ridiculous, then perhaps you’re not cut out for it. Give up and find something that’s more fun.
Unless you’re living in the third world, you won’t die for lack of perseverance at some dull task. You might lose your job or fail at school, but you won’t starve. That’s an embarrassingly rich situation to be in. Take advantage of it, is my suggestion.
It's also good to remember that Jim is often wrong.
Last week I found myself procrastinating for hours because something was going to be hard, was vaguely defined, wasn't going to work... and in the end it turned out to be five minutes work to try the first thing that came to mind, which was enough to solve the problem.
So in order to fool Jim, don't think about doing that whole big thing you need to do. Just tell yourself you'll only work on it a little bit for, say, ten minutes. Jim can hardly object to that.
And then much of the time, you made some kind of concrete start in that time, and the objections disappear.
> The problem is, while it’s easy to lie to yourself, Jim isn’t fooled.
While you claim:
> So in order to fool Jim, don't think about doing that whole big thing you need to do. Just tell yourself you'll only work on it a little bit for, say, ten minutes.
I will say that Jim can sometimes be fooled to a ridiculous degree.
When I’m out for a run and the going gets tough, Jim really wants me to stop. However I can just tell Jim that OK, I will stop but not before I reach the next light post, which is super close. Once I reach it, I’ll just shift the goal to the next light post.
This works wonders and I can keep going for miles. Often giggling to myself how easily Jim is fooled, as I’m literally thinking in that moment that I’ll just keep shifting the goal.
The solution I found to this is to use Pomodoro. I don't have a problem to keep focused after I start something, the problem is always not starting it. I force myself to do one pomodoro, but after the first one I am still not convinced I should keep working. It is incredibly unsatisfying, but because it is only 25 minutes, I can endure it. Then another one, and by the fourth I have finally understood a bit more about the problem I'm trying to solve and fog starts to dissipate enough that I feel a bit more motivated to work on it the next day. After I am finally able to forsee the payoff, I just ditch Pomodoro and keep working.
This works well for me. I'm in the middle of replicating someone else's research for a paper, so it's fiddly, not very exciting (I expect to confirm their conclusions, +/- some error bars), and hard to remain motivated. But I tell myself "work on this one little part for 30 minutes today" and eventually if I stack enough of those parts together it'll be done.
I’ve noticed this happening often enough that now when I need to do something hard, instead of trying to do it, I think “I’ll just attempt it for 15 minutes to learn more about the task”.
Sometimes it turns out the task I had been dreading can actually be mostly completed in that time, and I was just wrong about it being hard.
> If Jim thinks the reward on effort is too low, he puts a “tax” on that activity.
Actually, considering how old a mechanism this is, his name is not Jim but Grug.
And Grug no see point in doing tax when Grug belly full and cave warm.
We evolved to feel tired an out of energy when our minds asses that a task has a low probability of success. But chores, taxes, phonecalls and moving tickets in JIRA are very recent things from an evolutionary perspective, so it errs on the side of caution.
I have mild executive dysfunction that only seldomly interferes with my work. A strategy to defeating "Jim" as the article defines him, for me, is I often have trouble completing tasks if the goal/task is too broad. Going with agile methodology terms, if something is assigned to me that could be recategorized as as an epic with a bunch of sub-tasks or stories, it's very likely I procrastinate on that task, because I am not easily able to envision the series of steps to accomplish the larger goal.
So, I keep notes and to-do lists. I try to break tasks into as small of sequential tasks as possible, and then go back and prune this list throughout the week/day/hour, depending on how urgent it is and how bad the procrastination is.
Sometimes these tasks are extremely simple. As simple as "turn on your computer" sometimes. Completing them and checking it off gives that little dopamine burst and the confidence to continue the task. All you have to do is make sure that your smaller tasks are organized in a way that allow you to complete the larger goal (which admittedly isn't always easy).
I do this, but I honestly don't know if it helps or not; or, to be more specific, I don't know if my actually breaking down the task is what helps or if it's simply a means of coaxing myself into thinking about the task long enough to get "in flow". Outside of flow, doing anything else is easier than doing the task. Inside of flow, it's just as difficult to stop working on it as it was to start working on it in the first place.
