How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don’t Want To
blogs.hbr.org
blogs.hbr.org
The most common situation for me is to be faced with a list of projects and tasks that are more than I can handle, and doing any one of them means ignoring the others, which are all equally urgent.
I know all the GTD and Pomodoro techniques and everything else, but it's in my head where the problem lies. Once I settle in to one specific task, I can focus and get into the zone to finish it. But that first step—committing to which thing I'll do—is the hardest one. Hours can go by while I'm avoiding the question altogether. I can literally feel the anxiety in my chest whenever I try to pick one and start doing it.
Task a vs task b: if I don't have an opinion about which I should do, I flip a coin.
Task c vs task d, task e vs task f, task g vs task h.
Then winner ab vs winner cd, winner ef vs winner gh.
Then winner abcd vs winner efgh.
I almost never make it all the way to the end as by round 2 ive considered the urgency and value of every task and the winner is usually obvious.
In the cases where I truly don't have an opinion about any of them, the coin flipping only takes a few seconds and getting started on somehing now is often better than spending the time trying to gather enough evidence to form an opinion.
The trick is in forcing relatively easy binary comparisons vs hard absolute or exhaustive evaluations. Our brains have lots of good hardware to make binary and trinary decisions, but we have to use software once we pass 4 or so competing choices.
It works for me. Ymmv.
That's actually the best test. Flip a coin and then for a moment no matter how small when its in the air, you will hoping for a result. Work on that option.
It would be great if there were a matchmaking service that teamed people up to do this for each other. I find that it's a lot easier to schedule someone else's tasks than your own—I'd love to trade task-making responsibility with someone else.
I have tried multiple types of antidepressants and found the side effects unbearable. They didn't make me feel happy, they made me feel nothing.
I have tried CBT and regular therapy, both of which have failed because I was unable to motivate myself to actually go.
Maybe it is just a matter of changing how I think, but it's hard to change how you think when you don't even feel in control of your own thoughts. No matter how hard I try, I always fall back into the same patterns.
I don't why I'm writing this here. I don't know what else to do.
You need to surround yourself with people you want to emulate as well as beautiful women 24/7. And don't forget to travel the world. This should activate those dormant parts of your brain and make you real happy.
Some of us, however, need to get rich before this can happen. So if that's the case with you, go make those apps!
* Get sunlight — I grew up in Minnesota where if it's sunny in the winter that usually means its too cold for exposed skin outside. When I moved to Santa Fe (300+ sunny days at 7000' elevation) the first winter I was amazed at how much better I felt.
* Get exercise — Find some physical activity you enjoy (preferably outdoors) and do it. This is maybe harder for some than others, but I can't emphasize how important this is to me. I sit 10-12 hours per day in front of a computer, without outdoor activity on a regular basis I would wither.
* Check your diet — Okay, last but most certainly not least, there is more evidence coming out all the time about much diet and gut health can impact mood and psychology. One of the prominent books in this area is The GAPS Diet (http://www.gapsdiet.com), but I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. In short, if you live in America and you just eat what's easy you're probably eating a lot of processed grains that could be altering your health dramatically.
I hope those don't appear as facile answers, but the truth is those things have made a huge difference in my life. It wasn't an overnight thing, I had to grow up a bit, move away from my family, and establish my own life before I really started to feel happy. Best of luck.
[1] I had to work part time as a clerk at a store, it was insufferably dumb, but I left thanking them
[2] in the good kind of way, ability to be focused and do more and yet it has only been 5 minutes.
Chronic depression is a lifelong problem, but it can be managed pretty effectively. The combination of CBT and meds is well proven with clinical trials and this does not require faith in the treatment. Just your compliance.
Unfortunately it's still your job to start getting help and comply with treatment one day at a time. Nobody else can fix this for you. Do you have something better to be doing?
The more you think you aren't in control, the more you should be following the guidance of a doctor. If you're totally lost you might need hospitalization. If that sounds bad, then take more responsibility for your own treatment.
> ...unable to motivate myself to actually go
> don't even feel in control of your own thoughts
> I always fall back into the same patterns.
I'm not a doctor or professional, so take this with a huge grain of salt and get help outside of HN:
Did you consider having adult ADHD? - maybe the inattentive type? Do you have some disciplines where you still able to excel besides having problems with motivation and procrastination everywhere else?
I've lately read an adult ADHD CBT therapy book¹ and I was really surprised how it explained a lot of things in my life.
Depression is a common co-morbidity and while I'm more on the anxiety side your description sounds pretty familiar.
