Getting Past Procrastination
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
I've found this to be very true. A trick I found that made this easier for me is to leave a trivial task to start tomorrow with, often with notes to remind myself what to do. Ideally the trivial task is on the way to something bigger, not finishing something. That gets me into my editor, gets me running the code / tests / etc., and gives me a trivially easy way to get moving. Then the motivation kicks in and I can start moving for real.
The same approach helps me with tasks outside of software development, and even outside of work.
When there are no clear tasks, I sometime leave a syntax error at the place work should continue tomorrow. This is quite effective. It can make the answer to the "Where was I?" question immediate instead of taking a few seconds and this is one fewer barrier.
It's also useful to jot down a quick list of (say) three items that are at the top of your mind when you leave work for the day, and they too will help with a context restore.
The magic of Git means you can immediately find them in the working index and get back on to it. Just remember to remove them before the commit.
How does git help you find certain texts in files? `grep` should do the trick just fine, unless I misunderstand what "chuck Todo comments in the code" mean, the code lives on your disk no?
Grep will find them too, but any in the diff you'll know for sure were added by you.
And why it matters to get them from the diff if they're on disk already? Literally one command to find all of them, rather than going through git?
git status && git diff HEAD
To search for all mentions of 'TODO' in the repo, ignoring untracked files:
git grep TODO
git grep -i TODOBasically, my assumption is that `gq` should return empty, which means I have a clean slate, and can start taking on new work. Otherwise, there is ongoing work that needs attention.
It just lists:
* modified/untracked files
* stashed changes
* local-only branches (not tracking a remote branch)
* branches out-of-sync with their upstream (either ahead or behind)
* branches that aren't the main branch (even if tracking and in-sync with a remote upstream)
It's basically inbox-zero for git.
But it only works if you like working with a clean worktree.
Introducing a syntax error is like a saved game, portal back in time. I'll come back to it tomorrow and it'll take me max one minute to reload the context into my brain.
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4825/the-art-of-fi...
I’m just stating the obvious, but I find it odd that the author states the opposite isn’t true.
In my experience both works and some actors prefer one and some the other. But you can try it yourself, think of a sad thing, slumb together make a sad gesture and listen (emotionally) what happens on the inside.
Mostly because I don't think procrastination is inherently bad. There's a lot of stigma attached to procrastination as it's seen as being "unproductive". But I think procrastination can lead to great insights.
Your brain is telling you that it is not interested in the current task. The question is: Why? Overworked and needs a break? Much more interested in exploring something else? Protecting against the pain of failure?
Investigating the why instead of forcing "overcoming" is quite fruitful in my personal experience.
My guess is "action leads to motivation" might be helpful for solving one of the root causes (likely fear of failure/imposter syndrom) but not all of them.
I think for younger engineers "fail fast" makes a lot of sense; there's not enough of a foundation of experience to tell right from wrong so the only way to learn is to fail.
For more experienced engineers, there's a greater sense of "I have a sense where this can fail; how do I design around that?"
It's not that a more experienced engineer will know exactly how it fails, but that there are modalities of failure that have been encountered so the goal is to design with some flexibility or optionality in mind. And sometimes, this just requires a bit of "gestation" or "percolation" before carving the path.
I think of it like an experienced sculptor sizing up a block of marble before making the first strike with a chisel. It's a kind of procrastination, but really, its a process of visualizing the path.
I'd say that procrastination is bad when it drives you into some unproductive but addictive behavior, like watching silly tiktok videos, etc. It can be actually good if you do "structured procrastination": can't force myself to do task X, but find solace in solving problem Y really neatly. Another approach is to take a walk, do push-ups, etc, anything that changes your focus away from mental tasks, and preferably brings more oxygen to your brain.
Yet another approach is analytical: "I can't stomach doing that thing! But what thoughts or feelings make me loathe it so much? Where do they come from?" Interesting insights can follow.
This is actually what John Perry, an emeritus professor of philosophy at Stanford calls it. There is even an essay (and a whole website) called "Structured Procrastination" [1]:
> Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.
