Taxonomy of Procrastination
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That way, it's not a question of "do I have the energy today to go to the gym and workout?", it's just "do I have the energy today to workout while I'm at the gym anyway?", which is a much lower bar.
Another way to do things that have high activation energy is to have pets you love that will get excited at a specific time of day and be very disappointed if you don't follow through with it (take them on a walk). I've gone many times when I feel like I didn't have the energy just because they deserve it and I don't want to let them down.
Yes.
I was a terribly undisciplined child and carried much of that with me into college and early adulthood, so I spent over a decade doing "self discipline workouts".
I'm happy to report that it worked: I now have the ability to tell myself "you need to do X" and I will indeed do X. No matter how unpleasant. No matter how long it takes.
I'm unhappy to report that it worked: I can willpower myself into burnout easily and only notice how unhealthy I was being when I force myself (or my partner gently forces me) to take a vacation.
Overall I'm happy with the tradeoff, but it is possible to become an incredibly unhealthy version of yourself by overcorrecting on procrastination.
1. Promise yourself you will do thing tomorrow
2. If you do thing tomorrow, make another promise and repeat (but maybe a more challenging thing)
3. If you fail to do thing tomorrow, make another promise and repeat (but a WAY less challenging thing)
Example:
1. I will do 1 pushup tomorrow
2a. Tomorrow happens, I do pushup. I promise myself I'll do 2 pushups tomorrow.
2b. Tomorrow happens, I don't do pushup. I promise myself I'll bend my knees in something vaguely resembling a squatting stance tomorrow
I definitely recommend books like "Atomic Habits" and "The Power of Habit" for getting ideas that might work for you.
That's a risk, but I find that overall I pick things just hard enough to be challenging but just easy enough to make myself do. Then I do those things consistently until they become my new baseline and I increase the challenge. (2 pushups, 10, 20 pushups + putting on jogging shoes, ...).
The big idea is to pick things that you're almost certain you'll do. Falling back to smaller promises should be the exception.
> curious how it works.
Slowly, with lots of restarts, but the advantage of this method is that no matter how many times you fall off the wagon (and no matter how far you fall) you have something simple to start again.
Starting over at the proverbial "1 pushup" after you've spent time and effort building it up to so much more than that definitely sucks, but it's far better than other alternatives I've tried (such as waiting until I have the massive motivation needed to restart from exactly where I stopped).
Edit: I think it works for me because it slowly builds up self trust, which then becomes a positive feedback loop.
Thanks for sharing and thanks for putting possible future obstacles / challenges on my radar!
For example, if I'm scheduled to write for 3 hours and I feel too much resistance, I write for less time. Maybe 2 hours. If I'm super resistant, I invoke the 'nuclear option' and write for no more than 30 mins, or even less.
Much more important than hitting some predetermined target is writing everyday no matter what. To be forthright, it's not particularly difficult once I get going. The writer in me wants to write; that guy just needs a little coaxing sometimes.
I learned of the 'nuclear option' from an unfortunately titled book by Jerrold Mundis called 'Break Writer's Block Now'. The title is pretty cheesy but the book is gold. It's designed to be read (and applied) over an afternoon, perhaps 3-4 hours. It works. The proof is me. I've been a professional screenwriter for several years now as a result of daily effort.
I guess the most important thing I've learned is that punishment doesn't work (at least for me). But gentle, consistent practice does.
The Mundis book sounds like a very practical take on writer's block; Pressfield's take in The War of Art is more of a metaphorical approach.
I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts if you happen to have tried both!
There's some conceptual stuff in the Mundis book that provides a framework for understanding the why of his approach, but the majority of it is a 'Do this' and 'If this happens, do this' type of pragmatic approach.
What I found is if I followed the book's suggestions, I got a lot of writing done. That simple. Same for a good friend who is a comics artist, except for the obvious fact that he draws.
I found the Pressfield book somewhat useful but the simple fact is, I just don't turn to it anymore. I didn't find it skillful to anthropomorphize an abstract concept like 'Resistance' that I had to wake up and defeat everday. I think it's possible to have a really productive and fulfilling creative life without thinking of it like some kind of a daily fight.
I return to the Mundis book time and time again.
Finding the way into a healthy self-discipline is such a personal and creative act. The process that ultimate worked best for me is to give an approach a sustained trial (30 days or so) and then reflect on how it went. Assess and try again. After going through a lot stuff that didn't work (for me), I found the thing that did.
Perhap those reflections are useful in some way.
There's a lot to be said for empiricist approaches from real practitioners. I'm looking forward to checking out his techniques.
Time aggregate is a huge leverage and immensely undervalued.
I would have "do one pushup" as a calendar appointment at a specific time during the day.
