
No Studying After 5pm: Using Parkinson’s Law to Kick Procrastination’s Ass - seangransee
http://blog.seangransee.com/post/35254966580/no-studying-after-5pm-using-parkinsons-law-to-kick
======
paulsutter
Clocks vs alarms is a new insight. During hour-scale procrastination, I do
check the clock often. An alarm near the deadline, instead of clock-checking,
could force me to start the task immediately because of uncertainty. I'll try
it right now.

EDIT: I just tried it. Unable to check a clock, I felt a real urgency to get
things done. Very interesting idea.

~~~
tudorizer
I've tested exactly this last week, for an entire week. Result: I
procrastinated like hell. Both in my private life and at my job.

~~~
boothead
I'm halfway through the book "The power of habit" at the moment and here's two
little titbits I've picked up so far:

1\. Habits have a trigger and a reward and you'll get nowhere unless you work
within this fact.

Yesterday I had some success, I was trying to fix a dumb programming mistake
and getting frustrated. Normally that would _trigger_ my usual behaviour of
running off to /r/funny or HN to get my little _reward_ of
amusement/knowledge. This time however I was mindful of the loop and said to
myself that my reward would be the feeling of fixing it and having the tests
pass. It worked. I got my head down, fixed the bug, and felt good about
myself.

2\. People who successfully adhere to a habit change routine, visualize and
practice how to deal with "inflection points" upfront. Inflection points here
are those tough spots where you are more vulnerable to regressing to your
previous behaviour.

I've been having a bit of trouble lately sticking to my habit of getting up at
5am to work on my own stuff (open source and writing a book). Last night I
thought about my alarm going off, feeling the cold outside the duvet and
having an overwhelming desire to roll over and go back to sleep and visualized
myself just getting straight out of bed. Sure enough, this morning my alarm
went off and I was out of bed before I was even fully awake.

I think it's going well, however here I am procrastinating by writing a big
post on HN, so YMMV :-)

~~~
loceng
Visualization, if you have the underlying motivation, is how to get started.
Then after 5 minutes of focus can be right into it..

At the moment I've gone through my morning websites, consumed everything I
need to, replied to emails I need to, and now this is my second visit to HN
... so it times to make my work environment a clean slate, eliminate all
distractions, and focus for a little while... perhaps I'm not awake enough for
the focus required though either... |)

~~~
s_henry_paulson
I think you'll enjoy this

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PppCBDHeytg>

------
mindstab
That must be nice if all you are doing is being a student. I on the other hand
don't even get off work till 6. Home by 7, then dinner. If I'm lucky I sit
down to study at 8. Lets face it, you really don't realize how good you have
it as a student, but your advice isn't terribly useful to the rest of us now
in the work force also trying to continue to learn/enhabce/keep up.

tldr: student life has a lot of freedom and perks over working a job,
nanananana.

~~~
codewright
It's 11:14 pm my time, and I just got done with work. Legitimate, not-
procrastinating, i-work-in-the-startup-salt-mines, since I began this
morning...work.

I'm now faced with either getting a little more sleep, getting to read a book
series I started recently, trying to get some of my russian studies done, or
maybe actually learning something about programming today.

I think I developed more as a person when I was working a 9-5. I never even
got to experience the freedom of academics, because I couldn't afford to go to
college.

Fuck it, I'll read another article about monad transformers and then pass out.

------
engtech
One trick I've always tried to maintain is daily releases, namely that I'll
always check in code at the end of the day so that it can run in the smoke
tests overnight.

Running stats on our version control, I do about 4000 checkins a year, the
next highest is 1000, and most team members average about 300.

That being said, my focus is horrible. Using the pomodoro technique has helped
me in the past, there's something about not being allowed to multitask that
means you can avoid context switching off of a difficult task to something
easier (eg: the coding equivalent to cleaning off your desk).

My other problem is a willingness to work overtime. It's one thing to do it
for deadlines, but because I internalize monthly deadlines I always have
something that I think is so important that it Has To Be Done Now.

------
dmarti21
"I’ve noticed a trend. The ones who are most successful seem to be the ones
who value their physical and mental health."

This could be skewed. I'd imagine entrepreneurs who are already successful
have the mental peace to order their life and make time for these things.
Those without success will be overly concerned with making something work and
figure they can deal with physical and mental health when they have achieved
success. So the statistics or things you are reading may look like there is a
causal relationship between exercise, sleep --> success, but it is really
success --> exercise, sleep.

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DrorY
I'm sorry but I can't see how this is applicable for my situation. What kind
of studies are you talking about? University (First degree)? Second degree ?
High School? I've just started my first year of computer science and
mathematics. I study all day long and still don't find time for anything else.
Also, try adding a girlfriend or a spouse to the equation. With all the
positive sides of it, it adds a lot of distractions during the day that you
can't control.

