
To Stop Procrastinating, Look to Science of Mood Repair - sushirain
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303933104579306664120892036?mod=trending_now_2
======
quarterto
This is basically a stripped-down article version of The Now Habit [0],
without the good bits, such as guilt-free play, the idea that you should set
aside time to do whatever without constantly thinking "I should be working",
or the Unschedule, where you mark down the times you actually _did_ good work.

[0]: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Now-Habit-Overcoming-
Procrastination...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Now-Habit-Overcoming-
Procrastination-Guilt-Free-ebook/dp/B001QNVP7M/)

~~~
dmazin
Can you expand on the "Unschedule" bit or link to some reading?

Keeping track of what I've worked on time-wise during a day is something I've
attempted many times and it has never taken. Perhaps there is something I am
missing.

~~~
praptak
Unschedule is a reverse psychology trick - a schedule where you fill in the
play, not work. Being in the gap between periods of play motivates you to
start working. Also, google it.

I have not actually tried Unschedule so I cannot really recommend it but I
have read "The Now Habit" and it is the most high-level anti-procrastination
book. It goes straight to the root causes of procrastination, IMHO.

~~~
quarterto
That's actually more like the theory behind guilt-free play. With the
Unschedule, you mark any completely unavoidable block of time (meetings,
meals, sleep etc). Whenever you happened to have done a half-hour of
completely focused work, you mark it. This lets you a) spot patterns in when
you work best (e.g. I seem to do my most focused work on a Tuesday morning for
no apparent reason), and it gets you thinking "It's 2pm, I have a meeting at
3, I could get this small bit of work done".

I would also recommend Getting Things Done; even if you don't subscribe to the
entire method, there are bits that gel quite nicely with the Now Habit; the
bit about just _starting_ which this article also touches on falls nicely into
place with GTD's "next action" workflow.

------
j45
Motivation isn't an eternal flame waiting to be discovered, it can be a daily
practice of reminding similar to showering and eating, if we don't do it, our
thoughts and feelings tend to stink.

This article stuck out to me in providing relatively clear and immediately
applicable strategies that could be a lot closer to a first principles of
addressing procrastination.

Knowledge is not power, acting on knowledge is. Remembering to remind yourself
to imagine the future feeling of accomplishment, building momentum with small
items, and practicing forgiveness might be a realer challenge for many.

An interesting question that this article leads me to wonder is, how do others
here remind themselves of their big picture, their why, that leads them to
keep their flywheel spinning?

~~~
alan_cx
Im only posting this because it annoys me that I thought it.

"Knowledge is not power, acting on knowledge is."

At first, I totally agreed. Thought I'd tuck it away as a keeper, a small
pearl of wisdom. A good thing, right?

But then the bloody NSA thing floated in to my my mind and ruined it. They
have knowledge in the form of all that data they slurp. They haven't acted on
the vast majority of it, but many people, including the sort of people the NSA
are unlikely to ever be even vaguely interested in, have changed their
behavior as a direct result of knowing what the NSA has and what could be done
with it. So, NSA does have power from knowledge they are not acting on.

Shame, because I do know what you are getting at.

~~~
pkroll
What they're collecting is information. Their knowledge is in how to collect
all of it, and access it. That's where they're taking action.

------
randomdrake
Interesting.

I have difficulties with procrastination as well. I don't recall having met
anyone in our realm who says they don't have some difficulties with it.

Generally, I agree with what the article is saying. I have found my own ties
to procrastination and emotion; specifically anxiety, which the article
touched on.

I think the suggested approach from the article is missing something that I
have found to be important for personal growth and also applicable to
startups: _you must be able to measure your progress_. The process of
measuring the progress should be easy, if not automatic, and the ability to
digest the measured progress should be just as easy.

My blog post from last week[1] shares my personal experience with how I've
implemented the approach of measuring (and hopefully defeating) anxiety tied
to my procrastination. I go about describing my process to turn those
anxieties into actionable and measurable goals that sort of turned into my
resolutions for the year.

[1] - [http://randomdrake.com/2014/01/02/destroying-personal-
anxiet...](http://randomdrake.com/2014/01/02/destroying-personal-anxiety-from-
anxieties-to-actionable-and-measurable-2014-resolutions/)

------
mathattack
The irony of all these procrastination articles appearing on HN is not lost on
me. :-) For better or worse, the "Just get started" approach works best for
me.