I think often people who don't visualize in their head can't grasp this...it appears as inactivity. The reality is it seems to be a hyperactivity...procrastination comes from having too many tasks and directions with unsolved solutions. (in my case...)
Another way to put it I have heard is "Thinking is working". If it doesn't appear like I am working...I am likely thinking.
The productivity fetishists want us to hate ourselves for resisting the orders issued by the executive mind. Fuck that.
I think for a lot of us it's something like: Because it's nonsense busywork that I don't care about. Procrastinating isn't going to help, and it is absolutely bad because it leads to uncompleted tasks and that leads to financial distress. I need to get it done regardless of whether it's going to provide a dopamine hit or not. Best thing to do is to stop thinking about it and get it out of the way so that I can focus on the things I want to do. I'm not overworked, I just don't want to do this task. I am interested in exploring something else but that's not a choice that I have right now. I don't have the privilege of doing whatever I feel like doing. Pain of failure? No, it's not at all something that I'll fail at. It's drudgery avoidance. Unfortunately there's plenty of drudgery that has to be completed.
So if one really is as uninterested in the quality of the output as you suggest, perhaps it might actually be better to dump the problem into Claude/Gemini/Cleverbot and just copy/paste/act upon the results verbatim and then mark the checkbox as "done" and move on.
For me personally, the pain of such efforts is ordinarily from making sure that the output is correct when the input is largely guesswork or speculation that always leads to hunting through a morass of poor documentation of some library or seeking a workaround to some irritating problem or rolling the dice on what the risk to various decisions might prove to be over the future: "eh, duct tape this and it ought to hold".
And most notably that doing more of this work correlates to an exponential rise in the volume of similar work that will be required down the road to maintain the same results.
Those are often exactly the time one would be best served by taking a step back and questioning the entire framework that supports the busywork in question. Perhaps starting from scratch or making some huge change would reduce the garbage portions of the effort and keep them from further proliferating?
Also, it's not all or nothing. You can decide to engage more in the task as it's ongoing, which could contribute to higher quality output. The hard part is usually starting.
For me completely shutting down the brain (when/if I'm even capable of doing so) is just a function that activates sleep. While I haven't tried this while exercising in particular, I have more than learned my lesson from trying it merely standing up and the result is very much falling down.
But pain is a valuable signal, and often learning and resolving the root cause of the pain can be more valuable than reaching for the oxycodone to power past it.
I procrastinate super long on this 20% of boring task even though it could all be done in maybe 2 days.
The phrase "do something instead of nothing" might be more useful than "action leads to motivation." I have plenty of motivation - but my brain does not always comply when I try to focus on purpose. In such a case, I work on an unrelated task that is easy to engage with. This gives my brain a chance to focus, which begets more focus, until there is enough focus to do so on purpose.
I suspect that you use word procrastination too general, to include all possible cases. If a person is lazy for 5 minutes or for an hour it's not a procrastination. Procrastination is severe case of inability to do something a person wants to do. And before anyone interjects about "duh, work may be unpleasant", it also extends to ALL other spheres of life. Imagine wanting to play a game and literally not being to force yourself to click Start. Or scrolling saved watch list and not picking anything you want to watch. Stuff like that.
Procrastination and related issues is a severe mental disorder and I'm sick and tired of people normalizing it or dismissing as something good or beneficial.
PS: to rephrase all that above - the answer to the question "Why?" is not exclusively something external (like "not interesting") but often an internal one, a chemical disbalance in a person's brain, some brain structures under- or over-developed etc.
One example for me is getting out of the house: I loathe the idea of getting dressed, getting into the car and driving, whenever I contemplate it, but once I'm behind the wheel, the thought always is "this isn't so bad". If I think about the getting dressed bit, that too, thought of in isolation, isn't so bad. It seems it is the anticipation of a seemingly complex sequence of tasks that tend to put the brain off.
Maybe unless one can really convince themselves that their daily work matters (really matters and not just for their team/company metrics) one is bound to procrastinate as a symptom of some subconscious sense of pointlessness.
Maybe the answer isn't so much finding new tricks to play on your mind, but finding something to do that doesn't involve codifying more power in the strong leader, to increase his masculinity in the worklace or whatever the political issue du jour is.
