8 ms·

Stop Procrastinating by “Clearing to Neutral”

104 points by mattraibert 14y ago

Angostura 14y ago
I'll clean to neutral just after I've done something I'd rather do.
sarah2079 14y ago
I think a lot of this applies to me, I have a bad habit of leaving windows open for things I am not actively working on even though I know this can really bog me down mentally. However, while I think there is a lot of value in clearing your workspace to remove friction, someone also gave me some really good advice to help with getting started in the morning that is a little bit contradictory. The advice is to leave something partially finished that you can easily get right back into it when you get back to work. Sometimes the act of starting something new can be too much to overcome first thing in the morning, and then you get sidetracked. If you leave something ready to go that you can easily do, it can help you get into work mode immediately.
- mattraibert 14y ago
  I think leaving breadcrumbs for yourself can be a great way to reduce friction. The challenge for me has been when I wake up and I find that I've left myself a bunch of breadcrumbs for several different tasks.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Deliberately leaving some piece of low-hanging fruit at the end of a session so that it's there to pick up at the beginning of the next session is a really good idea.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Just do a code review in the morning to warm up, instead of hurriedly finishing yesterday's work and then tossing it aside to start something new.
  - sarah2079 14y ago
    The idea is to leave something fun but approachable ready to go to make it easy to get into work mode. I don't enjoy code review very much, so for me trying to do this first would be a recipe for procrastination.
kiba 14y ago
Nice hypothesis, but where's the lab result? I highly encourage people to think skeptically and scientific as well using the self quantitative approach to self improvement, even when they're certain when their theory is right. For example, I am measuring blood pressure, steps count, weight, blood sugar level, awake and sleep time everyday. I also just recently concluded that walking 10K steps have almost no effect on my weight or very subtle one. http://kibabase.com/articles/self-quantification#intervention-1---walking-10k-steps http://kibabase.com/articles/self-quantification#interventio... In the future, when I finish my analysis, other people might decide to replicate my experiment or comes up with their own conclusion based on the data I gathered. Although how one could test the idea proposed in the blog is unclear to me. I like the idea of having a clean desk or clean environment though. The ugly environment in my house doesn't appears to deter me from getting things done, though.
- lnanek2 14y ago
  Just counting steps isn't very effective. You need to walk for a good long while at a time to use up your glycogen (stored sugar energy) and make your body dip into fat reserves. So if you spread out getting your steps you are less likely to do that. Similarly, there are heart rate complications. If you don't walk fast enough or throw in some interval work to get your heart rate up, you aren't getting as much exercise...
  - kiba 14y ago
    I don't have the equipment to test your hypothesis, but I think I can test an easier one: running a mile a day in addition to doing 10K steps in a certain period of time around the neighborhood. Crude, but predictable.
    - krrrh 14y ago
      Try doing your walking first thing in the morning before breakfast. Lot's of bodybuilders use this technique when they are cutting for a contest. It's also a popular method because unlike cardio, walking has almost no detrimental effect on weight-training later in the day. I'd love to hear your results after keeping track of this.
mattraibert 14y ago
This article got me thinking about places in my life where there's friction. My computer stands out as a huge source of friction. I already try to close unnecessary windows/tabs, but after reading this, I realized that, because I use it for so many different habits, my desktop fails as a friction free starting point for work. So I've identified a few ways I use my computer and I'm setting up a user account for each one: * coding in Ruby * coding in Java for work * blogs and email (and hacker news) * personal and household maintenance This way I can tune each desktop to the appropriate kind of work. I can eliminate clutter in the dock. I can leave the appropriate windows open without it distracting me when it's time to do something else. If it goes well, I'll try to write it up in a blog post.
- charliepark 14y ago
  I would so love to see this written up, even if the experiment "fails".
- thirdsun 14y ago
  Maybe you don't even need individual user accounts - today I noticed this app to start (and close) different groups of applications. While I don't need it, this may be an alternative to your multiple account approach: http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/foreman/ http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/foreman/
  - w33ble 14y ago
