Ask HN: Is This Typical Procrastination? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is This Typical Procrastination?

46 pointsTekMol21 comments

Too much of my day looks like this:

I sit down in front of the computer to do some work. I think:

"Before I begin, let's check HN real quick if there is something interesting on the frontpage. Probably there is not, so I'll start my work in a minute."

Half an hour later, I realize I went down some interesting rabbit hole of information or joined a discussion.

Now I need a break from the computer. I stand up and do some other stuff.

20 minutes later, I come back to the computer to do some work. I think: "Before I begin, let's check HN real quick ..."

What is this problem called? Is it typical procrastination?

View on HN

Seems so.

Just a tip that may or may not be helpful for you:

I have personally gone through periods where I am extremely unproductive due to that exact process. For years I tried to fix it: using web extensions to limit the sites I can use, pomodoro, removing autocomplete results so I don’t enter a website through muscle memory, etc.

Results, however, were mostly temporary and not really successful in the long term.

What did work for me, as suggested in a book, was really thinking about myself, taking notes, and trying to find a pattern of what times in my life procrastination comes back in full force.

What I found out is that these periods happen whenever I'm avoiding a specific task, no matter how unrelated to the job at hand. So for example, if I need to have a difficult conversation with a partner and I start putting it off, that triggers my avoidant behaviour and I won't get anything done at work or in personal projects until I face the issue. Then the behaviour gets magically resolved and I feel super productive again.

Things that have triggered avoidance so far are as big as making up with a friend after an argument, and as small as having to go through phone customer service to solve an issue with my phone carrier's bill.

So I'd recommend you to stop and ponder for a moment if there's any important unrelated things you've been avoiding.

My mind follows the same pattern, and often when I have to do something unpleasant or anxiety-triggering. The support email might be about something I broke, or the phone call requires a big ask, or I’m avoiding feeling incompetent about what I need to do. The distraction is almost always either to numb/overwhelm senses to suppress that feeling, or something new to make me feel competent / intelligent / good. As an engineer, checking HN often satisfies both needs.

Pushing back from the desk and breathing helps me recenter and refocus, and “costs” me only 100 seconds from the day.

What book may I ask?

The Productivity Project, I think it was (I checked a few).

It’s pretty good. At times it falls in the style of self help books rambling on personal stories, but it has specific and actionable advice.

Peter Drucker in "The Effective Executive" has a chapter that makes this point, "know thy time".

This isn't procrastination.

Procrastination is having a test due in a week and studying the night of.

This is the problem when you have too flexible of a routine that allows you to go from distraction to distraction where you forgot why you even sat down in front of the computer.

Some people might say that's ADHD, some might say laziness/lack of discipline. But the reality is, you allow yourself the freedom to do that. You don't have to.

Here's another way to think about it. For your "work" that must be done on the computer, is there any reason why other parts of your computer need to be enabled to do it? Could you turn off the internet to code? Turn on airplane mode to write? Disable web traffic to problematic sites to research? etc.

Give your device a job to be done. Don't let it be an "all in one" device or you'll constantly fall into the trap of getting nothing done. Set one intention and do not allow yourself to do anything else until you're done or put enough time into that thing.

Sounds like "interacting" on HN is a lot more enticing, short-term, than whatever work you are supposed to do on the computer. It's possible that you need more of a real-world social life.

On top of the noprocrast user settings already noted, there's stuff like blackholing HN (and other too-tempting sites) in /etc/hosts.

If you tend to do stuff in ~25-minute increments, there are various "pomodoro" strategies to get work done.

But your procrastination sounds typical enough that I wouldn't waste much time looking for an exact genus & species.

There'a a reason the "noprocrast" setting exists in your user page. This is it.

So yep, not super unusual.

Edit: see FAQ for specifics of how noprocrast works https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

A friend of mine in college owned an old motorbike. It's starter switch sometimes never worked after the bike has been not used for more than 12 hours or so. Hence, every morning he had to either kick start the bike or catch a bus to college. Kick starting the bike was a pain, but it once it was done, he was able to use the bike for rest of the day, and not have to struggle with missing buses or having to stand in crowded ones. However, some days he preferred the struggle on the bus because it was easier.

