Ask HN: Advice for Dealing with Crippling Procrastination?

A bit of perspective. After four surprisingly good months, you’re having a bit more trouble is probably down to normal variation because that’s about the only direction you could go from a local optimum. It takes a little time to refill an empty tank. Nothing unusual or unnatural or unexpected about it. And these are crazy stressful days despite starting to feel normal. It’s ok to give yourself credit for what you did and be kind enough to yourself to let off the gas some. Good luck.

OP, I would encourage you to interpret "be kind to yourself" may also mean "be confident in recognizing that you have an unmet need, and forgive yourself for the lapses which this has led to, and persist in seeking a way to understand and meet that need."

I say this as someone who reached out for help with when I was at MIT and been told, "It's fine. Everyone struggles. You're doing okay." It remember being just utterly crushed to hear that I was expected to suffer like that.

OP, this situation is hard but debuggable and you are worth it.

I've been there.

Procrastination is often a response to fear or guilt. Studies have shown that people who feel guilty tend to indulge in bad habits more. Forgiving yourself is often far better than reprimanding yourself. (Maximum Willpower, Dr. K. McGonigal, 2012)

"...the inertia required to start work..." This is a key point. Try to minimize the energy needed to start, or better yet, make it natural to start. The book Atomic Habits has some good solutions, but the most effective trick for me is to try to get in just 2 mins of work every hour, which usually snowballs to working a full hour. You might also look into changing your environment; old environments mean old habits. Try working at a different time, using a different keyboard or chair, drinking a different drink before work.

I noticed that the commuting period also helps a lot with focus. Even when the brain is idle, it's still at full activity. It could well be that your brain doesn't have enough idle time. You could try allocating an hour or two to "meditation", which might simply be taking a walk, watching music videos, staring at the ceiling.

I don't have ADHD, but since I started WFH I've been having ups and downs in terms of productivity, including a period of a few weeks where I was getting about 2-3 hours of work done per day at most like you describe. I don't know details about what your situation is like, but here's what I did that helps me at least most of the time.

I have my desk/office in a a room that was a storage room/unused office. I ended up removing anything from that room that I found myself doing instead of work: keep my phone in another room, delete bookmarks to blogs/news sites, move my stack of unread books into a different room, etc. Basically I got to a point where if I was sitting in that room, there was nothing to do but work.

The other thing I did was start framing tasks in terms of "doing this will make my life easier tomorrow" rather than thinking about later deadlines or the "big picture" of the project. E.g. "I can't get myself to audit all of these documents today, but if I set up the spreadsheet template it will make my life easier tomorrow." Sometimes when I start something like that I find it leads naturally into doing the actual task, but sometimes not. In those situations, as others have mentioned, it's important to have some self-compassion and try not get caught up in feelings of guilt. I started using an app called Woebot that can help with this. When you tell it you are depressed/anxious/guilty, it helps you look for ways to reframe those thoughts to be more productive.

Also, I have heard of studies that say the average employee is productive for 3-4 hours a day. Consider if you are actually getting less done or if your productive hours are just distributed differently. In an office where you get interrupted regularly it might be more evenly distributed throughout the day compared to if you have the opportunity at home to burn through those hours all in one chunk.

I'm on a similar place. My productivity has still not fully recovered, but at least my sense of guilt and stress around procrastination is gone - and that itself was a big detribution my attention span when it comes to being generally productive. So that's a tricky one - practice self-compassion and mindfulness.

Other random tips that have helped me, in the past:

- List out a gradient of actions you could take to make your employer more aware of your current mental performance. From the most direct approach to the most subtle one, as in: pointing out you are taking action to reduce the amount of work you are going to push to get done in a sprint, or bringing up the topic to HR, what's best for your own situation - and take action.

- Taking even the shortest walk around your block helps a lot feeding your senses with something other than your monitor.

- Within your regimented schedule, force yourself to read a novel or watch a lengthy engaging tv show and allow yourself to get immersed within it - to separate a little the need for novel information and give it to the brain when it expects it. In other words, taking control of dopamine release in your brain and optimize it to fit the media you enjoy the most, will decrease your need of novelty which often distracts us when we need the focus.

It's good to reach out - so even if you can't find a satisfactory answer here. Keep looking!

I don't have ADHD, but I have struggled with motivation from time to time, especially when confronted with tasks that I have little confidence I'll complete successfully.

That said, I'll move along, taking you at your word that you're resilient and eager for good advice:

- get off the couch and get busy. don't beat yourself up when you sit back down, just don't over-indulge in idleness.

- I strongly recommend getting excessive on the first go. wear yourself out. then get some sleep. sleep until you wake up.

- the idea is, wring the anxiety out of your work and make the work second nature. you sound plenty capable (or at least confident you are, and that is usually sufficient).

- disconnect from the negative ideation through reinforcement by taking positive action.

I know it wont be easy or so simple as I have made it sound, but I think you can do it and I don't even know you.

Best of Luck.

If you can afford it rent a tiny office and go there everyday, sub-leases galore right now being permitted by cities. I also can't effectively work at home mainly because I hated being there all day and night. My mini office works out to $150/mth after I write off most off the lease and is 6 blocks from my home so I walk there everyday.

Find an accountant wherever you live and ask them how much your country/state/province allows you to write off a lease

When I have an idea to do something that I really love, my brain ignores everything else until the thing is done.

I'm not sure what it is specifically that you are procrastinating, but if it's a sideproject; perhaps you can think of something else. Or outsource the parts you keep procrastinating.

If it's tasks for your regular job, perhaps discuss this with your manager to see if you can work on things you like more.

One thing that I started doing recently has been to spend the first hour of every morning outside under a big leafy tree.

This is a bit of a self plug, but I do a weekly newsletter called Tech Productivity that features articles and tools on being more productive:

https://techproductivity.co/

I find tons of good articles on procrastination and similar subjects. I don’t recall any specific examples now, but you can view all previous issues starting here:

https://mailchi.mp/techproductivity/78

Just change the number in the URL (77, 76, etc) to view previous issues. I’m sure you’ll find lots of good articles and maybe a tool or two that can help you out. Hope that helps!

Hi! Fellow ADHDer here. Inattentive subtype.

I'd need to know your specific brain better. What I really _should_ do is listen to you and really dive deep into the habit patterns you get into. (As I'm trying to get my brain to shut up about, thats what real engineering is.) But it is hard to do that over an internet forum and I lack the time. So instead I'm just going to barf solutions at you.

0. Top priority is to fix the sleep and exercise schedule. Everything else flows from that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck

1. See if you can get a standing desk and a stationary bike. I took the handlebars off mine so it could fit underneath the desk. It lets me cycle while programming which makes it easier to be tired at night.

If your brain hates shopping, then just go with these links:

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/skarsta-desk-sit-stand-white-s5... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ultrasport-Trainer-Sensors-Backrest...

2. Double down on automated testing. Write scaffolding tests even if the company wouldn't need them and you delete them before pushing. You are worth it.

3. Buy the actual book on the Pomodoro technique and take notes on it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pomodoro-Technique-Acclaimed-Time-M...

4. Get some dotted paper and nice mechanical pencils to take notes: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005IAZXUO/ref=ppx_yo_dt...

5. ADHDers need external words. Find a podcast you can use to replace the narrative that plays in your head. (Hell, if you find yourself getting into thought spirals of being really hard on yourself and unable to forgive yourself for distraction, you may want to go full Matthew 4:4)

6. Create a calendar event called "silent coding" at work and invite people to join. Humans need camaraderie.

7. Read this: https://medium.com/@josebrowne/on-coding-ego-and-attention-3...