The Smart Guide to Beating Procrastination | Hacker News Reader

The Smart Guide to Beating Procrastination

steve-olson.com

55 pointssolson15 comments

I can tell you one way not to beat procrastination: Consuming 24 articles about beating procrastination.

Seriously, it's almost like it's a subtle joke and he's mocking the procrastinators

The first comment on the blog sums my response up so well that I'll just quote it:

> This is great! It’s going to take me about a month to read everything!

On an entirely related note, I think it's time to increase the time window that HN is LeechBlocked & switch the VMs I use for 'browser testing' to host-only networking...

I clicked through ... scrolled halfway down the list before I figured out the joke.

nice try.

More than anything else, I find that making a list with things that can actually be ticked off (ie specific, and measurably attainable in the short term, not something like "lose weight" or "become pro-active") is my best productivity tool.

There's something about a good list that is just like a flag to a bull to me.

    (ie specific, and measurably attainable in the short term ...

It's great self-hack. If I can just get rolling, I can (often, not always) keep moving and get stuff done.

It's the "Wow, I have a gigantic task here; it's so huge that a few minutes just $(anything_but_the_task) won't matter" thing that ruins the party.

I think it is part of why I'm so much more productive at debugging. Give me a spreadsheet with a big list of things that are wrong and I'll bulldoze through them like a lightsaber through butter†.

On the other hand, going to one of the 'proper' 'enterprisey' bug tracking systems actually reduces the visual impact, there is no list you have to search for them one by one and there is all this bondage and discipline around it.

Because of this for me anyway the spreadsheet ('worse') is 'better'.

†Disclaimer: it helps if you actually know the program and understand the problem that is being solved etc

That's the whole idea behind David Allen's "Next Actions" in the "Getting Things Done" book.

Sure, the goal might be "Lose 50 lbs", but the "Next action" is "Do 20 min of exercise today". Often turning your "to-do" list into things you can actually DO is all it takes.

This is actually a bunch of links to other online guides to procrastination, plus three videos, plus three books, and some commentary. Reading it all seems like a pretty good way to procrastinate.

The great thing about procrastination is that the reward comes now. Don't take that away from me.

I find it ironic this article (which takes time from your work) is about beating procrastination, and his own personal advice is "sometimes you shouldn’t do what others tell you." I'm sensing an incredibly subtle message here...

Priceless.

My gosh... that's a lot of content and I really don't feel like slogging through it all right now. Bookmark and move on!

Great, bookmarked. Will read later.

I'll read this article later

Hmm. Seems to be meta procrastination.

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