Failing practically anything during the study in the university is a laughing matter. Worst case you have wasted 6 years on partying and got nothing in return, maybe some debt too if it was in the USA. Failing a task later in life may lead to jail time, deportation, divorce, eviction, homelessness etc. So getting familiar with procrastination and letting it get more severe with years is recipe for disaster.
I procrastinated so badly I could never apply for jobs. And the jobs I did get I lost quickly due to the same procrastination.
But procrastination problems don't mean infinite procrastination. It's just that work keeps piling up and then it has to be done in a burst when it has to really be done. I find this doesn't necessarily mean my output is less (in the short term), it's just that it's exhausting.
Also productivity requirements at work, no matter how fancy workolace, are typically way less than you may think. Just showing up and not actively cause grief goes a long way.
What you tend to see publicly is people in their productive phases, or quite exceptional outliers, or just messaging.
I think the programmers in most environments aren't judged based on some hard metrics that could say someone procrastinated half of the time and could have done twice as much.
Most judgement comes from remembering whether anything has been done at all, and if yes then whether it was sunbathing of quality. People (I at least) will rate higher someone who worked less but contributed higher quality code. Also good contributions to discussion, mentoring juniors is something a procrastinator might not even think is work but is valued highly.
And even while procrastinating some part of your brain often thinks about problem so the time isn't completely lost.
All in all procrastinators aren't as bad as it sounds unless we get into some deep pathology.
For the sake of analogy, I feel like I wanted to be a photographer and take beautiful and artistic pictures, but in reality, I just take school pictures for a living.
Now, I do believe there are passionate jobs with passionate programmers out there, but:
1. I do not know where nor with whom one would even find such roles.
2. My lack of skill would be more burdensome than helpful for such teams. I'm not new either. I've been at this game for over a decade now.
So, I am stuck in this procrastination loop -- I lack the skills to better my situation, but I also feel so far behind that I, at some level, believe I am incapable of ever being able to find/retain such a job.
Long story short, I am not sure what your particular reasons are for procrastinating, but brother/sister, I don't blame you one bit for it.
seems like you are also suffering from imposter syndrome. if you have been doing this for over a decade you should have learned something.
I lack the skills to better my situation
practice. work on a side project. follow and implement tutorials. contribute to FOSS projects. (contact me if you want some suggestions. see my profile)
I see the bookends, but notice the root cause
> That really kicked me into gear [...] I was very motivated and productive
You don't have intrinsic motivation for these tasks and the job. This is the thread to pull on. Keep asking "why?"
In the least, I recommend a pro-active note, letting him know you're done and ready for his feedback on the assignment or new priorities. Figure out why he didn't (or persistently doesn't) follow-up.
You might have ADHD.
And is is very important to know whether you have it or not because all that advice for neurotypical people will not work for you then. In fact it will harm you. It will make you feel as a failure.
You need to figure out how your brain works and only then you will finally manage to make lasting changes.
(I’m always curious to learn other potential diagnostic markers for adhd)
For some people struggling with chronic lifelong procrastination, the oft-repeated advice from the author such as "Action leads to motivation, not the other way around." ... and similar variants such as, "Screw motivation, what you need is discipline!" ... and other related big picture ideas such as Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams' "Systems instead of Goals" -- all do not work.
And adding extra rhetorical embellishments to the advice such as using the phrase "it's simple [...]", and using the word "[...] just [...]" as in:
- "Stopping procrastination isn't that hard to solve. It's simple. Just chop up the task into much smaller subtasks and just start on that tiny subtask. That will give you momentum to finish it."
... also doesn't work. Some procrastinators just procrastinate the initiation of starting that tiny subtask! For the few that actually do try to start with that first step, they'll quickly lose steam because of boredom/distraction/whatever and the overall task remains unfinished.
A lot of books and blogs about time management repeat the same advice that many procrastinators have all heard before and it doesn't work. The procrastinators understand the logic of the advice but it doesn't matter because there are psychological roadblocks that prevent them from following it.
