To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved

That's a problem though isn't it? (Serial procrastinator here). When you've got non deadline based tasks (clean up your table), and personal goals (release that side project), the mantra of two deadlines really kicks you in the butt. Since there's only an imagined deadline, it's too easy for us to push it aside and say "I'll do it soon... Not now though"

I tried to enforce them once with a precommitment service (i.e. you set up a deadline and pay money if you slip). The first missed deadline stressed me, which made me miss more deadlines, which got me even more stressed, thus missing even more deadlines, up until the point my credit card started bouncing. And mind you, this was on trivial tasks - I just couldn't overcome the anxiety and make myself do them.

I ended up an order of magnitude more miserable and in a very bad financial position for half a year. I can see how it works for people with big tolerance for stress (apparently I'm not one of them), but it's a double-edged sword.

Core to treating the disorder is

1. understanding how it particularly manifests in (you, if you indeed have it), and 2. developing foundational patterns of action to support repetitive tasks and activities throughout your day.

Talking with someone who has expertise in diagnosing the disorder can be supremely helpful. If nothing else they'll help you narrow further where those effects are stemming from if not AD/HD, and if a diagnosis does make sense, they can help you start to build the structures and patterns in your life that can help alleviate those symptoms.

Driven to Distraction by Hallowell and Ratey was supremely helpful for me in understanding the deficit better and in helping to develop strategies to overcome / shore up some deficiencies in my day-to-day.

If it causes you problems, you should use whatever means available to you to end the interference, shouldn't you? For some, it's mindfulness. For some, it's medication. For some, it's exercise. Unless you're a doctor well-versed in medical disorders, you can't evaluate if medication would help. You can try mindfulness exercises and physical exercise routines, and if it doesn't stop the feeling that something about the way your mind works causes problems, why not see a doctor?

You have the time (doesn't feel that way, with all those DUE RIGHT NOW tasks I have that are way more important) to make the appointment (and why can't they just see me today, it probably won't take that long, it's just a questionnaire, right?), drive to the doctor (and deal with all those idiots on the road who clearly can't drive as well as I can, and where did they learn the rules of the road anyway?), wait in the waiting room (didn't I just fill out all this paperwork online like they asked, trying to be efficient? Why am I doing this again? I should tell them there are better ways of doing this! And that guy coughing over there, didn't he learn to cover his mouth? Ugh, figures, reading a trash magazine, probably doesn't know any better) and talk to the doctor (who I should totally tell about the nootropics I've been reading about to see if he knows about them too and can just give me some of those and send me on my way because I've got shit to do, and it ain't gonna do itself, and OH LOOK, THAT SQUIRREL JUST JUMPED TWO FEET IN THE AIR!). It can't hurt.

Note to the reader: the parentheses indicate my own thoughts when I did this years ago. I was told later by others I've met with AD/HD that they had the same exact thoughts, and it helped them to see a doctor. I was also told by others who didn't have AD/HD that I needed to grow up, suck it up, and just do it. To me, that clarifies the difference of someone with AD/HD and someone without. Either you can identify with every single one of those things in parentheses, or you think, "of course we all think some of those things, but we put our big boy pants on and get it done; it doesn't mean you have a deficiency in your neurochemistry, it just means you have to motivate yourself a bit more to get anything done."

I don't believe it was flippant, and as I said, didn't intend it to be. As someone with AD/HD, and who's studied it intently for many years trying to better understand how it may affect my autistic son (who is also showing signs of AD/HD) I can safely say that the kind of procrastination he describes is exactly the kind of procrastination that manifests in someone with AD/HD. Having that kind of insight lets me help my son learn coping strategies before it's too late to make those kinds of changes to his brain in any meaningful way.

Frankly, the description you have given is very similar to AD/HD, especially the "I'm that fucking good" part. Yes, I know you weren't bragging, but that sense of infallibility and the letdown that invariably follows when your abilities don't manifest ... I'm guessing it sours you to the project you're working on? Can't seem to direct yourself back to it to care again like you did when you were focused on it the first time? Anxious to find something else that's more interesting where you can prove what a rockstar you are? That rush when you pull that rabbit out of the hat, feels good, doesn't it? Dopamine is great, when you do something that creates enough of it that your brain feels rewarded. For many, it doesn't take much. For many people with AD/HD, the last minute YOLO cramming/programming/building/working session is what it takes to feel like we're doing anything worthwhile.

You are right - diagnosing ADHD is for professionals as it can be complex to separate out from several other diagnoses. But lets look at what you just wrote:

- Lack of awareness or concern for timelines until immediate consequences loom.

- Inability to control focus if not emotionally invested. (So-called hyperfocus is much part of ADHD as is non-focus).

