
Ask HN: How do you stay focused when working on hard problems? - um304
When working on hard problems, which might encompass unknown number of sub-problems, I often find myself procrastinating. Harder the problem, severer the procrastination. A psychology professor says that a person typically fails to begin a project when there is &quot;confusion about what the first steps of the task are&quot; [1].<p>When working on hard problem, you&#x27;re bound to hit tasks of which you won&#x27;t know first steps. You&#x27;re likely to often find yourself in deep marshes with no way out. How do you stay motivated in situations like these? How do you not give in to procrastination?<p>[1](https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@dr_eprice&#x2F;laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e312d01)
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Nomentatus
Don't ever solve a hard problem - let your unconscious mind do that; it's far
more capable. That's Bertie's advice.

Bertrand Russell's method was to concentrate with great intensity on the
importance of a problem, smack his head against it for some time, for days or
perhaps months. Then to forget about it and let the answer pop into his head
much later. The idea is to convince your unconscious mind of how critical it
is to devote itself to finding a solution - to convince it of the _emotional_
importance of solving it.

"My own belief is that a conscious thought can be planted into the unconscious
if a sufficient amount of vigour and intensity is put into it. Most of the
unconscious consists of what were once highly emotional conscious thoughts,
which have now become buried. It is possible to do this process of burying
deliberately, and in this way the unconscious can be led to do a lot of useful
work. I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon some rather
difficult topic the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity -
the greatest intensity of which I am capable - for a few hours or days, and at
the end of that time give orders, so to speak, that the work is to proceed
underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that
the work has been done. Before I had discovered this technique, I used to
spend the intervening months worrying because I was making no progress; I
arrived at the solution none the sooner for this worry, and the intervening
months were wasted, whereas now I can devote them to other pursuits." \- The
Conquest of Happiness

So yes, procrastinate - but only after thumping your noggin into the problem,
hard. Don't worry about which first steps to take, you don't know them and
probably won't 'till after you intuit the solution if it's a genuinely hard
problem. Your frustration is the point; it's how you convince the unconscious
to get to work. Idiotic research, cogitation, problem review are all useful
activities for this purpose if you really mentally engage and create mental
urgency.

Then drop it like a stone. And wait.

I've found this does work, across a wide range of problems. Sometimes I've had
to go through the cycle, reloading the problem emotionally, as it were, a few
times on problems that took decades to solve.

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cimmanom
There can be other reasons for procrastination, too.

Fear of failure is a common one, which fits the bill if you have more trouble
getting started on harder problems.

Personally, the only way I've found to deal with that one is to say "fuck it,
what's the worst that happens?" and just do it. But sometimes you have to work
yourself up to that.

There are other reasons you might be avoiding it too. I highly recommend
cultivating the habit of introspection, and applying it whenever you realize
you're procrastinating on something, to figure out what specifically is making
you uncomfortable about starting the project.

