
Ask HN: How do I get out of the procrastination abyss? - codeknight11
I have been struggling with my productivity for 8 months now. It has nothing to do with the pandemic. 
It just happened slowly. I was studying and learning (programming and ML) almost daily. 
But suddenly lost my pace and have been unable to go back since?<p>What can I do to get out of the rut?
======
RoboTeddy
My procrastination pretty much went away (!) when I drew a distinction between
“good” and “bad” delays.

A delay is in the “good” category if there are specific reasons that it’s
likely that there will be another time in the near future which is _better_
than right now.

For example, if the task you’re considering require mental acuity, and you’re
really tired, and it’s likely you’ll be less tired tomorrow, then it could be
good to delay.

Or, if it’s time to do a chore except you’re in flow and productive, it could
be good to delay the chore: it’s likely there’s a time in the near future
where you wouldn’t have to give up productivity to complete it.

On the other hand, if there’s unlikely to be a better time in the future, and
you should just do it immediately. (This is especially true for tasks that
actually become more work to do if you wait.)

Before drawing this distinction, I had thought the way to avoid
procrastination was just never to delay. Attempting to live up to that had
proven unrealistic/costly, so I would end up delaying a bunch for all sorts of
reasons including bad ones.

After I started drawing this distinction, I set about never procrastinating
for bad reasons, while often delaying for good ones.

------
stunt
Solutions are dead simple and they are mostly about discipline and life style.
But, you have to believe that they are going to work. Otherwise you will give
up quickly before seeing any results.

I heard so many times that writing is effective. But I couldn't believe it
until I've forced myself to try it. I think a lot of people are just waiting
for a magic course or a pill to solve this issue. But in reality solutions are
all those simple things that we've heard many times.

\- I set daily goals. I do it every night before going to sleep. I have on
average 3 daily goals(Sometimes more). You are guaranteed to achieve something
every day. And that's so rewarding that you want to do more

\- I write down my goals. It's as effective as having a good friend that keeps
you in check.

\- I have a Trello board for every side project that I do. Pretty much like a
Jira board. I have backlog, in-progress, testing, and done columns. It's like
releasing space from your mind. So you don't have to track everything in your
head and be busy thinking about them all the time. Also when you are working,
you don't have to stop and think what is the next thing to do.

\- I've created my home office. I have my own room but it doesn't have to be a
room. It's important to keep it consistent. So you train your brain to stay
focused when you are at your office. Also your family knows when you aren't
available.

\- Find healthy hobbies. I do hiking, cycling, and tennis. The time you spend
there helps your body and your health. And after a while you enjoy it so much
that you don't want to waste your time with social media or video game. I also
do it with my wife which keeps her more satisfied as we spend the time
together. Happy wife, happy life.

\- Find your big time wasting distractions and only do them as a reward for
your weekly achievements. Mine was video games and I was really good at it. I
started limiting myself to a two-hours session per week. After a while, I have
weeks that I don't want to play at all. I just enjoy spend my time playing
tennis or go for cycling.

Maintain a good lifestyle. Good food, enough sleep, enough physical activity,
rest enough, use your holidays.

------
afarrell
ADHDer here. Please steal some of the motivation-techniques I've learnt over
the years:

1\. Find a friend who is a software engineer or data analyst and cares about
you as a person. Talk about this with them. Humans evolved being able to talk
things over with their aunt or best friend. When you are perplexed by
something, a rubber duck probably won't cut it -- you should talk with a
human.

2\. Make sure you're taking care of your body and brain: exercise, good food,
good sleep (this is easier if you're getting exercise), meditation, etc.

3\. Understand what your "reward model" is. Under what conditions do you
recognize "Aha! I've made progress!"? To really understand what I'm getting at
here, watch this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYylPRX6z4Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYylPRX6z4Q)

4\. Find internal things to strengthen your reward model's signals. Go back to
when you originally started learning ML and Re-connect to your "Why". Do you
still find those reasons compelling? If so, take some time to bring some
vividness to your picture. -- Start With Why.

