How to Beat Procrastination | Hacker News Reader

How to Beat Procrastination

lesswrong.com

145 pointsKC8ZKF45 comments

This article is a significantly less bad than most, but still suffers from the ol' "depressed people should simply try to be happy, then the whole depression-thing isn't actually that bad" fallacy of mental illness.

If you're hard-wired to be impulsive and have a knack for viewing things in a negative light, it is in fact incredibly hard to get rid of such behavioral tendencies simply by "getting off your butt, man." Similarly, all these hints and tips implicitly require the very quality they try to instill. Works for mild cases, but has little bearing on genuine pathological procrastination. (See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_M%C3%BCnchhausen)

I mostly agree with you, but I'm wondering what precisely you mean by 'hard-wired to be impulsive'.

Hyperactivity and impulsivity are two of the primary characteristics of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). So Adhd is one example of hard-wiring that affects impulsivity.

I guess what I take issue with is the use of the term 'hard-wired' as the exact causes of ADHD are not known, nor is it necessarily permanent.

Human beings are giant incestuous continuum of software firmware and hardware. "Hard-wired" in casual conversation, i.e. this forum, is a very common catch-all for "condition we can't (or think we can't) think ourselves out of."

connotations, they exist.

I know what the term means, but that doesn't make it true. The parenthetical in your statement is my point precisely; hardly 'hard-wired' if it's potentially a product of misguided thinking.

"Works for mild cases, but has little bearing on genuine pathological procrastination."

My guess is that 'clinical' procrastination, like drug addiction, largely stems from Adverse Childhood Experiences and should be treated the same way. Although I haven't actually looked through the research yet.

As for any attention deficit tendencies, these can be trained via meditation.

Not sure why I'm being downmodded, as the same negative life outcomes (e.g. alcoholism or depression) predicted by adverse childhood experiences correlate very strongly with procrastination:

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Lu4r0H_wc...

I would be interested in the research you are referring to showing that drug addiction largely stems from adverse childhood experiences.

The first speaker in this public radio series explains the issue extremely well:

http://www.wpr.org/book/100307a.cfm

After you listen to that five minute or so clip, check out this writeup on the addiction portion of the ACE study:

http://www.nijc.org/pdfs/Subject%20Matter%20Articles/Drugs%2...

And if you want to read the original ACE study, which has over 1,300 cites, you can do so here:

http://www.liftchildren.org/admin/upload/The%20Adverse%20Chi...

The basic finding is that addiction doesn't really have anything to do with the molecule in question, but rather it has to do with emotional issues that stem from adverse childhood experiences. And so the way we as a society handle drug addiction is completely wrong, because we're actually making people's drug problems vastly worse instead of treating them.

I'm gonna bite.

So the observation that different drugs show different addictive potential (e.g., heroine versus cocaine) is in fact irrelevant because "addiction doesn't really have anything to do with the molecule in question"?

There's a distinction between substances that interact with brain chemistry in a particular way to enhance addictive behavior, and the circumstances that predispose some people more than others to seek out addictive substances as a means of self-medication.

So I think there are three different metrics to look at:

1) How physically addictive a drug is. E.g. withdrawals from oxycontin are much worse than withdrawals from cocaine.

2) How 'moreish' the drug is. In other words, how compulsively do users redose. With salvia most people smoke it once and then don't want to do it again for at least a few years if ever, whereas with mephedrone people snort it and then they NEED to keep snorting it ever fifteen minutes or so until they run out.

3) The percentage of people that use a given drug who become addicted. You would expect this to vary wildly depending on factors one and two, but it's actually virtually a constant.[1] Pretty much 10% of people who try a drug will get addicted whether it's alcohol, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, etc. There is a little variation of course, but not nearly as much as you'd expect if addiction were driven mainly by the properties of the drug itself.

[1] Once you cancel out the differences due to the routes of administration, i.e. smoking a drug is vastly more addictive than eating it regardless of what the substance.

> If you're hard-wired to be impulsive and have a knack for viewing things in a negative light, it is in fact incredibly hard to get rid of such behavioral tendencies simply by "getting off your butt, man."

The “fatalistic” view – in that there might be very little to be called “free will” – would assume that nearly all of a person's behaviour is dictated by genes shaped by life experience (response to which also depends on the same). For procrastination, one could coarsely define some archetypes:

* Those who don't procrastinate * Those who procrastinate but can overcome the tendency easily or with difficulty * Those who procrastinate and can't overcome it despite trying * Those who procrastinate and won't try to overcome it (either because they don't want to or don't think they'll succeed)

Not sure I agree with you. Simply 'trying to be happy' doesn't work, sure, but I have noticed I feel a lot better & happier when I'm exercising. When I don't feel good, I really don't want to exercise, but I know that I just have to get up and do it, and I'll start to feel better in a week or so.

