The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself
digest.bps.org.uk
digest.bps.org.uk
I think the worst explanation for procrastination I've come across is that it's caused by not truly enjoying the activity that is being procrastinated upon. But if that were really the case, then the remainder of my life would be spent sitting in a chair reading useless articles online.
Other questionable explanations I've stumbled across include: being unable to bond empathetically with your future self, that the procrastinator's brain has a [insert neurotransmitter of choice] deficit, that fear of failure keeps one from starting, that too much is tackled at once, and so on.
When I try to recall what has given me the greatest sense of fulfillment in life, everything I can think of is something I worked really hard to achieve. That which contents me momentarily does not seem to coincide with that which provides overall life contentment. I don't necessarily seek happiness — I would rather have demanding work that positively impacts the world over some job that allows me to surf online all day.
What's funny is that I procrastinate only with regard to intellectual activities — not physical ones. Getting myself to exercise is no trouble at all. But prodding myself to finish a VPTree implementation... that's much more difficult. My hypothesis is that I procrastinate on those things that I was naturally good at during childhood. Academically, I was decently above average (well, at least up until college), so I never had to study. I always completed homework at the last second before it was due, and I crammed most of my test studying into the night before the exam and then promptly forgot the material as soon as I walked out of the classroom (as I'm sure many of you have noticed, this "strategy" doesn't work nearly as well in college, and it fails dramatically in grad school).
On the other hand, when it came to sports, it was pretty much a guarantee that (at least initially) I would naturally be the worst out of everyone participating. I was determined to improve though, so I developed training schedules and religiously followed them until I got the results I wanted. I think that habit has stuck with me, and I still have no trouble starting an exercise regimen.
^^^ my thoughts exactly.
- Removed myself from things that enable procrastination; I installed software (Coldturkey) that blocks websites and programs on my computer(games), and I won't be able to change the configuration of Coldturkey for another couple weeks.
- I have a calendar next to my work area, I get a red X on days that I do a reasonable amount of work; I got this from Jerry Seinfeld's method of getting better at something, "Don't break the chain!" of red X's.
- I often ask myself "what sort of person do you want to be? Do you want to be remembered as someone that did a half-assed job most of the time? Or do you want to be remembered as someone that killed it any chance he got?"; that sometimes gives me a little push to get stuff done.
- I am always behind in my mind.
- I've been working on making a habit of following through to the end anything that I am tasked with; I have unfinished stuff but there is less than there used to be.
This is just what I've come up with for myself. It's just come down to not trusting myself, so I try to make it so I don't have to.
I think I'm realizing I bite off chunks that are too big, then freeze up when I feel overwhelmed
Very wise words in my experience. I think of it more as understanding yourself and setting yourself up for success. Make it hard to do the things you want to avoid and easy to do the things you want to embrace. If I have healthy food premade on hand I'm more likely to eat it rather than pick up a cookie from coffee shop down street. If I'm meeting my buddy to work out or surf I'm way less likely to skip it. Recognizing that you're unlikely to change established behaviors easily and having a plan to reward behaviors you want to cultivate and reduce the ones you want to get rid of.
Having kids particularly drove this home. Setting them up for success with good sleep, good food and a good environment of activities makes a world of difference for them and turns out same is true for myself.
For example, if I smoked a cigarette and ate poorly, to keep that day at 50% I'd need to exercise and do (home or project) work done. If there was a day where I didn't want to exercise, I'd have to do at least 2 of the other things.
Like most people in this thread, I know I can't trust myself to be perfect, so I give myself outs. I can do whatever I want, so long as I pay for it elsewhere.
I think that may work well for me when it comes to work. I'm not sure it would be sustainable when it comes to food or exercise, but there's no reason I can't get a reasonable amount of work done every day at work.
there are apps of all kinds so you can always mark off a day.
I think procrastination is a kind of anxiety. We enjoy the creative parts and fear the complexities of debugging that monster when it's 99% done. We need to switch back to enjoyment to get in the flow. That means doing things you like, instead of things you should do, but we can be smart and try to combine the two things.
Another example: I had to work on an old script that was really ugly and messy. I took a day to refactor the old codebase, clean it up, just so I don't see it as a scary monster any more. Then I was much more likely to work on it.
It's just how I work, and I've forgiven myself for it.
In the past I couldn't even have games installed on my computer for fear of getting sucked in for hours on end. Now I don't have to worry, I can be productive and still enjoy games at the end of the day.