Either way, I write things down. I used paper notebooks for years before moving to a Markdown-formatted git repository that is automatically built into a static site when I push it to the remove. These days I've taken to using a reMarkable 2, an e-paper tablet. The fact that I enjoy using it adds to its utility, but I'm not yet sure if it's something I'm going to stick with long term.
This is me as well. I don't naturally 'see' that a task is actually a bunch of smaller, easier tasks. It's easier not to start when you're not sure where to start.
Procrastination always boils down to one thing: the thing you procrastinate about is seen as unpleasant. Whether it’s because you think you’ll suck at it or because you don’t think the outcome matters that much, you imagine that doing the thing will be unpleasant.
Beyond medication, the only thing I’ve found that works well against procrastination is to tell my brain that it won’t be as unpleasant as I think, so long as I can just get started on it. And getting started means literally spending one minute on the thing.
Usually if I can get in that first minute, the thing becomes interesting and then I can make it happen.
The linked article is good, but I've found myself drawn in to other of the author's writings. I'm both enjoying them and feel like I'm taking something away from them - that's rare in my experience.
I don't have a "top-level" comment specific to the linked article, but I felt compared to share my impression of the site as a whole. If you've got the time, I highly recommend spending some of it reading this site.
Hire your own mobster. Have you tried body doubling? You work on your task, and the other person is just watching you (or doing the task with you). Maybe Bob is squeezing your abdomen, but there's also Mike. Mike is real, and for some reason you do not want to dissapoint Mike. Mike looks like a nice guy, but he is watching you. You don't know what's going to happen if you piss off Mike, but your lizard brain tells you not to do it.
This is how it works on me. I don't know why, I'm not even a social person. People say I don't care what other people think about me. Still, body doubling is the only method that has worked for me.
"Why does Jim exist?" Forgive me for being blunt, but I think it might be winter.
Using resources to chase low-probability goods in a sharply resource constrained environment is a lethal strategy. See also: why being rich makes it easier to strike oil when investing, aka the Risk Premium.
We've had such a fortunate run the last few decades that we've forgotten just how potent a skill "holing up" was, and likely will be again. Psychological illnesses like depression, maybe a similar reason for passing the great evolutionary filter.
Oh! Not now, no. No it is all bad. Definitely maladaptive. But how did it make its way through the millennia without killing everyone it touched and disappearing? Because a lot of the carriers survived, and maybe because of it, or - more likely - because of some trait related to it, like fat metabolism or some form of environmental tolerance. Sickle cell is the poster boy for this kind of thing - we though it was just all bad, it turned out to be adaptive for a particular environmnt.
If my understanding of history is reliable, there are times when being in such a state can help your odds of survival, like if your country is occupied by an insane murdering tyrant. Your body wants to keep you alive much more than it wants to keep you happy.
> Taxum 3: Even if you successfully did the thing, you don’t really think it will matter
This is the killer for me. For most of what I need to do, both "You think no one else will care" and "You yourself won’t care" are true. Not only do I think no one else will care, I usually know that no one else will care. In cases where they do care, it's short term: They care that the thing gets done, but once it is done, they don't care anymore. Because of these things, I myself don't care, and it's hard to get motivated to do anything.
There's a lot of research out there already that the OP doesn't seem to be aware of.
For one very helpful example: the book, "Solving the Procrastination Puzzle". One of the best techniques to solving procrastination is "Just Get Started". It addresses a lot of the objections that the OP brings up because very simply the tasks we dread aren't often as bad as we think they will be. If we just get started, we often find the challenge even enjoyable. Here is ChatGPT-4's summary of the techniques in the book:
> There's a lot of research out there already that the OP doesn't seem to be aware of.
You don't need to undermine someone's position to add more context. I like the additional context you add, but I believe you'd be better off without the judgment. It's unwarranted, and being an avid follower of the OP's blog, I'm pretty sure the author knows these facts about procrastination.
Users flagged the GP comment. With 300bps's permission, I redacted the GPT-generated bit and restored the post.
(HN users are allergic to LLM generated comments, including summaries. We don't know yet how the current AI wave is going to play out on HN but for the time being the community is super sensitive about not letting generated content permeate the threads and I think it's the right call for now.)
Jim is the collective around you. Jim is a mirror of your position in your social environment. Jim is always looking for clues about your position in your social environment. Jim is looking which role you are playing in society right now.
