Procrastination is more about managing emotions than time: study
bbc.com
bbc.com
Defeating this is a real challenge and requires serious conscious effort. People who have reputation as "doers" often gain it by finding the "good enough" target and driving towards it. Many "do nothings" are really people who have an overdeveloped desire to "do it right" and can't overcome it.
It's absolutely a matter of emotional control.
People often wonder why I ask not only so many questions but so many detailed ones when we are working on a project from scratch where I possess none of the information and the people asking me to code things for them hold all of that information, know I need it, and yet somehow do not recognize that I can not conjure up a website magically with the knowledge from their heads, or inboxes, or asses -- who really knows?
-anon
There's also a somewhat hidden emotional/mental toll with procrastination. When I procrastinate it weighs on me and causes stress. I'm reminded of this quote from Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar:
Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.
The genius and the mortal instruments
Are then in council, and the state of man,
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.
https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/juliuscaesar/p...
I'm also reading a book at the moment about the history of prime numbers. Both Gauss and Reimann were such perfectionists that they didn't publish (not archive) proofs they claimed to have. There is evidence they knew much more than they let on because it wasn't up to their high standards.
This is a vicious practice because once a discovery is skipped over it can be devilishly hard to discover later on, it's too easy to overlook, since no fresh result people are eager to work with ever points toward it. I think a occult Gauss discovery still inhibits our understanding of quantum mechanics, for example, to this day. I don't offer to support this paragraph at this time, however.
I've found that it especially comes from the knowledge of knowing how much work it'll take to undo something that's done the wrong way, and being afraid of that extra work and wanting to avoid it. But every time I've overcome it, it's been because I finally remember how very little time it'll take to do both the mostly-okay solution now and the better solution later, if I just stop worrying about it.
On the other hand, getting things out the door has been a major motivator. I'm inspired by the quote "real artists ship" (more than "perfect is the enemy of the good"). If it helps, I'm also try to recite the Dune litany against fear and Gunpei Yokoi's "lateral thinking from withered technology" as mantras to keep me moving forward.
Also listening to mp3s, surfing the web, and remembering how they've displaced nearly every other digital format because they're "good enough" is also a useful reminder.
Makes sense to me when stated like that.
There is another situation where procrastination kicks in and the above does not work: when I do have some weird, "code smell style" feelings about blind spots in my approach but things need to subconsciously percolate until I get a a-ha moment. In such scenarios I should not work on the thing and do something entirely different as if I try to force myself into it then consciousness and subconsciousness seem to deadlock each other on a shared mutex.
Here is an example: I'm learning Chinese. Instead of finding a perfect course, studying rigorously for a set of daily hours; I'm doing it the loose way: Anki for 30-40 minutes per day. Any time of the day. Try to do it every other day though. The odd "easy chinese" videos on Youtube. Usually in the toilet. The odd Cousera courses. Taking a 4H/week local supervised course.
Setting a more realistic goal: To be able to talk average conversational Chinese in two years. Doing that for two years. So far I'm picking in up in two different fields. It should work if I stick to the routine (I keep doing Anki, going to the local course, being engaged in odd videos, maybe start socializing in some chinese communities, etc...)
I think another aspect is setting relatively possible expectation: Instead of trying to learn conversational chinese in an accelerated 3 months course, I'm going for 2 years. Result is the same with the difference that: 1. It is more likely to happen and 2. My life/work/other stuff won't be in a halt until I finish the aggressive chinese course.
I'll report back my experiment results... probably in a couple years though.
Those who value a creation against the vacuum that exists will push for output. Those who measure a creation against the perfection that could be, do not want to get stuck with the tyranny of “good enough” and will delay for perfection.
Both approaches are right in their own way, and owing to fundamental value differences, neither can convince the other about the “right” way.
I have started reading the angular tutorial, and you're right that it's emotionally very disturbing. There are many files, some sophisticated design pattern I have no understanding of their existence and utility.
On top of that I don't really understand the mission I have been given.
So I'm doing vague work, with a technology which I don't like and don't really understand the philosophy.
Suffice it to say that I have all the good circumstances to procrastinate. Most troubling thing for me is that I have been in this situation for about 2 months now, I have quickly talked about procrastinating to HR some time ago, and yet nobody is really bugging me. I guess I should try to tell my superior to give me a more concrete work to do, or at least give me precise constraints.