At least for me, it's a self-perpetuating cycle, and there is no secret trick to breaking it, other than doing it

You may have read the article before it was updated, but there is a note and a couple of comments addressing this. Basically this is a somewhat simplified model, and the papers on which it is based view things more complex then impulsivness = hard-wired:

An important note is that the full version of TMT places a constant in the denominator to prevent the denominator from skyrocketing into infinity as delay approaches 0. Also, 'impulsiveness' here is a substitute for 'susceptibility to delay,' something which may vary by task, whereas 'impulsiveness' sounds like a stable character trait that might not help to explain having different motivations to perform different tasks.

A comment by antirez here [1] really led me to consider that procrastination is a signal rather than an issue: the best I can do is be aware of that and listen to it.

Now I often realize that when I feel procrastination coming, it's because:

- something needs to be clarified (a situation)

- there is a risk that hasn't been assessed

- I'm hungry

- I'm tired (physically or mentally)

- I'm hurting myself (RSI)

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1190700

For me "something needs to be clarified" is often "faith in the idea needs to be clarified via stamp of approval from a third party". Yesterday, I was procrastinating badly. This morning, I talked about my project with someone and they were very positive about it. Today saw a massive burst of energy that will last through the week.

edw519 has one form to complete, two database tables to configure, four functions to test and an app to deploy today. But instead of getting started, he minimizes his test environment and Textpad and opens a browser window to Hacker News. He knows he has 6 hours of work and only 7 hours before the Super Bowl and he understands that he'll probably be too drunk to program after the game. But he is too caught up in stories of software development, scientific journeys, industry trends, the pratfalls of rich and famous hackers, and silly articles about procrastination.

edw519 is lazy. He should close his browser and get back to work.

(Simple story, but too boring for a scientific study.)

edw519's waiting for the next Perl [1]

1 Where "Perl" stands for your epiphany of choice, slaying the twin dragons of monotony and repetition while riding in on a linguistic unicorn of intrigue with teasing hints of familiarity. And sigils -- because tagging's always been underrated.

(P.S. I'll trade you for my PHP crap.)

EDIT: OT: Have you ever gotten used to Textpad 5?

As your first sentence indicates, in this scenario you have specific, attainable goals. Just getting to that point goes a long way towards beating procrastination.

Impulsiveness is a personality trait, it doesn't change, it's part of who you are. It comes from preferring to take information instead of making decisions. Some people have it and some people don't. For the people who don't have it, it would seem like a character flaw. But for the people who do have it, it seems like the most natural thing in the world.

You can of course force yourself to be diligent, but it'll make you very stressed. (hint: startups are stressful).

You can only force yourself if you see a value thats attainable in the foreseeable future.

If something is of low value, low importance, and boring, why would you want to force yourself to do it? It doesn't make any sense. I'd advice you to defer it and do something that's more interesting and more valuable while you can.

The author postulates three character vignettes, each one based upon an identified predictor of procrastination. There exists, however, a forth:

Zach stares at a blank document in Microsoft Word. His essay assignment on municipal politics, due tomorrow, is mind-numbingly dull. He decides to take a break, texts some friends, watches a show, and finds himself even less motivated to write the paper than before. At 10PM, he finally dives in, but the result is... well, it's great.

This forth case is strange, because it does not suffer from the generally proposed downfalls of procrastination. This is because the author has ignored an entire segment of procrastinators: Those that operate better under an impending deadline.

This is how I completed nearly every task in school thus far, and assignment grades less than an A are few and far between despite the fact that I put in, in many cases, a small fraction of the time it took my classmates to complete this assignment. I operate this way because stress is my friend. My output quality/time ratio is never greater than when I'm working with a looming deadline.

My entire life I was told that procrastination is bad. Procrastination is bad. Procrastination is bad. It's only recently that I've realized that procrastination is actually one of the greatest contributors to my success.

My younger sister refers to this as "Percolation", as do others (http://www.learningassistance.com/2005/june/percolation.html).

Sometimes, I need to sit with an idea for a week or so before taking action, and the product is great, albeit somewhat rushed. This gets me in trouble on occasion, but less often than one might think.

I've found lately that working piece by piece well before deadline gets about the same quality of work done, but I also have bigger projects and more generous deadlines now.

Though I'm very sympathetic to eustress as a wonderful motivator of good work, it falls on its ass when you suddenly lose external deadlines. This occurs in varying degrees depending on your life path, but almost always you're expected to take more personal responsibility of your schedule in any challenging (desirable) job.

So it's just worth noting that combining eustress/percolation with aggressive personal goal-setting might be necessary to keep this sort of thing up.

I definitely agree with this. I bounced from deadline to deadline for seven years in late high school and university. Addiction to deadline-driven activity is now causing me tons of grief when it comes to anything not required by an immediate deadline at work. Career development, outside-of-work life planning, calling companies about that wrong bill...

This is definitely the case and was actually something I was going to plan on addressing in my initial comment about procrastination before deciding that I could put it off. :)

While I did not make it clear, the formula presented within the essay remains applicable whether or not someone is motivated by eustress, except that the formula changes slightly:

                   expectancy x value
  motivation  =  -----------------------  +  eustress
                  impulsiveness x delay

Using this formula, an incredibly low-value task (in my case, school assignments) can still have an acceptable (or greater than) outcome when complimented by a high level of eustress. (In my case, this is often in the form of an impending deadline.)

