
The cure for procrastination? Forgive yourself - AlexeyBrin
http://digest.bps.org.uk/2010/05/cure-for-procrastination-forgive.html
======
Xcelerate
As someone who procrastinates, I've yet to come across a true "cure" for the
habit. "Forgive yourself" is such a vague and abstract mantra that I don't
even know how to actualize the advice.

I think the worst explanation for procrastination I've come across is that
it's caused by not truly enjoying the activity that is being procrastinated
upon. But if that were really the case, then the remainder of my life would be
spent sitting in a chair reading useless articles online.

Other questionable explanations I've stumbled across include: being unable to
bond empathetically with your future self, that the procrastinator's brain has
a [insert neurotransmitter of choice] deficit, that fear of failure keeps one
from starting, that too much is tackled at once, and so on.

When I try to recall what has given me the greatest sense of fulfillment in
life, everything I can think of is something I worked really hard to achieve.
That which contents me momentarily does not seem to coincide with that which
provides overall life contentment. I don't necessarily seek _happiness_ — I
would rather have demanding work that positively impacts the world over some
job that allows me to surf online all day.

What's funny is that I procrastinate _only_ with regard to intellectual
activities — not physical ones. Getting myself to exercise is no trouble at
all. But prodding myself to finish a VPTree implementation... that's much more
difficult. My hypothesis is that I procrastinate on those things that I was
naturally good at during childhood. Academically, I was decently above average
(well, at least up until college), so I never had to study. I always completed
homework at the last second before it was due, and I crammed most of my test
studying into the night before the exam and then promptly forgot the material
as soon as I walked out of the classroom (as I'm sure many of you have
noticed, this "strategy" doesn't work nearly as well in college, and it fails
dramatically in grad school).

On the other hand, when it came to sports, it was pretty much a guarantee that
(at least initially) I would naturally be the worst out of everyone
participating. I was determined to improve though, so I developed training
schedules and religiously followed them until I got the results I wanted. I
think that habit has stuck with me, and I still have no trouble starting an
exercise regimen.

~~~
g0v
I'm just another chronic procrastinator and from what I've experienced there
is no single "cure". Here's where I stand in trying to solve my own
procrastination problems:

\- Removed myself from things that enable procrastination; I installed
software (Coldturkey) that blocks websites and programs on my computer(games),
and I won't be able to change the configuration of Coldturkey for another
couple weeks.

\- I have a calendar next to my work area, I get a red X on days that I do a
reasonable amount of work; I got this from Jerry Seinfeld's method of getting
better at something, "Don't break the chain!" of red X's.

\- I often ask myself "what sort of person do you want to be? Do you want to
be remembered as someone that did a half-assed job most of the time? Or do you
want to be remembered as someone that killed it any chance he got?"; that
sometimes gives me a little push to get stuff done.

\- I am always behind in my mind.

\- I've been working on making a habit of following through to the end
anything that I am tasked with; I have unfinished stuff but there is less than
there used to be.

This is just what I've come up with for myself. It's just come down to not
trusting myself, so I try to make it so I don't have to.

~~~
kalms
The "always feeling behind", is actually helping me personally. If I'm not
just a tiny little bit stressed, I start procrastinating. I need to have
something to lose, otherwise I'll never get going. So I tend to work myself
into situations, that require me to put in an extra effort.

It's just how I work, and I've forgiven myself for it.

~~~
g0v
I'm in the same boat, It's really been a boon for self-improvement. There is a
lot of value in being your own harshest critic.

------
hippo8
Ahh Im 16 hours late to the party,

What's helped me deal with procrastination is, to keep a backwards list of
things I have done.

I used to make a timetable, plan my work ahead, and always end up not
following it.

I then did it the other way around, now I think about the work I have to do,
just pick it up and start working, once I am done with my work, I write it on
a notebook I carry around with me all day.

Its now like a part of my life, I even write down things like, "had a shower",
"bought bread". I have noticed I have become really productive compared to the
person from around 7 months ago. I am really happy as a person, and when ever
I have a doubt if I have done enough work, my note book is there to tell me
how much I have done.

I guess this is one of those carrot and stick things in this case, a self-
governed carrot and stick I guess.

I think most programmers can relate to this feeling when you consider that
amazing feeling you get after a whole night of debugging and seeing it run
beautifully. I feel like this backwards list is also something like that.
Looking forward to seeing that book fill up is making me do the work, and
seeing all the work I have done lets me feel accomplished.

And I don’t get to be disappointed by plans that never worked out.

------
zamalek
Also, if you're not usually the procrastination type but find yourself in a
procrastination hole: take leave. When you're hungry you eat, when you're
thirsty you drink; unusual tendencies to procrastinate are simply another
signal that your body is sending you.

It's always good to take time off when you have earned it, you'll come back
twice the hard worker than you were before.