Knowing about these things accepting that I have to attack certain things from a different angle helps me a lot recently, I also don't feel like a stranger in the world anymore - I'm almost 30 years old and I have not much academically to show for in my life.
Maybe it's bullshit and you are better off ignoring it, but from your description I'd considering checking that angle too.
1: http://libgen.org/book/index.php?md5=b8e7b20b602fee2b1bdb1b1...
Try a quiz; it's no diagnosis, but you could bring it up with your doctor if your result shows that you may have some form of ADHD. http://psychcentral.com/addquiz.htm
Wanting to get out of depression is the hard part because you got to be willing to do what is necessary.
You are closer than you think to getting out of depression when you say, "Maybe it is just a matter of changing how I think." It is that. You are also right about it being hard and how easy it is to fall back into the same patterns.
He's what I've done and what I got my friend to do: break out of your daily routine.
I know this sounds like advice that isn't that different than what the other commentators have posted but it's because they are partly correct. The missing part is to incrementally break out of your daily routine by incorporating small changes as you go along.
So what do I mean?
Well try walking/driving a different way home even if it takes longer. Go to a different supermarket for food. Listen to a different radio station. Even if you hate a certain genre of music try listening to it and listen to it for longer than what you would normally trial it out for. Go to a different café or restaurant. Eat or cook new food you have never considered trying. If you can, try to do stuff you wouldn't ever 'normally do.'
The trick here is to not overwhelm yourself with too many changes too quickly or to try things that are really hard for you. This way you can actually keep to the incremental changes you are making and you don't fall back into your old patterns.
Keep sticking to these changes as you make them. Soon you will find that they will start to stack and you start to feeling new feelings. As you are going along try to stretch your routine to do ever different things. Don't rush, and don't beat yourself up. If all you can do is one thing then do that until you can do the next thing.
All the best and you can make it.
But, at least in my case, obsessively pushing myself into doing something I wouldn't ever 'normally do' had the opposite effect. I realized that there was/is probably a reason why I never tried it before, the chance that I will somehow magically start liking it now is too slim, and the only thing I was doing at that time was wasting energy that I could had otherwise spent on doing something I would've enjoyed.
The only thing that's left to add is to never push yourself into doing something you don't enjoy in hopes of finding somehow happiness. (I guess a lot of people fail here, or at least I did)
I did CBT and ended up going (100% no-show fee can do that) - I'm not sure if it was the method (CBT) that worked, or just having a stranger say "and why is that?" a lot. Basically she did a "Five whys" on my life. It was all so simple, but I couldn't see it.
For me it was low self esteem, but veiled: I consciously knew that I was pretty good at what I did and had my life reasonably in order - I checked all the boxes, so I should be happy. "Just pull yourself together" seemed like reasonable advice, but I just couldn't do it. But subconsciously, I had huge doubts about my self worth. The first step of the solution was to reflect every evening over what I did that day and what went well to reinforce a positive self-image.
I also changed jobs (this was pre-CBT, so not a direct effect, but in retrospect it's all related) from a high uncertainty contracting gig with a promise (ha!) of becoming a start up to a bog standard full time programming gig in a good company. The new job gave me many more chances to get good results and much more time and opportunity to learn stuff and self-improve.
One habit I've taught myself is to pay attention to a certain "jab" in my stomach that I get when something is wrong. I immediately stop what I'm doing and carefully analyse the cause. More often than not, I've seen, heard or read something that plays into a subconscious fear about my self esteem, and by forcing it out into the open and applying reason to it, I can make it go away fairly simply. It's worked wonders for my overall feeling of happiness.
You situation will obviously be different from mine, but your post resonated a lot with me. Feel free to email (see my profile) if you want to continue the conversation in private.
I kind of agree with everyone else though, some exercise and sunlight every day. And time. Change is part of life, it happens eventually.
And yet every morning, millions of people get up and go to work to do a job they really don't feel like doing. People still do back-breaking work just so they can put food on the table. I'm not saying it's a recipe for happiness but people have been doing stuff they don't enjoy for millennia. And even in present day, only some of us can afford to choose when, where and what to work on.
We have such a luxury and we fail to understand that.
You won't reduce them to nothing, but you will get them under control enough that you can then steer them just as you are saying. Otherwise your aversion feelings are overwhelming and it's impossible to steer as you say.
Your steering technique is good. I like it.
