I don't really struggle with procrastination much any more, but it took all sorts of work that would have seemed apparently unrelated to me. E.g., a regular sleep schedule is really helpful, and that required an automated lighting system that helps me keep in sync with the sun. Regular cardio helps keep my baseline anxiety level much lower. Meditation, therapy, medication, food choices, and an awful lot of introspection and self-experimentation were necessary. And time, just a lot of time to unwind the bad habits and bad associations.
I get that it feels hopeless sometimes, but I hope you'll continue. Note that you can't catch up if your baseline is some arbitrary standard. But the right way to measure it is improvement from where you are now. Then there's no "catching up". There's just today, and whether you're going to make things better by one day's worth.
To put this in perspective, one of the hallmarks of addiction is avoidance of feelings. It's a deeply psychological coping mechanism, and obviously a symptom of a larger problem.
So true. The guest post on Ferriss's blog on this is quite good -- https://tim.blog/2009/07/28/the-big-question-are-you-better-...
Wouldn't letting the curtains open achieve the same thing?
https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise
To my surprise, the most valuable part for me was not sunrise but sunset. If the lights auto-dim in the evening, I go to bed on time, which means I wake up on time.
For me, it is a feeling like you said, of never being able to catch up. Like with debt, for years, I would just keep spending on my credit cards. I tried consolidating several times, and finally, I have used a 401k loan against myself to consolidate. My student loans and car loan are paid off, and I have < $10,000 of actual credit debt for the first time since college.
When something seems hopeless, or too much to overcome, I think the mind says "fuck it", and wants to escape.
I find myself very productive at cleaning when I am on the phone with friends and family. I will pace the house, sweeping or mopping or throwing away papers that need sorted. Why? Because doing it alone is lonely, boring, unfulfilling.
I'm lonely. Despite several good friends and family who care about me, I am very lonely for someone to love and care for me in the way I feel I can care for them - I've had love before, though I didn't know it when I was younger. I miss it.
With debt finally going away, and with a good job, I at least see the light at the end of that tunnel. I may finally be able to travel more, buy a sailboat, buy a house. I have been more intentional about my spending, that I don't use any credit I can't pay off immediately. See? having hope, seeing that things can be better, really helps.
I had to get that out there. TLDR: I procrastinate on doing chores and making hard decisions because it is overwhelming at times, hard to envision the immediate benefit, and so I go a bar to chat with other people who are running from something, too.
Fuck, there should be a support group for this.
I racked up plenty of debt during my school years and it only increased after that for no good reason. I felt overwhelmed most of the time and the marginal increases in debt didn't feel like much. So my debt grew another 30%, which for me was a lot.
I've finally got a handle on my debt and I'm paying it off, but this turn of events only came about after a lot of suffering and feeling awful about my debt. It took years to smarten up and realize the pain of limiting myself in my purchases is less than the pain of having the debt hanging over my head.
Be the change you want to see!
+1
I neglected this, thought that I could force myself to work, instead of seeking help. I did 100h weeks after all, I'd always get stuff done. I quit my job, started looking for more rewarding things to do, finally had time to do things right.
And, one day I ended up crying on the floor, hurting myself and spending 3 days on a task that was supposed to take 5-15 minutes. Then a simple coding exercise (2-3h) took me a week, because I couldn't focus, I couldn't accept any solutions because they weren't perfect. I ended up not sending my job application because I lost my shit, even speaking to the recruiter was too intimidating. The whole situation was ridiculous, surreal.
I felt embarrassed because I went throught some difficult (arguably waaay more stressful) situations when I was younger and just couldn't cope with the fact that at the age of 32 my brain gave up on a high school grade CS task. It still perplexes me.
> At the moment doing pomodoro and putting everything in kanban charts and devide&conquer seem to work somewhat. I don't really have any clever advice beyond that, it just sucks.
I'm not sure if you're the same but I used to hate routine. I'm learning to enjoy it now, because I realised that it allows me to deal with the previously neglected parts of my life (exercise, meditation, sleep, food) with less friction. I hate self-help books, but Atomic Habits was surprisingly helpful.