Highly recommended for people that work from their personal computers.
I actually believe in this, though it's a somewhat far-fetched conjecture. There is some talk in psychology about "will power" being a scarce resource, though professionals are unsure why. But maybe human brains aren't made for keeping a thought for long. The need to procrastinate then would be like a homeostatic response from the brain saying "these neurons have been firing for too long, shut them off". But whereas diligent people leave for a cup of coffee and some fresh air, the procrastinator keeps the idea at the back of his head and goes check HN.
As for "forgiving youself", it could be something as little as acknowledging that I did indeed spend 40 minutes wikidiving by my own will, and not because of a little demon residing in my head. Low belief in free-will and self-efficacy spoil one's mood.
Anyway, I think mental tasks take much more energy than physical tasks, so what you are saying makes sense. Also, I've noticed that many tasks require an "activation energy", meaning that once you have started on a task, it doesn't take so much energy anymore, and it even becomes fun. The trick is to get over that initial hill first.
Even though, at an intellectual level, I know that taking any step is better than no step, I freeze up over-analysing whether it's the right step, and fatigue myself. The natural reaction is to procrastinate by taking my attention away from the stress causing decision, even though the stress is totally sourced internally.
But, like I said, it's probably different for a lot of people.
For myself I've found someone who is above me in our org, even though they aren't particularly technical. I can take them these problems, they'll hear me explain why I think X is a good direction, or why it's better than Y (even though I'm uncertain of the outcome). They will ask sensible questions (costs, risks etc) and approve the direction, eg "then I want you to pursue option X, and come back to me when you hit unexpected circumstances".
This person can be anyone that you feel some ultimate responsibility towards - in a one-person startup perhaps it's your significant other, as you owe it to them to be efficient and effective (and not wasting time procrastinating).
What do you think of the following Idea that I'll get around to launching at some point... when I am done procrastinating:
A service that is like any normal Executive Assistant services -- but focused on helping procrastinators:
"What is the thing you're putting off? OH - its your tax issues? Well - we will meet with you confidentially and get all the details and make the calls for you and fill out the forms... and include you on each step that you need to either literally talk to someone yourself - or sign a piece of paper."
"Oh, you havent been able to do that thing with the DMV? We got you covered."
And I need to get the fuck off the internet. It's simultaneously the best and worst thing to ever happen in my life. I procrastinated before the internet, but there's no doubt that the internet is the main driver of my procrastination right now.
Late one Sunday evening drinking session, a bloke I know ordered another round of spirits. "Don't you have a big day at work tomorrow? You're going to be ruined" -> "That's 'Tomorrow Tom's' problem. Tomorrow Tom hates Today Tom. Tomorrow Tom thinks he's an arsehole"...
Solving procrastination has become a sort of my own personal overcoming. Self-motivation is one of the core problems of life that everyone has to solve, I feel. Forgiving myself is just one of the tactics in my arsenal.
For me, I see the ideal of me doing anything I set my mind to, easily, without loss of energy or "motivation" (in fact transcending these concepts), and that is so tantalizing, and I am so naturally not good at that, it becomes a great target of Overcoming for me, and has an effect of having a constant but large reduction in procrastination.
Given that, I found a very simple method to do away with being unproductive while still getting a decent dose of procrastinating. Simply, I started to enrich any activity that tops the to-do list with an element I enjoy about pondering/procrastinating. For me it works repeatedly. I'll give you three examples.
1) On doing the tax-filing. Instead of plunging right into, I thought of people I'd like to contact anyway and make a cross-section of who just recently did that or sports an expertise in that. In my case it was my brother (we usually don't connect too often). Besides enjoying talking about side-topics, I learnt tax rules new to me. Namely, some step-functions where different social security fees apply. Very worthwhile!
2) Physical workout. I'd have a better body and probably mind as well, if I could stick to a rigorous schedule. Now, I like to engulf myself in curiosities from time to time as well. Easy fix: moving the workout session to Venice Beach. Jogging there, some calisthenics plus absorbing new (mostly human) attractions in one sweep!
3) Getting "work" done. I needed to implement this iteration of an ML algorithm. There was no particular deadline. However, knowing that starting soon would yield a better outcome irrespective of any other factor, I decided to procrastinate by researching on sources I would like to read anyhow. That became hackernews quite recently. So instead of randomly reading posts (like this one, lol), I put in keywords of ML into the search box and sort by date. Et' voila.
