Ask HN: Have you succesfully stopped being a procrastinator?

Most of my life I was like this. I studied for exams the night before, same for coursework. I did the night owl thing. I would leave my work right until internal deadlines and rush or work late to finish.

9 months ago I started a new job. It was a relatively senior role for me. Straight away my manager kicked my ass if I didn’t get stuff done. It was fully expected that I was a productive and competent member of the team. The prospect of loosing my job was very real. There is also no working from home so there is nowhere to hide. I quickly started focusing and putting in extra effort. For a while I had to put in extra time outside work to get up to standard but now I just work productively and go home.

When I work on my side projects I make far more progress far more quickly. I feel far better about work and life in general as I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time.

My advice is to put yourself in a situation that will demand a lot from you. Make sure you can’t make excuses and that you have someone/thing to hold you legitimately accountable to a high standard. It may be hard but in the long term it’ll help you reach your potential.

What kind of work?

I've always felt I was more productive on my own projects when I came home from a 9-5.

I don't know why, but I somehow think that running helped me. I don't even remember why I started running, but I remember I didn't expect to be able to make an habit out of it. It turns out I made an habit out of it, and helped me make others. I think it is because running is such an automatic thing. You put one foot ahead, then the other, until you get home.

I don't think I 100% stopped procrastinating, but now I almost never think about it. No thinking, no reasoning, no excuses, no strategies, no prioritization, no schedulers, no productivity apps, no deals with myself. No search for motivation in the moment where I need it.

Just show up. With or without motivation, with or without optimal circumstances. Show up over and over again, without thinking.

> I get bored or distracted easily, I don't believe in ADHD, but according to the definition I definitely have it.

ADHD isn’t some genetic on/off switch that determines whether you can focus or not, it’s a threshold for commonly-linked traits that indicates you may benefit enough from medication, routines, and special accommodations in certain circumstances that it’s worth it to try them and for you to be evaluated differently from people who don’t pass that threshold.

Not believing in ADHD is like not believing in charisma or any other observable set of traits.

According to what I've read has been that most of the people can be diagnosed with ADHD. I may be wrong. I'll read mor about it.

Do you have any literature you can share? If not I'll do a quick search here.

I recommend the replacing guilt series: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/pFatcKW3JJhTSxqAF

Basically, if you're constantly applying willpower, you're doing something wrong. Stop trying to use a stopgap as a solution. (See link for details)

I spent most of the past decade (up to about 2 years ago) upset that I wasn't more productive, and mad at myself for not having any real hobbies outside video gaming. Now I'm more successful by my past standards (learning piano, writing, producing meaningful work doing something I like). More importantly to me, I've exited the emotional state of constantly beating myself up for not doing more.

I wouldn't say I have "stopped", but my productivity has improved greatly after I went through this course: https://www.drdavidmaloney.com/procrastination-course-101 Procrastination is a psychology issue and some of the things that cause it are counter intuitive. This course gave me a toolbox to both recognize and deal with the different causes.

Figure out what you actually want to do and do that. If you still can’t do it, ask yourself why. Don’t label it “procrastination”. There is probably a good reason you are not doing it, such as something higher priority that you are putting off, poorly defined goals, pressure to succeed, or whatever.

Or you could just be tired. Take care of your body: sleep, exercise, diet. If you’re exhausted then you won’t be able to focus on anything.

One thing that I have found to help some is to spend a minute daydreaming about having successfully completed the task at hand. It increases my motivation to start some. Once started, I find that it's actually a little easier to continue than it is to stop. No magic bullets I'm afraid. Just a small, but sometimes, useful boost.

No, and the consequences of not doing so have led me to have a terrible life with a commute of over 2h one way, a constant state of depression and anger even after seeking help from professionals for years, and a sense of regret and lack of hope, all as the fault of my own decisions and actions.

Hope you also read the responses here. There still future for us, hope they help you too.

I would like to believe in them, but at this point... no idea.

Sorry for all the links, but I've been struggling with these EXACT same things my entire life, and recently spent a lot of time writing about it.

> * I tend to leave things to the last minute. Most of the time it usually goes very well, unless I've heavely understimated the task which happens 1/10 times. Most of the things I need to do are important but not urgent, so they require to be proactive

Rather than trying to force yourself to be proactive, I found success by eliminating all my sources of distraction. After my wife put a passcode on my phone for using HackerNews and Reddit and YouTube, I magically found myself avoiding work less!

https://taylor.town/parental-self-controls

> * I get bored or distracted easily, I don't belive in ADHD, but according to the definition I definetly have it. So thats why I sometimes prefer tinker with a RPi on a project that has my interest instead of the ticket I know I can finish by just focusing 15min.

