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2 ways to deal with procrastination: 1. Don't worry about it. We all procrastinate and most of the time it works out OK. Our instincts know what they're doing.

by drb311 10y ago

2 ways to deal with procrastination: 1. Don't worry about it. We all procrastinate and most of the time it works out OK. Our instincts know what they're doing. 2. Break tough tasks down into very, very laughably small tasks. Don't even worry about doing them. Once the first task in the list is small enough you'll think "sod it" and do it right away. If you try to improve your self control you will fail. Go with the grain -- either stop worrying, or find a chunk of the task so is tiny and easy that it becomes instantly gratifying to do it.

domusliber 10y ago
I didn't even click the article (the pain of reading it seemed too large) so I came directly to the comments. Awesome tips! "Our instincts know what they're doing" is very true. I tend to procrastinate when two conditions are fulfilled 1) the task is boring/painful, and 2) in the back of my mind, I've already calculated out the time and I can afford to push it until later. Trying to force myself just increases my expected pain of the task, so I should just go with it. (And look, I'm procrastinating so much I made a HN account so I could comment about procrastination!)
- cylinder 10y ago
  Isn't procrastination a way of converting painfully boring tasks into fun adrenaline rushes? It seems like a pretty good evolutionary adaption: I perform better when all my senses are elevated, so why not? Problem arises when you don't have a hard deadline (I.e., you are only accountable to yourself).
  - otoburb 10y ago
    Adrenaline junkies injecting excitement into boring tasks makes a lot of intuitive sense for some of my own selectively chronic procrastination.
  - thanatropism 10y ago
    Which is why on the worst of days I set up timers. "Ok, I'm going to work for 15/20/30 minutes straight and then I'm kicking up my feet". I always keep going after the timer goes off.
  - tmrmn 10y ago
    >Isn't procrastination a way of converting painfully boring tasks into fun adrenaline rushes? must be one of my new favourite quotes. Thanks for this gem
  - ljf 10y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11514937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11514937
- randallsquared 10y ago
  The third major one, for me, is "I don't know enough to start on this task, but don't realize it". That's another thing that breaking down the task helps solve.
- programmarchy 10y ago
  Our instincts don't know they're doing actually. It's an ancient system that is designed for survival but in the modern world it's easily tricked and manipulated. Just by doing something over and over, our instinctual caveman brain rewards with dopamine, which automatically forms habits over time. Imagine a caveman looking left and right before he leaves his cave: it just started out as a random occurance, but since he didn't get eaten he gets a dope hit which forms the neural pathways to continue the habit. Great adaptation for basic survival, and social mechanisms will even propagate the habit to others. However, the habit forming dope reward system doesn't "know" what the behaviors are. It's not making any rational or moral judgement. Habits like addiction are extremely maladaptive, formed by the same feedback loop. This is why withdrawals actually feel like a threat to an addicts' survival. Breaking it feels like a threat triggering a fight or flight response. Trusting your instincts or feelings won't help you break a bad habit. Thinking can help, though, which is where the forebrain comes in. By thinking, we can break a bad habit by creating a different, better adapted habit to replace it. This requires the force of the will, at least in the beginning until the new and improved neural pathway is formed. But once it is, you'll have a shiny new habit that's actually beneficial. tl; dr. Think and use your forebrain to form the habits you want.
ghaff 10y ago
Both those ideas appear is some form in David Allen's GTD (Getting Things Done). I'm not a particularly big fan overall--I don't much care for systems. But some of his individual ideas include: - the idea that, if you can do something in 5 minutes or so, just do it rather than keep putting it on to do lists. - breaking down complex projects into discrete small concrete tasks. Both are good ideas which do help me. One thing about procrastination that often seems to be overlooked though is procrastinating about things that really do need to get done sooner or later (If I don't do the expense report, no one else is going to do it for me.) versus procrastinating about doing some project or making some plans because there's a voice questioning whether you really need to or want to do this project at all. Now, I suppose in the latter case, a hyper-organized person would create an action item to "get more information" or something along those lines. But sometimes letting ideas just sit and percolate in a future projects queue works OK too.
- dazc 10y ago
  - the idea that, if you can do something in 5 minutes or so, just do it rather than keep putting it on to do lists. This seems so obvious now I've read it. When I think of how many small tasks I've never got around to doing it's embarrassing.
  - marai2 10y ago