I'm still getting to the point where I enjoy things around me (instead of constantly solving problems), but I hope this will go when the lockdown ends.
I used to have much, much more control over myself. I feel that what I did to myself was reckless, because now keeping my emotional health at the level allowing me to work can be really hard.
I wish I was brought up to care about myself, because now even though I slowed down and made some changes in my life: 1) I don't feel like a better person 2) I'm not better to anyone around me. I'm just tired. I can find a nice 6-figure job, but can't guarantee that I'll be strong enough emotionally to support my partner. Please consider this a warning, so you don't end up like me. Making small changes and taking care of yourself is easier than damage control.
I hope I'm not too intrusive, but did you happen to quit some sort of addictive substances before that, like caffeine, nicotine, etc? Did you happen to go through a breakup or something? Or was it a super random, out of the blue kind of thing?
It's the only thing that seems to consistently work for me. When I was so emotionally overwhelmed I couldn't focus and it took me half a day to begin working, I would switch to doing pomodoros and rewarding myself for achieving a certain amount any given day. I tried punishing myself through not achieving too (via Beeminder), but that ended up worsening my emotional negative feedback loop, so I stopped.
Over the past decade, with tremendous help of my wife, I've managed to resolve some of my anxiety issues, so these days my main sources of work anxiety are: 1) trying to do a thing I have no first clue how to approach, and 2) the tension between spending time coding for money vs. doing hobby projects. If I do too much of the latter, I don't have money, but if I do too little, I burn out quickly. So I reward my work time with hobby project time. I keep a small pad on which I put a tally mark for each pomodoro spent on working. These tally marks represent pomodoros I can then spend on hobby projects (software on otherwise) guilt-free. This satisfies my emotional self, as I literally work to earn time to spend doing something else.
In practice, I end up buffering tally marks and then spending them in batches, this fits well with me being an independent contractor (I can work less today if I worked more yesterday), and also works well for the state of flow: if I have 10 pomodoros buffered up, I can let myself spend them all in 5 hours of continuous hacking.
I'd say the key thing here is getting rid of the guilt: I've agreed with myself that as long as I never exceed the accumulated pomodoro budget, I can spend it without feeling bad about not working.
(Well, the second big trick was to block HN on my router during work hours; this ensures I actually get to both earn and spend my pomodoros, instead of procrastinating here all day.)
(EDIT: Well, the third big trick, one which lets me keep anxiety down, is that I keep running journals - both personal and work - and I dump my train of thoughts straight into them whenever I start feeling even slightly anxious or confused. I almost never read them again, but the act of going through my thoughts in writing calms me down, and lets me pinpoint the sources of anxiety.)
I found this to be a key factor. I can enjoy myself as long as there are no matters unresolved.
>(EDIT: Well, the third big trick, one which lets me keep anxiety down, is that I keep running journals - both personal and work - and I dump my train of thoughts straight into them whenever I start feeling even slightly anxious or confused. I almost never read them again, but the act of going through my thoughts in writing calms me down, and lets me pinpoint the sources of anxiety.)
Reminds me of "getting things done"
I don't know why, but they work way better when hand-written
ADD/ADHD-PI is kind of a terrible name, but procrastination and a mind that never rests is a combination that while not unique, is quite uncommon outside "ADD type" brains/people.
It's not that a diagnosis is going to solve all problems instantly, but it can help avoid depression, burnout, and various secondary issues.
For me personally, I would say it brought me back to life. That's why I encourage others, because there was almost nothing left of me when I finally got the help I needed, and maybe I can help someone else take the same step someone once helped me take!
Now that I am medicated and it is mind-blowing how my life has changed. I can hold more than one thought in my head at a time, I can get back on track to what I was doing before without forgetting what I was doing, I don't sleep in until 10am anymore and I don't binge eat anymore. Consequently my self-esteem has improved dramatically too.
I'm not sure I understand; how could one not be thinking about things constantly? If I try to just sit there and think about nothing, it doesn't work. The only time when the thinking has stopped for me is while under anesthesia.
For me I day dream all the time. I don't think about anything when I play guitar. I don't think about anything when I do the dishes. I don't think about anything when I'm laying in a hammock looking at the sky. I don't really think when I'm exercising outside of "this is hard!".
