Ask HN: People who once struggled with severe procrastination, how’d you solve | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: People who once struggled with severe procrastination, how’d you solve

22 pointsarikr16 comments

People who once struggled with severe procrastination for years, who overcame it, what was your journey of how you solved it?

I’m talking about people who had this for likely a decade or more, and now it’s not a challenge for you and it’s been years of it being solved. How?

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Recognized that procrastination was often a form of emotional soothing - got stressed thinking about starting a task, and promising that I'd start it 'tomorrow' removed that immediate threat. Which worked until the stress of not completing a task was greater than the stress of starting it.

Introspection on why I was stressed starting a task and changes for each type: -Sometimes ambiguous and I didn't know where to start: break it down, and treat 'getting oriented' as a discrete task -Sometimes I was giving myself pressure that it had to be 'perfect': approaching it via iterations -Sometimes I was just too tired to start: understanding my energy cycles and scheduling to do the hard parts right after coffee. And scheduling it.

Other commenters suggesting great other techniques, but for me the core was understanding and leaning in to the sources of anxiety to know what techniques to try. I'm still not perfect, but getting better.

I came to accept it as a strength rather than a weakness, as it is often much more efficient to do tasks in order of inspiration and interest than order of external priority. "As long as I am making progress, it doesn't matter so much what I am working on."

For a couple close friends of mine, the answer has been ADHD diagnoses and medication. It's led to a drastic improvement.

Obviously does not apply to everyone. Do not self diagnose or self medicate. See a professional!

A regular daily routine helps. Regular short breaks are also essential for your physical and mental health so don't try to fight this urge too hard. A break doesn't have to involve 30 minutes of doomscrolling, you can just go and look out of the window for a minute instead.

And yes I did suffer for years, sometimes the simplest solutions are those you come to last.

Chiming in late, in case you're still monitoring this thread.

Once someone tried to convince me that "The Procrastination Equation" described the problem exactly, but to me it seemed to ignore key factors, although I admit that it was nice that it recognized that different people have different issues, so there's not a single trick that works for everyone.

I'd suggest that you try the first exercise from "The Now Habit" (Neil Fiore, 1989):

   "The first step is easier than anything a book on procrastination has ever asked of you before: simply procrastinate at your normal level for another week. I will teach you to become aware of how and when you procrastinate. Just observe yourself objectively, like an anthropologist who records the behavior and rituals of a foreign culture without making judgments. Don’t judge yourself or analyze your behavior. For now, just concentrate on becoming aware of your current behavior patterns."

It turns out that it's possible to self-diagnose the problem.

For me, this exercise was fairly easy because for years I had been logging my activities in a daily journal every couple hours, so I increased the frequency to every 15 min. What I discovered during this exercise was astonishing to me.

Knowing what the problem was, then I could address it. In my case, the issue was described fairly accurately in chapter 1 of Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now".

Given this is HN this could be an unpopular opinion. But if I'm procrastinating about doing something, I just don't do it. In fact, I just try to forget about it because I'll end up in a horrible loop of guilt and self hatred.

If it's important, it will eventually get done. If it's not, it will get done when I feel like it. This strategy has worked well for me because I've still managed to produce cool projects in my spare time without stress.

I also find that it helps to identify the source of procrastination. For me, it's usually anxiety in some form. If you can figure that out, find a way to cure it and move forward.

We're humans, not machines. You don't have to force yourself to do anything.

This system works well for some things (side projects, sweeping the floor), but not others (treating medical conditions, handling tax issues). It is important to differentiate between those two classes of action items.

I spent a lot of time devising and refining the perfect system avoiding procrastination. It is the most efficient and elegant approach on the subject. But I recently found a minor flaw in it, so I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

Perfect, will bookmark your comment and try it later. Thanks for your time, really appreciate it!

The split method: Start immediately, split your work up into parts and finish gradually. If you have a 10 page paper due in a month, start immediately and just write the title in a word document. Then tomorrow, write up a skeleton outline. Then the next day, fill in half of the first section in that outline. Then the day after that, fill in the other half. Then do half of anther section. Etc.

The point of this is: Procrastination psychologically conditions you to hate work, because you do it all at the last second drenched in stress and fear. So massive workload and stressful environment. Sure, there is some reward from making progress towards your goals, but this is heavily outweighed by the negative parts of the experience. Which causes you to avoid work more, which increases the problem and gives your brain another experience causing it to reinforce hatred of starting work. It's a vicious cycle / positive feedback loop, procrastination causing procrastination.

The point of the split method is to train your brain over time to like work. Progressing towards your goals is rewarding! Your brain is built to like achieving goals. With the split method, each work session is much easier. There is no stress of "AAH I HAVE TO GET 100% OF THIS DONE RIGHT NOW". Over time after repeated work sessions 1) are not nearly as stressful, and 2) that leave you feeling good, your brain will start to like work more and more. Additionally, getting into the habit of not thinking and starting IMMEDIATELY on your assignment will help break the habit of procrastination. For me the hardest part was always getting myself to start, so being in the habit of automatically starting has been super helpful. I'll admit though I still don't have some perfect work ethic and I haven't 100% gotten rid of procrastination.

I started this a couple years ago and my work ethic is significantly better. Went from being a 2.7 GPA student to a 3.7 GPA student (moving average GPA each quarter, not cumulative).

I have this for a while especially around things/decisions I do not want to make. What has helped me is just getting started, so I tell myself you do not have to do the whole thing but you just need to get started. In most instances once I start I feel like this is not that bad and I can get it done.

Puting yourself in a situations where you have to do it helped. I increased my workout by habitually going to the gym. I wouldn't even think about it. So once I was there I would have to workout. So the goal is to physically get yourself, without thinking about it, to a point where you have to start. The key there is not thinking about. Make it a habit.

Also make sure it's outside your home. If you're able to do other things, you will. And dump the phone somewhere where it's outside your quick use.

I thoughtfully write a list of things to do, which feels slightly similar to more procrastination, so it’s not that hard, then I order the list. Without any deliberation, I do the actions on the list. If any item seems too big or too complicated or I just don’t know how to start, I break it down into subtasks.

Ultimately, IMO, breaking through procrastination takes something like a mental muscle, that can fatigue, atrophy, and strengthen with use. Patience and persistence are key.

Read "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius. Cut off social media, gaming and other distractions. Figure out what you want and what your goals are. Figure out the things you need to do to reach your goals, and then do it (every day).

Anti-anxiety medicine and ADD medicine

Logically speaking the only sure way to solve it is to forget the concept of time opportunity cost

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