    Though I've had the GTD book sitting in my bookshelf (unread) for a few years, I finally read about GTD on a blog just yesterday :-) And that was the one of the things I tried out yesterday. If a task takes around 2 minutes, just do it. And suddenly I felt like I had a productive day. I got many such small tasks done that were just sitting there in the back of my mind causing cognitive load.
    - mryan 10y ago
      The idea of a book that could solve your procrastination problems sitting unread on a shelf is an amusing irony. And I say this as someone who has multiple procrastination books on my shelves. :-)
vatotemking 10y ago
pomodoro is a great technique. its similar to #2
- wastedhours 10y ago
  +1 whenever I really need to get stuff done at work (and particularly helpful when working from home), I split my time into pomodoros. 25 minutes is a short enough time I can fully concentrate, but long enough to actually get a great deal of "knowledge worker" work done.
- taneq 10y ago
  Admittedly I've never tried it, but from the description, the pomodoro technique would drive me mad. It often takes me more than 20 minutes (sometimes an hour or two!) to get "in the zone" but once I've got my head in the game I can smash through work for hours. The idea of just getting some flow going and then being interrupted seems awful. The only thing I can think of which it really sounds good for is boring, easy tasks that I have to do but really don't want to. What makes it so good? Obviously it works for a lot of people.
  - mbrock 10y ago
    It might not be appropriate for all kinds of work, but there is also a flow aspect to the rhythm of work and rest. Try it for a couple of days and see what happens. The break times may not be as disruptive as you imagine.
  - manicdee 10y ago
    The Pomodoro Technique allows you to get into the flow faster by providing a structure that allows you to ignore distractions and complications. It meshes exceptionally well with Neil Fiore's "The Now Habit".
    - fizzbatter 10y ago
      It's also (as i was taught) a way to break up the mental processes, giving your brain time to analyze your problems without being so intently focused on them. "Focused" mode for 25m, "Diffuse" mode for 5m
sandymcmurray 10y ago
Step 2 is key, but does not come naturally to me. In fact, I usually don't notice that a task is big and undefined until I've spent some time stuck, not getting anything done. I also find it hard to ask for help, so I often get stuck when the next logical step is "admit that you don't know what to do next, and find someone to help."
maxxxxx 10y ago
Your advice sounds a little like telling lonely people go out more and everything will be fine. It's not so simple for a lot of people. I have serious procrastination issues in some areas (anything that involves paperwork) and it's causing me a lot of stress despite having followed your advice many times. Advice is good if it helps people but you have to resist the urge to generalize.
meanduck 10y ago
That is completely opposite of what article implied. Do not (over)feed the "lets have fun/lets not suffer" monkey (like the point 2 says). Do not ignore the red "consequences" deamon (like point 1 says).
unfocused828 10y ago
> Don't worry about it As an engineer who has been fired twice for performance problems, I don't have that luxury. > Break touch tasks down into very, very laughably small tasks. This works well if you've used the technology/tool before and you feel like you understand what you are doing. It is very difficult if you are in the circumstance of having to learn things as you go and having to prodding at things and trying things to figure out how things work. In cases like these, it is better to just figure out what the smallest first step is and iterate that way. Unless of course you have the breathing room to spend time working through a tutorial on whatever set of abstractions you are trying to work with.
- mryan 10y ago
  > It is very difficult if you are in the circumstance of having to learn things as you go and having to prodding at things and trying things to figure out how things work. With respect, it sounds like you are describing a problem caused by not knowing the technology/tooling well enough to begin completing the task, rather than a problem directly caused by procrastination. That being said, one can easily procrastinate the task of learning too :-) In cases like this, the first item on the to-do list could be a time-limited R&D task where the goal is to learn enough so that you can compose a more concrete plan.
  - unfocused828 10y ago
    > caused by not knowing the technology/tool well enough. Yes. But given the average quality of documentation and the fact that the most common advice for how to learn a new technology is just to build something with it, how uncommon is this?
lackbeard 10y ago
There is nothing I procrastinate on more than breaking a large task down into smaller tasks. Seriously.
lackbeard 10y ago
There is nothing I procrastinate on more than breaking a large task down into smaller tasks. Seriously.
PerfectElement 10y ago
Breaking things into small pieces works great when you know what to do. The tasks that I find myself procrastinating the most are the ones that are hard to break down. For example, right now I need to implement a feature that will touch many parts of a software. I don't know how to do it yet, and figuring out the best way to do it will require a lot of mental effort, because I need to take several technical and business variables into consideration.

