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Comment by quezzle | Hacker News Reader

This may sound flippant but it’s deadly serious:

Just Do It.

Put your head down and do the work and stop not doing it.

I spoke to my counselor once about going to the gym and I was expecting to hear him talk about emotional issues that might be preventing me going etc and he said: “there are some things in life that you simply have to take action on. Going to the gym is one.”

Nothing more fancy to it that that.

Do the work. Take action.

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This is not good advice and if anything can make people feel worse about themselves and have the opposite effect. Do you also think that an alcoholic should just "do it" (i.e. stop drinking) or a depressed person should just "get over it"? Where's the line (I know I took your example a bit further to prove a point).. Our brains are complex and it takes all kinds of psychological "tricks" to make progress on certain things.. In the scenario posted, making tiny almost insignificant progress, over and over, is a good way to go. I also like (depending on what I'm having a hard time getting started with) outlining my work, especially if its writing or a presentation - write headings, keywords, thoughts... rearrange a bit here and there and in the end you realise you only have to beef out words into sentences and the whole thing is almost done and being at that stage you get a huge win and the remainder is a breeze. So different approaches. Even with your career though, putting an actual short and medium term plan together for yourself (and maybe sharing it with a friend or family member) can help tremendeously!

I don’t agree with your response.

>> Do you also think that an alcoholic should just "do it" (i.e. stop drinking) or a depressed person should just "get over it"?

False equivalence.

Not doing work is neither depression nor alcoholism.

If you find you get to a point in life where essentially you have fallen into lazy habits then you fix it by taking action.

>>> Not doing work is neither depression nor alcoholism.

It definitely can be as a result of depression. I don't think we have enough information to rule out things like depression.

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