How to Procrastinate Productively | Hacker News Reader

How to Procrastinate Productively

nickwignall.com

284 pointsnwignall64 comments

At some point, you have to stop fiddling and finish what you started. Even if you procrastinate productively, spending ten minutes on a musical instrument, then another ten on reading an article, and then delving somewhere else is marginally better than binging on Youtube and Netflix. The constant context switching prevents you from going deep. All you gain is superficial knowledge.

This, in my opinion, the bad "good procrastination." Something I am trying to escape from. Doing so many things without focus ended up imbibing a habit of rarely finishing anything. I agree with the author that it's useful to let your attention wander away from day-to-day stuff, but it's equally important to realize that there's a limit to how many things you can productively do in parallel.

One of the most damaging pieces of advice I ever received was "starting lots of things and not finishing them is bad".

Rather than finish more things, I became wary of starting things. This did not improve my overall output, and in fact lost me the experience I would have gained from many started-but-unfinished projects. It's taken me years to unlearn this advice in practice.

I especially take issue with calling out practice of a musical instrument. Ten minutes every day or two is much better than one hour every week or two.

I prefer starting as many projects as I possibly can, because it gives me an endless amount of interesting things to work on. Same with writing as well, dumping things on hackernews is just potential draft blog material to write about later

My view is to go all in or not at all. Nobody rewards you for doing a half-assed job. Having many side projects lets you pinpoint one that's particularly interesting and push it to the limit.

I prefer the mantra "One who puts on his armor should not boast like one who takes it off."[0] I take it as advice not to talk about anything that isn't finished, which spurs me to finish more things so I can talk about them.

[0] Disclaimer: From a really old book, might be superseded by newer material (1 Kings 20:11)

To reinforce your point, the act of talking about a work-in-progress can actually give your brain a reward similar to actually finishing a that task, sapping your drive to finish things and increasing your drive to start more things, just so you can talk about them.

This.

Before I picked that up, I started a lot of things and talked a lot about them. Now for any endeavour I find myself making early decisions to push through and finish or move on ASAP. Among other things, it's meant far less time spent on books I don't actually want to be reading.

I do agree, I tend to see that it's almost a form of anger to just do it. No amount of theory, reflection or beating around the bush. Just . do . it.

I used to spend 99% of my time wandering. But at one point I (finally) realized it was going nowhere and I was feeling like a muddy lake. And even sweating doing chores felt better.

Kickstarting it is never that easy, but I know now that I'll enjoy my time a lot more after it done.

My comment only applies to the first paragraph.

I agree with this when it comes to learning but not so much when it comes to just executing on something already known. There is not a lot of "going deep" when what you need to get done is write an article on a topic you already know.

So you are saying that 30 minutes of procrastination is only marginally better than binge-watching Netflix series? What Netflix region are you in? I’d be hard pressed to find a series where one episode is less than 30 minutes, let alone whole seasons.

Sure you have to finish things, but that is what the article is all about. Didn’t your read it?

My point was while getting distracted to do/learn something new has its upsides, keeping focus on one thing for a stretch of time is an indispensable need. It might be wrong to equate with binge-watching, but I have noticed that with wandering focus, I am able to absorb and learn a lot less.

American sitcoms average 22 minutes. You could binge-procrastinate The Office. ;)

I have a list called "Low-energy tasks" which I use whenever I'm feeling burned out and can't focus on actual work. Simple things like "Organise my mailbox" or "Review documentation" that aren't taxing, but still count as work. I'll probably still procrastinate a lot on those days, but at least I can say I got something done.

Yeah, I do the same and find that it works really well at managing my procrastination habit. It's also consistent with the idea of managing your energy and not your time, made popular in this HBR article.

https://hbr.org/2007/10/manage-your-energy-not-your-time

I've really taken this to heart and found that there are entire categories of "high-involvement" tasks that I'm simply not up to outside of my peak energy periods (mornings) but that still need to get done. Even breaking those high-involvement tasks down to micro tasks I find that my low-energy intervals can deal with some of those quite well.