~~~
ballstothewalls
I doubt you are being productive. You have to isolate yourself from
distractions (on a college campus this is most likely people).

If you really are studying with perfect productivity, then you need to ask
yourself if you are triaging your time properly. For instance, say you have
three tests: one easy, one medium, and one hard. Do you study equal amounts
for all of them? Probably not. If you have already spent seven hours studying
for the hard test, how much will one more hour help you? Maybe an 85 to and
87? But then if you spent that hour on the medium subject maybe your grade
would jump up from an 80 to a 90. Thus your time would better be allocated to
the medium test.

There is an economic concept about this though I cannot remember its name.
Marginal Returns and the Law of Diminishing Returns, I think.

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kayoone
My problem with this is this: "I tell myself that everything has to be done by
5pm"

Thing is, i cant tell myself anything if its simply not true. I cant force
myself to get everything done by 5pm because i simply dont have to, i can do
it later and i know it even if that means stress and doing it in the last
hours.

~~~
flebron
That is true, but if you need a way to rationalize it, it's a Schelling
fence[1] you're using on yourself. It doesn't need to be false, you can agree
to make it true by pragmatism.

[1]
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slo...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slopes/)

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tsahyt
For me, productivity changes on a day by day basis. There are days when I'm
able to stay focused and work from 8am to midnight, taking a half-hour lunch
break and a 5 minute break every 3 hours and I actually get _a lot_ done in
that time. On other days I work for hours on end on the same thing and won't
get it done because I keep procrastinating, checking HN, reddit, whatever.

I think it's a lot about being motivated and excited about what you do. If it
feels really interesting, the work is basically doing itself. If I've got
other things on my mind (which I have lately), everything feels like a chore.
Still have to do it though. The same even applies to my personal projects to a
lesser degree.

------
chatmasta
This is great, and honestly I've found the same. I'm actually taking this term
off from school to work on my business while remaining on campus. I also need
to follow a pretty rigorous exercise schedule as I'm on the varsity track
team.

I've found that achieving a consistent sleep and exercise schedule has been
extremely difficult without any real commitments in the morning. I think one
of the best things you can do to stick to a schedule is to commit yourself to
something at 9am every morning.

That said -- the evenings are hard not to indulge. Weed and alcohol are pretty
hard to resist... got any tips for that? :)

~~~
freyr
> Weed and alcohol are pretty hard to resist... got any tips for that?

Get some self control.

~~~
willismichael
That's easier said than done. There needs to be a mechanism to reinforce said
"self control". It's not good enough to just repeatedly tell yourself "I'm
going to do better" (Although that is a good first step). I don't have any
magic answers here, but willpower alone is not enough to change habits.

------
mediocregopher
YMMV. I'm also working part-time along with full-time school, and my average
school day doesn't end till around 3. This ends up with me not home till 8
usually. I would never be able to hold to any kind of schedule like this,
since my days vary so wildly, both in amount of school work and work work.

Personally, what keeps me from procrastinating is that at this point of my
school career the work I have to do at home is mostly project based, so I
actually find most of it somewhat interesting, unlike the busy-work laden gen-
ed courses I was in the first two years (when I did have a big problem with
procrastination).

------
hakanito
I think it essentially is a question of personal character. I consider myself
very lazy and procrastinate all the time, so it would not help to just cover
the clocks for me to get things done. I would still procrastine, probably even
more.

The change needs to happen on a completely different level to get out of the
old routines of laziness and inability to focus. I'm talking about some kind
of life-changing experience. For example, people being diagnosed with cancer
often makes them appreciate life and spend their time more carefully -- or
something else that has an impact on our core values and instincts.

~~~
thirdtruck
From what I can tell from a broad study of self improvement, the idea of
personal character reduces to an abstraction of the training and habits that
actually define us.

You can think of it as the difference between "that square way over there is
green" and "that square is covered in tiny blue and yellow dots, with some a
few reds ones for good measure".

Our brain performs that compression of "myriad behaviors to broad
categorization" automatically, by the way, so we have to drum that mental
compression with conscious effort.

