
How to minimize procrastination - emilwallner
https://myelin.io/how-to-minimize-procrastination
======
kmnc
What do you do when procrastination becomes more serious and develops into
life avoidance? (You procrastinate on everything, regardless of how you frame
a task, regardless of the difficulty of it). In the extreme case
procrastination isn't a obstacle to task competition but a learned habit of
avoidance. It becomes an addiction in the same way that gambling, drugs, etc
do. How do you beat an addiction whose very nature stops you from taking steps
to beat it? Is it possible to quit procrastination cold turkey? If I want to
stop smoking one way is to just stop and deal with it. If I want to stop
procrastination do I have to be doing something productive 24/7? How do I
attain the discipline for that?

~~~
zensavona
I actually was at that stage a couple of years ago - I couldn't get anything
done, which made me feel bad and depressed, which made me not get anything
done. I couldn't even start doing something in a meaningful way.

It's such a bizarre thing to think back on that I can't even fully empathise
with my former self..

This is what made me realise what was going on and rectify the situation, it
all just "clicked". I had been doing this since early high school at the time.

Why: [http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-
procrastin...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-
procrastinate.html)

How to beat it: [http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-
procrastination.ht...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-
procrastination.html)

The thing which really worked for me was realising that if I really work and
try hard to work on something for even lie 10 minutes, I can get into a flow
state and then it's easy. And from there it was just baby steps forward over a
matter of a couple of months until I remember getting into a flow state all
the time and thus my mind thinks of it as "easy" and it _is_.

This is exactly the same experience I had when I was younger and learning to
feel confident talking to girls. It's really hard, but when I'd done it all
the time for a while I have enough semi-recent memories of me doing the thing,
that the thing seemed like an easy and normal thing to do.

~~~
luminiferous
It's a weird feeling, procrastinating on work by reading an article about how
to stop procrastinating.

~~~
lloyd-christmas
It's a weird feeling, bookmarking an article about procrastinating to read
sometime later.

------
oneJob
I've booked marked this. Will check out later.

~~~
bdevine
"Sir, Thank you very much for the article on hoarding. I've put it with the
others."

------
bluish
One way of minimizing procrastination is to surround yourself with people who
are more intelligent, more accomplished, and more success-driven than
yourself. Being isolated (which was the case with me during my time at
university), or associating with lazy, mediocre people, makes it easy to fall
into the bad habit of idleness.

My experience shows that any kind of approach based on personal organization,
use of productivity tools, time management methods, or attempts at habit
formation using willpower will fail if there is no environmental pressure (in
the form of friends and family, and not just institutions) to maintain a high
level of personal productivity.

------
dikaiosune
1\. Go to HN to procrastinate.

2\. Find article on how to not procrastinate.

3\. Ack.

~~~
sotojuan
Or the classic

1\. Want to stop procrastinating and get stuff done

2\. Spend hours reading "how to get stuff done" blog posts

~~~
212d1d
This is me. What's the reason behind this? Is this because it gives me the
"I'm doing something productive" feeling while simultaneously doing nothing
productive?

~~~
JadeNB
Yes, I think. See [http://www.aaronkharris.com/things-that-arent-
work](http://www.aaronkharris.com/things-that-arent-work) and
[http://www.aaronkharris.com/things-that-arent-
progress](http://www.aaronkharris.com/things-that-arent-progress) for similar
thoughts.

------
Mithaldu
> How to minimize procrastination

[http://i.imgur.com/aZ1zkNo.png](http://i.imgur.com/aZ1zkNo.png)

Oh. OK then.

~~~
emilwallner
It works now, we reached our peak connection limit in firebase.

~~~
Mithaldu
No it doesn't, since it will display literally nothing without Javascript.

~~~
philippnagel
Welcome to the Internet of 2015.

------
tempestn
The first talk under the Getting Things Done section mentioned something
that's been a big help to me, but that I had never really thought about until
he mentioned it. In a nutshell, it's that maintaining Inbox 0 forces you to
make a _decision_ on emails. Often the ones that will end up hanging around
aren't anything that will require a lot of time to deal with or respond to,
they're just the ones that require a decision that for whatever reason you
don't want to make. Often though, you have all the information you need to
make that decision, and putting it off doesn't help. Inbox 0 forces you to
identify those situations, because you either need to deal with the email now,
or explicitly decide when you will. Either way, it prevents you from just
procrastinating on it because it's uncomfortable. Now that I think about it, I
realize that has happened to me a ton since switching to Inbox 0, but I had
never thought about it in those terms.

In general, by the way, I strongly recommend adopting a GTD system and
sticking to it. Personally I use Evernote, based loosely on
www.thesecretweapon.org. It took me a _significant_ effort over a period of
weeks to get it set up and make it a habit, but I literally can not imagine
being able to do the things I do today without it. (If anyone's interested in
setting something like that up, feel free to get in touch via my profile.)

------
nostromo
Try meditation. If you can learn to focus on your breathing for 20 minutes,
you can focus on anything.