~~~
marcosdumay
Well, it's a very well targeted group, and easy to reach. What's not to like?

------
MartinCron
I am reminded of a simple diagram a therapist drew for me (on a whiteboard, no
less): a triangle connecting "mood" to "thought" to "behavior" illustrating
how the human mental state is a feedback system and that you can adjust one
thing by applying pressure to another.

Sure, it is simple and obvious, but seeing it visualized that way, coupled
with the idea of "mood hygiene" was helpful to me.

~~~
mih
Sounds interesting. Could anyone please point to more literature along these
lines?

~~~
bgilroy26
Feeling good by David Burns is good, but you kind of have to buy in to it.
Otherwise the tone and language can seem California fluffy.

~~~
charlieflowers
Did you know that a study was done around the "Feeling Good" book, and that it
was shown that _merely reading it_ was _way_ more effective vs. depression
than antidepressants?!

(Unfortunately, I don't have the details in front of me and couldn't pull them
up quickly via Google. Maybe someone else can provide a link).

~~~
bgilroy26
The claims are noted in the 20th anniversary version of the book.

I believe the biggest difference between medicine and reading was relapse rate
rather than a big difference in how much improvement people saw.

I believe them. They're persistent strategies.

------
septerr
One of the causes of procrastination is perfectionism. The fear of not meeting
your own high standards probably affects HN readers more than anything else.

~~~
unstabilo
I just made the same comment. This article may help:
[http://coastalcenter.org/overcoming-
perfectionism/](http://coastalcenter.org/overcoming-perfectionism/) .

------
codezero
Dr. Pychyl advises procrastinators to "just get started, and make the
threshold for getting started quite low."

That's like telling a depressed person to just feel better. I've tried a lot
of things to help with procrastination but very little works, this is just
another thing to try that maybe will or won't work.

Also, personally, I've never had the "suffering" from failing when I put
things off, so it's hard to believe that this method would work for me :(

~~~
nisa
That's the problem. I had some suffering from procrastination. Suffering does
not exactly helps against it. A self reinforcing feedback loop so to say.

The Now Habit has solid advice. But it takes a lot of effort to implement that
advice.

Get yourself together first. Sleep! A minimal Schedule! Rituals! Build a
structure for yourself. If you fail here assess yourself and build up a
structure for your in small steps from there. This works for me. If it does
not work re-examine the situation, adapt. You need a minimal structure before
you can even start to working on yourself.

Learn about stress and how it affects your mind and your body.

The basic idea is to switch your mind into a more mindful state so you can act
conscious. You don't need meditation for that. That is in my experience too
complicated if you have bigger issues. But these mindful moments. Work towards
them. Their effects multiply.

Nothing will work without effort. That's a sad truth but a little momentum
(even if it is external) can go a long way.

No need to be perfect. No need to aspire some vague world class. Just do the
next logical thing that needs to be done. If this thing is to big, divide and
conquer. Iterate.

Ah well... honestly would be nice if my words would help. Without being able
to act upon it's all just talking and no walking.

~~~
codezero
Thanks nisa, I actually own the Now Habit, but haven't read it... I bet this
is common :P

Since getting a Jawbone UP, I'm pretty rigorous about my sleep as I was able
to get real data showing when/how sleep affects me and I have been able to
optimize the right amount of sleep and when the best windows for waking up
are, it's been a great help in building a better structure for my day-to-day.

I'm really self aware, I can tell when I am stressed (though this took work to
develop, I wonder if that's generally true, I didn't know what stress was, or
rather, I couldn't identify it in myself until I was about 27).

Everything does fall apart when there are strong external stressors that
cannot be remedied with even your own hard work, but that's a separate issue I
think.