EDIT reply to: >That doesn't mean the advice is bad,
I'm not saying the advice is wrong. Instead, I'm saying that some well-meaning people who give that repeated advice seem surprised that it doesn't work on some people. Because the advice givers believed "Action Precedes Motivation" worked on themselves, they automatically assume that imparting those same words to other procrastinators will also work. It often doesn't. The meta-analysis of that advice and why it sometimes doesn't work is not done because the people giving that advice are the ones who used that technique successfully. This creates a self-confirmation bias.
isn't the problem here that the answer is very individual. for me for example some of the above things do work, and some don't. some of the time. it's like it depends and there is no clear answer even just for myself. knowing whether i had ADHD would not make any difference. i'd still not know what works.
for example i have seen tasks lists recommended as one way to deal with ADHD. because the lists help focus. isn't breaking things down into small steps the same thing? others here with ADHD also claim that specific suggestions work for them. so this isn't clear cut, and it doesn't make sense to just dismiss the suggestions.
you are right, there is more than just getting started. boredom and distractions are a problem too. but they are also a problem for "normal" people.
seems to me that the only thing we can do is to list a number of possible approaches, and let everyone pick what works best for them.
so back to the original question: what does work for people with ADHD?
Medication.
Not for everyone with ADHD. Only for 70% but that is still pretty good.
Besides that, again understanding how their brains work.
Neurotypical people don't have executive dysfunction. If they have a task that they know how to do, have the means to do, know they need to do, have the time to do and want to do, they can... just do it.
In fact neurotypical people can't even imagine it being any other way. For me with ADHD this sounds like a super power that I can't even comprehend having.
To simplify it very much, the ADHD brain is chronically understimultated. It lacks dopamine.
So easy boring tasks can be insanely painful. That is why stimulants work so well. It is not to get us "high", it so so we get the same level of stimulation as a neurotypical person watching paint dry.
But, we can still get over-stimulated as well so it is a balance act.
Neurotypical people mostly manage time and exhaustion, I guess but managing ADHD is managing your level of stimulation and focus and time tertiary.
You need to build activities into your routine that stimulate you, both mentally and physically. Washing your clothing can be much more taxing for you that fixing that complex bug no one else can figure out. ADHD can make the hard things easy and the easy things hard.
So yeah, ultimately every human is different and what works for one might not work for another. Yes some advice or trick for neurotypical people might also work for someone with ADHD but if you don't understand yourself you will not know what to user and what to dismiss and only hurt yourself.
Being overwhelmed with simple task is typical ADHD behavior.
Lots of people with untreated ADHD develop depression as well. It is not either/or. Not to mention that there is a overlap in symptoms as well.
A diagnosis for ADHD will make sure that there no other physical or mental things present that could explain the symptoms instead. The will try to exclude anything else that could explain your struggles. They check for stuff like depression.
On the other hand, a depression diagnosis is just given out like candy. I never understood that.
Why wouldn't you ask WHY someone is depressed in the first place? I don't mean to invalidate people that are depressed. Sometimes that is just what is going on but it still vexes me because so many neurodivergent people will get diagnosis like "depression" because health care providers refuse to look further into it.
It is such an uphill battle get diagnosed with ADHD.
Turns out, unmedicated ADHD, procrastination, and depression are all comorbid
General advice for running a marathon will not for for someone who has no legs. I can't will my brain to work differently than it does. I can just learn to cope with my ADHD brain. And you being judgemental about it will not change that.
I am also sorry but I do have ADHD and I'm no different than any other human being, and so aren't you. Many people just deal with it much better than you, but at least it means it is possible. Nobody said it is easy but people with ADHD have a tendency to think that people doing what they need to do have it easy, "they just do it". Well, no. That is not how it works. It is hard for everybody.
They often do not want to do things. They will often choose to do the easy or more pleasant task but they do not have the same struggle someone with ADHD has.
The world is not fair. Yes, you can still achieve your goals with ADHD but you will have to go about it differently. The first step is in accepting yourself and leaning into your strengths and weaknesses.
I'm in the process of doing this myself, and after 8 months, with many setbacks, I kinda have a base system I'm following that's significantly improving my quality of life and ability to keep up with everyday tasks. And it's still a struggle, but it's getting easier.