What's even weirder is that I feel bad for being in this position, somehow it makes me vulnerable and sensitive, like I could be judged for slacking, but on the other hand, I'm not being reprimanded or told about it.
Does "this is fine" look like perfectionism? https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/08/05/us/05onfire1_xp/0...
My own experience/struggle confirms, and I concur 100%.
A viable solution to this problem would bring immense life transformation / healing / success.
this also eerily applies to shipping software. the launch date is repeatedly "put off another day" while trying to build the perfect product with no customers...
little life hack gems we collectively discover is what makes HN great.
(1)I see a direct correlation between how much people care about the outcome of something, and procrastination.
People that treat their work as just something they do 9-5 then switch off, are detached from the outcome for the project or the client never procrastinate. People that care do. I think this goes in the direction of the article.
(2) People that are stronger at analysis,able to grasp complex systems and the effects of changes, are much more likely to suffer from procrastination than those that are less apt at this. This is often confused with perfectionism. In my experience procrastinators are not looking for perfection, but are looking for a course of action that will have a reduced negative outcome. This would be in line with the general 'loss-aversion' [1] bias from psychology.
Tangent: Procrastination is often presented as a symptom of depression, but my personal feeling is that the causation is reversed. Procrastination is a symptom looking for but not finding good solutions. As such it is a lot more likely to be encountered in engaged, intelligent people. Depression can be a consequence of the stress built up overtime by that process. So you are not procrastinating because you are depressed, procrastination is a precursor to depression
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/20180...
Yeah, I noticed that too, and always was surprised about it. I've never seen a detached 9-5er procrastinate. In the field of programming, the only procrastinators I know are those who show some actual interest in the field beyond getting their paycheck.
> Procrastination is often presented as a symptom of depression, but my personal feeling is that the causation is reversed. Depression can be a consequence of the stress built up overtime by that process.
That... resonates. It seems that it's usually prolonged procrastination that destroys me emotionally, not bad emotional state causing me to procrastinate.
The only thing that has helped me is to break tasks down and use Pomodoros to track time. It creates some accountability and sense of progress that, I guess, provides enough pressure to motivate me. For the disappointment, I just have to remind myself that it almost always takes three tries to get something really right and try to focus on taking satisfaction in learning from errors rather than focusing on the sense of disappointment.
Some amphetamines would probably help, though. ;)
Amphetamines can help. What they actually do, at least for me, is raise the stakes. Imagine hyper-focusing on procrastinating.
I think that's a pretty good rule to incorporate for many cases. After three effortful tries stop working on it no matter what. Learn from it and move on to the next one. I like to remind myself of pottery and quantity over quality [1].
[1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/quantity-always-trumps-quality...
As an aside, I'd love to procrastinate significantly. It doesn't make me happy anymore. I've read the books, read the articles, tried the Pomodoro Technique, nothing. I don't think I have ADHD, since I can concentrate fine, just never on what I am meant to be concentrating on.
Based on what you’ve said, I recommend watching the first 20 minutes, and continuing with it if it strikes you as relevant:
Everyone can relate to the experience of lacking the focus to perform an un-stimulating task, and to the experience of procrastination - and so that often leads to the kind of blasé reaction you offer here (no offense). This is a very harmful kind of attitude.
Everyone can relate to the feeling of being sad too - that doesn't mean we're all suffering from depression. Most people can relate to the experience of drinking too much. But they aren't all alcoholics.
It's when the degree of such behaviors/states-of-mind become so prevalent and unshakable as to be destructive and harmful in a person's life, that they become disorders.
It's only when that person can no longer function in a healthy way that it becomes a mental disorder.
And for many of us we slip in and out of it.
Even activities that are risky, drinking or skydiving, can be a part of a healthy and functional person.
And everyone anecdotes about how they "beat" that by doing some random activity, life is long. Keep beating it, but don't judge those that are affected by it. Just wait a decade and you very well may be the same situation. Life is all about kindness, however you can be kind, do it.
Make a list of things that interest you, that you want to get done, and break each one down into a set of smaller tasks necessary to get that thing done. It doesn't have to be perfect initially, just make the initial list over the course of a day and rank order the tasks by how easy you think they will be to accomplish.