------
taylonr
I essentially did this throughout my college career. I don't think it was 5pm,
though, more often 7pm. What set me off was getting so frustrated one night
doing Calculus at 10pm. I tend to need 8+ hours of sleep per night, so by 10 I
wasn't in the best mood for studying.

It got easier once I moved out of the dorms. I'd have most (if not all) of my
work done by supper and finish up a little bit after. I studied Saturdays but
not Sundays. That left my nights open for things like irc or setting Red Hat
up on my machine.

I found I was a lot less stressed than my friends that played N64 all day and
STARTED studying at 8pm.

------
jessepollak
Are you actually able to get all of your work done by 5pm on a consistent
basis? I really like the idea you're promoting (and I may well try it myself),
but that seems like a stretch for me. Between 2.5-3.5 hours of class a day,
lunch, and the time it takes to go from class to another etc, that would
really only leave me 2-3 hours for work every day...I honestly don't think
that would be enough even if I could focus 100% for the whole time. Is your
experience different?

~~~
seangransee
Yeah, I actually have been. It seems like a stretch, but being really
disciplined has made it possible. Sometimes if I start zoning out in class,
I'll start doing some homework instead. Usually that leaves me with around 3-4
hours a day to get stuff done. Then there's the Sunday catch-up day. If I'm
really behind on stuff, I'll take most of my Sunday to catch up before the
week starts.

(Mostly) following this schedule has made me get everything done at least
twice as fast, and given me more time to work on jobs and side-projects.

------
kanamekun
Racing to get everything done by 5 pm, telling yourself that you can't work on
weekends... hmm, sounds almost exactly like being a parent!

------
rizzom5000
It's the same story every time someone posts one of these. 1\. Be Motivated
2\. (optional) Use (1.) to be healthy, and therefore increase your ability to
be (1.).

Yep, that's been the story for as long as people have been thinking about
success and communicating to others on how success works.

------
rnernento
This is cool and all but a lot easier said than done. The author is in college
where free time is in abundance. I'm not disparaging the principles but
working a full time job, getting 8 hours of sleep, and exercising an hour
every day isn't always possible...

~~~
freyr
Why not?

If you work 9 hours a day, exercise for an hour, commute for an hour, and
sleep 8 hours, you're left with 5 hours every day.

Real-world tasks that fill those remaining 5 hours \- Showering and getting
dressed \- Working overtime \- Eating meals \- Random errands and appointments
\- Shopping for food and preparing meals (could be off-loaded to the weekend)

It seems like you should be able to cram that stuff into 5 hours a day.

I think another factor the OP doesn't factor is time spent with a significant
other. This varies from relationship to relationship, or family to family, but
the expectations to spend time together can be quite high, and that can cut
into personal productivity.

~~~
icebraining
So, no parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins,
friends and others that may regularly need your help or just your company?

------
taubo
You have some great student life there. I'm 2nd year, full time CS student +
working part time(30h/week) as a developer. My day starts at 6.30am and usualy
ends at about 1am working/studying all day.

I could only dream about your schedule.

~~~
thisone
quite

I was thinking, wow, at university I had classes from 8am to about 4pm 4 days
a week (Wednesday afternoons were "free")

Evenings were spent cracking the books and in the computer lab when I needed
access to resources I couldn't get over the network.

Still managed to work part time.

Tasks can expand to fill the allotted time, that's true. But, conversely, if
you don't have enough time to contemplate and to fail, you often don't chose
the best route. You do what's familiar rather than what's correct.

------
rgbrgb
What classes are you in? The labs for my OS class seem to usually take on the
order of 20 solid hours per week and my school requires at least 5 classes per
semester.

~~~
seangransee
Machine Learning and Databases (both graduate level courses), plus Physics
(electrostatics and magnetism) and Differential Equations.

My school has three trimesters instead of two semesters, so we have 3 terms of
4 classes each.

------
jcfrei
thanks for the insights. it's always amazing to see in what convulted ways our
brains works. if we'd all be completely rational minds we wouldn't need to
limit our daily work/study time. yet here you go - and now that the article
mentioned it, I actually remember quite a few (academically successful)
friends who limit their daily study time as well.

------
eLobato
What was your schedule like during hackNY?

~~~
seangransee
Go to work approximately 10-6 on weekdays. Some days I would stay a bit
longer. I didn't really follow any sort of schedule when I wasn't at the
office.

------
holograham
To summarize:

Get adequate sleep and exercise Maximize flow time

~~~
rgbrgb
This is a terrible summary. The post was about limiting the amount of time you
allow yourself to work in order to maximize productivity during work time.

