
How to overcome resistance to work  - jirinovotny
http://www.dextronet.com/blog/2012/06/how-to-overcome-resistance-to-work-4-techniques/
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TrevorJ
Some great suggestions here, but I find the best method for me is to just
crank some music, down a couple swigs of coffee and dive in. About 95% of the
time the issue isn't about getting stuck partway through, or approaching the
problem wrong, it's about getting through the first ten minutes of work.
Resistance crumbles after that and motivation and focus kick in to full gear.

~~~
gwern
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/3kv/working_hurts_less_than_procrast...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3kv/working_hurts_less_than_procrastinating_we_fear/)

~~~
einhverfr
You know, if a task isn't particularly urgent, I have no problem with
procrastinating for a couple days on it (and working on other things in the
mean time) as long as I keep coming back to it.

This resembles the Feynman method of how to be a genius, but sometime if a
task is hard, and seems insurmountable, sometimes all you need is some time
for your mind to grasp the task. I have occasionally tackled a problem, given
up as it seemed hard, come back a couple days later and discovered a trivial
solution, completing in half an hour what I figured would take me 3. So I call
this "productive procrastination" and it's a good thing. Another function of
my complex to-do list is that it gives me a chance to think about tasks before
I start (again, I don't worth through it sequentially). The difficulty is in
figuring out when to procrastinate and when not to. There are a lot of things
you never want to procrastinate in doing (if you take a long time to bill your
customers, they will usually reciprocate when it comes to timeliness of
payment, for example). But there are a lot of cases where procrastination can
be helpful. So the challenge is when to and when not to.

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raheemm
I quit my job 6 months ago to travel and learn programming. And the greatest
personal frustration has been staying productive in a work-from-anywhere, no-
boss environment.

What I've realized is that discipline is not only about buckling down, but
also about using mental hacks such as the ones listed in this article. Its
also been helpful to realize that transitioning productivity from a cubicle to
a self-directed path is difficult. It has also been the biggest surprise.

~~~
stephengillie
There's something to be said for the ceremony of grooming for work, travelling
to your workplace, interacting with coworkers, during approximately the same
time each day.

Work is the "2nd space" in the Starbuck's "3rd space" advertisements.

Have you tried working in the same seat at a library or other public place
each weekday?

~~~
raheemm
That's a good suggestion. I use a spreadsheet to monitor the # of hours worked
each day and my goal is to keep that on an upwards trend. Its based on
Seinfeld's 'dont break the chain' tactic. This has worked the best for me.

~~~
Revisor
Is the number of work hours really what you want to increase?

~~~
dredmorbius
It suffers from what a lot of metrics offer: it's easily measured, easily
gamed, and not particularly correlated with output.

I'd say it's probably useful to measure, but also key to keep in mind when
you're warming a seat just to move that number up, rather than actually
getting things done.

Including other measures of work _output_ would be a very good modification.

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barik
This is great advice for overcoming procrastination and I use it daily. It has
significantly improved the way that I work. I think I learned of the trick
from GTD, or possibly Pragmatic Thinking and Learning. A TODO list by itself
isn't helpful for me -- in fact, in can increase my procrastination by seeing
a giant list of tasks because it's just so overwhelming.

What has worked is coupling the task with the next immediate action. Depending
on the level of procrastination, this next immediate action does not have to
be a grand vision. It is often as simplistic as "open the lid to your laptop",
then, "open a text editor", then "think of the file you need to edit", then
"type hello world three times" (just to get me to start writing
__something__). Passing that initial hurdle usually gets me to the desired
state of flow.

Similarly, I now have the following written at the top of my TODO list at all
times: "Direct the Rider. Motivate the Elephant. Shape the Path." This
psychology comes from Switch by Dan Heath and Chip Heath, and it's hugely
impacted my outlook on work, especially as a researcher.

