
Ask HN: How often do you experience self-control issues? - basdevries
Related to this HN post on how to overcome instant gratification: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14751439<p>I find myself a lot of times that I go to bed 1 or 2 hours too late, get distracted a lot from work by all variations of bs (especially when working from home), and think that there should be easy steps to solve this problem.<p>Does the HN community feels the same way? I&#x27;m curious as to when it&#x27;s particularly annoying&#x2F;relevant. For instance sleep, studying, working, doing chores, etc. Let&#x27;s discuss!
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girvo
Used to be all the time, which is one of the factors that lead to my heroin
addiction at the age of 16 until I was 22. Clean for five years now, and one
of the key things for me has been cognitive behavioural therapy, along with
having reasonably defined mid-term goals.

The other thing is not to beat myself up when I slip up; to use the "going to
bed" example, if you miss your bedtime by 20 minutes and beat yourself up
mentally, it's much easier to rationalise "may as well stay up another couple
of hours, I've already ruined it".

Instead, let it go; this alone has helped me tremendously :)

~~~
hugodahl
Great advice on your point to not beat yourself up at slip ups. I was also
advised to learn to forgive myself (it's seriously much more difficult than it
sounds).

Also, major kudos on being clean for five years. While I can't relate to it, I
can certainly appreciate the accomplishment that it is.

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livingparadox
I experience self control issues on a fairly regular basis.

Computer, phone, daydreams, etc. I'm just recently keeping bad sleep habits at
bay (usually, still occasionally let the lure of the shiny keep me up).

On a solution-level, I've found that exercise + proper rest tends to have the
greatest singular impact on my self control. My willpower tends to scale with
my energy-levels. In addition, adding little obstacles between you and the
distraction (noprocrast setting on hackers news, forestry app for phone, etc)
can often give me just enough time to pull myself back to important things.

~~~
basdevries
What percentage of that is phone and computer related? If you were unable to
visit particular sites (maybe during particular timeslots), how much would
that solve the problem? What other things could solve the problem without
changing your actual habit?

~~~
livingparadox
Hard to say currently, as my phone broke about a month ago and I intentionally
didn't order a new one until just recently.

I'm also just bad at quantifying anything as a whole. I generally have trouble
getting distracted whenever important things aren't attention-grabbing and
shiny things are few clicks or taps away...

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brad0
I find my self control issues all stem from not having a solid plan to do
something.

I know that I could be doing things "better" but I don't have a strong enough
emotional reason to.

I've found if you want to change something then you need to think of a
concrete plan and attach emotion to it (good or bad).

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SyneRyder
_> I find myself a lot of times that I go to bed 1 or 2 hours too late..._

I've dealt with this one a lot. For me, it's partly caused by having bright
lights everywhere while I work through the evening. The bright lights are
really helpful while I'm working, but not when I need to wind down.

What helped me was setting up a 'night mode'. I put tealight candles
everywhere (in Australia, Dusk is a great store for that sort of thing). I
also have a lamp with one of those "vintage" bulbs with long straight
filaments that outputs an orange-yellow glow (in Australia they're called
Mirabella Vintage). For bonus points, I run Netflix's "Fireplace For Your
Home" on the TV. Whatever it is about that dim light ambience, that signals my
body to start winding down for sleep, and it's usually about 1 - 2 hours
earlier than without it.

[I took a photo at the beginning of my night mode setup here:
[https://twitter.com/syneryder/status/766299439489097728](https://twitter.com/syneryder/status/766299439489097728)
]

As for work distractions, I work solo so I don't get many intrusions that way.
But I am ruthless in turning off notifications on my phone (and I deactivated
Facebook, because it was a constant stream of distraction). I got a Pebble
Time Steel watch, and set it up so only urgent notifications go to the watch
(like downtime alerts). If my watch isn't buzzing, it isn't important enough
to interrupt what I'm doing.

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bykovich2
Do you feel passionate about what you do? Do you /like/ what you do? (Don't
confuse those.) I constantly struggle with distraction at work -- and I'm
becoming increasingly convinced that the problem is, at least in significant
part, that I /just don't like it/.

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drakonka
All the time. My big things are:

* Going to bed too late

* Cleaning the house (that is, I have trouble doing it)

* Sticking to my eating plan (I'm not _too_ bad at this, but need to get better)

* Buying crap I don't actually need. I'm not rich, there are better things to do with my money.

* Inability to let things go - that is, if I am stuck on a problem at work but still have ideas for what to try next, I will have trouble going home until I've tried all of them. I'll keep thinking "I'll just try this _one_ more thing..." If I do force myself to go home, it will often haunt me until the next morning.

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afarrell
I use a three-pronged approach:

1) Put my vices out of reach. I don't keep candy in my house and I use
[https://freedom.to/](https://freedom.to/) and
[https://selfcontrolapp.com/](https://selfcontrolapp.com/) to block
distracting websites.

2) Build habits and structures to take care of my physical health. I use a
spaced-repetition flashcard app [https://ankiweb.net/](https://ankiweb.net/)
on my phone to remind myself of the habits I should be following. I go to
sleep at 11:30 and wake up at 8:30 (+/1 30 minutes either way) so I get 9
hours of sleep a night. If I feel anxious when going to sleep, I put on an
audiobook. I do a 20 minute workout (run 1km, bench press, situp, back-up,
lunges) before work. I'm not building muscle, but it makes my mind clearer.

3) Reinforce mental toughness by explicitly saying to myself "this is
frustrating, but it is worth it to work through it and I'm stronger than I
think."

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twobyfour
All the time. The solution is usually mindfulness. When you're lost in HN at
2AM when you should be sleeping (or when you're coding and in the zone), your
focus is _inside_ what you're doing. You won't stop doing it until you pull
your focus back and look at _what_ you're doing. That allows you to assess
whether it's what you want to be doing _now_, and whether it's a good use of
your time.

To prompt yourself to pull your focus back , you can condition yourself to
respond to certain cues - typically sounds - and program your phone or
computer to produce those cues every N minutes. Meditation can also help
develop your ability to be mindful of what you're doing and why instead of
getting caught up in the moment.

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danm07
Interesting to read the experiences of others.

I experience difficulty with task switching. When I latch onto a problem, I
feel like I cannot do anything else until that problem is solved. This makes
for very inefficient studying as often I just need time to digest. This also
creates problems for multi-tasking.

What I find strange is that I have much less of a task switching problem when
it comes to programming.

As others have pointed out, will-power comes and goes with energy levels. On
afternoons I'm practically useless. In my experience the disparity between
what one wants to do and what one ends up doing is function of available
energy, as a form of mental agility.

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weishigoname
keep one habit all the time, and never try to change it, like do some running
every morning, I think it can help you coming back very soon.

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yellowapple
I'm pretty sure my whole life is one long lapse in self-control.

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dnh44
“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” - Oscar Wilde

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SirLJ
Sometimes I do after few drinks...