These are both things that would light up an ADHD scoreboard. They're almost direct quotes from the literature, and if you spoke to a group of ADHD people they would recognize them immediately.

People with ADHD have many explanations for "why" they are this way. A lifetime of rationalization does not make it not so. So perhaps talk to an ADHD specialist - it can make a huge difference in your life, and your loved ones.

Ask someone diagnosed in later life, say, over 40, if they would have preferred to not be rationalizing and suffering the consequences over the last 20 to 30 years.

Honestly, your description of yourself sounds like ADHD. Unfortunately, ADHD is a very poor name, because it really is not about an inability to pay attention. Hyperfocus is very common in people like myself who have ADHD. ADHD manifests itself as an inability to pay attention to things that are uninteresting or not engaging, an inability to change focus when appropriate, and difficulty with time perception and management.

Like yourself, until diagnosed, I would have never considered ADHD a possibility because I would regularly focus intently on a programming project or random wikipedia rabbit hole for hours and hours at a time, often skipping meals and staying up until the early hours of the morning. But it turns out these trances of hyperfocus are typical for many ADHD sufferers. There are different flavors of ADHD. I never experienced the hyperactivity that often leads to diagnosis in children.

Keep in mind that one of the requirements for diagnosis in the DSM is impairment in social, academic or occupational function. In my case, spurts of hyperfocus routinely kept me from maintaining healthy sleep, diet, and hygiene routines, and ADHD also prevented me from doing homework and chores that were uninteresting. Unfortunately, there are precious few people who are able to exclusively focus on whatever engages their fancy at the moment. For me, it was debilitating.

Check out the video brazzledazzle posted above. You'll learn ADHD is way more nuanced than the popular understanding.

Eliminating certain sites and eliminating the internet is basically the same thing for me. As a programmer, I'm always on the internet researching problems and solutions. I don't count that because it's not an instant fix, it's the work I put into getting the fix, which is solving my problem and seeing my program work.

I'm tempted to start consuming the internet solely through my kindle (again, just the instant fix sites: hn, reddit, facebook). It would slow my consumption way down and I'd only be able to use it when I'm not working. But, I need to find a way to stick to that and not also read HN and Reddit while I'm at the work computer. The only tried and true solution I've found for that is to get an accountability buddy. I tried to do that once in person with co-workers (I offered to give them $20 if they can catch me consuming caffeine), but in the end they were uncomfortable taking my money. The next step is researching those accountability buddy startups, where you give money to an organization you hate if you fail.

I tried a lot of things and the only thing that seem to be working is putting all websites on HOST file (Win/Sys32/Driver/etc) and blocking them there. I block all addictive sites all week except Friday Night and weekend. It worked for 2 consecutive weeks. Today I got another laptop and can't do the blocking (don't have admin rights), so I'm back to surfing again.

Hum, interesting. I guess I always thought it was his because he actually developed very similar ideas in his essay "In Praise of Idleness"[1].

[1] http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

To clarify, Tim LeBon's book is the Achieve Your Potential book.

Meditation will follow the same principles regardless of the specific techniques or tradition. The reason is that there isn't much to it. When you come down to it, there isn't much difference among Zen (Chan), Vipassana, Insight, Taoist shengong meditations, etc. This is because they all touch on the same ground of being (emptiness). (And yes, you'll find this in Western traditions and indigenous tribal traditions).

The exercises that will have the most variants are concentration exercises, usually some sort of one-point concentration on a sensory object -- sight, sound, touch, kinesthetics, taste, smell, etc., tangible or untangible in varying forms of abstractions. Journeying methods (where you visualize a space, or say, in Gestalt therapy where you allow fragments of your persona to embody) are variations on concentration techniques. Despite the emotional connotation of the word 'concentration' (which usually mean, some sort of pressure, stress, or force), skill in concentration has more to do with relaxing than stressing.

Kundalini yoga is interesting because you'd have to distinguish between Kundalini Yoga (tm) (the specific lineage of Kundalini yoga promoted by a genius in marketing) and kundalini yoga (the class of practices or yoga designed to awaken shakti and kickstart the Kundalini process). I don't know the details of your practice, but I wouldn't doubt that you would find them helpful. If you are arousing energy, then you will start surfacing up buried emotions, memories, habits, etc. and a complete system will also include methods on dealing with it. If nothing else, there is simply "sitting through it", and that is where it intersects the mindfulness practices like vipassana or insight.

Does this help?

@kinlyd glad that helps.

In my experience, the feelings that arise leading up to the practice time were exactly the feelings that arise leading to procrastination. One day, I found myself putzing around, avoiding the cushion, and knew that the practice has already started.