5\. Find external punishments to remove. Now that you've spent 8 months
working on it, you've noticed the things which are annoying you about your
workflow.

\- After 8 months, it is totally healthy to take a week or two and improve
your development environment to sand the edges off of things that give you
friction. For a stranger's recommendation:
[https://fishshell.com/](https://fishshell.com/) has made it dramatically
easier for me to write little scripts that take away annoying tasks.

\- Maybe you feel like you've been "in the weeds" for two long and your mental
model is a bit scattered. Maybe just take some time and explain what you have
learned in order to make it fit together in your head better. I find it
helpful to pretend I'm back in university and fill an A4 sheet to prepare for
a test.

6\. Find external things to re-enforce your "reward model". In normal
programming, this is what Test-Driven-Development does. In thinking through a
hard problem, the anticipated social rewards from a person who is curiously
listening to your thoughts serve the same purpose.

------
melvinroest
> What can I do to get out of the rut?

A few ideas, not sure if they'll work. I hope it'll get you inspired!

Idea 1: do it for two hours or a bit more, and when you do it, simply ask:
what do I like about this right now? If the answer is "nothing" rephrase it
to: "what's the coolest thing about this project right now?" Be a pure
positive person. I'm a realist normally, but when it comes to becoming
motivated to something, I simply _ignore_ the negativity to the point of being
irrational about it, because the power of positivity makes me feel motivated
(and biased, but I guess that bias helps with motivation too :) ).

Idea 2: consistency is key, it's better to do it 4 days for 2 hours than 8
hours on one day. The reason for that is that you want it to slowly but surely
become the top idea in your mind (see Paul Graham's post on that [1]). You'll
also have more creative thoughts about it.

Idea 3: try to get other people involved. Heck, I'm up for a 30 min. call to
hear about what you're learning as I have a passing interest in ML and read
[http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com](http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com)
and made this for fun [2].

My email is in my profile.

Good luck!

Also, some ML awesomeness for that fun hype factor :)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrIbQ0pIFOg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrIbQ0pIFOg)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSVrKK_uHoU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSVrKK_uHoU)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6wn8zMRlVE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6wn8zMRlVE)

(15 min. probably in total)

[1] [http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html)

[2] [https://github.com/melvinroest/Interactive-Neural-
Networks](https://github.com/melvinroest/Interactive-Neural-Networks)

------
kleer001
What's your physical routine? Do you exercise regularly?

Regardless of the pandemic, there's still truths here to learn about the
connection between your body and mind. CGP Grey is great. :
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck)

Do you have a boredom routine? I find as a creative it's important for me to
force myself to be away from the productivity grind for a little bit each week
so I can get hungry to get back to it.

------
Trias11
Procrastination is a mental state.

Start DO-ing something that is more or less interesting.

DO-ing is physical. This will override mental state with physical energy that
will in turn re-ignite proper mental state.

------
yesenadam
It sounds like you were into those things, now you're not. No big deal. So
find something else you are now into and do that, maybe come back to those
other things later.

I'm into a lot of different things, but only 1 or 2 at a time. I can't force
myself to do something I'm not naturally into at the moment. I'm taking better
notes now (started a couple of decades late) so when I go back to a subject
months or a year later, it's all there waiting for me to continue.

You seem to be trying to force yourself, and seeing it as a problem with you
that's it's not working. Be kinder to yourself! If you were treating someone
else that way, trying to force them to focus on something they didn't want to,
day after day, you would seem very mean, wouldn't you? One thing I've learnt
is, we're taught to be nice to other people, but not to be nice to _yourself_
, which is perhaps most important, as treating others well is difficult at
best without that, and we're with ourselves 24/7\. _Treat yourself like
someone you really love._ [1] Sounds like you're blaming yourself, torturing
yourself! The Albert Ellis' classic _New Guide to Rational Living_ [2] was
also very helpful to me, to become aware of how I was treating myself, what
things I was saying to myself, and changing the negative things.

John Perry's essay on procrastination might be helpful too[0] – in short, have
such a great list of To Dos that even if you're procrastinating by doing
things much lower on the list, they still add up to an awesome life! I thought
it was genius.