I used the focus booster app for OS X, I highly recommend it: http://www.focusboosterapp.com/
Sit to do computer work. Sit using a height-adjustable,
downward titling keyboard tray for the best work posture,
then every 20 minutes stand for 2 minutes AND MOVE. The absolute
time isn’t critical but about every 20-30 minutes take a posture
break and move for a couple of minutes. Simply standing is
insufficient. Movement is important to get blood circulation
through the muscles. And movement is FREE! Research shows that
you don’t need to do vigorous exercise (e.g. jumping jacks)
to get the benefits, just walking around is sufficient.
Details: http://redd.it/kfjet
What I usually find is that after the first session, I'm engaged enough to keep going. My emotions have caught up, my determination sets in, and now the desire and confidence to complete the task are strong enough that I rarely need to do more pomodoro sessions.
I really want our culture to shift in a direction where it's economically feasible to research nootropics and find ones that are seriously effective.
As far as I know, the last time someone put a serious effort into researching a pharmacological aid to "drive" was in the 60s when selegiline was discovered, and it worked. Selegiline is now used for Parkinson's. After 40 years they also started using it for depression and dementia.
But our society is so averse to transhumanism that not only has that research not been followed up in the last 50 years, but the one drug that does improve motivation is not legally available to non-depressed people with motivation problems.
And I think it's quite possible that there isn't an organizational solution. It seems very likely to me that humans have evolved to basically be as lazy as we can get away with.
It makes sense as a survival strategy to put in exactly as much effort as it takes to get your basic needs met. For most of us throughout history, this meant working our asses off to subsist. Pushing ourselves further than that would be a dangerous gamble on our resources.
So in first world countries today, many people have this problem where we can subsist on relatively little effort, compared to, say, a farmer in 8000 BC. So our motivation scales down to that context. Send someone with that little motivation back to 8000 BC and ask them to start farming, and they'd starve - except that their motivation would probably rescale to fit the new context.
And yes, there are those who find motivation easy, who don't have these problems. But I think they are significant outliers.
So my point is that I'm not sure we can really ramp up our motivation without finding ways to stress ourselves the hell out. And I don't mean "this report is due tomorrow" stress, but "winter is in one month, and I don't want to die" stress.
I'd really rather have the pill that turns me into an outlier.
What I find interesting though is this stigma around depression, lack of motivation and laziness. There's nothing unbecoming, wrong or unnatural about any of these states. We don't need to stamp it out completely.
Winston Churchill had severe depression but he was arguably one of the most productive people in the 20th century. Lazy people often come up with brilliant inventions (in order to do less work). And lack of motivation can often be addressed by life style changes.
Maybe for one person the lack of motivation is because the work they engage in isn't meaningful to them. For another person, the work may be meaningful but they are missing connection from other people. The next person might not be leading a healthy lifestyle so they are not providing their body an environment in which they can thrive (not enough nutrients/sun light etc). And yet another person may simply be experiencing a natural oscillation between being motivated and unmotivated. All of these things can be addressed in some way or another.
Personally, I found the education system a factor in robbing me of motivation and questioning my drive. I didn't get really motivated about learning until I got out of it and picked topics I was truly curious about. But up until that point I would almost have considered myself as kind of broken because I was doing the bare minimum to pass tests when I could be doing so much more. The only thing that changed for me to tap into my drive was the conditions I set. Now I learn because I'm driven by curiosity and a drive to make things.
It would be a pity if people start taking pills without addressing these other things (at least in conjunction).
Having said that, for specific treatment alternatives, I think the future is much brighter with neuro/bio feedback technologies. And it's getting cheaper by the year.
It's interesting that you bring up Winston Churchill. He slept less than 6 hours per day, which suggests to me that he likely had a higher dopamine response than normal. That's associated with higher drive, which means Churchill was probably one of the outliers I was talking about.
He came up with it based on reinforcement studies in pigeons. There are more details on the linked page, but basically whilst working you just put a dot on a piece of paper every 6 minutes in the shape of a square, then join all the dots with a line. Something about doing this essentially meaningless thing improves motivation and throughput for me.
The problem with adopting a prevention focus is that it doesn't work. Or, rather, it might work when the fear of failure is the only fear at stake, but -- at least for me -- it seldom is. For example, one might have thoughts like "I really need to be doing this, otherwise it might be too late ... hang on, it already might be too late ... I really should check ... but what if it's already too late? I'd feel awful ... no, let's not feel awful, let's check sometime later." Poof, thought gone until next time. When you suffer from GAD or any other psychological disorder involving anxiety, about the only thing you can do is understand your fears and your reactions to them, and take small steps towards reinterpretation. Fighting anxiety with inducing more anxiety is not going to work.