~~~
irremediable
This is very good advice.

I _am_ the procrastination type, but I have lots of friends who aren't, and
I've watched too many of them burn themselves out. Some of them are miles
smarter than me, and far more hard-working, but my innate laziness and
procrastination have actually given me an edge.

~~~
zamalek
I became a bad procrastinator due to overworking myself and almost got a
formal verbal warning for it (more of an informal fix your shit warning
happened). At the time I had over 1 month [effective] leave "saved" up; I took
it.

I came back and became the _exact_ opposite - by a very substantial degree. It
felt like I was 20 again: I had all the brains, guts and dedication that got
me hired in the first place.

Burn out can really mess you up - far worse than being a plain-old incompetent
bad hire.

------
skrebbel
I like the idea, but is "forgiving yourself" even a thing you can consciously
do? Probably, but I'm not sure. The study did not ask people to actively
choose to forgive themselves, just whether they had forgiven themselves.
That's a rather different thing.

If I rationally decide to say "I forgive myself for having slacked off", I'm
not sure I'll actually _feel_ forgiven deep inside. I strongly suspect,
however, that self-forgiveness can be difficult but can be practiced.

Does anyone here have experience to share? Did anyone ever consciously
practice self-forgiveness? It seems like an interesting approach to me.

~~~
existencebox
I'm the exact opposite. I used to slack a LOT more, and have cut down on it
heavily since my school days. Back then I would regularly last night
assignments and pull multiple all nighters to do it, because I _knew I could_.
As long as I subconsciously knew "I can get this down in the delta between
now->due date" I would put it off, even if that delta involved not
sleeping/eating/etc, and "Forgiving myself" only made it worse since I'd just
keep doing it.

It was when I got into industry, and instead was posed with the equation of
"If I didn't rush, I would have done better work, and more effectively used
the time of the people paying me", which had enough external variables that
the need to change became pressing. I used (and still use) the feelings of
guilt at wasting my bosses time, the feelings of falling behind in my
skill/learnings, and dominatingly (as I get older) the feeling of "There just
isn't enough time in the day" to force myself off of procrastination every
time I notice myself doing it too much.

Take this with the context that I've never been one for positive
reinforcement. Seeing my own flaws and failings drives me far more than
getting a pat on the back. I think you hit the nail on the head re:
rationality, as that I don't think I _could_ forgive myself even if I tried, I
wouldn't really internalize believing it in a way that would impact my
behavior.

(And aptly, I've now procrastinated enough in writing this, and need to be
back to reading docs :) )