Good luck!

[0]
[http://structuredprocrastination.com/](http://structuredprocrastination.com/)

[1] I think I got that from Louise Hay's _How To Love Yourself_.

[2] Also Wayne Dyer's excellent first 2 books _Your Erroneous Zones_ and
_Pulling Your Own Strings_ cover similar ground, and might be more to your
taste.

------
gadders
Read The War of Art: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Art-Through-Creative-
Battles/dp...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Art-Through-Creative-
Battles/dp/1936891026/)

~~~
Imanari
Seconded, that book lit a fire under me.

------
gt2
Promise yourself you'll only do 15 minutes.

Do pomodoros (similar to above).

No zero days/don't break the cycle (made famous by Seinfeld).

Leave a small task to do for next time, making it easy to get into it.

Set a realistic goal/project to make with your learning rather than learning
open ended (could be the reason for your plateau, as it can be interesting to
get into something initially but hard to maintain after the low hanging fruit
is learned).

Blog about each topic/micro topic/learning.

Get peer feedback/reinforcement by announcing to someone or a community what
you are working on or learning and when you will finish.

Good luck!

~~~
neuroticfish
>Blog about each topic/micro topic/learning.

Any recommendations for this? I've always wanted to make a blog but I never
have anything to write about. What I work on is trivial so it doesn't seem
worth the time to write about. I've thought about researching interesting
topics and writing a "research paper" for each blog entry but that feels like
cheating and using another person's work.

------
radu_floricica
Many technicals answers here so I won't get into details. But I'll suggest
what worked ok for me once: take a walk. Take a long walk, and think about
what you really want in life. Accept when you walk out the door that the
outcome may not be what you expect.

In my case I realized I actually want to do what I'm doing, and the current
procrastination crisis went away. But you may also realize you want to change
some goals.

~~~
guzy
I love this answer, procrastination is commonly linked to an expected negative
emotional state associated with an activity and thus delaying. I feel this
plays into the theme of check in with yourself that you really want the
outcome so that you have a feeling of it's worth it.

I feel internal alignment of goals is the first step and then look at some of
the more direct tactics others have mentioned e.g. reward cycles and a good
mental and physically state

------
robmerki
Are you actually procrastinating? Procrastination is when you _consciously_
decide to delay some work. Perhaps you are unmotivated or burnt out?

"Just get started" is good advice sometimes, but in your case it sounds like
you're burnt out, in which case you can't get started so easily.

Rather than doing brain hacks or productivity "tips", try doing _less_.
Instead of aiming for massive bursts of productivity, try doing a tiny bit at
a time. If you miss a day, who cares.

You are under no productivity "debt". You're studying and learning, these are
creative processes that have a daily limit.

Finally, a sustainable level of motivation should feel like you're "kind of
hungry", not that you're obsessed. I have ADHD, and sometimes I fool myself
into thinking I'm no longer "passionate" about something because I'm no longer
in a hyperfocus phase. In reality, healthy long-term productivity is much less
extreme than obsessive hyperfocus.

------
ExcavateGrandMa
Your main problem is that you aren't learning programming and ML but how
become productive with these last...

and as I just read few minutes ago... "If you find it a struggling maybe it's
not for you..."

You'll never succeed without fascination for what you doing...

------
segmondy
Perhaps you over studied and need to shift gear and start building. What are
you building?

------
Imanari
Try mindfulness meditation, it is almost magical. Procrastination just kind of
went away. Am I super productive 100% of the time? No, I still watch Netflix.
But these negative thought loops and self-hate that makes procrastination feel
so nasty go away.

I use the app 'Waking Up' from Sam Harris, and I find it absolutely brilliant.

~~~
muzani
A lot of the procrastination loop is hating yourself for procrastinating and
then procrastinating as a relief from the discomfort. Meditation helps a lot
in staying rational.

------
mac01021
What do you now find yourself doing or thinking about doing instead?

------
AlDante2
I'll get back to you on that.