The problem with ignoring your feelings is that it's much easier said than done. Good luck ignoring the urge of turning off the alarm clock when you're not even half-conscious, you feel dizzy, sleepy and have headaches. While in #3 the author advises to "embrace the fact that your willpower is limited," here he seems to forget all about it. In situations like getting up in the morning, techniques involving subconsciousness like [1] are more likely to work.
We are more feeling-driven than we think ourselves to be, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Those feelings are there for a reason, and ignoring them might just not work. Indeed, the author acknowledges that "on some level you need to be committed to what you are doing" and I think when he says "ignore not feeling like doing something," he actually means "_trick_ your mind into starting feeling like doing that."
The problem with using if-then planning is that for some people, it's all too easy to change the decision, even if it's already been done; the unconscious mind keeps re-examining the decision and re-pondering the issue at hand. So when the time comes, you end up re-considering the decision instead of deliberating what to do. That's not exactly the same thing, but it still eats up willpower.
[1]: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/how-to-get-up-right...
(1) A prevention and a promotion focus are two types of focus people have a disposition to. You can't adopt a prevention focus if you are promotion inclined. Maybe you, personally, work better with tasks requiring a promotion focus.
(2) The technique you mention does not contradict the author. I agree with you though that often tricking your mind into starting something works wonders.
You can't ignore that having a process is tremendous help.
Murakami describes his writing process as an extremely rigid daily routine: he wakes up at 4 a.m. every day and writes for five to six hours, exercises in the early afternoon, and then reads or listens to music before his 9 p.m. bed time. Murakami adds: “I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.”
(3) Have you tried writing down your if-then plans? Because there's a huge difference in outcome between saying you will do something and writing down you will do something. Writing makes you commit. It keeps the unconscious mind away from sabotaging your decision.
If you're wondering why 3% of Harvard graduates make ten times more than the remaining 97% combined it's because they didn't just think of their plans but instead wrote them down.
http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/why-3-of-harvard-...
http://www.dominican.edu/academics/ahss/undergraduate-progra...
The conclusion: writing one’s goal enhances goal achievement. You are 42 percent more likely to achieve your goals just by writing them down.
It's curious how HN users found nothing positive in my comment above and chose to downvote it. It must have seemed my intention was to mislead people.
What I do is take a task I am avoiding and come up with a small piece of it I can reasonably do as a goal. It might be a task I can do in 15 minutes. It might be something I might need two hours to do.
I then follow that to completion, and then decide whether to bump the rest of the task of and get started on something else or whether to continue.
Usually for the tasks I feel like I don't have a solid grasp on how to do this helps, but I may still bump part of it down the road. For the tasks I am avoiding for administrative reasons or don't feel like, this gets me started.
An important point though is that the bumped task is less intimidating and smaller than it was when I started, meaning it is less likely to happen again.
I think the best method to get something done is to first have a clear vision and passion for the bigger picture. Then, understand how this unpleasant task gets you nearer to the goal of that bigger picture that you want. If it does, you won't need to ignore your feelings. On the contrary; your feelings will push you to do it. If it doesn't, there's a good chance you should be doing something else.
What works without fail is peer pressure or a stinging comment.
Disclaimer : Personal experience, may not be generalizable.
"How to Make Yourself Have Sex When You Just Don't Want To"
"How to Make Yourself Eat Krispy Kremes When You Just Don't Want To"
"How to Make Yourself Love You Children When You Just Don't Want To"
Here's a dirty little secret: You should have an emotional attachment to your work similar to the emotional attachment you have to having sex, eating Krispy Kremes, loving your children, or whatever else is your thing. Others should have to drag you kicking and screaming away from your work.
If you "just don't want to work" then the wrong question to ask is:
"How can I make myself work when I just don't want to?"
The right question is:
"What the hell am I doing working on something that I just don't want to work on it the first place and what should I really be working on?"
Find the answer to the second question and you will never encounter the first question again.
As one example; I don't like dealing with the marketing / networking aspect of m,y business; but if I didn't do that I'd go out of business.
"What the hell am I doing working on something that I just don't want to work on it the first place and what should I really be working on?"
Because what I don't want to work on pays, and what I do want to work on doesn't make money! If I were independently wealthy, I would have no trouble at all allocating my time to things I find productive and enjoyable to do, and give the results away for free. For example I have a backlog of several projects relating to improving OpenStreetMap data waiting for time to work on them, but I can't think of a way to get paid for doing them. I think the results would be valuable to many people, but it's hard for me personally to capture that value, since improving OSM data is kind of a public good that anyone can use freely (when your work enables a profit-making business based on OSM data, it's not like they pay royalties to all the people who enabled it).