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Try not to go with the negative - and especially beware of using guilt over
wasting company / bosses time. They have enough leverage over you already.

~~~
existencebox
A fair point; I try and take it a different way (as opposed to their having
leverage over me), if my conscience is clear in terms of having done GOOD WORK
and not wasted any time by procrastinating, they have _less_ leverage from my
point of view, since I know I've been delivering 100% and can come from a
position of strength.

In terms of motivating myself by negatives instead of positives, that's
something I've put literally decades in trying to adjust and something I'm not
sure I'll ever break myself of. It's too useful in other areas (looking
critically at my own code, looking critically at problem spaces, being
unbiased in introspection) that as with the OPs point of not truly
internalizing something despite agreeing logically that "X should be this
way", I'm not sure I could truly internalize looking at things in a positive
light.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Well you seem to have made your peace with it - enjoy

------
eranation
Correlation does not imply causation? Maybe I didn't read the research right,
but what if people who have the ability to change themselves and stop /
decrease procrastinating, because the mere fact that they managed to stopped
procrastinating (e.g. stopped a negative behavior in their mind, and got good
results out of it), they were able to forgive themselves for past
procrastinations?

E.g. if someone was addicted to drugs, and managed to go clean, they are more
likely to forgive themselves (and others to forgive them) than those who just
keep taking drugs, right?. Any 5 years old will tell you that if the bully
started becoming nice, it will be easier to forgive them than if they stayed a
bully. forgiving oneself is not that different than forgiving others, and if
you correct your ways, it's easier to forgive yourself, just as much as it is
easier for others to forgive you. no? what am I missing?

------
dboreham
All the procrastinators are here so here's my most recent thinking on the
subject: Procrastination is just an emergent behavior of the "human runtime
executive".

Consider first a cat: it sleeps (in the warmest place it can find, but not too
hot) until it is either hungry or bored or someone shows up to amuse it. Then
it hunts prey, plays with it, possibly eats it. Repeat.

I believe the human (at least male human) version of this algorithm is
roughly: sleep when tired, otherwise absent some imminent threat (see below)
work on various plans directed toward having sex in the future, otherwise go
figure out the world. Imminent threats (hunger, leaking roof, dangerous
predators, "sprint" deadlines...) trigger immediate and focused activity.

I think this explains procrastination and pretty much everything else: doing
things like the VPTree implementation doesn't rise to the level of dealing
with an imminent threat (unless someone needs to ship it in a product
tomorrow), and it doesn't fall into the category of "figure out the world"
because you already know how said trees work and are used well enough. And of
course it isn't terribly sexy, most of the time.

------
DiThi
The best articles I've read about this topic are the ones in waitbutwhy.com.
There are three, this is the first one: [http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-
procrastinators-procrastin...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-
procrastinators-procrastinate.html)

~~~
shellerik
Thanks for this link. Perhaps the most disturbingly accurate description of
procrastination I have ever read.

------
visarga
I have an unusual procrastination tackling method inspired from yoga. It
involves stimulating the prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain behind the
forehead). The role of the PFC is to counter emotions and work out rational
solutions to unusual (novel) situations. When it is stimulated I feel like all
my work inhibitions are gone.

The technique is simple: with my eyes close, I orient my inner sight
(including my eyeballs) to look at the middle of my forehead and then just
sense any sensation that appears in that spot. It feels like a kind of
pressure or energy building up in the forehead.

The eye trick is good for focusing my attention there. It takes 10 minutes to
get my PFC into gear, then I can work like a robot for a whole day.

This spot in the middle of the forehead is called Ajna Chakra and in yoga is
considered the "command and control" center. When it is stimulated, it allows
for better emotional control.

~~~
audreyt
I use that technique too — inspired from Taoist meditation. The effect is
rather like running /usr/bin/top on the mind.

------
pkrumins
I recently realized that the cure for procrastination is to be on a mission.
I'm on a mission to build my company, Browserling, to be an amazing company.
As funny as it sounds I just don't have time to procrastinate.

~~~
iraphael
Which is why great teams are formed by people who can see how their work will
impact a greater goal, and can internalize that goal as being their own.

------
dasboth
I tend to procrastinate on things that are only really important to me like
side projects, job hunting etc. When someone else is expecting me to do
something, I will just do it. I worked on a side project that my wife asked me
for and did it in one sitting.

My "fix" has been to create external pressure somehow. Want to learn
something? Sign up to a course that has hard deadlines. Want to build
something? Tell someone about it and offer to show them a draft by a certain
date. It seems to work for me.

~~~
camillomiller
This. Is there any study about this approach? That's exactly what I do, and it
seems to work. Unfortunately it's har to apply for strictly personal projects

~~~
dasboth
It is hard, especially when it's a side project you're doing for yourself
because it's not easy to get others excited about it.

------
nicklaf
What's to say that the students who forgave themselves didn't do so as a
result of some other underlying reason that happens to be correlated with a
propensity to forgive oneself?

At the very least, one could argue that inability to forgive oneself could in
some cases be indicative of, say, depression. Perhaps self-confidence is
simply what helps one succeed?

------
nkozyra
The best - and worst - thing I've done had cured my procrastination issues.
It's essentially a personal moon shot system wherein I describe my perfect 5
years, 1 year, month, week and day. Like a pace car doppelganger. No human
could do what I set out to do, but I work at it tirelessly. My productivity is
gobs better than it was, I get more done on time than any other time in my
life.

The 'bad' part is it still feels like perpetual failure. Even if I do 10x more
in a day than I did 5 years ago, I only did 40% of my perfect day. I never
feel satisfied. It's depressing.