I have a few things like this.

I sew when I'm brain dead and hate working. Not even organizing/grunt work sounds appealing, so I'll design and make some sweaters.

Ive also found getting stuck in a favorite video game has helped productivity. When I'd rather work than get past a hard spot, I'll keep working. Similar is true if you simply uninstall a large game.

[...] what procrastination looks like for most people:
- Think about working.
- Immediately feel the urge to procrastinate.
- Start beating themselves up with a bunch of negative self-talk for wanting to procrastinate (I’m such a procrastinator, why can’t you just stay focused?)
- Feel badly, including a bunch of negative emotions like shame and disappointment, on top of the already-strong urge to procrastinate.

- Procrastinate on something emotionally numbing.

Is that really how it works for most people? I (and I always assumed that's how it is for most people) often just rationalize procrastination ("My tasks are not that important/interesting, I'll do them later", "Reading just one more article is fine, then back to work") without any negative thoughts at that time. Sometimes I do some research and suddenly realize I ended up on StackOverflow or HN and think "wait a minute, that's not work any more". But that's ok if I get all work done.

I think that is the usual way of procrastination. What the article claims how most people procrastinate (negative thoughts, getting no work done) sounds like more extreme but rarer cases.

Anecdata: personally, procrastination and self-hatred go hand-in-hand.

While the BBC isn't the most authoritative source, this reminds me of this post from recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17878716

"Prof Tim Pychyl, from Carleton University, Ottawa, who has been studying procrastination for the past few decades, believes it is a problem with managing emotions rather than time."

Depends on the person. If I have the conscious frame of mind to realize I'm procrastinating and the thing that needs to be done is urgent, then the negative emotions hit me, but often I completely forget what I was supposed to be doing as I get entrenched in whatever I was procrastinating on, losing track of time to the point of asking "Wait ... when did Monday become Wednesday!?"

His description of procrastination lines up with my behaviour, that being said you might well be right, for me it takes constant mental effort/will power to stay focused on a particular task, even more so to begin a task, I don't know that this what most people experience.

I personally attribute this to anxiety/adhd where part of my brain wants to focus and get one thing done while the other is desperately concerned with trying to "keep an eye on everything at once". So there ends up being a deadlock between the two, in which case his strategy works for me, I do a little bit of everything because at least I get stuff done then.

The only thing that forces me to focus on a single thing for any length of time is a hard deadline and even that's no picnic it tends to leave me completely exhausted.

I suspect there are a number of behavioral patterns that outwardly appear as "procrastination" and so are limited together. When one person talks about procrastination, others assume it's the pattern or patterns they have personally experienced. This is the kind of assumption that leads to insultingly useless advice. Suggesting that a procrastinator "just do the work". Similar to the case of asking a depressed person "have you tried being happy?". There may be cases those approaches do help, but there are also many where they are very ignorant approaches.

>without any negative thoughts at that time.

You'd be surprised...

I hadn't thought of coming to work/office early (6AM in this case), to work on personal project/hobbies. My thoughts on the benefits of this strategy:

* One can actually look forward to going to work in the morning, knowing that something fun/interesting/passionate is waiting at the office.

* Which leads to ... It motivates one to wake up early, which I had been struggling with.

* One can avoid morning traffic/rush hour and also get the best parking space at office.

* One can feel a little bit of peace knowing that he/she has done something to move the needle on the passion/side project every day.

* One can give the best part of his/her day to the side-project. I'm usually too tired to work on side project in the late afternoon/evening, so I often end up doing nothing but vegging on Youtube/TV/etc after dinner.

EDIT: It's a win-win, as long as it's okay with the employer. It might be awkward and weird especially if the passion project is something that's not related to the occupation -- like shooting Youtube videos in my cubicle. Another downside is that half of day is spent in the office, which is a little too long.