The next morning pick one task off the top of the list and either work on that task or think about how to better define the task to make it easier, this will often involve breaking it further down into smaller tasks. Some of the tasks will be easier to work on in sets, and some will be dependent on others. You can also pick a different task if you want, it is totally up to you.
As you finish a task, move it to the bottom of the list, mark it as complete, and make notes on what you did and additional paths to pursue. Typically this step will inspire additional things that you would like to get done, so add those as new tasks to the top of the list and reorder those tasks at the end of the day.
To make this easy for yourself, you will need to reserve 20-30 minutes at the end of each day to update the list, marking and describing accomplished tasks, adding new ones, and sorting the list.
Windows Sticky Notes is the perfect thing for this as it auto-saves (still backup though) has minimal editing features and is always there for you :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_sensitivity
That isn't by itself enough to effectively regulate emotion in oneself. You need to cultivate the habit of checking on yourself (how am I? right now? and just before?), understanding what is needed and making the adjustment. All three parts have to fire, or it won't work.
Mindfulness is the first part, awareness is the second, but then you need to actually go ahead and change how you feel, and for that you'll need some breathing exercise or medication. Eating right and exercising helps a lot with this.
The one thing that really does the trick though is to get something out there and start having paying customers. Then you know that if you procrastinate you'll lose them and that the best motive to do the work that anyone can find.
I've been a procrastinator for as long as I remember, and have the following problem I struggle with: whenever I try to force myself to do a task - like any task that isn't fun or just following curiosity - I feel this strong emotional block. The more I force myself, the stronger it gets, quite often turning into powerful anxiety, and sometimes even physical pain. Usually the mental pain itself is powerful enough to dumb me down to the level I am not smart enough to complete the task at hand (perils of working with one's head instead of hands...), which means the work won't get done anyway.
Is this normal? Is this just lack of discipline, as some would suggest? Does lack of discipline manifest itself with debilitating levels of anxiety? Do people here, who overcame procrastination, suffered from something similar at the beginning and don't suffer from it now?
I ask because I've tried the usual tricks - from pomodoros, through commitment schemes (hello Beeminder), imagination exercises, GTD, DeepWork planning, edw519's A/B mode of work... and everything eventually lost to the emotional pain. It's a small miracle that I'm able to get enough stuff done to make ends meet, but I look at how much more I could be doing if I weren't procrastinating that hard, and the very thought of years wasted makes me feel bad.
(#HNTherapy once again, I guess.)
Tactical interventions ultimately fail because the monkey, not the deliberator, has its hands on the levers. The monkey can learn that letting the deliberator do its thing and earn zorkmids will ultimately also bring in plenty of bananas, but that has to be true for it to work in the long run.
(I may be adding a few of my own thoughts about how this monkey-and-machine business applies to procrastination -- I don't remember if those were on that long page.)
A suggestion: do the smallest part right now and then look at that as a success. Meaning, don’t worry about planning the whole thing out, with pomodoros and imagination exercises. Those are hurting you because they are keeping your focus on what your mind perceives as a huge mountain of work. Instead, ask yourself, “what is the most stupidly small thing I can do right now?” Have a task to write a new website? First task is to log into your laptop. Once that’s done, next stupidly small thing? Open your text editor. Start with ‘<html>hello</html>’ saved in “index.html”. Keep just doing to most obvious, tiny thing.
Then afterwards, the hardest but most important part: perspective. Don’t look at how much more you could have done if you weren’t procrastinating —- look at how much you got done over a baseline of doing nothing. Hey, I got rails stood up saying “hello world”, but with postgres behind it and it all checked into git. That’s several more things done than if I had done nothing at all. Go me!
Completely!
Have you tried meditation? It sounds like you are over identifying with your thoughts & emotions. Putting some distance between them and the observer (the third eye, so to speak) has allowed me to recognize something as being anxiety inducing, but not have a panic attack over it. Also, try to reframe things that terrify you as challenges. It changes the narrative from victim to hero.
I also enjoyed reading "the war of art" and still find solace in its musings when I am faced with resistance.
Mindfulness, to some extent. Much less than I'd like. So far I found it useful in toning down anxiety attacks.
> I also enjoyed reading "the war of art" and still find solace in its musings when I am faced with resistance.
Seen this book recommended a couple times on HN already; adding to my toread list. Thanks!