by drb311 10y ago

domusliber 10y ago

I didn't even click the article (the pain of reading it seemed too large) so I came directly to the comments. Awesome tips! "Our instincts know what they're doing" is very true. I tend to procrastinate when two conditions are fulfilled 1) the task is boring/painful, and 2) in the back of my mind, I've already calculated out the time and I can afford to push it until later. Trying to force myself just increases my expected pain of the task, so I should just go with it. (And look, I'm procrastinating so much I made a HN account so I could comment about procrastination!)

cylinder 10y ago
Isn't procrastination a way of converting painfully boring tasks into fun adrenaline rushes? It seems like a pretty good evolutionary adaption: I perform better when all my senses are elevated, so why not? Problem arises when you don't have a hard deadline (I.e., you are only accountable to yourself).
- otoburb 10y ago
  Adrenaline junkies injecting excitement into boring tasks makes a lot of intuitive sense for some of my own selectively chronic procrastination.
- thanatropism 10y ago
  Which is why on the worst of days I set up timers. "Ok, I'm going to work for 15/20/30 minutes straight and then I'm kicking up my feet". I always keep going after the timer goes off.
- tmrmn 10y ago
  >Isn't procrastination a way of converting painfully boring tasks into fun adrenaline rushes? must be one of my new favourite quotes. Thanks for this gem
- ljf 10y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11514937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11514937
randallsquared 10y ago
The third major one, for me, is "I don't know enough to start on this task, but don't realize it". That's another thing that breaking down the task helps solve.
programmarchy 10y ago
Our instincts don't know they're doing actually. It's an ancient system that is designed for survival but in the modern world it's easily tricked and manipulated. Just by doing something over and over, our instinctual caveman brain rewards with dopamine, which automatically forms habits over time. Imagine a caveman looking left and right before he leaves his cave: it just started out as a random occurance, but since he didn't get eaten he gets a dope hit which forms the neural pathways to continue the habit. Great adaptation for basic survival, and social mechanisms will even propagate the habit to others. However, the habit forming dope reward system doesn't "know" what the behaviors are. It's not making any rational or moral judgement. Habits like addiction are extremely maladaptive, formed by the same feedback loop. This is why withdrawals actually feel like a threat to an addicts' survival. Breaking it feels like a threat triggering a fight or flight response. Trusting your instincts or feelings won't help you break a bad habit. Thinking can help, though, which is where the forebrain comes in. By thinking, we can break a bad habit by creating a different, better adapted habit to replace it. This requires the force of the will, at least in the beginning until the new and improved neural pathway is formed. But once it is, you'll have a shiny new habit that's actually beneficial. tl; dr. Think and use your forebrain to form the habits you want.

ghaff 10y ago

Both those ideas appear is some form in David Allen's GTD (Getting Things Done). I'm not a particularly big fan overall--I don't much care for systems. But some of his individual ideas include: - the idea that, if you can do something in 5 minutes or so, just do it rather than keep putting it on to do lists. - breaking down complex projects into discrete small concrete tasks. Both are good ideas which do help me. One thing about procrastination that often seems to be overlooked though is procrastinating about things that really do need to get done sooner or later (If I don't do the expense report, no one else is going to do it for me.) versus procrastinating about doing some project or making some plans because there's a voice questioning whether you really need to or want to do this project at all. Now, I suppose in the latter case, a hyper-organized person would create an action item to "get more information" or something along those lines. But sometimes letting ideas just sit and percolate in a future projects queue works OK too.

