Sometimes, brain function is actually to blame for procrastination, and not attitude or perception of the work before you. When I‘d slept too little, or am going through caffeine withdrawal, my procrastination goes through the roof. I‘d just rather sleep than do anything productive then. My anti-procrastination toolkit is:

- Like you said, going for a walk (activates beneficial genes, helps circadian rhythm)

- Stop caffeine as soon and often as you can. Sometimes situations force me to use a pick-me-up, but I try and stop the day after.

- Go to bed early (10PM ideally)

- Vitamin D, Magnesium, etc. also check out near infrared therapy to improve mitochondrial function

- Moderate exercise (overtraining has a bad net effect on nearly everything, so stop if working out makes you feel worse; if you have a heart rate variability monitor, you can use that as a metric for overtraining)

- Small talk (works for me to „wake the brain up“)

But really, 90% of the time I just have to sleep more. The others are just hacks to keep me going if I can’t get enough sleep (sometimes not easy with 2 kids).

> 90% of the time I just have to sleep more

I don't know about a lot of the rest of your post, but this bit is key. If you aren't getting enough sleep, nothing will help. The legends of politicians and executives who sleep 3 hours a day are either outliers for whom 3 hours genuinely is enough, or speed-freaks, or often enough both.

I can function on 3 hours a day -- if the only thing I have to do is talking and reacting to incoming stimuli. Which is precisely what high-flying politicians and execs do: talk, talk, talk, with some occasional reasoning thrown in. They don't have to break down complex problems or create complex artefacts, there are aides doing it for them. They just go through briefing after briefing and react to what is thrown at them.

Actual creative workers and engineers require a different set of brain functionality, which requires deeper concentration, and hence need more sleep.

Great distinction that doesn’t get brought up enough. At the same time, we also want politicians and CEOs making optimal decisions rather than just surface level ones.

That is often a function of having good (or convincing) reports available to them.

Seriously this. Sleep and hydration. This sounds as trivial and stupid that most of the people will dismiss this advice for this very reason. People often prefer complex solutions which they do not really understand instead.

One more thing is just as important: Water.

Another tip that worked for me is not eating any fast sugars at all.

A couple nights ago I tried to force myself to get some coding done ("just a little a day adds up over time"), and woke up to a line of "ssssssssssss" on my screen. I erased it and went straight to bed.

Or you force yourself and get the thing done on your list ... but discovered later that it was just a half baked solution creating all kinds of other problems later. Coding when too tired is really, really not a smart idea.

Or just old. Often as people age some need less sleep. Reports of old people sleeping 3 to 4 hours a night are common.

Or lies.

> But really, 90% of the time I just have to sleep more.

I agree to this but I think the bigger problem is - How much more is actually "more"? Do you any literature about how to actually find your sleep length time?

I recently read the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker (a professor at Berkeley). It's pop-sciency in style but more nuanced and well-supported than most pop science books I've read. I definitely recommend picking it up. It made me value sleep a lot more than I used to, both for long- and short-term reasons.

Among other things, the book talks about how much sleep people need. Almost everyone needs around 8 hours—it varies with age, but it pretty consistent among people at the same with very rare exceptions. For most people, being short even by just one hour (ie a night with seven hours of sleep) has a number of measurable negative effects.

https://smile.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/15...

I'm no expert, but from what I've read you should awaken without feeling groggy or tired. I've personally had the luxury of being able to sleep according to my own schedule (without waking times or alarms, simply sleeping when I was tired). For myself to reach that well-rested feeling, I should give myself 9 hours a night. Sometimes I need 7, but sometimes I need the 9 hours. I very occasionally need more, and very rarely sleep less (though it happens).

What I know affects how much sleep I need or how long I should give myself to sleep varies. I'm female and follow a cycle closely linked to hormones as a baseline. If I wake up at night (for toilet, etc), I need a bit more time. If I increase physical activity, I have an adjustment period that requires more sleep.

I'll also note that time of sleep impacts me. I'm better off waking after 9am (naturally this is 11am or so). I cannot always get enough quality sleep waking at 6am and 7am leaves me slightly deprived. I tried keeping a schedule even on the weekends, but I felt horrible and found it better to sleep a bit more to catch up.