I'm writing a blog post about it currently, which will be more structured. It's about how I used my software dev skills to think about and tackle my ADHD(and other issues). Not about writing actual software(although software is involved), but imagining the brain exhibiting ADHD is a software system , identifying the "bugs", and combining concepts from software dev and behavioral/cognitive psychology to fix, or at least mitigate them.
This blog post could be finished two days from now, two years from now, or never. ADHD is still hard to live with, and I'm still quite dysfunctional. I guess if I do finish it, it'll be worth reading since I'll be on to something...
I'm honestly curious, because I can't believe that a person having the problem this bad should just resign themselves to a life of misery and failure.
I've also found that there's no real cure for it. You can take the meds but they'll chip away at your personality and health in other ways.
Also there is ADHD coaching. Having someone who had ADHD themselves coach me through my problems was an absolute game changer.
Maybe that could be an option for you as well. Worked much better that traditional therapy for me personally.
As for medication, well for most people with ADHD it works really well and is worth the relative mild side effect. But that is most, for some it does not work unfortunately. I think it is always worth trying but yeah it is no silver bullet that works for everyone.
In approx 7 years I went through working at all the top software companies in my country, but what really fixed my problems was moving on to being a researcher at the university. I’m now paid less than half from before, but it’s still enough, and I couldn’t be happier.
Getting to work on what I think is actually important and interesting every day is what helped. I also seem happier than the younger researchers who didn’t work at companies first, who don’t know how good they have it.
In my case, not always, but often, procrastination shows up when fear is involved. Fear of failure, of not doing something perfectly, of the task being too big. What’s helped me is turning the task into a challenge, because I know that personally, I thrive on challenges. It re-frames the fear into something exciting, and once I get started, I follow all of the other advice such like breaking it down into small steps. Thanks for sharing.
However, challenges that start with “I wonder if”—like wondering if some bold idea just might actually be possible—give me a huge reservoir of energy to work well beyond my normal limits and find new solution that truly make a difference.
Of course in most projects, actual innovation is only a fraction of the work so some reframing of “run the business” tasks is necessary. That’s when I tap into gratitude: for being able to work on a project, for being entrusted with a particular task, etc.
I used to procrastinate a lot when I was a PhD student and later in academia. Sometimes, it was literally weeks of doing nothing and stressing out.
I eventually migrated to big tech and I now rarely procrastinate. We have pretty tangible goals, good results are rewarded and lack of results would raise concerns pretty quickly.
In my case, working in the right environment helped a lot with procrastination.
Incidentally, I have a supervisor who felt the exact same way when he was doing his PhD and fled to industry. Evidently he found that there was something to be enjoyed in the freedoms of research and returned.
Sounds more like fear than “not” procrastinating.
But on the other hand fear is a good motivator
It's definitely going to be too hard as it is imo simply not possible and is a non-goal for a marriage.
family is trickier. finding the right partner is very hard. it takes a lot of introspection and being able to recognize flaws in yourself and in your partner. it took me decades to understand what i need in a partner. and now i feel like i'd rather stay alone than have a partner that doesn't fill my needs. that sounds very selfish, but it goes of course both ways, i also look at the needs of my partner and evaluate whether i can fulfill those needs. (in short it's about compatible goals. many chinese women for example just want their husband to be successful and enable a comfortable life. fortunately the woman i found didn't because as i said above, that's just not a life goal for me)
when you mention space, the olympics and video games i get the impression that those are not even your real goals, and you are more likely lamenting that you feel like you don't have anything to strive for.
as i wrote above, it took me decades, not just to understand what i need in a partner, but simply what i need in life. the interesting thing is that now that i think i understand that, actually fulfilling that need became less important. understanding myself helped me detach.
as for beating procrastination, for me it's not about increasing productivity but being productive at all. it's not just 20%, it's 200% or more. it's about keeping that job and doing enough to get leads for the next one.
It's lowering the activation energy so the reaction can happen more easily.