IMO what you are facing seems to be the same. You have issues starting work on whatever tasks you have because either it is not interesting, or it requires the initial chore of building up context even before you do a quantifiable unit of work. Focus on getting started, and the rest will become easy.

I think the most common advice is to break your wanted tasks into smaller steps and just do the first small step. then do the next. If you feel yourself looking for an alternative focus, break the steps into smaller steps and do the first one.

One of the primary reasons to procrastinate is to do something perceived as more enjoyable or easier than some nebulous task -- by thinking of the tasks you need to do in these small almost trivial pieces it can make the trade off advantage for alternative timewasters seem less fruitful. Plus you get the reinforcement of completing those small chunks.

I feel like a lot of the comments here are focused on HN part of the problem, but I would imagine if you didn’t have HN you’d have something else to distract yourself with.

I don’t have an answer, but I know of a small minority of SWEs that suffer deeply from this.

You may find this blog post relatable https://medium.com/@jimmypostwick_90910/a-day-in-the-life-of...

> I feel like a lot of the comments here are focused on HN

And I've been downvoted for it. Yes, it is not the problem. But why not accept the design could be healthier? aren't this what hackers do, design better systems? what is better that healthier?

HN is not helping alleviate this "mental-health" related issue because:

- The high throughput of "anything goes" (i.e. no categories) posts may push some to try and be always watchful to catch that "needle in the haystack"

- The very-short half-life of threads will draw people to want to always be on, to "hop on that fast discussions train" in time.

- That Karma system will trigger, for some hardcore users, an unconscious continuous urge to get more of it.

People with "issues" are very vulnerable to these kinds of "games". But it is not a binary thing : IMHO We are all to a variable degree affected.

There I said it.

I think you've been downvoted because HN is already among the most "healthy" designed social sites out there, if not the top, so pointing out it could be "healthier" still is a bit of an eye roll.

I mean yeah sure but really? It's already as deliberately spartan as it can get. You don't even get notified of comment replies.

If someone's degree of self control is so poor they are addicted to HN it's not HN that should change, it's the user that needs to develop some modicum of self control and discipline.

> if not the top

> It's already as deliberately spartan as it can get.

I don't agree. Minimalism (feature-wise) does not equal a better design (or a healthier one for that matter)

This is not a "Chair" (more like a flood...). By definition, People with "issues" (like in this thread) lack that "self-control" to deal with it. I was just pointing to where IMO the weak spots could be.

I guess all this just does not make any sense for users who are accustomed to this HN system for years : As well adjusted (themselves) AND well-adjusted to it (not the same thing), they can afford to roll their eyes.

This could be procrastination - could be that the work is not interesting, so anything else that is even slightly more interesting takes control. I know I am guilt of this as well!

But something that helps with focusing is doing tasks with someone else around. This is called social facilitation [0]or body doubling - I've been building out a site to help with just this sort of thing! [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_facilitation

[1] https://doubleapp.xyz

Curse of modern life. I co-work, or virtually co-work, so it feels awkward if I'm goofing on on social media with everyone else working around me.

Less helpful are tools. But more helpful than nothing. I use Chrome plugin 'Intention' and block sites like HN for certain hours of the day on my router.

I know I've got it bad because of how many times I'll see the HN (or whatever site) block screen, go back to my work, and ONE MINUTE LATER tab back over and refresh without thinking. It's a reflex.

And yeah sometimes I just disable everything and waste time. But sometimes the roadblocks work and get me back on course.

Procrastination is an emotional response to the task you need to complete. So think about why you aren't engaging with the task. It is almost always based on some kind of fear, i.e. fear of failure, fear of judgement etc...

If you have ADHD or are otherwise distracted easily then block hacker news at the DNS level. This will suck for 2 weeks but it works.

This is an underrated problem. You could call it procrastination I guess.

IMO, we can handle this better if we can alleviate our FOMO. I wrote about this on HN yesterday [1]

A feature like noprocrast [2] is not very useful if people will (literary typed) "fear missing out" on something (comment, news, tool...). Is it really healthier to do 10 min every hour that a continuous hour every day?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33746151

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#:~:text=In%20my%20...

It sounds like you created a thread to avoid doing work?

My tip is to develop social skill ,and spend time talking to close one , instead of infinite scrolling in tech forums

This sounds like ADD to me.

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