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SLuijk
This reminded me of those long sales pages with an email list signup box at
the bottom. This is what I got from the article. Break it down into small
tasks. Work out what the next easiest actionable task is, like say "Opening an
application". Set yourself a time limit on the task. Discover and remove any
internal resistance you may have. Use you new found insight now. Maybe on this
link to download our to-do list software.

Don't get me wrong the advice will no doubt help some of us, most likely more
then the software would.

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JosephHatfield
The technique recommended in the article is similar to Kaizen, the method that
Toyota implemented in the 50's to overcome quality and productivity problems.
It's the practice of using continuous small incremental changes to lead to
larger improvements. It also happens to be a great way to overcome many
psychological hurdles.

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gamzer
Social media bar floating _above_ the article's text on my Android phone.

I cannot remember just how many articles I did not read because of this.
Guessing one word per line lowers my reading enjoyment.

~~~
stephengillie
This is why I often browse (sites other than HN) with JS turned off in the
Android browser.

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Swizec
I still find the ticking of a pomodoro timer to be the best way to make me
start cranking out work. There's just something about tik tik tik tik that
springs me into action.

~~~
faichai
I've just discovered Pomodoro (on Day 5) and I have to say it's completely
revolutionised my productivity. I've gone from 3 or 4 hours of unfocused time
a day, to 12 hours of laser like focus on stuff that matters.

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bitwize
Step 1:

Realize that if you don't work, you'll fucking starve.

Step 2:

Close HN.

Step 3:

Work like fucking crazy, to put as much distance between yourself and
starvation as you possibly can.

~~~
_delirium
Step 1 is not really true for a large number of middle-class Westerners,
though, and even less true for middle-class Westerners with tech skills. There
are a lot of unpleasant things that would happen if I stopped making money
tomorrow, but it would be a _long_ time, if ever, before I starved. Between
savings/friends/parents/foodstamps/etc., I would have to seriously run through
about 20 fallback plans before literally not having food.

And in particular, it doesn't solve the independent-motivation problem. There
are a lot of people who can work a regular job who have trouble, at least
initially, getting into a productive self-directed work mode. If someone is
trying to figure out how to transition from regular employment to self-
directed productivity, telling them that their motivator should be money-
making to eat misses the point, because they could do that via the "failure"
option of just giving up and going back to a 9-5, too.

~~~
planetguy
If I stopped working tomorrow, it would be months before anyone even noticed.
Probably much longer before they got around to stopping my pay. This doesn't
help with motivation at all.

This doesn't help with motivation. You folks who are living on the edge of
starvation have it easy!

~~~
capex
"You folks who are living on the edge of starvation have it easy!" Where did
you assume that from?

~~~
jiggy2011
I think it's a joke.

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kiba
I wish a psychologist research all the suggestions and laid out the
effectiveness of each approach.

