- Procrastination/distractions are reactions to discomfort: “They’re not character flaws, they’re emotional regulation problems”. So: try to to develop better internal tools to manage discomfort.
- Things like email or items checked off TODO lists are more pernicious, because they feel productive. Recognize this.
- Set a routine (e.g. work 2 hours on writing), not targets (word count).
- When you do sit down to work, expect discomfort, e.g. from boredom, frustration, anxiety, uncertainty. When it arises, instead of trying to get away from it, lean into it: approach it with curiosity, like a scientist.
- When you get an itch to go look up something, instead of acting immediately, set it aside for 10 minutes (I'd say an hour) — and see if you still care at the end of it.
- For urges that don't go away, “surf the urge”: sit with the sensation and examine it.
- Once you have made some progress in managing your internal triggers (e.g. can deal with some discomfort), try to understand your values (the kind of person you want to be/become). Then create a schedule for tomorrow that fits it.
- Remove external triggers, those that tend to distract you.
- For tasks where all this still doesn't help, try some “pacts”, like the one in the article about the $100 bill.
This may not seem “anything approaching concrete advice” but his defence in the article is that this is his strategy: “There isn’t going to be one tactic that works for everyone. You use the strategy to try individual tactics until you find the right formula for you.”
Maybe because he wants to sell his book :)
Also notice he uses distraction instead of procrastination most of the time. The core ides is solid though that it's a emotion management problem. If you can control your emotions related to a given task, you can be more productive.
> Nir is also an advisor to several Bay Area start-ups, venture capitalists, and incubators.
Good it's on the front page of HN ;)
Otherwise it becomes a suck-it-up-and-just-do-it strategy, which is a fine when used reasonably, but it too can be exhausted as a strategy.
But anyway, all of our tools and progress flys in the face of the author’s suggestion. We are at this point in society because we put a lot of thought into not having to work hard.
The irony of working hard to not work hard.
I agree with you that rote work should be minimized with better tools and processes. I can delegate the bookkeeping for example.
Hard work seems like a matter of culture. There might be the expectation from your organisation, family, community etc. that working long hours is the only right way of working. But I don't think that's what the author is addresssing here.
So that leaves challenging work, like writing, marketing, cold-calling, etc. I should be cold-calling much more for example, but I've become quite proficient in finding excuses not to do it (one of them is that it's illegal here in Germany for my product in many cases). I certainly see the author's point about avoiding the discomfort for these types of activities.
Yes, there are few concrete pieces of advice to tackle the "internal triggers" of distraction. These are to be found in ourself and any tricks, like turning off all of the notifications, will only address the surface of the problem. Any concrete advice would risk here to conceal the truth that that hard word is not easy.
I like the path proposed by the article.
* searching in oneself for the deep obstacles toward our goals. boredom? loneliness? fatigue? uncertainty?
* clarifying our priorities into a concrete daily schedule;
* imposing ourselves a routine on what matters
* and even using pacts with ourselves.
Looking closely at my own current habits, this helped me to better understand what I already do well and what I need to improve.
I guess the widely availability of free sources has skewed perspective on what is of value.
The most important subsection is "Most moments of distraction are caused by internal triggers." But that section lacks anything approaching concrete advice. It just repeats already written ideas then offers this:
> So if you want to deal with distraction the first thing you have to do is deal with the negative emotional triggers that lead to it.
The next section, regardless of the title, is about routines rather than internal-emotional triggers and is primarily an anecdote about their writing with no larger take-aways.
I think it is an article with good ideas, going down the right road, but never quite reaches a useful destination. Too bad.