Conclusion: find out what is it that fancies you about your urge to procrastinate at this exact moment and then draw a link to what you should do. It works.
Oh and here is example 4) I should now follow-up with a dozen of new acquaintances and prepare to meet them for dinner tonight. But I'm on HN right now. So I decided to take the insight from this discussion and use it as a topic for tonight's dinner. Be gentle, be curious and be interesting to people that matter!
What's helped me deal with procrastination is, to keep a backwards list of things I have done.
I used to make a timetable, plan my work ahead, and always end up not following it.
I then did it the other way around, now I think about the work I have to do, just pick it up and start working, once I am done with my work, I write it on a notebook I carry around with me all day.
Its now like a part of my life, I even write down things like, "had a shower", "bought bread". I have noticed I have become really productive compared to the person from around 7 months ago. I am really happy as a person, and when ever I have a doubt if I have done enough work, my note book is there to tell me how much I have done.
I guess this is one of those carrot and stick things in this case, a self-governed carrot and stick I guess.
I think most programmers can relate to this feeling when you consider that amazing feeling you get after a whole night of debugging and seeing it run beautifully. I feel like this backwards list is also something like that. Looking forward to seeing that book fill up is making me do the work, and seeing all the work I have done lets me feel accomplished.
And I don’t get to be disappointed by plans that never worked out.
It's always good to take time off when you have earned it, you'll come back twice the hard worker than you were before.
I am the procrastination type, but I have lots of friends who aren't, and I've watched too many of them burn themselves out. Some of them are miles smarter than me, and far more hard-working, but my innate laziness and procrastination have actually given me an edge.
I came back and became the exact opposite - by a very substantial degree. It felt like I was 20 again: I had all the brains, guts and dedication that got me hired in the first place.
Burn out can really mess you up - far worse than being a plain-old incompetent bad hire.
Sometimes you can't.
Do floor managers in factories let their machines go to rack and ruin? No, they maintain them and leave is how you perform maintenance on humans.
Most organizations designed by and made of humans are inefficient and ineffective.
If you always bail on (quit for managers, fire for subordinates) people who are fuck ups I feel like you'd have a hard time staying fed / keeping the lights on -- but maybe I'm just unlucky in my professional experience so far.
If I rationally decide to say "I forgive myself for having slacked off", I'm not sure I'll actually feel forgiven deep inside. I strongly suspect, however, that self-forgiveness can be difficult but can be practiced.
Does anyone here have experience to share? Did anyone ever consciously practice self-forgiveness? It seems like an interesting approach to me.
It was when I got into industry, and instead was posed with the equation of "If I didn't rush, I would have done better work, and more effectively used the time of the people paying me", which had enough external variables that the need to change became pressing. I used (and still use) the feelings of guilt at wasting my bosses time, the feelings of falling behind in my skill/learnings, and dominatingly (as I get older) the feeling of "There just isn't enough time in the day" to force myself off of procrastination every time I notice myself doing it too much.
Take this with the context that I've never been one for positive reinforcement. Seeing my own flaws and failings drives me far more than getting a pat on the back. I think you hit the nail on the head re: rationality, as that I don't think I _could_ forgive myself even if I tried, I wouldn't really internalize believing it in a way that would impact my behavior.
(And aptly, I've now procrastinated enough in writing this, and need to be back to reading docs :) )
In terms of motivating myself by negatives instead of positives, that's something I've put literally decades in trying to adjust and something I'm not sure I'll ever break myself of. It's too useful in other areas (looking critically at my own code, looking critically at problem spaces, being unbiased in introspection) that as with the OPs point of not truly internalizing something despite agreeing logically that "X should be this way", I'm not sure I could truly internalize looking at things in a positive light.
http://digital.heartsintrueharmony.com/catalog/learningtolov...
The exercises will either feel very cheesy or move you to tears.
Procrastination, like other problems of self-improvement, is multilayered. Some of my friends who constantly agonize over their productivity levels confound me, because often from my vantage point they seem perfectly well adjusted, if not for the constant feeling like they should be doing more. Other times procrastination is a response to stress or trauma that needs to be addressed on its own. Some kinds of distraction are arguably more of a reflection of changes in our culture than individual pathologies. Sometimes you just need an egg timer. Sometimes human beings are just garden-variety imperfect.