My calendar today has; "write morning pages", "clean brewery", "run 30 min"
Looks like OP explained his system below, but it's really just an instantiation of The General System:
1. Try something.
2. If it worked, go back to step 1, and try to do better.
3. If it didn't work, go back to Step 1, and try to do better.
(There are some tricky parts to the system, like defining "works" and "better" — but on the other hand, everyone has to define those for themselves anyway.)Also, FWIW, "failure" might not be the most useful way to frame whatever's happening for you. Sometimes, I like to say instead, "an embarrassingly high price to pay for learning a simple lesson... but at least I've learned it now."
(Usually, when I frame it that way, it also becomes clear that I passed up many earlier opportunities to buy the lesson for a much cheaper price. And that's sort of a nice realization, too, because it restores a fair bit of agency.)
No type or amount of discipline training has ever dented the impervious armor surrounding my neocortex.
> There’s also the non-solution: Give up, reduce your ambitions, and stop calling it procrastination. The only thing worse than not doing the thing is not doing the thing and also beating yourself up about it forever. You weren’t designed to overpower Jim all the time, so don’t expect to.
As someone with executive impairment severe enough I can’t function without medication, it’s obvious the presented model of procrastination has gaps and the non-solution is a necessary addition to the equation that’s often omitted.
It has been very hard to accept my body or mind failing me is not procrastination and I’m glad it’s being mentioned. All of the procrastination strategies presented are still very necessary. They just don’t work as well for me.
The important thing is to find what works for you. The article is a good place to start.
Edit: as a side note, I think the ADHD being associated with schizophrenia is due whatever causes schizophrenia initially presenting as ADHD. Related, a lot of bipolar children have been initially diagnosed with ADHD for the that reason.
Unless you’re living in the third world, you won’t die for lack of perseverance at some dull task. You might lose your job or fail at school, but you won’t starve. That’s an embarrassingly rich situation to be in. Take advantage of it, is my suggestion.
Last week I found myself procrastinating for hours because something was going to be hard, was vaguely defined, wasn't going to work... and in the end it turned out to be five minutes work to try the first thing that came to mind, which was enough to solve the problem.
So in order to fool Jim, don't think about doing that whole big thing you need to do. Just tell yourself you'll only work on it a little bit for, say, ten minutes. Jim can hardly object to that.
And then much of the time, you made some kind of concrete start in that time, and the objections disappear.
Sometimes it turns out the task I had been dreading can actually be mostly completed in that time, and I was just wrong about it being hard.
> The problem is, while it’s easy to lie to yourself, Jim isn’t fooled.
While you claim:
> So in order to fool Jim, don't think about doing that whole big thing you need to do. Just tell yourself you'll only work on it a little bit for, say, ten minutes.
I will say that Jim can sometimes be fooled to a ridiculous degree.
When I’m out for a run and the going gets tough, Jim really wants me to stop. However I can just tell Jim that OK, I will stop but not before I reach the next light post, which is super close. Once I reach it, I’ll just shift the goal to the next light post.
This works wonders and I can keep going for miles. Often giggling to myself how easily Jim is fooled, as I’m literally thinking in that moment that I’ll just keep shifting the goal.
Actually, considering how old a mechanism this is, his name is not Jim but Grug.
And Grug no see point in doing tax when Grug belly full and cave warm.
We evolved to feel tired an out of energy when our minds asses that a task has a low probability of success. But chores, taxes, phonecalls and moving tickets in JIRA are very recent things from an evolutionary perspective, so it errs on the side of caution.
Personally I use this to fall asleep faster.
So, I keep notes and to-do lists. I try to break tasks into as small of sequential tasks as possible, and then go back and prune this list throughout the week/day/hour, depending on how urgent it is and how bad the procrastination is.
Sometimes these tasks are extremely simple. As simple as "turn on your computer" sometimes. Completing them and checking it off gives that little dopamine burst and the confidence to continue the task. All you have to do is make sure that your smaller tasks are organized in a way that allow you to complete the larger goal (which admittedly isn't always easy).
Either way, I write things down. I used paper notebooks for years before moving to a Markdown-formatted git repository that is automatically built into a static site when I push it to the remove. These days I've taken to using a reMarkable 2, an e-paper tablet. The fact that I enjoy using it adds to its utility, but I'm not yet sure if it's something I'm going to stick with long term.
Beyond medication, the only thing I’ve found that works well against procrastination is to tell my brain that it won’t be as unpleasant as I think, so long as I can just get started on it. And getting started means literally spending one minute on the thing.
Usually if I can get in that first minute, the thing becomes interesting and then I can make it happen.
I don't have a "top-level" comment specific to the linked article, but I felt compared to share my impression of the site as a whole. If you've got the time, I highly recommend spending some of it reading this site.
My typical interaction with Jim looks more like:
Jim: "Nah, don't like it; if you want it, here is the new rate."
Me: <tries to pay the extortion money>
Jim: "Oh look at you, aren't you hungry? I know you've just eaten your dinner, but AREN'T. YOU. HUNGRY. RIGHT. NOW.?"
Me: <tries to ignore it and power through>
Jim: "What? Is Bob here squeezing your abdomen too tightly? Your chest hurts? He will stop if you stop pursuing this."
Me: "I guess I'd better write a comment on this newest procrastination story on HN."