    Thanks for this! It's a little buggy wrt hiding/showing applications from the popup dialog, but overall it's working pretty well and was worth the purchase. Hopefully future updates iron out the minor issues. There's a free version on their website (scroll down a bit) if you'd like to try it. It lacks the toggle hotkeys, but it'll let you know if it suits you before buying.
- ANTSANTS 14y ago
  This seems a bit overkill, like trying to prevent yourself from wasting time on a site by blocking it in your hosts file. I worry it would make "mental context switches" too expensive, which might help to discourage you from wasting time on HN, but also get in the way of your work. I imagine that if I tried to separate my activities into separate accounts, I would get tired of switching users and end up with a de facto main account very quickly. Have you looked into a virtual desktop solution yet? I use virtual desktops for very similar reasons (tuck all the real time wasters away in one desktop, put music playing controls and such in another, and use every other one for a different task), and I find it does a very good job of keeping me focused on the task at hand without getting in my way when it's time to do something else. Each one of my desktops is just two keypresses away, but there's no indication that anything is even running in any other desktop but a tiny square in the bottom right corner of my screen.
jiggy2011 14y ago
If you don't want to ahem procrastinate, then don't put a picture of slave leia up on your wall.
agumonkey 14y ago
Any tennis player knows this, always recenter. I think somehow the idea of automated garbage collection got to some of us programmers.
tptacek 14y ago
A variant (I think) of this idea that I've been using for years: when I stop coding, I jot down what I was doing, whatever problems I was dealing with, and what I felt my next steps were going to be in a little Emacs buffer. It would probably be even smarter of me to take 20 seconds to figure out exactly the right set of Emacs tabs/frames to keep open alongside them, so when it was time to start up again, I'd get sucked right in.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- naglfar 14y ago
  Even though I have not used it myself (yet - I should probably try it as well) - shouldn't the Emacs desktop mode just store all open tabs and restore them for you when activated: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Saving-Emacs-Sessions.html http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Sav...
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  A related trick I find valuable is to do the exact opposite of what the article suggests. Never finish anything at the end of your workday. Leave yourself a small mess to clean up, or some simple and finite wrapup task that you can afford to postpone. Bonus points if it's going to be fun or interesting to work on. The idea being, it'll be much easier to get back into the groove the next day if you aren't confronted with the proverbial empty screen or blank sheet of paper the minute you walk in the door. After you spend 30 minutes wrapping up the work from yesterday, you will already be in the zone, and it'll be easier to move ahead to the next big thing on your list.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    I do this, and I find it's invaluable. If it's the end of the day, and I have a writing or coding task to do that is small in scope and I'm looking forward to doing, I put it off to the next day. I think of it as leaving work "hooks" for myself to pull me into work the next day. Work hooks are small in scope, and satisfying to accomplish. The next day, not only do I know exactly what I'm going to do, I'm looking forward to it.
kailden 14y ago
I've found the best way for me to jump into something is to leave vim open to the very project I'm on--even if I'm midtask. I wouldn't want to close all the windows, as that would make it harder to start the next day.
3rd3 14y ago
It scares me a bit how close these pictures are to reality.
gathly 14y ago
These seem to be all points for the ADHD/OCD set, which does not include everyone. Clutter doesn't bother me, not in my sink, not on my desk, not on my desktop. I can't work, because I have too many things in my home that are more fun than work.
anotherbadlogin 14y ago
That title is a good example of when to use commas. The title actually says "Clearing to Neutral" CAUSES procrastination (you're procrastinating by "clearing to neutral"). Stop procrastinating, by "clearing to neutral."
shakeel_mohamed 14y ago
I'm a big fan of Asian Efficiency, I read a similar article years ago (maybe it's the same one?). Clearing to neutral has definitely given me positive results.
kjhughes 14y ago
The effectiveness of these mind games tends to be fleeting. Nike nailed it: Just do it.
Evbn 14y ago
This article is completely ignorant of scientific research into how procrastination actually happens.
- aw3c2 14y ago
  I'd be interested, could you share some papers/articles?
taybin 14y ago
Fancy name for the lesson "cleanup after yourself" I'm trying to teach my son. But still a good idea that I will try to make use of in my own life.