For now, I guess we goes with "whatever works for me".

~~~
jwdunne
I know what you mean. Most of the time such advice like this makes sense, and
some of it is indeed backed up by psychological research, but it's hard to see
that unless you know of the research yourself. A lot of the time what seems
like common sense is actually contrary to findings in psychology research. The
book 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman is a good starting point here and it offers
lots of advice which is backed up with research and data. For example, the
book talks about how smiling can make you feel happier, which I had discovered
to be true for myself on my own accord.

One thing I'm looking into is using self-administered Cognitive Behavioural
Therapy (CBT) to overcome various problems, such as procrastination. I have
found this, which I posted on HN earlier:

<http://www.threeminutetherapy.com/chapter6.html>

This uses REBT, or Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, which is a form of CBT
and, apparently, the most extensively researched form. See here for more
details:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_emotive_behavior_thera...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_emotive_behavior_therapy)

CBT has been proven effective for a number of psychological issues such as
anxiety and depression and I'm really interested in its potential applications
to other problems. There's more info here with a ton of citations:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy>

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perlpimp
I think non-monetary reward is important issue here. Trying to focus not only
on smallest but most pleasurable thing if when the result is there is
important. It helps to reduce friction to get yourself to get momentum going.
Pomodoro is a great way to keep the momentum. Having a realistic checklist
with some cool and some less cool things to accomplish for the day has done
wonders form my productivity as well.

Remember you've got to treat yourself well while doing work and work will
treat you well in return.

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einhverfr
My approach is horribly more complicated and involves a set of two TODO lists.
The first is my immediate list, and always has 12 items on it (4 harder ones
and 8 faster tasks). 3 tasks (1 hard and 2 fast) are always marked as current
works in progress. 3 more are listed as next up. The next six I choose freely
from to promote when I complete a task.

Then I have my mid-range to-do. Tasks usually stay here for days to weeks (my
short-term I get unhappy when something is there for more than a few days).
Items here are coded with a * for a bigger item and a % for an item I think I
can do quickly. The % are moved to my short-term list in chronological order
(with some exceptions) while the * ones are moved in based on what I think i
can tackle next.

This gives me some variety and some freedom to jump around between tasks and
stay productive. I have ADD so thats a good thing. It also lets me set goals
that I can usually meet and procrastinate constructively. More than once I
have had tasks I really had resistance to starting become trivial after
thinking about it for a day or two. But yea part of that is breaking the task
down, thinking about it, maybe making a couple abortive attempts to complete
it.......

~~~
gareim
I don't have ADD, but this is absolutely true for me. I prefer seeing exactly
what I need to do and having the freedom to tackle components of them one at a
time.

With that said, are you using any special applications for your TODO list?
I've been looking for a good one (I'm on Linux) that fits my workflow better,
but so far, I keep going back to RTM which isn't exactly the most optimized
for me.

I want something that is a desktop application that also syncs with
Android/iOS that is lightweight and at my fingertips. I want it easily
editable and possibly with a checklist rather than just deleting finished
items. I want the list to be rearrangeable rather than static. If anyone knows
of a good TODO application, please let me know!

~~~
einhverfr
I am using gedit. I would use vim but doing more visual copy/paste seems to
work better for me here.

------
rplacd
Holy hell I'm reading this instead of working. What has my life come to.

------
xSwag
Programmer here, I usually start to procrastinate when I find something
difficult/too tedious to do. Whenever something like this happens, I find that
taking my dog out for a 20 minute walk really refreshes me up and motivates me
to do the task!

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dredmorbius
NB/offtopic: this page design is _horrible_.

On mobile, there's a "social sidebar" which hovers _over_ the text, as others
have noted, to the left side of the page, obscuring the first word or so of
each line, in a manner that it cannot be dismissed.

Reading with NoScript enabled on Iceweasel, the text is squeezed into a narrow
2-3 character column to the far right of the page.

My solution is to disable stylesheets and read the page unstyled.

Distractions such as this take a great deal away from actually being able to
_access_ content.

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AnthonBerg
Get started at any cost.

You are ready.

Build it wrong, but _build it_.

Don't work too long, it's harder to get started next time if you flogged
yourself into the ground last time. Pavlov rang and told me so.

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kaitnieks
When I set to do a task for a few minutes in order to trick myself into
working all day, it never works because I already know what I'm doing and why,
and the trick fails. I have been struggling with this for a long time, and I,
too, have discovered that the method that works best is to suck it up and just
start working.

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michaelpinto
"resistance to work" usually means that you don't have any passion for that
work, and that you shouldn't be doing it. if you're running a business you
should think of outsourcing any task that you don't want to do, unless it's
mission critical.

~~~
overgryphon
This isn't necessarily true- for me, resistance generally means I'm scared I
can't do the task well enough, or scared that someone else will look at my
work and think it's awful.

~~~
intractable
I have the same thought process as you, and I find it quite debilitating. It
often manifests as a need to know _everything_ about a problem space before
even starting on a solution.

The upside is that on the whole I produce code that is logical, consistent,
maintainable and relatively bug-free. But it takes a long time.