Even when I'm dating someone she'll ask "What are you thinking about?" and more often then not the response is "literally nothing."
So yeah, it's definitely possible to not think about things. Maybe it's worth the cash on a therapy session just to double check? https://www.betterhelp.com/ Is a good source.
To me this sounds like the equivalent of a tooth ache for your mental health, better to get it checked now then wait.
Not having a real passion on pretty much anything, but have small impulses for pretty much EVERYTHING. Means that I wasted a lot of hours/days/weeks but didn't gain much. Plus no experience of major positive feedback makes me less and less confident.
On the other side, if it's purely from my impulse then I found it difficult to finish it.
My longest-running projects are all in active use. I maintain them because they are useful to me, and update them to fit my needs.
It's a lot harder to maintain something for an imaginary customer.
This makes sense. A lot side projects (that are not for others but just for me) only spinned from semi-interest, not for active use. This could be the reason. Someone has to use it.
One fact I found really interesting is that fear is embedded in your brain & body. A fear response is triggered immediately (30ms) even decades after the original incident. Learning to identify and resolve causes of fear can help you lower the barrier to doing your tasks. If we consider procrastination as a barrier preventing you from doing something, you can either up your will power, lower the barrier, or a combination of both. Good luck on your journey!
What I like about it is that many facts are backed by science research.
[1] https://www.amazon.ca/Mind-Numbers-Science-Flunked-Algebra/d...
Again totally recommend this video on the wall of awful for ADHD procrastination https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo08uS904Rg
When you catch a wave, you ride it out knowing that eventually it ends. And when it does, you get off the wave and paddle back out to catch another one. Repeat forever :)
Looked it up on amazon and the book was free with an audible trial. Hope it works.
There was one other book, a very short one, it's more like an excercise book really with space for you to write your answers.
Has a very "commercial" title I'd say, it's called Self Discipline in 10 days.
It's a bit of a psychological rollercoaster and but I did find it pretty effective when I went through it years ago. It will ask you to write down and articulate your biggest failures fears etc.. Try it out :)
- What is the the thing making me feel the worst at the moment? - What is the largest small thing I can do with my current energy to offset my biggest problem?
For example, one time when money was really bad and I knew I'd get some money from tax returns, I focused all my energy (to the exclusion of other things even work) on trying to get it done, which resulted in some money and reducing my pain. This allowed me to re-focus on the next small challenge that I felt I could tackle reasonably well.
Sometimes the spiral is so deep and the challenges so multidimensional that it's hard to pick on the right thread of the ball of yarn to start making progress, but it's possible.
Idea/suggestion: How about the old "delete all your emails" trick: Sell everything you have. Quit your job. Move to another place.
Having said/suggested that, I've done this email trick a couple of times and while it works wonders short term - I stop worrying about those highlighted emails I should do something about that are getting older and older - I tend to just end up in the same situation later.
But, having moved around a couple of times, it also does work wonders, as long as you keep focus on the "new you" while everything's fresh.
From experience, I suffered what a lot here describe. Used to be a lawyer, hated it, and the procrastination bled from work to my personal life. I basically stopped living for 3-4 years because I couldn't do anything. Outside of work and basic life necessities, I'd just watch Netflix, play videogames and drink
I thought quitting and moving was the answer. So I did. I found the strength to save money and study coding. After 2 years, moved to another country and am now graduating from CS and just got promoted to intermediate developer.
While life seems better because I've accomplished things, I noticed I still have the exact same feelings as soon as I stop working. I love my work now. I have a nice salary. The problem is that my issues are with me, and no external factor.
I used to blame those feelings on a boring bog, a lack of money (since I used to spend all my nice salary on bad things), a violent country... I eliminated all that, but it didn't work.
So, just a warn here. If the issue is internal, no amount of turning your external life around will change your internal feelings and problems. Work on that instead.
I moved to another country some time ago. To me, it was difficult. Starting your social life from scratch is difficult. Learning a new culture, a new language and a new bureaucracy is difficult. Buying everything again is difficult. Upping the difficulty level doesn't solve your procrastination problem, it exacerbates it.
