Comment by scarygliders | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scarygliders | Hacker News Reader

Forget what most here are saying about Adult ADHD, ADD or whatever fancy schmancy TLA is this era's Mental Illness Du Jour.

You, my friend, are suffering from Procrastination.

You have the idea - but you're putting SO MANY barriers in front of implementing that idea. You're finding excuses NOT to just sit down and write code. You're procrastinating.

I know this because I too am guilty of it - been guilty of it all this week in fact. I have an application to write for a business client - it's Wednesday already and I'm still "thinking over it". I should get started on it, preferably before this week is over.

Listen. Forget TDD. Especially if you're a team of 1. Just sit down, decide on an IDE - vim will do, even! - and start writing Code That Does Something for your idea. Got stuck? Google for "how do I <do this in $language>?", see how to do it, then write the Code That Does Something.

"But, the TESTS!" - here's my method of development (as I'm on a team of 1) : A) Write the Code That Does Something. B) Run it and see if it Does What You Wanted It To Do. If it does, great, carry on. If not, sort that bit out until it does. Then carry on.

Oh and stop procrastinating.

Ctrl-f procrast

> You, my friend, are suffering from Procrastination.

1000X this. I recognized this immediately because I see the same pattern in my own behavior. OP starts out doing a bunch of things that will need to be done eventually for the project to succeed, but that are essentially a waste of time and other resources at the initial stage. OP does this (I do too!) because those steps are familiar, easy, and very well defined relative to actually working on the project. Actually making progress on a novel project falls outside our comfort zone. Stop procrastinating.

In my first startup we came up with a cure for this: "Get to the problem"

Don't solve for problems you don't yet have. Solve for immediate problems first.

Also try grabbing what you think you'll need then taking your laptop if you have one and go and work somewhere without internet. If your laptop has a 3g modem leave the sim at home, leave your smartphone at home. You don't need the internet all the time.

Not when using tools that are unfamiliar. It's really really hard to fight the urge to Google "how do I XXX in YYY". Even though I have an online documentation browser (Dash), I still Google first; it's much faster.

Perfectionism and procrastination can be tightly-coupled.

This page [1] convinced me, against my own intuition, that I'm a perfectionist. I thought I was lazy, but I'm not. Perfectionism is simultaneously one of my greatest strengths and weaknesses.

If you can identify perfectionism and put a name on it, it's easier to manage. This book (short, small, cheap) [2] contains useful coping strategies.

[1] http://depts.washington.edu/hhpccweb/content/student-health/...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Procrastination-Lollygagging-P...

Let me add another book on procrastination and perfectionism to the list which is a favorite of mine:

The Now Habit by Neil Fiore

Although it seems the OP has settled with FOMO, I still think this can provide valuable insights.

Another advice to reduce information overload: Close those (probably) hundreds of browser tabs & disable session restoring, block HN for most of the day and read emails only once a day.

I do most of this, only I write tests too :) I tend to implement a rough version first, then write some tests, then get those tests working, then iterate and refine. Any time some code does something unexpected I write tests to define what I expect it to do and then get it to do that.

But Writing Code That Does Something is absolutely the important first step!

The other thing that I found helped get over this was to stop assuming that at some point some sneering jerk of a programmer would look at my code and criticise it for not using the latest shiny, and accept that the only time anyone would look at my code is if it became a success, and if that happened I could shrug off any criticism with a "it worked didn't it?" response. In other words, stop worrying what other people might think of my tech choices.

I wonder if this phenomenon is perhaps one of the side effects of the cost of producing and deploying software approaching zero. You could learn a language, framework, or library a week for the rest of your life for the cost of an internet connection. You could spend the rest of your days locked in a man-made cave studying software development methods. You can throw out your work with the sunk cost being only your time.

I think it is, indirectly. This is a side effect of everyone else making worthy frameworks, languages, etc. I've been doing this long enough to remember when the choices were basically Microsoft C++ or Borland C++. Then Java was basically the one best choice. Now, there are too many choices.

Procrastination banished:

* What EXACTLY would success look like?

* What needs to be done NOW?

Do the hard bits first! Then, the closer to the goal you get, the more ground you will cover faster.

If the best time to do something was five years ago, the second best time to do it, is often now.

ref: http://youtu.be/g9zWLDfysis

Good advice, except: "1. Just sit down, decide on an IDE - vim will do, even!"

Skip the part about deciding on an IDE or you are off to shave the yak again!

Good point ;)

Technically (and to wriggle out from that point) you could say I decided for him (vim) :P

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