~~~
nisa
> Everything does fall apart when there are strong external stressors that
> cannot be remedied with even your own hard work, but that's a separate issue
> I think.

For me that's exactly it. I have yet to find something that works. I don't
know. Not giving a fuck does not work for me.

------
terhechte
I just took the small comics from the sidebar, and put them as my desktop
background image. I find they give particularly short but useful advice as to
how to proceed once procrastination attempts to strike.

~~~
Pitarou
Good idea. I think I'll do the same.

------
mistercow
I was pretty disappointed in this article. Rather than offering any new
insight or techniques, it was just a reiteration of well-known techniques,
each of which I've personally found to be barely helpful at best, and counter-
productive at worst. The "time travel" technique in particular is actually
just my default behavior, and only serves to reinforce my ugh fields.

Beyond that, all the article offers is a piece of jargon to name the obvious
motivation behind procrastination: doing something to distract you from an
unpleasant obligation.

------
dgreensp
This is very primitive advice.

We should meditate on why surfing Facebook is "bad mood repair" but forgiving
yourself is "good mood repair." If it's bad to feel good, maybe forgiving
yourself is just another way to dodge your responsibilities? The advice
presented in the article offers no escape from this psychological tangle,
except projecting yourself into an imagined future, where your present work is
done -- but you don't feel any more like working (so start now).

The truth is, feeling good only helps. You should feel as good as possible,
and make time for the things you enjoy. Be understanding with yourself, and
feel free to just watch TV sometimes. At the same time, dial down your anxiety
and worry. This is helped by not racing to react when you feel anxious -- to
distract or fix or rationalize -- but just breathing deeply and carrying as
best you can. Finally, get in touch with who you are helping _now_ , who you
are being now, how you are serving your values and what's important to you
now, and what progress you can make now -- not in the future. Get in touch
with your motivations and what you care about. If you don't care enough about
something in your life, try not doing it. You can choose your life and your
work (at least, once you get out of school). Don't clean your car, then. Oh,
that bothers you? Enough to clean a car? Sit with your anxiety for a bit and
observe it without reacting. It will pass if you face it head on.

Time management is also a whole skill unto itself, like math or small talk. It
takes practice. There are no bad activities (among the usual ones cited, like
surfing the Internet), only bad uses of time. And you're in charge of your
time. What do you want to achieve with it? If your ideal life is to sit around
all day and you can afford it, go for it.

------
dpweb
I'm so bad with procrastinating, in fact I'm avoiding work right now! I've
found virtually all the books and blog posts useless, but this one really made
me think differently.. [http://www.amazon.com/Self-Discipline-10-days-
Thinking-Doing...](http://www.amazon.com/Self-Discipline-10-days-Thinking-
Doing/dp/1880115107)

------
elwell
Title should read: "To Stop Procrastinating, Get Off Hacker News"

------
logicallee
Actually, I had a lot more productive day when HN was down then when I'm
reading the wall street journal's 1500 words on the science of mood repair,
plus all the comments on it. And participating in writing my own.

~~~
tunap
Smite thee, heretic!

------
dasil003
Definitely some good stuff in there, a lot of those are techniques that I've
discovered on my own. But the big problem in talking about procrastination is
that it's caused by so many different things. It might be anything from small
fears to 30,000 foot problems in your life which may intractable in the short
term. Assuming no true pathology, the key is really self-awareness and
stopping the productivity drumbeat long enough to peel back a few of the top
layers of your own psychology.

------
kroger
No book has helped me overcome procrastination more than Steven Pressfield's
"The War of Art":

[http://www.amazon.com/The-War-Art-Through-
Creative/dp/193689...](http://www.amazon.com/The-War-Art-Through-
Creative/dp/1936891026)

Instead of overanalyzing procrastination, he identifies the invisible but real
force of Resistance and how to deal with it.