You're not going to escape the pain, but you can control its duration usually ("OK, I'll do this for 5/10/20/40 minutes then I promise myself a break")
Ever read "The Now Habit"? It talks about the angst & guilt from being a perfectionist about execution. At the end of the day if you are providing yourself and/or family a living, then that is quite a good thing.
On a spiritual note, I find the more I pray and study the Bible, the less I am burdened (anxious) about the outcome of things with no eternal consequences.
Tried that, and - like many tricks - worked for a while. Eventually ended up in a state where starting something is nigh-impossible, but if I somehow manage to do it and survive 15 minutes, then things flow well for the next couple hours.
I found that the more I have left things "unfinished" or "waiting on" clarity or resource, the dreaderer it feels to approach anything at all in my life. That has to go.
Finish things. Dox and wrap them up for later, if you have to. Don't leave things out, do make the bed, if something takes 15 minutes do it right now and forget, all that jazz.
The first three weeks of that are excruciating, and you should expect them to be. But the benefits will keep you going after day one. Just keep a tally of what's been done on any given date, and don't make it hard for yourself by putting off preparing for something until it's actually needed. Running shoes for tomorrow morning go by the door. Tonight.
Or if it's mundane, find and focus on aspects that appeal more; can it be done quicker? is it possible to create a better way of doing it?
And for fairly simple tasks, sometimes the right music or radio station or podcast takes the boredom away and passes the time too.
https://betterhumans.coach.me/how-to-use-psychology-to-solve...
He calls it short term mood repair. Once you realize that, there are a lot of interesting ways to beat it.
My understanding is that fear related emotions are closer to the root cause. Fear of failure, fear of imperfection, fear of wasting time and energy, fear to be rejected, ... I don't think that emotions like Anger, love or sadness are root causes.
Fear can worsen through time with new painful experiences. But fear can also be tamed.
One way is by adopting the development mindset. Failure is normal when we learn and practice. It is through practicing, and thus some failures, that we get better. No one is borned perfect at something. (See Dr. Dweck's book "Mindset").
Another way is by analyzing and identifying the root cause of fears. I could for instance fear to go in kitchens. That would be very disabling. By searching the root cause, I could find out that I got burned by touching an oven when I was a toddler. Or I could deduce that the kitchen is not dangerous in itself. Only the sharp knives and a hot oven are dangerous. One can then enter the kitchen and avoid the real dangers. Etc.
When I'm anxious about a task it's usually because I don't know where to start OR I'm because afraid I'll be dissapointed by how the result will be.
Anxiety and trauma tend to manifest in disassociating your mind from your body. Working to bridge that gap can help a lot in dealing with uncomfortable situations.
Also, just stoop to bribing yourself. If I finish doing my taxes today I'll get those headphones or the fancy chocolates or my favorite ice cream. Lots of small wins, even contrived ones, gives you confidence for bigger ones. I have done this small annoying thing ten times. I can do this moderately annoying thing twice.
i did the self bribing, it works but not a lot. Hard to be judge and party. For bureaucracy I'm often more proactive to use the system against itself, namely giving them willfully stupid forms so they curate the required data, fill half of it and give me clear directions for the remaining part.
You could very well be focusing on the wrong things -- that's the essence of procrastination, and drugs that help you focus could exacerbate that.
“Power of Now” is by Eckhart Tolle.
I think abuse can come in two forms; intentional abuse, which is what we think of as abuse, and unintentional abuse, where during the titration period, when you first get on the medication, you titrate it too high, but this feels like the right amount. I think the latter situation happened to me due to life circumstances. The Adderall I was taking was too much in combination with the lack of sleep, because I took too many credit hours and was staying up in the library or bar studying. Diet probably was less than stellar as well.
The too much level for me as 30mg / day split into 2x 15mg morning and later afternoon / early evening. If I ever go back on Adderall (assuming I can ever find a doctor that takes new patients on medicaid and doesn't make you wait months to see them), I would take 15mg / day split into 2x 7.5mg
On a side note, recently I read something about adderall and neurotoxicity caused by some oxidation reaction, which apparently has been exhibited in very high doses in experiments. Apparently Ritalin doesn't have such neurotoxic effects according to that article. I think there was also something in there about combining ritalin with adderall, which causes the ritalin to counteract the neurotoxic effects of the adderall or something. I think it said that Adderall causes more neurotransmitter to be produced, while ritalin limits uptake of said neurotransmitter.