If you want a good intro to guided meditation, check out the app Headspace.

~~~
emilwallner
Meditation is mentioned briefly. I agree, for the coming iterations this will
have more focus. I'm a big fan of Headspace - I use it every morning.

------
stupejr
I don't know what this is, when I visit it I get an empty UI with no
indicators as to what I'm supposed to be doing.. no action buttons, nada.

Going to assume hn hugged it to death.

~~~
bshimmin
Probably relevant:

FIREBASE WARNING: Specified Firebase has reached its Peak Connections limit.
If you are the Firebase owner, consider upgrading. ([https://blazing-
fire-4313.firebaseio.com](https://blazing-fire-4313.firebaseio.com))

~~~
emilwallner
Correct, thanks!

------
joelrunyon
Not really impressed. Just a collection of other resources & articles about
the topic.

~~~
emilwallner
You are right, at a first glance it's just a list of resources. It's designed
to break down 'how to minimize procrastination' into a subset of jobs, and
then matching them with the best resources to solve them. Users can challenge
the subset of jobs, and resources to achieve them. This way it will become
easier to tackle procrastination over time.

------
ksikka
Trying to do all of this at once will result in failure. Reducing
procrastination boils down to changing your habits, which is _hard_.

One thing that's helped me is writing down what I do and observing it as a 3rd
party. Writing the log daily is easy. Observing allows you to notice patterns
over time, tweak a small habit, and observe if it's working. I wrote about it
here - [http://ctrl-c.club/~ksikka/articles/02-write-it-
down/](http://ctrl-c.club/~ksikka/articles/02-write-it-down/)

------
dazc
TL;DR How to minimize procrastination - stop procrastinating.

------
lyondhill
By reading the article and the comments I procrastinated finishing a project
for 30 minutes. What do i win?

------
jcrites
The Pomodoro Technique, which is mentioned on the page, has been helpful to me
when I need to concentrate on solo work privately. I'd recommend it. It's an
effective technique, and the only one I've discovered that's been
significantly helpful.

To summarize: When you start on a task, set a timer for 25 minutes. Work
exclusively on that task for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break and
repeat. That unit is "a pomodoro". If any interruption occurs during the task,
either an internal interruption like you find yourself reading email instead,
or an external interruption like someone comes to your office, then you
_cancel_ that task and reset the 25 minute timer. Keep a record on paper of
each pomodoro completed successfully, and each that's interrupted.

One of the primary values of the Pomodoro Technique is that it helps you be
realistic about how much useful, productive time you can commit towards your
tasks. Upon trying the Pomodoro Technique, a number of colleagues and I have
discovered that one's reserve of fully focused time is typically around 2-4
hours per day when first starting to use it. (The remaining time per
productive day is typically lighter work, like communication and coordination,
and interruptions of various sorts. It's still work, but it's not fully
focused work applied to the task you've chosen.) Over time you can adjust your
schedule and manage your commitments to squeeze out more solo focused time, if
that's what you desire. Some types of responsibilities naturally involve
interruption and are not well-suited to this kind of solo focused work;
however, whether that's the case or not, Pomodoro can help you be conscious
about how much time you actually have available.

The Pomodoro Technique does not fight distraction directly. It's not like
you're supposed to slap yourself when you cancel a pomodoro. Rather, you just
keep track of it. This conscious awareness of your productivity engages a new
part of the mind that helps rein in the short-term-rewards part. When you
waste a day by doing work off and on while mostly procrastinating, it's
sometimes easy to miss how much productive time you _haven 't_ spent. When you
measure your productive time as "completed pomodoros", you can be realistic
with yourself about your output, and make changes accordingly. It engages
something new in your mind and enables metacognition that notices when you get
distracted; when you are supposed to be _completely_ focused on your task, and
that notification pops up saying you have new messages, this metacognition
will help remind you that you need to ignore it and turn it off, or else
cancel the pomodoro. The long-term-rewards part of you that's powering the
metacognition wants to complete the pomodoro. The act of _recognizing those
distractions_ will fight them. I suppose you could call it the Copenhagen
Theory of Time Management. :-)

~~~
icc97
I created a Pomodoro Timer [1] to procrastinate instead of doing actual work.
It has the novelty of giving you Lock Stock film quotes every 25 mins.

[1]: [http://pom.ianchanning.com](http://pom.ianchanning.com)

------
tdkl
Somehow related, I've been looking to block certain websites on iOS for a
while now and a free content blocker called "Refine" can do it easily.[1] You
can enable just the custom list if you're already using a different content
blocker.

This might be an idea to implement something like Stayfocusd, where you could
define a list of sites to be blocked between a time period or certain days (if
this is possible).

[1] [https://appsto.re/si/Y5pt8.i](https://appsto.re/si/Y5pt8.i)

~~~
icc97
I'm a leechblock user on FF.

I still procrastinate even when I've got my use of reddit, twitter and
facebook down to basically nothing.

Just HN is enough to kill off most of the productive work time, so if you
spend time on the other sites I just don't see how a functional work life is
possible.

------
nikanj
The best anti-procrastination advice I ever got was from
[http://productiveblog.tumblr.com/](http://productiveblog.tumblr.com/)

------
pkrumins
Being on a mission minimizes procrastination. I'm on a mission to build my
company Browserling to be a fantastic business. That leaves no time to
procrastinate.