Like “brush teeth”, “do nothing at all for half an hour after work” “remove trash photos for the day in the phone”, “finish working” (here I have a detailed sublist ending with “close computer lid”) “move todos I did not have time for today to tomorrow”
another cool habit is “I did list”: add items that you did that were not planned, because we sometimes forget why we did not do something “planned”, because we actually did something else important that we are just blind to when “planning”. for example, “meal”, “took some rest that I actually need”, “took out trash”, “told someone irritating to fuck off” etc etc
The trick is to come up with a tiny goal and give yourself permission to quit once you reach it so it’s not like your overwhelmed by the full task.
The smallness of the task is important, but it’s even more important that you genuinely give yourself permission to stop when it’s done. If you don’t do that, it’s not “one small task”, it’s “step one in a big task” and you’ll keep procrastinating
For coding it’s a sequence of: “Ill just get all the software and documentation open and organized”
“I’ll create a few empty files on a new branch”
“I’ll just stub out a few things I KNOW I’ll need”
…
For other non-code writing, I’ve occasionally been able to hack it in a similar way by writing progressively more detailed outlines.
For physical projects, sometimes it’s just about gathering supplies and organizing tools.
I have found that “procrastination” is not a particularly helpful word because, for me, its meaning includes a shame component that can obfuscate causes.
I would suggest picking a fixed point in time every week. At this point in time you will finish (if they are small enough, otherwise split in multiple steps) on of these chores/repairs. E.g., every Saturday afternoon from 1 am you will finish one of these. The rest of the time you then do not need to think about these which is your reward for doing one chore/repair.
Maybe the idea can help you starting things?
It also helps that, sometimes, when the tasks are big, I convince myself that I can finish it later. Many times I do not have to finish it later..
But sometimes it's not inaction we're choosing against; it's discomfort.
In that case, this becomes simplistic.
The core point of the article is breaking down the task, which he made it look trivial but it's not that simple.
In my experience, higher expectations leads to trying to control the outcome which leads to perfectionism and procrastinating for "ideal" time. So the key is to reduce expectations, which is under our control.
Once I reduce expectation I can try random stuffs which usually lead to breakthrough and the flywheel mentioned in the article.
Or maybe that is just another excuse :)
of course we are pressured to be “consistently highly productive”. But is it healthy and sustainable for everyone? Probably not. So I would start with “consistently bare minimum productive” and not demand more from myself. If I demand more, the “procrastination” kicks in, because my body knows that it needs rest and relaxation.
we are not robots: work for us and not we for work.
You can characterise this real factor (quality of time over the year) as 'procrastination' but I think this is unfair. Other factors such as joy/depression, meaning in work, personal circumstances, etc also come in to play. But yeah, if 'work' is the highest principle one has, these are just excuses for procrastination.
> But yeah, if 'work' is the highest principle one has, these are just excuses for procrastination.
exactly! And even rhyming some other thread here, this might happen if “work” is procrastination for the life itself. I honestly feel myself here now: work figured out as process, but life… oh my I better go write some code.
It’s like you’re cornered: you’re like deer in the headlights concerned with “work”, if you’re not “productive”, you devalue yourself completely. It could happen if you chose work as your primary value long before you realized that the same patterns will lead you into the corner inside work itself.
It’s like running away from one world to another to another until there is no further escape. Then hopefully, you start to find the way back, because you have the Ariadne’s thread in your hands.
Good luck to us all :)
For me, this sounds a bit tautological. Of course the opposite of procrastination is action.
It’s similar to saying, “If you want to lose weight, just eat less.” It’s certainly true on a meta level, but very difficult for some people to implement.
If you want to lose weight but don’t feel motivated, it might be because you associate getting started with a strict workout routine and highly restrictive dieting. But taking smaller steps in the right direction can spark motivation. From my own experience, I know I naturally start eating healthier as soon as I get back into running.
That said, in practice it may be reasonable advice on average, but there's also a problem where it's not very practical to eat the "same" calories as someone else, unless they are together with you all the time.
I accept it as part of my life, because I believe it is an intuitive process that protects me from doing bad work.
There are times when I really have to get something done, and then I need to put pressure on myself. But mostly I have learned to listen to and respect my procrastination.