What worked for me were a number of small things:

(1) Dedicating a space for practice. When I first started, I dropped a cushion right next to my bed so I would trip over it when I woke up and trip over it when I slept. Formally dedicating a space, even if it is a small corner, helps a lot when you are first trying to establish a discipline.

(2) Dedicating a time. When I first started out, I was a night owl. I still am; but a lot of the night owl thing comes from -- you guessed it -- procrastinating on sleep. So I formally dedicated the time right before bed for practice; that, no matter how late, how tired, how fuzzy I was, I was going to sit before I crawled into bed. (A year or two in, I naturally shifted to a morning practice; by then, I feel off if I didn't practice something each day).

(3) Gamification worked well for me, though beware going to the extreme. Eventually, one of the things you start stripping away from your mind is responding to the reward/punishment triggers. I used a streak calendar. I took page from Kickstarter. I knew that I have a tendency to go overboard in excitement and then try to do as much the next day, fail, feel ashamed/guilty about failing, and the dropping off from the practice. So I would have three levels of practice:

The nominal practice time. In the beginning that was 5 minutes. I might not be able to do 10, or 20, but how hard it is to do "just" 5 minutes right before bed?

Stretch goals: if I went further, I'd consider it a stretch goal. Completely optional. In other words, the next day, the practice goal still resets to my nominal goal. If it happens I reach that stretch goal, then that's ok, but it's ok if I didn't. (If you practice correctly, you would know that there are a lot of things that arises from waiting to achieve stretch goals -- anxiety, shame, guilt, etc. the usual suspects).

Token effort: over time (months), I started ratcheting up my nominal practice to longer and longer lengths of time. I tend to do it when I'm regularly hitting stretch goals effortlessly. However, I left room to be lazy. I allowed myself a "token effort", the absolute minimum I can do. It's set around 5 minutes. (These days, "token effort" has more to do with the quality of my mindfulness rather than length of time). I knew early on that, just like stretch goals, some days ... my mind is tricking me into persuading me into skipping for the day, and I counter with "well, why not just do a token effort". Then when I do it, end up going past the token effort and it turns into a regular sit length.

(4) Other side of gamification -- social cues. (Ever read a book called "The Talent Code"? If Malcolm Gladwell popularized the notion of "10,000" hours of practice, "The Talent Code" speaks about how to get there). In the Buddhist tradition, this would be the sangha, that is, fellow like-minded people also on this journey, although they might not be traveling the same path. Opensit.com is a great example. You log your time there and people help each other stay with the sit, as well as comment on when difficulties start arising.

If you seriously want to establish a practice, my suggestion is to start at the basic: just getting yourself on the cushion consistently every day. Focus on the process, not the results. No one will ever give you a gold star for attaining enlightenment (seriously, no one will give you a gold star for attaining enlightenment). There are interesting states you can reach in meditation, but if you cling to those states and you're not aware that you are clinging to those states, you're not really practicing impeccably, are you? (You could also cling to the process, turn it into an empty ritual, but for most people, the issue usually lies in getting started).

Hope that helps.

Looks nice, I'll have a look at one of the clones for vim.

exactly.

Observing is the foundational skill. Expression is secondary and not what it is cracked up to be.

I've found that most of the time, people don't want to know what you are feeling. They want to know that you are feeling what they are feeling. The most crudest form of that is mirroring techniques, but that's actually not necessary and can be detrimental. It's a bandaid because the person is ignorant or unskilled in healing.

There is a Sanskrit word called "dukkha" that doesn't have an easy English cognate. The closest would be "existential anguish", something that lies underneath every single experience.

There is a particular way of opening yourself up to someone else's dukkha that I've found extremely effective. It's at that point, you forget about yourself ("this isn't about you"), and you drop all your psychological armoring, shielding, interpretations, etc. When I am mindful enough to remember to do that, people tend to walk away feeling better, even if I never say anything. Just listen.

Being able to do that requires meditation, and you first start with observing emotions as they come and go. It does not end there. At some point, you directly experience the insight that your self is an illusion, that this existential misery underlies everything and you cannot escape, and that the ground of being is emptiness. It's at that point you can listen to the dukkha.

So... what's the alternative? Depression is another common behavior pattern/mode that "must have evolved for a reason". And sure, there might be a benefit to depression that is yet unnoticed. But since based on the current information it's so bad, treating it anyway makes sense. It's pretty implausible to somehow verify there are no benefits from procrastination, and it clearly causes problems for people (from their own and other's perspectives). That seems like something to attempt to solve. It's not like every single mental/biological feature must be beneficial somehow, that's not actually how evolution works. It might be, we can't "prove" otherwise, but we kind of have to work with what we have until there's a complete map of human neural structures or something.

> It would have to be proven to be pretty effective.

Good point. Just imagine and assume that this cure is the most effective cure available w/a success rate of 100% without knowing further details.