At the risk of venturing in cheesy territory, I'd recommend checking out Brene Brown's TED talks on vulnerability and shame, if you're not already familiar with them.
http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame?lang...
E.g. if someone was addicted to drugs, and managed to go clean, they are more likely to forgive themselves (and others to forgive them) than those who just keep taking drugs, right?. Any 5 years old will tell you that if the bully started becoming nice, it will be easier to forgive them than if they stayed a bully. forgiving oneself is not that different than forgiving others, and if you correct your ways, it's easier to forgive yourself, just as much as it is easier for others to forgive you. no? what am I missing?
Consider first a cat: it sleeps (in the warmest place it can find, but not too hot) until it is either hungry or bored or someone shows up to amuse it. Then it hunts prey, plays with it, possibly eats it. Repeat.
I believe the human (at least male human) version of this algorithm is roughly: sleep when tired, otherwise absent some imminent threat (see below) work on various plans directed toward having sex in the future, otherwise go figure out the world. Imminent threats (hunger, leaking roof, dangerous predators, "sprint" deadlines...) trigger immediate and focused activity.
I think this explains procrastination and pretty much everything else: doing things like the VPTree implementation doesn't rise to the level of dealing with an imminent threat (unless someone needs to ship it in a product tomorrow), and it doesn't fall into the category of "figure out the world" because you already know how said trees work and are used well enough. And of course it isn't terribly sexy, most of the time.
The technique is simple: with my eyes close, I orient my inner sight (including my eyeballs) to look at the middle of my forehead and then just sense any sensation that appears in that spot. It feels like a kind of pressure or energy building up in the forehead.
The eye trick is good for focusing my attention there. It takes 10 minutes to get my PFC into gear, then I can work like a robot for a whole day.
This spot in the middle of the forehead is called Ajna Chakra and in yoga is considered the "command and control" center. When it is stimulated, it allows for better emotional control.
My "fix" has been to create external pressure somehow. Want to learn something? Sign up to a course that has hard deadlines. Want to build something? Tell someone about it and offer to show them a draft by a certain date. It seems to work for me.
At the very least, one could argue that inability to forgive oneself could in some cases be indicative of, say, depression. Perhaps self-confidence is simply what helps one succeed?
The 'bad' part is it still feels like perpetual failure. Even if I do 10x more in a day than I did 5 years ago, I only did 40% of my perfect day. I never feel satisfied. It's depressing.
So if you're willing to sacrifice mental health for productivity, try my system. Maybe it will work better for you. Maybe it's worthwhile in the short term.
"By contrast, in guilt we’re not truly interested in healing. Most of our energy is committed to the internalized child-parent (or adolescent-parent) conflict that allows us to indulge in doing “it”—whatever we “shouldn’t” be doing—and to justify continuing to do “it,” we have to keep the threat of parental punishment (from ourselves or from others) hanging over our heads, so that we can, in a sense, “wipe the slate clean” after our misdeed.
To work with your guilt, bring as much attention as possible to the shame that has become locked into guilt’s framework. Stay with that shame, exploring it and your history with it, approaching the shamed you with as much compassion as you can. Don’t let your inner critic trespass here. As you do this work, you will feel the childish side of guilt fleshing out more. Embrace that side and protect it, just as you would a shamed, frightened child." Robert Augustus Masters.
There is no cure for procrastination.
However, I have a similar method to the article for dealing with "blocking" issues such as feeling overwhelmed or just don't want to pick up the phone to take an ass chewing. Sometimes you just have to let go. You screwed up. Live up to the mistake and move on rather than continue to let it eat you up and cause problems for everyone else involved. Be honest, work out a way to move forward and pass the torch to someone else if you have to.
Many believe their self-worth is tied to personal accomplishments.
This trips you up because procrastination creates a negative feedback loop where the lack of action creates anxiety that increases inaction.
If you can't follow the mantra that you should "forgive yourself" because it feels to corny it might be easier to think:
The most effective thing for me to do right now is to forgive myself because the time I spend beating myself up is energy wasted.
This might be less elegant then just simply forgiving yourself but it might work.
See: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18009/49
"Keep forgiving yourself and keep working.", "Guilt is rarely a constructive force, and it can lead you to make bad decisions to compensate.", "forgiving yourself only works if you trust yourself".
(Not to mention that they appear to be treating number assignments for a "strong agree <-> strongly disagree" Likert scale as actual numbers and doing things like averaging them. Ick.)