So if you're willing to sacrifice mental health for productivity, try my
system. Maybe it will work better for you. Maybe it's worthwhile in the short
term.

~~~
jstanley
It doesn't seem like you need to sacrifice mental health at all: your
productivity is up 10x on 5 years ago, can't you be happy about that, while
still acknowledging there is room for improvement?

~~~
nkozyra
Apparently, no. Like I said, it's a pace car, a lure. I'll never catch it. I
can't complete 10 of 15 impossible daily tasks and be satiated. It may just be
my personality.

------
codezero
Procrastination is a form of anxiety. There is no single thing you can do to
will yourself away from procrastinating. If you can afford it or it's
available to you, work with a mental health professional to figure out a
program that works for you.

------
geden
I'be been struggling with procrastination for 25 years. It's quite miserable
not least because it's clearly self perpetuated. I'm deep in a quest to slay
the beast at the moment and just a few hours ago read this, which definitely
tickled something deep in me, as procrastination and guilt seem to be close
bedfellows.

"By contrast, in guilt we’re not truly interested in healing. Most of our
energy is committed to the internalized child-parent (or adolescent-parent)
conflict that allows us to indulge in doing “it”—whatever we “shouldn’t” be
doing—and to justify continuing to do “it,” we have to keep the threat of
parental punishment (from ourselves or from others) hanging over our heads, so
that we can, in a sense, “wipe the slate clean” after our misdeed.

To work with your guilt, bring as much attention as possible to the shame that
has become locked into guilt’s framework. Stay with that shame, exploring it
and your history with it, approaching the shamed you with as much compassion
as you can. Don’t let your inner critic trespass here. As you do this work,
you will feel the childish side of guilt fleshing out more. Embrace that side
and protect it, just as you would a shamed, frightened child." Robert Augustus
Masters.

------
Chlorus
Eh, I'll get around to forgiving myself later...

------
ryanmk
I've plugged this before, but this is something that has really, actually,
worked for me: beeminder.com

------
gexla
Procrastination. Get it done or get out of the way and someone else will get
it done. If you look back and nobody else did it, congrats, it wasn't worth
doing anyways (validation for your procrastination.)

There is no cure for procrastination.

However, I have a similar method to the article for dealing with "blocking"
issues such as feeling overwhelmed or just don't want to pick up the phone to
take an ass chewing. Sometimes you just have to let go. You screwed up. Live
up to the mistake and move on rather than continue to let it eat you up and
cause problems for everyone else involved. Be honest, work out a way to move
forward and pass the torch to someone else if you have to.

------
bcarlyle
I'm a clinical psychologists who work with ADHD patients and others who
procrastinate.

Many believe their self-worth is tied to personal accomplishments.

This trips you up because procrastination creates a negative feedback loop
where the lack of action creates anxiety that increases inaction.

If you can't follow the mantra that you should "forgive yourself" because it
feels to corny it might be easier to think:

The most effective thing for me to do right now is to forgive myself because
the time I spend beating myself up is energy wasted.

This might be less elegant then just simply forgiving yourself but it might
work.

------
henpa
I'm a huge procrastinator! On a previous and recent "procrastination" post
here on HN, I read someone's post about his experience with mediation and how
it helped him overcome this. Of course I heard about meditation before, but I
wasn't sure what it meant exactly in practice. I found this video very
informative, and I hope someone else will find it useful too:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt5Qv9tUObI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt5Qv9tUObI)

------
stared
I know this, both from my experience and this paper (2010); also, it was a
part of the classics: "Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls".

See:
[http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18009/49](http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18009/49)

"Keep forgiving yourself and keep working.", "Guilt is rarely a constructive
force, and it can lead you to make bad decisions to compensate.", "forgiving
yourself only works if you trust yourself".

------
pla3rhat3r
The irony is not lost on me that I'm reading this while I procrastinate on
doing something I've needed to get to for some time. I forgive me.

------
arnorhs
correlation != causation

~~~
tgb
I know this is a trite, possibly overused saying, but in this case it is
completely accurate. The study had no ability to draw the title as a
conclusion, regardless of its results.

(Not to mention that they appear to be treating number assignments for a
"strong agree <-> strongly disagree" Likert scale as actual numbers and doing
things like averaging them. Ick.)

------
chris_wot
How do I know this study is accurate?

------
mojuba
I will procrastinate... later.