EDIT: grammar

~~~
jongold
If you liked that, check out his follow up - Turning Pro. I read the second
book first & loved it; thought The War of Art was a liiiittle bit self-helpy.

What I took away from those two books were that the /only thing/ that will
help you is sitting your ass in the chair and doing the fucking work.

~~~
kroger
Thanks for the recommendation, I'm reading it now and I'm liking it so far
(I've read "Do the Work" and I didn't like it as much). I agree that The War
of Art is a little bit self-helpy, but I got a lot of value from the other
non-self-helpy part.

------
unstabilo
In my case procrastination is/was a symptom of perfectionism. This article was
an eyeopener for me: [http://coastalcenter.org/overcoming-
perfectionism/](http://coastalcenter.org/overcoming-perfectionism/) .

------
tcfunk
I find some of this advice to be really silly.

Telling someone with procrastination issues to "Just get started" or in other
words "Stop procrastinating" seems as effective as telling someone with a
smoking habit to "Just stop smoking".

~~~
prawn
Putting off a cigarette for ten minutes is better than smoking it right away
and surely achievable.

------
stonewhite
"time-management consultants"

Wow, I wonder what it takes to become one.

~~~
croisillon
Time.

------
bayesianhorse
I put off reading the article for about a day now...

------
michaelochurch
What's bizarre about procrastination is how much it derives from irrelevant
past experiences (negative ones) that, in truth, have little or nothing to do
with the activity being procrastinated. Some failure or embarrassment that is
hardly related to the activity at all gets dredged up, not always consciously,
and becomes paralytic.

In the process of _doing_ work, people are generally happy and can even get
into a flowful state. That's even true for most people with mood problems-- if
they can get themselves there. But the anticipation of work or change or even
playful activity like exercise is often an anxiety-ridden negativity-fest.
Cleaning an apartment isn't so bad; but the anticipation and feeling of having
to do it brings forward all those negative emotions like, "how the fuck did I
get to age <X> and still have to do my own cleaning? Why can't I get my
goddamn shit together and take ownership of my career?" It's much easier to
just do the damn cleaning: even high-status, rich people have to do it
sometimes, it's not a big deal. But the mental and social prison of "having
to" clean makes that menial task 10 times worse than it really deserves to be.

I think that people have to reprogram themselves to "just do" instead of
fussing about how their work will be evaluated and how long it will take and
what might go wrong. That kind of nonsense makes it hard to do anything.

My suspicion is that procrastination (like depression) was adaptive to our
primordial existences as pack animals in hierarchies that were brutally
enforced. Depression (low libido, physical lethargy) is an adaptation to low
status and scarcity-- inappropriate to modern life, but it probably helped our
ancestors survive periods of transient low status. Procrastination also seems
to be something that we evolved to defer ambitions (especially while young,
and unable to succeed in a physical fight) during periods of low status so we
could survive into better times. It's the "I'm not ready to do that" reflex.
It's incredibly maladaptive to modern life-- in which social status is mostly
undefined and a little _internal_ confidence can go a long way-- but given our
"winner-take-all" society in which most people lose, it's not surprising that
it's at epidemic levels.

~~~
cma
But who is going to clean your apartment under an open-allocation world
utopia?

I do like your idea about the origins of procrastination, but like almost all
evolutionary psychology, it is too easy to make up stories to explain things.
Occasionally there is something concrete from the fossil record to work from.

------
contextual
Funny how this is the latest research findings. It seems so obvious. I guess
we all are so distracted, numb and unconscious we don't even know ourselves
anymore.

EDIT: I'm pointing the finger at myself as well.

------
joemaller1
To stop procrastinating, open HN, see article about procrastination, pause,
close window and go back to work.

~~~
joemaller1
...then come back to HN to post pithy comment, _then_ go back to work.

~~~
kostato
Just add it to the read later queue and then go back to work.