Test out what happens to you when you alter sleep habits. How much uninterrupted sleep do you prefer and when? What are the effects of naps during the day on metrics you care about? Keep the traditional sleep log, and track your other related behaviors & habits like eating/nutrition, exercise, etc. National averages are useful, but nothing beats learning how our own bodies function in various situations.

Here is one example paper https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28545315 and while it isn't a direct example of how to find your own ideal sleep patterns, it does highlight the relationship between sleep and body weight in the study population and it again mentions the 6-8 hour recommended minimum sleep period. This source might be better https://www.sleepfoundation.org/excessivesleepiness/content/...

I'm by far no expert on this, just listened to a lot of podcasts and read articles. So, grain of salt etc...

AFAIK the only way to be sure is to either go to a sleep lab, or get an accurate tracker like the Oura ring, which reportedly has a 80-90% accuracy compared to sleep lab data. With that data you can see the distribution of your various sleep phases, and the people in the lab or the app will tell you how much of each phase you'd ideally have.

But, why not just experiment a bit? Sleep 7/8/8.5h for a couple of days in a row, and keep track of how you feel and how much you procrastinate. E.g. for Mac, the Timing app is great at tracking how much time you spend in each app - one could use the amount of "productive" apps (text editor, IDE, graphical editor...) as a measure of productivity.

I sleep way better since I'm following the keto diet, and surprisingly my sleep is "perfect" since I take Vitamin c just before going to bed, and I'm now super-motivated in the morning.

I followed this advice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbHnpdtQKUA

I'm doing very badly on ketogenic diets, it's definitely not for anyone. Hypoglycemic etc.

8 days of water only fasting stimulates hippocampal neurogenesis so you will sleep better than you are currently doing, besides also improving neuroplasticity and thus your future earning potential.

Or just sleep at the appropriate times and cut out screens hours before bed. You don't have to water fast for your circadian rhythm.

It helps, studies have shown it.

Can you link to some of these studies?

> Stop caffeine as soon and often as you can.

Why?

Addiction.

I suffer from caffeine addiction: a cup of coffee in the morning just to make myself feel normal. I got terrible mental melt-down once I stopped coffee for a few days.

Chronic caffeine consumption builds a tolerance fast. At that point you will need a coffee just yo feel normal.

Caffeine interferes with sleep.

When is procrastination not a form of depression? I cant find any study to show SSRI's help or hinder with procrastination probably because no one has thought to study it properly.

Plus some people just need more sleep than the 8hr average and need to wake and work later than most in society. I for example, have just slept 11hrs and woken at 11am, but I will get more done than if I had woken at 7-8am.

My suspicion is that the circadian rhythm plays a big role in productivity (and well-being in general). It's not enough to just sleep, it's also important to reset your body's clock when the sun rises. Spending the night in a club in artificial lighting might not be made up for by sleeping in for 10 hours.

AFAIK almost everybody procrastinates (more or less), but not so many people are suffering from depression.

Some jobs/tasks are just depressing so its valid comment. Put another way if the job was fun would people procrastinate?

The problem is IMO that NOTHING is really fun if you are depressed (or sleep deprived, for that matter). Sure there is some reciprocity, mundane tasks make you even more depressed. But if you get depression under control, then you will either find a way out of those tasks, or learn to enjoy them.

I don’t think that shitty tasks themselves can cause depression; it’s all about the social context of the work you are doing. Is your boss bullying you, or telling you that you are not important to the organization, or does she try to punish your mistakes? Are you working just to support a study you are not really into, because you think you owe it to your parents? Is there another job you would like better, but you dare not change jobs because you are afraid you won’t earn enough to support yourself? That’s the way to get depressed about the tasks you are doing. Sort out the social context, and you might even realize afterwards that the tasks were not so mundane after all.

I did try to game things, analyse them, find approaches etc etc... I went nowhere, only deeper into paralysis.

These days I have a simpler trick: stop thinking, do <it>, don't stop until it's done (avoid multitasking, unless you're already into flow or you sense high motivation).

welcome to adulthood.