Jim is there when you are a baby and picking your nose. Jim is reflected in the face of your mother when you wanted to eat the big fat booger and her warm and smiling face turned into an angry and disgusted grimace. There is Jim. Jim turns from an observed behavior as baby to an internalized behavior as adult. If you want to change your behavior there is Jim.
Jim is at the edge of your comfort zone. Jim is at the edge to the unknown. If you venture into new behaviors you will suck at it and Jim will tell you to go back. Jim says its comfortable where you came from.
The same as Luke fought his Jim, we all have to fight our Jims. And as Luke kills dark-side Darth Vader, light-side Anakin Skywalker is reborn. I told you. Star Wars is full of eternal wisdom. The same will happen to you. As you fight, your dark-side you will uncover your Jims light-side. Because Jim is the mirror image of you.
It is your damn RESPONSIBILITY to create the best Jim there is. It is your damn JOB to fight Jim everyday. It is your RESPONSIBILITY and JOB to uncover his light-side one tiny bit each day. Jedi, its our job to save the galaxy from the dark-side. Its worth to die for!
The best procrastination fix I have found (I am a world class procrastinator) is the drug modafinil which seems to be both effective and is safe at least for one-off use according to Scientific American, although it says long term studies have not been done. However people have been taking it for a decade or more so any problems likely would have shown up by now.
When I take one of these pills I don't notice any particular effect until the end of the day when I usually have a load of stuff done that had been hanging around for weeks or months.
Neil Fiore's book The Now Habit helped me quite a bit with procrastination (I saw a recommendation on HN years ago, but haven't heard it mentioned much since). One key point to remember is that procrastination is first and foremost an emotional problem, not a time-management problem.
I have this weird conspiracy theory based on absolutely nothing that all the procrastination hype is sponsored by state actors of the western world who are worried we are falling behind the east in terms of productivity per capita.
I mean I'm sure some people suffer from real procrastination, but these cases are quite easily identified: horrible junk filled houses, terrible hygiene and health, no job, things of the sort.
Except these extreme cases, yeah, everybody could do more of everything and be more productive. But think about it, no organism wants to burn energy unless absolutely necessary. Any effort you undertake costs you something. A broken back and a broken mind are not exactly rare for heavy workers. If you have your needs covered why would go with "more is better"? There's no undertaking without risk or cost.
I’m not sure you’re talking about the type of procrastination people complain about.
It seems more like you’re saying ‘you don’t need to be working on that second side gig’. Which, sure (Assuming someone isn’t on the edge of insolvency due to lack of income, anyway and has tried cutting back on expenses.).
But what typically causes people to complain are things like - procrastinating looking for a job because the market is tight and scary. Or procrastinating on doing the taxes because ugh, or procrastinating on finding that weird production data corruption bug that is going to suck.
Which have consequences, and cause a lot of stress avoiding them, and realistically aren’t actually optional.
Like ADHD meds, the tools can help someone go in the wrong direction ‘harder’ if used without thinking about it or if someone has a bad plan.
A shitty environment and unrealistic workload isn’t going to NOT result in burnout if it doesn’t get better, no matter how much Adderall someone takes, or how good they get at tackling procrastination.
But if taking care of something (like looking for a better job!) will produce a better outcome, but someone is procrastinating, then the tools can help.
Procrastination feels absolutely terrible, just like binge eating. You know it's wrong but you keep doing it because you are not in a good place mentally.
Even if ending procrastination led to no increase in productivity it would still be a good achievement for mental wellness
For someone like me, it's not productivity that's the problem. It's that procrastination causes me to not do the things I enjoy, either because I'm procrastinating on something else and not able to avoid it, or because I'm literally not getting started on leaving the house or planning the camping trip or getting the motorcycle ready, whatever. Maybe productivity porn has the underlying conspiracy you mention, but ADHD doesn't really.
Nahaha, great writing! Though, the irony of reading this and articles like these (as they often come up, or maybe that is my selection bias)... right now? Thanks, Jim.
Before taxonomies and remediation, I would watch Tim Urban's absolutely legendary TedX talk that humanizes procrastination--despite all its ills--and how to empathize with procrastinators (inside and around you):
That way, it's not a question of "do I have the energy today to go to the gym and workout?", it's just "do I have the energy today to workout while I'm at the gym anyway?", which is a much lower bar.