------
jhallenworld
Procrastination pays:
[http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-03-22](http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-03-22)

~~~
JadeNB
I don't have your Dilbert-fu, but there is another, I think more recent, comic
in which Dilbert is triumphant about how his boss's poor leadership, which
resulted in a project's requirements changing, and in the project's final
cancellation, didn't affect him because he simply didn't work on the project.

~~~
sokoloff
[http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-04-08](http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-04-08) is
similar, but not an exact match.

~~~
JadeNB
I am surrounded by expert Dilbert-ers! That's not the one that I had in mind,
but I agree that it is quite similar. Probably, like all serial cartoonists,
Adams consciously or unconsciously winds up ringing changes on a few common
themes.

------
emilwallner
Let me know if you have any feedback on how to improve it, or know of any
better resources than the ones suggested.

~~~
asgard1024
How to improve it? Make it into one big HTML page so I can save it and read it
without having to click like crazy! :-)

~~~
emilwallner
haha, nice point. It's designed so that other people can challenge the
structure and the resources in it. So when you come back to it it will always
be better.

------
stewbrew
I personally don't get why people talk that much about procrastination just to
avoid the question: Am I using my time on things I'm actually interested in or
do I just go on because I get paid too much to jump ship.

------
carlosrg
This reminds me, there's a good YT video about how to deal with
procrastination:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXsQAXx_ao0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXsQAXx_ao0)

;)

------
hal9000xp
I'm trying to eliminate procrastination in my life. In the last three years, I
had my ups and downs. I think that recently, I have positive progress. Here is
some things/ideas/observations which helped me recently:

1\. Core idea is that procrastination is unaware avoidance behaviour.

For example, I have great motivation to learn all algorithms in CLRS book. But
at some point I got stuck on some proof, I tried to re-read it but got
frustrated by some statement in the proof. On the next morning, I could watch
Team Coco in Youtube and eat Pringles instead of attack that proof. Yes, I
still love CLRS, but right now, I would like to watch Team Coco. And here is
perfect example of my procrastination episode.

Core idea here is to realize that you entered unaware avoidance behaviour. And
not just force yourself reading CLRS because next time your avoidance
behaviour become even stronger. But you have to be brutally honest with
yourself. Then, you can turn off any music, sit down, and enjoy total silence
by doing 5-10 minutes of mindfulness meditation. After that, it's much easier
to become more comfortable with your frustration on that proof in CLRS and
start attacking it again.

2\. I noticed strong link between quality of sleep and procrastination. Better
your sleep, less chances for procrastination episodes. After many years of
wrong sleep schedule (2 am - 11 am), I started follow very strict sleep
schedule (9:30 pm - 6 am), after two months of such schedule, I noticed
substantial positive progress in my daily productivity.

3\. No caffeine, no red-bull, no coca-cola, no concentrated tea anymore.
Instead of fixing my sleep schedule and doing physical exercises, I consumed
coffee and red-bulls. It gave me fake feeling of alertness. But in fact, I was
just dizzy and my focus ability was completely evaporated.

Now, I don't even eat a chocolate. There is nothing better than good healthy
sleep and being productive by 8 AM (i.e. 2 hours after I woke up everyday).

4\. No music while your reading and coding anymore. I listened music all the
time for years. Even when I really tired of music, I couldn't code in total
silence.

Mindfulness meditation helped me to see beauty of silence and white noise
(especially coming from nature outside of my window like slight sound of trees
because of small wind).

I couldn't say I become perfect. But I substantially decreased procrastination
in my life.

I hope these advices could help somebody to overcome procrastination.

P.S. By the way, note that I didn't use statement "fight procrastination". If
you try to fight it, you make your procrastination stronger next time. You
have to be honest with yourself and being aware about your weaknesses!

------
zomg
i procrastinate so much, i read the first section then clicked the "save to
pocket" icon from the chrome toolbar. i'll get to reading it. eventually...

~~~
icc97
I do wonder if bookmarking apps are one of the underlying causes of 'link
hunting' i.e. the journey you go on every time you click a HN link.

You bookmark a page cause you don't want to lose it, but then you want to read
more pages to bookmark those because you're worried that if you don't bookmark
them you'll never find them again.

I'm going to bin my pinboard add-on for a week and see if that helps.

------
mkempe
Bookmarked, I'll read that later.

~~~
mkempe
Incidentally, I fondly remember learning the word "cras" in latin class.

------
sleepychu
Read HN less?

------
a3voices
The way I solved my procrastination problems is that I do at least one thing
per day towards my goal. More often than not, this puts me in a mental state
that leads me to doing many things. I find that simply starting a task is the
most difficult step.

------
alfapla
If you procrastinate a lot, it usually means that you really want to do
something different with your life. Go find out what it is, rather than
submitting yourself to all sorts of masochist self-discipline schemes.

~~~
Hates_
Of course, but there are things that can't be avoided like seeing your doctor
about that pain you've been feeling/paying bills/finding a job/finishing that
task your boss asked you to do/doing house work etc. Procrastinating can
appear in various different areas of life, not just in those related to
following your dreams and passions.