Since I'm releasing nothing... I decided to take on smaller and smaller projects. Instead of making a mobile app, I'm now making a small plugin to release on CodeCanyon.net. I put all the CSS for the demo and the actual plugin in the same file to begin with, and now I don't "feel like" separating the demo's CSS in a separate file because it's frustrating and boring. I'd rather code new things than mess with this stupid CSS on a project that probably won't sell, that took way longer than it should have.
But this time I said I'm not doing any other project until I've finished this one. And now I've done absolutely nothing for 2 weeks(except my part-time job), and procrastinated by watching TV shows and studying Japanese.
As someone who always changes their opinion on "what should I really be working on" - I think I need something more than "asking the right questions." I'm still not sure what that is, but I'm hoping that one day I will find it.
In those terms, this article is very much about "type 2" processes, which is conscious and slow monitoring of the more intuitive type 1 processes.
A consequence is that following this advice will result in "ego depletion". By exerting your willpower in one area, you deplete a common store of it, and thus you're more likely to overeat, act lazily, think lazily, etc. in other areas.
I think this probably manifests in people who work too hard getting fat, since they don't want to watch what they eat or exercise (if those things require willpower; for some people may not)
Note that "conscious willpower" is the opposite of a "flow state". And flow is what is necessary to write good software.
Like all things, there has to be a balance. You have to exert your willpower, and all new things involve this pain, but you can also set your life up so it isn't a constant problem.
Where x is normally between 2-10
y is anything
z is normally 10
If you are procrastinating right now, give it a go. Go on twitter or facebook and say if I don't work for 2 hours on Akasha(a project), I will donate $10 to watsi(the charity).
I think when setting goals we hope for some reward in the future, but the brain doesn't value rewards as much as it hate losses(loss aversion). YMMV
Try rewards rather than punishment. It seems like a sself-made, self-run system using rewards would be simpler and more resilient.
Are you really saying this is like Pavlov's dog experiment? Since, the money goes for good cause, I think it might not act as a good motivation in the first place to finish the task. But yeah, publicly announcing this stuff can lead to many people comprehending this as unethical.
But who knows this may only work for a certain type of people.
Ultimately I semi-solved some of my problems by writing a time for coming into office in my work contract and thus fixing the top (early) part of my schedule.
In a way, this experience taught me that I'm increasingly anxiety-driven and unable to be deterred by potential punishment. I'll ponder something hurtful to me in my conscious mind, stress like hell because of the unconscious, and then go ahead and do it anyway. Anyone knows a cure for that?
Though I will comment and say I do like the one about "just show up" rather than waiting for being in the mood.
EDIT: Also, the issue of hunger in the United States is much more serious than you think.
http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hun...
Regardless on if I would have starved or not, it was the most stressful and horrible time of my life. To say "what is the big deal" to me says you've never actually been in that position.
Thankfully, I eventually found an ok job, and am now taking that ex-girlfriend on an international holiday just to say thank you.
I know this is HN, but please don't over-parse the headline. Telling your boss or customers that you just don't feel like working today is a luxury that almost no one has.
I know that I find work fulfilling. However, I don't like starting work. If I took your advice, my life would be far less pleasant (and not only materially).
E.g. (quoting the article)
> If it is 2pm, then I will stop what I’m doing and start work on the report Bob asked for.
What's the long term goal here? Being in good terms with Bob? Keeping your job? Are those the goals that you should care about?
Yep.
At the very least, you want to abandon your current job on your own terms, not by being fired. But keep in mind that even great jobs (including owning your business here) have boring tasks that must be fulfilled.
However the question usually isn't whether to do a task you don't want to but how to start a task you don't want to start out of fear or feeling like you don't have a grasp of it, or just aren't in the mood for it. If you can start a task, then you shouldn't have to force yourself to complete it. If you do, that's bad.
But there are things we have to do that we may not want to at any given moment. The question is how to structure one's work so they get done.
So, I appreciate this article, but the content does seem somewhat redundant to HN. Every now and again a new life-hack article will appear, and then talk about Pomodoro, then people posting links to their time saving apps. It's a tested technique, so why not? Maybe it really will help someone today get their project shipped. It's not the worst thing that can happen around here :)
I like that the HN community supports constantly trying to be more productive. "Building it" can be hard for people, depending on their background and what "it" is-- and I don't think having a sarcastic oppositional stance is going to encourage or help anyone.