It might be awkward and weird especially if the passion project is something that's not related to the occupation

It might also later be argued that your successful side-project belongs to the company since you used company resources to build it. I would get any agreement in writing so there are no misunderstandings later.

> Re-frame procrastination as a natural desire for variety and curiosity in your life. If you give this natural curiosity regular outlets throughout your days and weeks, it won’t need to blow up into major procrastination.

That's a good point I haven't seen expressed in that way before, though I realize now I've been using this as one of anti-procrastination tricks. If I'm procrastinating because I really want to some particular other thing, doing that thing usually makes me quickly want to go back to the original task.

But I do also have a lot of open-ended curiosity that's a problem. During university times, I often joked I owe half of my knowledge of the world to binge-reading Wikipedia at nights in high-school. These days, I try to rein it in a bit, otherwise I could spend the whole day following different trails of knowledge, without ever feeling a desire to come back to the task at hand.

> By cultivating hobbies and interests that are at least indirectly supportive of your primary work, anytime you choose to procrastinate you’ll be engaging in productive procrastination.

Yeah, right :). I use that excuse a lot. But the truth is, I've been stuck at the last 40 pages of Polya's book for the past 2 weeks, not because I didn't have any opportunity to procrastinate, but because it's somehow much easier to open a HN article or comment on one (as I'm doing right now), than it is to read a few pages of a book, or do a tiniest contribution to any of 20 open side-projects I have...

The moment I start worrying about procrastinating productively, I’ll start procrastinating procrastinating, and then there will be two levels to traverse back to productivity, rather than one.

With this kind of metacommentary in mind, you may be intrigued/horrified by some of the Black Mirror-esque ideas that come up in transhumanist scifi now and again of future people creating automation for themselves for given activities, and that automation when sufficiently advanced emulating the person well enough to create automation for itself for given activities, and that automation when sufficiently advanced... you get the idea, until it's Russian nesting dolls all the way down and it's impossible to find the original person again.

This was also explored in a short from Robot Film Festival 2018 [0], though the recursion wasn't so deep.

[0] Everything is Okay, https://vimeo.com/227801697

Sounds like the Rick & Morty episode 'The Ricks must be crazy'

Also reminds me of the Calvin and Hobbes "duplicator" storyline! (https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1990/01/11)

Haha! Good one! Might steal it from you. ;)

The trick is to never stop procrastinating. I'll get to that code after I read a few articles... 1.5 articles in and I'm getting bored again, I'll finish these after I write a little code... repeat.

I tend to do that but is super draining. I could spend hours and then look back at it and get depressed because I didn't do as much as I expected.

And at the end I'm still as tired as if I worked 100% focused on something, I try to avoid this as much as possible.

Strategy #4: Realise that procrastination might not just be a bad habit you can lifehack your way around. It may well be a symptom of an anxiety disorder, and you need to get that thing checked.

Yes. Generally, excessive procrastination has been linked with ADHD.

ADHD is clearly a problem here, yes, but it's a different kettle of fish.

I'm talking more about anxiety disorders like generalised anxiety disorder, and potentially depression. If you suffer from work-related anxiety, procrastination is a classical avoidant-style coping mechanism.

Ironically, I clearly have something going on in that spectrum and I'm amazed it hasn't affected my career yet... but I've as of yet completely procrastinated on getting myself checked out for it.

What about ADD?

Hacker News No Procrastination Settings: maxvisit 30, minaway 30. Eventually I'll wean myself down to 15/45.

But in all seriousness, Pomodoros are great when I'm unsure / keyed up about a new project and prone to wander off "researching."

IME, eventually the Pomodoros inevitably give way to extended sessions with flow.

> eventually the Pomodoros inevitably give way to extended sessions with flow.