Jim: "Good call."
This is how it works on me. I don't know why, I'm not even a social person. People say I don't care what other people think about me. Still, body doubling is the only method that has worked for me.
Using resources to chase low-probability goods in a sharply resource constrained environment is a lethal strategy. See also: why being rich makes it easier to strike oil when investing, aka the Risk Premium.
We've had such a fortunate run the last few decades that we've forgotten just how potent a skill "holing up" was, and likely will be again. Psychological illnesses like depression, maybe a similar reason for passing the great evolutionary filter.
This is the killer for me. For most of what I need to do, both "You think no one else will care" and "You yourself won’t care" are true. Not only do I think no one else will care, I usually know that no one else will care. In cases where they do care, it's short term: They care that the thing gets done, but once it is done, they don't care anymore. Because of these things, I myself don't care, and it's hard to get motivated to do anything.
For one very helpful example: the book, "Solving the Procrastination Puzzle". One of the best techniques to solving procrastination is "Just Get Started". It addresses a lot of the objections that the OP brings up because very simply the tasks we dread aren't often as bad as we think they will be. If we just get started, we often find the challenge even enjoyable. Here is ChatGPT-4's summary of the techniques in the book:
[redacted]
You don't need to undermine someone's position to add more context. I like the additional context you add, but I believe you'd be better off without the judgment. It's unwarranted, and being an avid follower of the OP's blog, I'm pretty sure the author knows these facts about procrastination.
Ugh. Now I need to decide if ChatGPT hallucinated something in this summary, or if its otherwise factual.
(HN users are allergic to LLM generated comments, including summaries. We don't know yet how the current AI wave is going to play out on HN but for the time being the community is super sensitive about not letting generated content permeate the threads and I think it's the right call for now.)
Jim is there when you are a baby and picking your nose. Jim is reflected in the face of your mother when you wanted to eat the big fat booger and her warm and smiling face turned into an angry and disgusted grimace. There is Jim. Jim turns from an observed behavior as baby to an internalized behavior as adult. If you want to change your behavior there is Jim.
Jim is at the edge of your comfort zone. Jim is at the edge to the unknown. If you venture into new behaviors you will suck at it and Jim will tell you to go back. Jim says its comfortable where you came from.
Watch 1977-1983 Star Wars (which is full of eternal wisdom). Luke fought his Jim before he could fight Darth Vader. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qiDuHCKSc8
The same as Luke fought his Jim, we all have to fight our Jims. And as Luke kills dark-side Darth Vader, light-side Anakin Skywalker is reborn. I told you. Star Wars is full of eternal wisdom. The same will happen to you. As you fight, your dark-side you will uncover your Jims light-side. Because Jim is the mirror image of you.
It is your damn RESPONSIBILITY to create the best Jim there is. It is your damn JOB to fight Jim everyday. It is your RESPONSIBILITY and JOB to uncover his light-side one tiny bit each day. Jedi, its our job to save the galaxy from the dark-side. Its worth to die for!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-safe-drug-to-bo...
When I take one of these pills I don't notice any particular effect until the end of the day when I usually have a load of stuff done that had been hanging around for weeks or months.
I mean I'm sure some people suffer from real procrastination, but these cases are quite easily identified: horrible junk filled houses, terrible hygiene and health, no job, things of the sort.
Except these extreme cases, yeah, everybody could do more of everything and be more productive. But think about it, no organism wants to burn energy unless absolutely necessary. Any effort you undertake costs you something. A broken back and a broken mind are not exactly rare for heavy workers. If you have your needs covered why would go with "more is better"? There's no undertaking without risk or cost.
It seems more like you’re saying ‘you don’t need to be working on that second side gig’. Which, sure (Assuming someone isn’t on the edge of insolvency due to lack of income, anyway and has tried cutting back on expenses.).
But what typically causes people to complain are things like - procrastinating looking for a job because the market is tight and scary. Or procrastinating on doing the taxes because ugh, or procrastinating on finding that weird production data corruption bug that is going to suck.
Which have consequences, and cause a lot of stress avoiding them, and realistically aren’t actually optional.
Like ADHD meds, the tools can help someone go in the wrong direction ‘harder’ if used without thinking about it or if someone has a bad plan.
A shitty environment and unrealistic workload isn’t going to NOT result in burnout if it doesn’t get better, no matter how much Adderall someone takes, or how good they get at tackling procrastination.
But if taking care of something (like looking for a better job!) will produce a better outcome, but someone is procrastinating, then the tools can help.
Even if ending procrastination led to no increase in productivity it would still be a good achievement for mental wellness
Before taxonomies and remediation, I would watch Tim Urban's absolutely legendary TedX talk that humanizes procrastination--despite all its ills--and how to empathize with procrastinators (inside and around you):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU&pp=ygUacHJvY3Jhc...
Another related article on the same topic: https://alexvermeer.com/limit-procrastination/
It reminded me of this classic: https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti...
(There's also a TED talk, linked in the article)