dazc 10y ago
- the idea that, if you can do something in 5 minutes or so, just do it rather than keep putting it on to do lists. This seems so obvious now I've read it. When I think of how many small tasks I've never got around to doing it's embarrassing.
- marai2 10y ago
  Though I've had the GTD book sitting in my bookshelf (unread) for a few years, I finally read about GTD on a blog just yesterday :-) And that was the one of the things I tried out yesterday. If a task takes around 2 minutes, just do it. And suddenly I felt like I had a productive day. I got many such small tasks done that were just sitting there in the back of my mind causing cognitive load.
  - mryan 10y ago
    The idea of a book that could solve your procrastination problems sitting unread on a shelf is an amusing irony. And I say this as someone who has multiple procrastination books on my shelves. :-)

vatotemking 10y ago

pomodoro is a great technique. its similar to #2

wastedhours 10y ago
+1 whenever I really need to get stuff done at work (and particularly helpful when working from home), I split my time into pomodoros. 25 minutes is a short enough time I can fully concentrate, but long enough to actually get a great deal of "knowledge worker" work done.
taneq 10y ago
Admittedly I've never tried it, but from the description, the pomodoro technique would drive me mad. It often takes me more than 20 minutes (sometimes an hour or two!) to get "in the zone" but once I've got my head in the game I can smash through work for hours. The idea of just getting some flow going and then being interrupted seems awful. The only thing I can think of which it really sounds good for is boring, easy tasks that I have to do but really don't want to. What makes it so good? Obviously it works for a lot of people.
- mbrock 10y ago
  It might not be appropriate for all kinds of work, but there is also a flow aspect to the rhythm of work and rest. Try it for a couple of days and see what happens. The break times may not be as disruptive as you imagine.
- manicdee 10y ago
  The Pomodoro Technique allows you to get into the flow faster by providing a structure that allows you to ignore distractions and complications. It meshes exceptionally well with Neil Fiore's "The Now Habit".
  - fizzbatter 10y ago
    It's also (as i was taught) a way to break up the mental processes, giving your brain time to analyze your problems without being so intently focused on them. "Focused" mode for 25m, "Diffuse" mode for 5m

sandymcmurray 10y ago

Step 2 is key, but does not come naturally to me. In fact, I usually don't notice that a task is big and undefined until I've spent some time stuck, not getting anything done. I also find it hard to ask for help, so I often get stuck when the next logical step is "admit that you don't know what to do next, and find someone to help."

maxxxxx 10y ago

Your advice sounds a little like telling lonely people go out more and everything will be fine. It's not so simple for a lot of people. I have serious procrastination issues in some areas (anything that involves paperwork) and it's causing me a lot of stress despite having followed your advice many times. Advice is good if it helps people but you have to resist the urge to generalize.

meanduck 10y ago

That is completely opposite of what article implied. Do not (over)feed the "lets have fun/lets not suffer" monkey (like the point 2 says). Do not ignore the red "consequences" deamon (like point 1 says).

unfocused828 10y ago

> Don't worry about it As an engineer who has been fired twice for performance problems, I don't have that luxury. > Break touch tasks down into very, very laughably small tasks. This works well if you've used the technology/tool before and you feel like you understand what you are doing. It is very difficult if you are in the circumstance of having to learn things as you go and having to prodding at things and trying things to figure out how things work. In cases like these, it is better to just figure out what the smallest first step is and iterate that way. Unless of course you have the breathing room to spend time working through a tutorial on whatever set of abstractions you are trying to work with.

mryan 10y ago
> It is very difficult if you are in the circumstance of having to learn things as you go and having to prodding at things and trying things to figure out how things work. With respect, it sounds like you are describing a problem caused by not knowing the technology/tooling well enough to begin completing the task, rather than a problem directly caused by procrastination. That being said, one can easily procrastinate the task of learning too :-) In cases like this, the first item on the to-do list could be a time-limited R&D task where the goal is to learn enough so that you can compose a more concrete plan.
- unfocused828 10y ago
  > caused by not knowing the technology/tool well enough. Yes. But given the average quality of documentation and the fact that the most common advice for how to learn a new technology is just to build something with it, how uncommon is this?

lackbeard 10y ago

There is nothing I procrastinate on more than breaking a large task down into smaller tasks. Seriously.

lackbeard 10y ago

There is nothing I procrastinate on more than breaking a large task down into smaller tasks. Seriously.

PerfectElement 10y ago

Breaking things into small pieces works great when you know what to do. The tasks that I find myself procrastinating the most are the ones that are hard to break down. For example, right now I need to implement a feature that will touch many parts of a software. I don't know how to do it yet, and figuring out the best way to do it will require a lot of mental effort, because I need to take several technical and business variables into consideration.