To me, this sounds more like running away from your problems than solving them.
The second was when I studied abroad. Completely different culture and everything, allowed me to shift my personality more towards what I wanted to be, though it was sadly only temporary and when I returned back to school I slowly shifted back.
In fact, I've noticed it again. I moved back home after college (to my hometown, etc.) and started teaching at my old high school, and I'm kinda falling back into the same habits I had then, and I feel I'm almost regressing as a person in a sense. I think it's time for another change, though I also think the fact that I'm regressing is because there's some internal issues I haven't fixed.
But, overall, I think moving and taking those leaps are a good chance to get started on fixing some of those issues when you're stuck in a rut and just can't get out of it.
Nothing works.
I found BJ Fogg’s behavior model [0] useful. His model let’s you plot a behavior on a graph. If you create two plots for two behaviors, the one closest to the top-right corner is the one you will do.
Procrastination then is just choosing one behavior over another. Doing nothing over doing something. And you can plot it, and then figure out how you can position the levers (there are only 3) to make “something” the chosen behavior over “staring at the wall”.
His book Tiny Habits goes into more detail about how you might run this diagnostic process. Atomic Habits is also good here for the actionable changes, but I found Fogg’s simple model to be wickedly effective for wrangling my executive dysfunction.
Once you have a habit framework in place, you need a wholistic approach, which I would listen to the 1st question of this Q&A [1] (around 2min mark) for an example of a daily routine (which starts the night before), and in some cases professional help works wonders (therapy, medication, CBT).
In terms of rescue from the acute fog-of-anxiety, I use 3 meditation tools that, if I follow them, have never failed.
One is a general observe-and-dissipate meditation, something like Sam Harris’s course, to build awareness and the ability to pause life for a brief second so you can inject habit loop triggers.
Second is meditation for calm, using modified box breathing to mitigate acute anxiety. In each of the 4 parts of the breath (in, hold, out, hold), wait for the most pleasurable part, and repeat. Something out waiting for the moment of most pleasure is (a) mildly pleasurable and (b) very focusing.
Third is the same as the second, but taking a break after each box breath cycle to pause and acknowledge to yourself that you are moving in the right direction. I added this after hearing a neuroscientist talk about hacking the brain’s reward system using this approach: pick any goal (even if it’s short-term counterproductive), take the smallest possible physical step toward that goal, pause and acknowledge your effort toward moving in the right direction, and repeat. The pause-and-acknowledge step triggers a dopamine response, which he said has the effect of buffering or titrating adrenaline, meaning this cycle is energizing and can be sustained for a very long time compared to an acute adrenaline spike and subsequent crash. Once you get forward momentum you can redirect to a better goal, so the initial goal is rather unimportant. Just building the momentum in this dopamine reward cycle overcomes all of the crushing anxiety, negative self-talk, and so forth.
[0] https://www.behaviormodel.org/
[1] https://impacttheory.libsyn.com/ama-8121-190416-pod-for-post
Imo, it's a brain malfunction/illness. Some spectrum of ADD, some people being affected more than others. Perhaps it was useful in the millions of years of evolution, but it's counterproductive in a modern society.
Which is why I would love for (more) doctors to recognize procrastination/Attention Deficit as a real problem in itself and not just wave it away as a symptom of something else.
A real problem for which there is real, working medication, that thousands of people are happy with. But unfortunately due to the nature of these drugs, everyone shies away from it.
It's not the perfect solution, but it's a working solution. Medication would've changed my life, but I can not get it. And so I continue wasting hours, days, months and years of my life.
Not to mention it causes anxiety and depression, and they continue reinforcing each other, making things much worse.
An alternative is that the reinforcement mechanism in the brain only responds to rewards on a short timescale. The reward from procrastination (not having to face xyz) comes immediately. The punishment from procrastination (your job/life is in shambles) comes months or years later. So you end up adopting a policy of procrastination.
At the moment doing pomodoro and putting everything in kanban charts and devide&conquer seem to work somewhat. I don't really have any clever advice beyond that, it just sucks.