Well said. There is no game, it's simply doing. How is any journey started? By taking a step.

I think sometimes peoples intelligence works against them. A deep analysis of procrastination is itself procrastination. The fact that someone recognizes they are procrastinating is 90% of the way there to stopping. Next, they just need to step. Eventually, taking a step becomes habit.

I have no real way to convey how I feel about this topic. All I know is that I tried so many side tricks.. but at one point the only thing that felt good, outside of ideology or anything, just good, is the stopping of overthinking, the pleasure to actually doing something instead of the stress of idle, and the satisfaction of finishing it. For years these weren't clear emotions, so trying to think seemed a better idea.

> the pleasure to actually doing something instead of the stress of idle, and the satisfaction of finishing it

This is great. Focus on the after feeling, and then work to get there as quickly as possible. What I found is that feeling of procrastination caused way more stress than just doing. Of course it's hard to see this in the moment, and requires discipline to get going. But after, it's a great feeling to crush through all these things that would otherwise drag on for a long period, and now enjoy my free time.

There's also a notion of uselesness that changes, for a while you'd spend time hesitating between choices and then you'd just pick one, throw out the rest.

A few tips from my personal experience; may not necessarily work for anyone else:

- As the other reply here says, getting enough sleep seems to make a massive difference. It's easy to say "I haven't got enough done on this today, I'll stay up late and just do a bit more..." and ending up in a cycle of being tired and not working enough where you really just needed a good rest.

- The article mentions the 10 minute timer thing. I've done a different timer thing, where I start a timer and tell myself I have to stop the timer any time I stop working. If I starting reading Hacker News or something, I have to pause the timer, and the pain of having my work minutes conspicuously not counting up as real time marches on is significant. The fact that you have to go and manually stop the timer when you stop working is also a mental barrier that gives you a chance to think rationally about whether you should be stopping. Unfortunately it's also easy to just forget to stop or restart it.

- The article and many like it talk about all these ways to "trick" your brain. Do x and y to "get that dopamine hit." Another comment here starts "You can't do a thing you don't feel like doing." But you're capable of thinking rationally. Sure it's easy to get into these habits of procrastination where you just naturally start getting away from work. But it's also possible to take a mental step back and just say NO, I'm in control of my own actions, and I'm going to work on this thing. And then just do it. Feels really bad when you're doing the work and you really want to be doing something else. Feels really good when you get the work done.

> I've done a different timer thing, where I start a timer and tell myself I have to stop the timer any time I stop working.

This is a great trick... also informing yourself honestly how many 'productive' hours you had at the end of a day. With all kinds of interruptions (many of those self-inflicted) some days the timer registered less than 3 hours when I was studying in university.

That realization prompted me to stop studying at home, and travel to the university library daily. There my pattern was similar to 50 minute periods of work (before Pomodoros were a thing) followed by 10 minute breaks. After that, I easily clocked 6 hours of real work daily.

I totally agree about talking to co-workers. Another tip in the same direction which helps me:

I try to create collaboration setting so that I don't work alone on a task I don't like. For example, I tell my work mate "I need to finish this document, do you have time tomorrow afternoon to read it and give me feedback?". That creates a social obligation to get the task done.

The thing that worked for me is to have a personal mission statement, which goes beyond the project and company I’m working for. Currently it’s the idea of digitalization as a greater good, which in turn propells humanity into a more well-connected and globalized state. So I just take on jobs that align with that personal mission statement. Then everything from doing mundane tasks to strategic work actually makes sense, and are easier to do.

I'm not sure if you read the entire article, but two of the tips mentioned are talking to coworkers, and taking breaks like walking around. I think it would've been nice if you gave credit to the article for mentioning tips that have worked for you, instead of making it seem like the article didn't provide these tips. Some people might read your comment and think the article only discusses gamification.

Is it counter-intuitive to think that people are much more productive when they are happy, having arrived at the work through their own initiative, with their own inspiration, and in their own time?

Great story. So basically you’re saying your gut outsmarted you because it knew it wouldn’t be worth it...