juzerali

WSJ is even worse. You have to call their US number to cancel the subscription. I haven't been able to cancel it since 3 months.

In those stern points, there is some farm good existential advice.

It was high time for someone to put it in perspective and thankfully someone has. Managing to do lists or calendars are no substitute to living an authentic life.

It might help to understand from where does the stress of procrastinating originate. My hypothesis is that it comes from the procrastinator getting hung up on a "desired outcome". Procrastinator expects certain reward in lieu of his work, for instance making someone feel a certain way about them. But they realise how unlikely the exact outcome is. Inability, perceived or real, of managing with even slightly different outcomes is what causes the stress in the first place. Then later, the guilt works as double whammy for the procrastinator.

Here is where I disagree with the article. Taking first step might be a stimulant, but not a solution. It might cause further stress when it becomes clearer that the desired outcome is more unlikely. Possible solution might be to let go of desire to control the world and people who are going to be affected by the work. Building confidence in oneself, trusting others, and self awareness are the only way out.

I too don't have any side projects primarily because I find creating projects is a slower way of learning. The fastest is reading documentation, books etc. Creating side projects doesn't guarantee that you will learn anything more than what you already know. Looking at codebases of high quality frameworks/libraries, reading books about best practices, taking online courses are some of the faster ways of learning.