I have also found this to be a great way to trick my mind into working. Promise myself "just one" pomodoro, then I can go do something else. If I get that first session started, by the end of it I don't want to stop even for the five-minute break, and then next thing I know four pomodoros have gone by and, lo and behold, the opposite of the usual procrastination timesuck: I actually spent two hours working on the thing without thinking about it! The mind is such a weirdo like that.

That's a good perspective. I drifted away from pomodoro's precisely because I found the intervals too be a bit too rigid and the breaks occurred when I'd be in the middle of something. Instead using one or more as a bootstrap for productivity is something I hadn't considered, but it seems obvious now.

I'll admit they kind of fade in and out of usefulness for me. But I always feel free to bleed into a break, too, if I'm right smack in the middle of something. I have found it important to actually take the break at some point, though. Timer rings, take a minute or two to finish the thought, then reset the timer for your break.

Dr David Burns, who popularized Cognitive Behavorial Therapy, says that the common misconception people have when it comes to procrastination is that motivation precedes action. In fact, he says, to beat procrastination it’s helpful to realize that motivation follows action. Listing out and accomplishing a few ridiculously easy steps (“open editor”, “review last commit”, etc) can be enough to generate the motivation to keep going.

In other words, instead of setting out to work for an hour, convince yourself to work for only 5 mins; more often than not, when the 5 mins are up you’ll probably keep working for a good while longer, motivation increasing as you work.

Procrastination is fear and most of it makes absolute sense, your body is telling you something is not right.

When I started working long hours in front of a computer,alone, I had to stop doing it. It was impossible to continue after some time doing that.

I though it was procrastination. Then I learn about the lymphatic system and how the body needs to move every single day or else you will feel miserable.

So I started doing exercise every day and suddenly I could work for long hours. There was something wrong and the body acted like a baby that does not know what is wrong but knows something is wrong and cries.

Any procrastination technique that does not consider the root of the problem will fail.

I also put my computer in front of my eyes while standing up, added physical objects to my work, devices that react to touch(3d mouses) or movement.... and my live improved enormously. The reason they work is even longer and more complex that the lymphatic system.

Another very useful thing was recording in a piece of paper the time(hours of real work) and intensity of my work(in a color scale). I realized I called "procastination" when I tried to do too much work (8 hours a day) of work that at the end of the day was super intensive.

It was kind of ridiculous. It is like considering that because you could walk for 8 hours that you could run a marathon with the same velocity and intensity as a sprints. And then do it every single day after that.

Being young, I could do one day(or two) this way, but after that I did burn out.

Computers are very antinatural objects for human beings. If you try to adapt yourself to the computer instead of the other way around,(making the computer speak for example) you are going to suffer enormously.

I am lucky that I find enjoyment procrastinating with interests that synergise with my work. However I often get into a feeling of being unable to relax and worrying that if I stray I am wasting time. Even if I am enjoying it.

Or make your procrastination time really worthwhile. I force myself to do chores or other work when I'm procrastinating about a particular task. This also means I'll have more time later.

It's also important long term to train yourself to not procrastinate. The trick I use is to immediately work on something when I recognize procrastination. For me, it was always getting started that was hard. When I fail at this, I do the chores above.

Another trick is getting up early. Did I get up at 5am to read HN, or did I get up at 5am to workout and get some solid work time on my side project?

This sounds kind of like me. I don't use things like pomodoros, I find it distracts me too much. I embrace my procrastination habits. It is like ADHD, I just go wandering mindlessly through youtube, some specific subreddits, hackernews, etc. Its not a waste of time for me because I'm learning about new technologies, software, tools, content, etc that helps me in my job and personal life. I never view anything I do for fun as a waste of time.

I have 3 cycles in personal productivity.

1) When I intentionally let my mind wander freely -> When I deep dive into a huge number of breath first content in multiple industries. I watch many documentaries,youtube videos, read news,etc and I have systems for collecting which information I've read or seen

2) Focused on one task -> Depth first approach, deep diving and learning one specific topic very well. Or working on a side project and nothing else. I try and make this timeblock last a few hours long, because there's a startup/warm up time in getting "in the zone".