I’m pretty sure addiction is very rare, and not comparable with other prescription narcotics.
I’m not sure what you consider abuse. I guess college kids use it to help them get homework done, which sounds like a congruent context to me; only without the doctor approval. Taking too much has direct and uncomfortable side effects, at least for me. Whenever a I took adderall, I was extra careful to never accidentally taking an extra dose after doing so once on accident.
(No, I will not cite a source. It is nearly 1am. I am attempting to be helpful. It is a thing you can look into if you so desire. Or not. Whatevs.)
So if you are procrastinating, consider the possibility that your subconscious still remembers that you need some information but some other part of you is blocking you from getting it.
The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
If you need some help with procrastination and not moving forward, a must read....
One cannot simultaneously conduct Nobel-caliber research, train as a top-tier professional athlete, be deeply involved with running a serious business, and spend a fulfilling/requisite amount of time with family. There is not enough time.
For me, the critical part of dealing with procrastination/perfectionism has been mastering, and executing upon, prioritization.
The rest of the tips in the article are useful, but that last one, I couldn't abide (and hence have been delayed by ~5 minutes doing the things I want to do today).
But historically, the projects of mine that got the most positive feedback and have the most users, are ones I did purely because I wanted to, because I saw a need and knew how to fill it and knew it would be an interesting and satisfying challenge.
So the other night I decided to go back to that. I've got a super cool new app that will make Mjolnir/Hydra/Phoenix/AppGrid look like stone age tools, that I plan to dedicate serious time to. I've also started re-typesetting a very fascinating public domain book printed in 1885, which I found on archive.org, and got Tesseract to do most of the work for me last night in about an hour flat.
So yeah, I can get a lot of really cool stuff done in a very short amount of time, as long as I stop worrying so much about how things will be provided for me and trust in Divine Providence to take care of that. That's how all those other cool projects were made anyway, so I have even more evidence against my worrying and overthinking it.
It's not just a question of making the time, but also making the time count.
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/why-wait-the-s...
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/careers/6-myths-you-ve-been-t...
https://finishyourthesis.com/procrastination/
One of the leading researchers in this field is Tim Pychyl. I learned most about the subject by reading his books and listening to all his podcast interviews with fellow researchers. It is possible the papers I'm thinking of are listed on his group's web site. The paper titles tend to be hard to parse, unfortunately:
https://www.procrastination.ca/
If and when I track down the source research studies, I'll follow up here.
I'm going through a stage in my life when I don't enjoy doing things anymore. Obviously, if a task is considered somewhat hard and I know I will barely enjoy it, there is very little internal emotional support (motivation?) for doing it, thus procrastination.
I did an exercise from the book which was to list tasks I did during the day and mark a satisfaction rate as well as an efficiency rate. All the tasks are like 10% satisfaction, 99% efficiency. Seems like a mismatch. Then I asked myself a question "What would a person who does useful and efficient things tell himself to feel that miserable? What would he think about?".
I got the following, which goes really deep into my internal motivations and fears: "All these tasks are worth nothing. I shouldn't be happy with them because I can forget that I don't grow and don't accomplish much in general. I may end up being a silly guy who only chills and has fun but in fact, has nothing meaningful going in his life. I shouldn't forget that things are not that good at the moment and it's too early to relax, to enjoy small accomplishments. A person becomes weak if he always enjoys what's going on around."
So if you experience a huge mismatch between satisfaction and efficiency (paradoxically I naturally have lots of fun doing things I am like 0% efficient in because I don't know yet how perfect result looks like), I suggest you to ask the same question "what thoughts could make a person that miserable?".
After listing advantages of believing the above and deep appreciation of my beliefs, it became clear that some of them are crazy self-sadistic. Even though they have the best intentions in the universe (making my life better) what they in fact achieved was getting me to the verge of having suicidal thoughts. And now I am doing exercises mentioned in the book and the podcast to give up these beliefs.
[1] - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Feeling-Good-New-Mood-Therapy/dp/03... [2] - https://feelinggood.com/2017/09/18/053-ask-david-i-dont-feel... [3] - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/feeling-good-podcast-tea...
For any person not retired or similar, this is a true statement, not a mere sample of "internal motivations and fears".