Other than school, however, I have been working with a friend, attempting to launch my first startup. This is an incredibly high-value task for me, which leads to greater motivation despite a lack of solid deadlines. In this case, I procrastinate very little.

That's not, of course, to say that every task related to launching is high-value. In those instances, you are correct, aggressive goal-setting is absolutely necessary. I'd add, though, that it's not simply an attempt to "keep this sort of thing up," but rather a simple acknowledgement of how I function.

The research that has been done in this area seems to indicate that while you might believe you work better under pressure, that may not actually be the case. Rather, you only work under pressure when faced with a task for which you have little internal motivation to complete:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/200808/in-sea...

I thought the same of myself when I was in school. However, it really isn't better. It just so happens that you have more skill than your classmates in writing essays, and are able to cover up a lack of effort with skill.

My boyfriend is working on his Ph.D and I read his students' term papers on occasion. 90% of them are mind-bogglingly bad, but the school in general has a low expectation of "excellent." Thus, these people get A's.

Don't kid yourself; it's still mediocre. Read a graduate school paper in comparison. Ask a graduate school student to honestly grade your paper. ;) Better yet, watch a graduate school student write a paper. They go through ideas, delve into research, and realize they can't adequately prove their idea, so they retreat. And they read, and read. And write. And when they are done, they are fully aware of how limited their paper really is, because they know where they want it to be, but such leaps require original research, and that's what the dissertation is for. :) ___

Further, many of us (myself included) make decisions on which corners to cut when we only have limited time to work on a task. These are decisions we are less hasty to make when we have more time, thus the task looks bigger and we are more likely to procrastinate. Sometimes, like school essays, the 80% solution is exactly what is warranted. I'd suggest you look up timeboxing.

I need deadline pressure as well, so I assign myself personal deadlines to follow that tend to precede the real one by 50%. I tend to find that while I finish before deadline, I'm always able to improve the product before the real deadline.

I am one of the worst cases of procrastination you can ever find. I always find something else to do instead of doing what I am supposed to do.

Personally, I have experienced that there is only one way to get things done:

1. I try to minimize distractions(I say try because distractions will always be there; there is not a way around most of the time).

2. I make a (mental)TODO list, before going to sleep.

3. And finally nothing beats getting of my butt and actually start working.

Just my thoughts.

I often find the hardest part is actually starting whatever it is you're putting off. After that, it's a lot easier to keep going (provided you don't get distracted by interruptions).

My solution is to turn off all my IM clients, load up a different browser without all the tabs I normally open, mute everything except the radio, and force myself to start it. After that, I can usually work through and get it finished.

The quintessential problem: Its a long article, I'll read it later...

No, the quintessential problem is: Cool, I'll try that next week...

Or you could do what I did and impulse-order the book from Amazon. Now I'll have to read it. (I've been working on my book impulse-buying for a while now. Damn useful.)

I'm sorry if this is off-topic, but I have become amazingly addicted to Readability's view of webpages.

On topic, switching to the Readability view increased my desire to read the article, because I found it less mentally tiring. However, if I had homework due in the upcoming days, I probably would have archived it into Readability, because I doubt reading it would have presented a lot of immediate value.

I'm a terrible procrastinator too. Unfortunately, sometimes I work best under pressure; so this feeds back into procrastination. But it doesn't always work this way. Sometimes the task is so big that "under pressure" is not possible.

I've found that chopping up the task into bitesize bits always helps. I'll get the little task done quickly; and then if I feel like it, I can keep going; otherwise, I can get up and do something else, basking in the glow of having accomplished the task I wanted to. After a few days of such repeated positive experiences, I find that I can pick up steam and really accomplish a lot.

Interestingly enough, yesterday (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2183183) there was a Show-HN for a website designed to perform textual analysis and render the top few most-relevant sentences:

http://www.bookshrink.com/

I tried it on this article, and it was neat, but I realized that part of the reason this is so hard to skim is because of the information density in each sentence.

Try bookshrink on it and you'll see what I mean after trying to read its output.

I have to say that most of us who are taking the time to read this are probably procrastinating in the first place. Therefore it would have been better to publish this article on a weekday when people are most susceptible to procrastinating online. After all, those are the people this article is targeted for.

Accept Procrastination as a different way to do something!

There is a brilliant 4 minute movie about it all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3...

Funny. The author wrote a long article on how to avoid procrastination, when the intended audience isn't going to go beyond the first paragraph.

How to beat procrastination? Set noprocrast to yes.

Nah, I read the whole thing, which is funny, because I've got a lot to get done this morning. Then I saw your comment, and figured I'd better reply. Oh, hey, look, there's that bookshrink thing they mentioned, I wonder if that's any good, I'll just check that out before I get started on this to-do list. Hey, I wonder if I can get a better to-do list manager ...

At the risk of becoming too meta, I'd like to ask anybody who is about to bookmark this "for later" to consider what would happen (viz. procrastination) if you didn't.

I'll read it later...

I cannot get through this and someone would like me to read it. Any hope of a summary/tl;dr?

(Or is it as crappy as I think it is?)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com