3) When my mind needs a break -> play something like rocket league, ASMR, walking around for a bit, stretching, getting food, etc

At the start of my day, I usually do steps (1) (2) and (3) in order. As the day progresses I tend to focus on (2)

Procrastination arises from different sources in different people. For example, advises in this article won't work if you procrastinate because you are completely burned out. Or you are overwhelmed by anxiety. Or some health problems prevent you from staying focused. The devil is in the detail.

If that article hadn't been upvoted here I would have just glanced at and instantly dismissed it as rubbish, the style, the stock picture, the seemingly fake piece of dialogue at the start stop being so productive!. The whole looked thing like it was put together to a recipe.

I feel that mindful procrastination is very helpful to keep my focus rather than trying to avoid procrastination and getting lulled into a state of staring at the ceiling (or, of course, the negative self-criticism). Everyone seems to have a different mode of procrastination, so there probably isn't a one-solution-fits-all. Also, I think one of the aspects of procrastination that we don't seem to talk about much is how other people view your procrastination and judge you based on their perception (whether accurate or otherwise) of your efficiency or lack thereof. External judgement of your mode of procrastination greatly affects your emotional well-being and thus also your focus and efficiency.

Do stuff that for the most part, you don't find boring enough to procrastinate.

It's not the boredom that's always a reason for procrastination.

For me, it sometimes is. If I can sketch a convincing implementation in my head and it's not something I have strong personal desire to see in the real world, the implementation suddenly becomes one big chore. I have enough experience in programming to be confident I can code up anything I plan with enough details in my head, and find little reward in just proving myself right.

But the other thing is, I procrastinate on things I have to do, just because I have to do them. I.e. take anything, attach any form of obligation to it, and you've just turned up my procrastination up to 11. I don't know why that happens, but I've been like this for as long as I can remember, and my entire career in this industry is mostly about figuring out tricks around this problem.

Playing piano for short breaks is pretty nice but I've found that picking hobbies can really get me sucked out of the work I _need_ to do. What I do these days is either set a timer when I want a longer break from work (15m-30m) or hit the eject button on any task really quickly. If I start reading an article, I try to decide within 90 seconds if I should just start working again.

I’m not a morning person so I have a hard time envisioning myself getting to work before 7am to procrastinate for a total of 1.5hrs. Does this guy leave work earlier in the day? I would probably become less productive at work if I was there 7am-5pm and leisurely took my time. I like to have time at home to relax and think (procrastinate) too.

So basically, it's okay to procrastinate as long as what you're procrastinating with is a good habit.

I'd flip that around a little: Procrastination is inevitable, so accept that you'll do it, and avoid the worst forms of it.

Pomodoro technique helps here: 25 min. focused work/flow. Then, 5 min. break. After 4 Pomodoros, take a longer break I noticed I also stress less and standing up during break energize me

Being a programmer I rather find it penalizing me. The time I take to think+code, 25 mins are gone and I feel emptiness and incompleteness inside.

I loved the article, but what I really want to apploaud is how well your typography, design, and varying fonts, quotes, setence lengths, etc. make it engaging and readable. So well done!

Sorry but reading articles online is not procrastinating productively.

I would accept procrastinating productively as tasks that are important but not urgent.

Developing your knowledge (which you can do by reading articles online) is important but not urgent.

If I ever have to survive a post apocalypse type event I'm sure my (theoretical) knowledge of blacksmithing, gasification, woodworking, permaculture and micro-hydro will come in useful.

Until that time I've no idea why these things (and many more I didn't mention) tickle that part of my brain which makes me want to learn everything there is to know about a subject.

Not trying to be a negative nancy, but isn't this all kind of obvious?

For me it helps to purposely "do something that scares you."

How to procrastinate recursively?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com