104 points by mattraibert 14y ago

I'll clean to neutral just after I've done something I'd rather do.

sarah2079 14y ago

I think a lot of this applies to me, I have a bad habit of leaving windows open for things I am not actively working on even though I know this can really bog me down mentally. However, while I think there is a lot of value in clearing your workspace to remove friction, someone also gave me some really good advice to help with getting started in the morning that is a little bit contradictory. The advice is to leave something partially finished that you can easily get right back into it when you get back to work. Sometimes the act of starting something new can be too much to overcome first thing in the morning, and then you get sidetracked. If you leave something ready to go that you can easily do, it can help you get into work mode immediately.

mattraibert 14y ago
I think leaving breadcrumbs for yourself can be a great way to reduce friction. The challenge for me has been when I wake up and I find that I've left myself a bunch of breadcrumbs for several different tasks.
tptacek 14y ago
Deliberately leaving some piece of low-hanging fruit at the end of a session so that it's there to pick up at the beginning of the next session is a really good idea.
Evbn 14y ago
Just do a code review in the morning to warm up, instead of hurriedly finishing yesterday's work and then tossing it aside to start something new.
- sarah2079 14y ago
  The idea is to leave something fun but approachable ready to go to make it easy to get into work mode. I don't enjoy code review very much, so for me trying to do this first would be a recipe for procrastination.

kiba 14y ago

Nice hypothesis, but where's the lab result? I highly encourage people to think skeptically and scientific as well using the self quantitative approach to self improvement, even when they're certain when their theory is right. For example, I am measuring blood pressure, steps count, weight, blood sugar level, awake and sleep time everyday. I also just recently concluded that walking 10K steps have almost no effect on my weight or very subtle one. http://kibabase.com/articles/self-quantification#intervention-1---walking-10k-steps http://kibabase.com/articles/self-quantification#interventio... In the future, when I finish my analysis, other people might decide to replicate my experiment or comes up with their own conclusion based on the data I gathered. Although how one could test the idea proposed in the blog is unclear to me. I like the idea of having a clean desk or clean environment though. The ugly environment in my house doesn't appears to deter me from getting things done, though.

lnanek2 14y ago
Just counting steps isn't very effective. You need to walk for a good long while at a time to use up your glycogen (stored sugar energy) and make your body dip into fat reserves. So if you spread out getting your steps you are less likely to do that. Similarly, there are heart rate complications. If you don't walk fast enough or throw in some interval work to get your heart rate up, you aren't getting as much exercise...
- kiba 14y ago
  I don't have the equipment to test your hypothesis, but I think I can test an easier one: running a mile a day in addition to doing 10K steps in a certain period of time around the neighborhood. Crude, but predictable.
  - krrrh 14y ago
    Try doing your walking first thing in the morning before breakfast. Lot's of bodybuilders use this technique when they are cutting for a contest. It's also a popular method because unlike cardio, walking has almost no detrimental effect on weight-training later in the day. I'd love to hear your results after keeping track of this.

mattraibert 14y ago

This article got me thinking about places in my life where there's friction. My computer stands out as a huge source of friction. I already try to close unnecessary windows/tabs, but after reading this, I realized that, because I use it for so many different habits, my desktop fails as a friction free starting point for work. So I've identified a few ways I use my computer and I'm setting up a user account for each one: * coding in Ruby * coding in Java for work * blogs and email (and hacker news) * personal and household maintenance This way I can tune each desktop to the appropriate kind of work. I can eliminate clutter in the dock. I can leave the appropriate windows open without it distracting me when it's time to do something else. If it goes well, I'll try to write it up in a blog post.

