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Comment by yuuuuyu | Hacker News Reader

The risk with this is that you keep procrastinating away before getting going again. It's the anticipated pain of frustration that prevents you from starting. Not so much if your idle time generated a solution to the problem. But if it didn't, then you are in trouble.

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This is an underrated comment. Not only this, but there are some micromanaged environments that make this impossible and you're immediately hit in the face with a meeting first thing in the morning that destroys any energy you might have had to continue after being asked several ways if it's "done yet".

I've been 60 minutes of focused work away from wrapping up this current ticket for the past two days. Too exhausted to get going in the morning before meetings and interruptions kill my productivity for the day. Usually I start work two hours before the workday actually starts because context switching and meetings drain me, and deep work won't get done otherwise. The curse of ADHD.

I already know I don't have ADHD, so I can tell you it might not be your ADHD. It's not that you're ruminating about what they asked, but that they all keep asking you because they use you as their syncing mechanism and must repeat yourself to several people. Effectively just as bad for productivity.

Morning meetings are a deliberate tactic. Middle management needs answers for their next meeting which is also right after yours in the morning.

The people who get to have meetings at the very end of the day are at the top of the hierarchy, and guess what? They got their work done!

If there was ever a real example of inequality that should be fixed (fuck all that DEI shit) this would be it. Work from home actually massively reduced this meeting train crap at my workplace, but they just found other ways to annoy people. It's still an improvement though.

Yeah, you have to give it a solid effort for this to work. On day two if it's not solved yet, you have to give another solid effort before resting.

I'm not sure if in this scenario it's an option to solve the problem on the first go. Usually when I hit this scenario, I am simply unable to do it in the first place, but the next day is easy.

Right. Or you try to break it down into subproblems which may be easier to solve. And those are then candidates for the downhill parking on-ramp for next day.

Well, if it did work, and you have a good solution the next morning there will be no reason to procrastinate.

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