I recommend keeping a /now page with your personal "sprints" in the future. For me, what causes tinkering rabbit-holes is twofold:

- being afraid of not every getting back around to THE REALLY COOL IDEA

- not being realistic about how long the rabbit-hole will take compared to the rest of your wish-list

https://taylor.town/now

> * As typical in procrastinators, I tend to ignore big tasks because they seem difficult or tedious, but when you start doing them most of the time I get into the flow in about 15mins into the task making me wonder why did I took so long to start the task.

A lot of my procrastination comes from imagining that a task won't fit in an allotted block of time. I've made a personal mantra of "scrounging for between time".

https://taylor.town/between-time

> * Also, you may relate to this, I have 2000 videos on my youtube watch later playlist and lost count on my "To read" bookmark on Chrome.

Those lists will haunt you until you decide it's fake and unimportant!

https://taylor.town/nothing-fulfills

Thank you for all the links!

I realized that I need to keep changing the techniques I'm using to keep my brain on my toes.

Basically, the effectiveness of any productivity idea/hack starts out the most effective and interesting and then after a few weeks/months it usually starts to become less motivating. At that point, I know I need to either find a new idea or revamp my interest in the original plan.

For example, people will say to use a phone timer or hourglass or notebook or whiteboard in different articles. I have all those things, and once I accepted that cycling through them and adding new things to the rotation doesn't mean they failed it became much easier to keep the chain of not procrastinating going.

Along with this, I've also tried to accept that sometimes I won't notice the decrease in effectiveness until I've started to fail at something, and that's just part of the reset/switch period. If I'm aware of myself and notice things becoming harder, I can try to pre-empt the procrastination by looking for a new tactic. If I'm too busy or bored or stressed and I mess up my schedule, it's not going to last forever. Sometimes it's fine to pull an all-nighter. I think a reasonable amount is about once a month, but some people would try to do less.

I didn’t crack it but found this guy has some very interesting ideas on how to attack procrastination

https://alexvermeer.com/getmotivated/

I think procrastination is ultimately a mental/emotional problem and no amount of “productivity systems” can solve it. Turning inaction into action is where the rubber meets the road and What prohibits it from meeting is the incongruence inside you. One part of you wants something but your mind is fighting you all the time when you try to do it/get it

I went from being extremely lazy and failing classes to working 10-12 hrs every day, getting a 3.65 avg in college engineering, and enjoying it. Mostly I got the habit of starting everything immediately and then doing it in chunks and finishing early. If I had a 10 page paper due in 30 days I would make the document day 1, day 2 I would make the outline (lets say its 10 sections), day 3 id do section 1's rough draft, day 4 id do 2's, etc. So by the 12th day I would have a rough draft of the whole paper, which I would polish for 2 more days, getting the paper done in 14 days and only working on it for like 15 mins a day. Peak stress is super low, whole process is super rewarding, and it takes much less willpower because starting immediately became my habit, and habits give willpower discounts on whatever you're doing. The higher ratio of reward to stress made my primitive parts of my brain start to actually like work and see it as progress. Before, I would wait until day 25 to start, freak out, and work like 3 hrs a day on it until the final day when I would work 8. Super stressful and made me hate work and produce lower quality work. Put hand on stove, hand burns, brain hates stove.

I tried many techniques for like 15 years because my procrastination and laziness were the bane of my existence. Nothing worked except this. Some stuff worked temporarily but nothing was a fix like this. It took some time for my brain to adjust but it worked wonders.

Summary: Start everything immediately and finish early Space things out to avoid high peak stress if possible

I realized that a good job done before the task is due will save me time to spend with my family or do whatever the hell I want to do with that time. To my mind it looked like if I did that I'd be saving time, and in my book time is money so I'll be saving money if I quickly finish my tasks.

I also imagine that I'm trying to build a wall out of bricks, rather than focusing on the wall (end goal), I just have to put one brick. Feeling sad? Place another brick. Bad day? Place another brick. Didn't get a raise? Place another brick.

Try timing how much actual work you do each day. Track it. Also time procrastination and track.

Then increase first number while decreasing second number. Just try to beat the previous day by a bit.

If you finish all your work, ask boss for more.

No, nothing I’ve tried in the last 16 years of professional life has worked, other than legitimately good opportunities which do not inspire procrastination.

Are aware procrastinating is a way if handling emotional issues?

There are many ways its created, but at the end of the day one needs to work on these issues

For example, one of the reasons is to be confronted with the results... That I'm not good enough

You are welcome to email, see my profile

I always mean to stop, but somehow never get around to it.

nah