charliepark 14y ago
I would so love to see this written up, even if the experiment "fails".
thirdsun 14y ago
Maybe you don't even need individual user accounts - today I noticed this app to start (and close) different groups of applications. While I don't need it, this may be an alternative to your multiple account approach: http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/foreman/ http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/foreman/
- w33ble 14y ago
  Thanks for this! It's a little buggy wrt hiding/showing applications from the popup dialog, but overall it's working pretty well and was worth the purchase. Hopefully future updates iron out the minor issues. There's a free version on their website (scroll down a bit) if you'd like to try it. It lacks the toggle hotkeys, but it'll let you know if it suits you before buying.
ANTSANTS 14y ago
This seems a bit overkill, like trying to prevent yourself from wasting time on a site by blocking it in your hosts file. I worry it would make "mental context switches" too expensive, which might help to discourage you from wasting time on HN, but also get in the way of your work. I imagine that if I tried to separate my activities into separate accounts, I would get tired of switching users and end up with a de facto main account very quickly. Have you looked into a virtual desktop solution yet? I use virtual desktops for very similar reasons (tuck all the real time wasters away in one desktop, put music playing controls and such in another, and use every other one for a different task), and I find it does a very good job of keeping me focused on the task at hand without getting in my way when it's time to do something else. Each one of my desktops is just two keypresses away, but there's no indication that anything is even running in any other desktop but a tiny square in the bottom right corner of my screen.

jiggy2011 14y ago

If you don't want to ahem procrastinate, then don't put a picture of slave leia up on your wall.

agumonkey 14y ago

Any tennis player knows this, always recenter. I think somehow the idea of automated garbage collection got to some of us programmers.

tptacek 14y ago

A variant (I think) of this idea that I've been using for years: when I stop coding, I jot down what I was doing, whatever problems I was dealing with, and what I felt my next steps were going to be in a little Emacs buffer. It would probably be even smarter of me to take 20 seconds to figure out exactly the right set of Emacs tabs/frames to keep open alongside them, so when it was time to start up again, I'd get sucked right in.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
naglfar 14y ago
Even though I have not used it myself (yet - I should probably try it as well) - shouldn't the Emacs desktop mode just store all open tabs and restore them for you when activated: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Saving-Emacs-Sessions.html http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Sav...
CamperBob2 14y ago
A related trick I find valuable is to do the exact opposite of what the article suggests. Never finish anything at the end of your workday. Leave yourself a small mess to clean up, or some simple and finite wrapup task that you can afford to postpone. Bonus points if it's going to be fun or interesting to work on. The idea being, it'll be much easier to get back into the groove the next day if you aren't confronted with the proverbial empty screen or blank sheet of paper the minute you walk in the door. After you spend 30 minutes wrapping up the work from yesterday, you will already be in the zone, and it'll be easier to move ahead to the next big thing on your list.
- scott_s 14y ago
  I do this, and I find it's invaluable. If it's the end of the day, and I have a writing or coding task to do that is small in scope and I'm looking forward to doing, I put it off to the next day. I think of it as leaving work "hooks" for myself to pull me into work the next day. Work hooks are small in scope, and satisfying to accomplish. The next day, not only do I know exactly what I'm going to do, I'm looking forward to it.

kailden 14y ago

I've found the best way for me to jump into something is to leave vim open to the very project I'm on--even if I'm midtask. I wouldn't want to close all the windows, as that would make it harder to start the next day.

3rd3 14y ago

It scares me a bit how close these pictures are to reality.

gathly 14y ago

These seem to be all points for the ADHD/OCD set, which does not include everyone. Clutter doesn't bother me, not in my sink, not on my desk, not on my desktop. I can't work, because I have too many things in my home that are more fun than work.

anotherbadlogin 14y ago

That title is a good example of when to use commas. The title actually says "Clearing to Neutral" CAUSES procrastination (you're procrastinating by "clearing to neutral"). Stop procrastinating, by "clearing to neutral."

shakeel_mohamed 14y ago

I'm a big fan of Asian Efficiency, I read a similar article years ago (maybe it's the same one?). Clearing to neutral has definitely given me positive results.

kjhughes 14y ago

The effectiveness of these mind games tends to be fleeting. Nike nailed it: Just do it.

Evbn 14y ago

This article is completely ignorant of scientific research into how procrastination actually happens.

aw3c2 14y ago
I'd be interested, could you share some papers/articles?

taybin 14y ago

Fancy name for the lesson "cleanup after yourself" I'm trying to teach my son. But still a good idea that I will try to make use of in my own life.