
How to Cure Deep Procrastination - joshuacc
http://calnewport.com/blog/2011/07/15/how-to-cure-deep-procrastination/
======
gwern
> In my previous post, I introduced a dubious evolutionary explanation for an
> otherwise very real phenomenon: procrastination, in my experience, is not a
> character flaw, but instead evidence that you don’t have a believable plan
> for succeeding at what you’re trying to do. In this post, as promised, I
> want to apply this evolutionary perspective to help better understand, and
> therefore better combat, the deep variety of this common issue.

Instead of fumbling with folk intuitions and deeply dodgy evolutionary
psychology (hard for even the experts to not embarrass themselves doing), why
not look at what the psychologists have actually found?

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/3w3/how_to_beat_procrastination/> covers the
literature. (You will notice that the equation includes 'expectancy' as only
one of the related variables. This is a simplified form; the full equation
with the details can be found in all the linked PDFs.
<http://lesswrong.com/tag/procrastination/> also has a lot of interesting
reading which are much better than this guy.)

And heck, while I'm at it, the overview of research on how to be happy:
<http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/>

------
diiq
This is an _excellent_ suggestion --- though anyone who uses this method
should be prepared to discover, sometimes, that they not only have no
motivation to complete the given task, but also that the task does not lead in
any clear way to what they have decided is a good life. The task can be
happily dropped at that point iff they were totally honest in defining "a good
life" and completely informed about the path from here to there.

~~~
dimitar
which makes it even more excellent :-)

------
mattmillr
I had this same issue in college, and later as an employee. I've discovered I
don't perform very well when I have to ask "why" too many times to figure out
the value of the work I'm doing.

"Why am I studying this material? To pass the test. Why? To pass the class.
Why? To get a good GPA? Why?..." You lost me several Whys back!

As a professional, it was the same way. The worst was when my short stint in
Finance, but even working for nonprofits and social-conscious startups, it's
tough for me to get motivated when the end goal is too many layers of
abstraction away.

(I think that's strange, because when I'm actually dealing with technology,
abstraction is one of my strengths.)

This was one of the factors in my decision to start my own company. I want to
get rid of the layers of Whys and let them have more weight. Why am I working
on this project? To make this client happy, so I can pay the rent this month.

Another approach that has helped me in the last year or so has been phrasing
my goals and aspirations in the form, "I want to be the kind of person who
___." Then do ___!

~~~
younata
Holy crap. I thought I was the only one. I know I'm smart, I just don't put in
the effort to study. I'm friends with all these people who don't have the
problem I have (or they've figured out how to solve it).

At the same time though, I'm constantly working on side projects. Currently,
I'm building an autonomous tricopter, because I thought it'd be cool to build.
Last semester, I wrote a webapp to handle an event we were having. Previous
semester, I was working on a way to control my room from my computer (still
working on that, just not as intensely). These all easily answer "Why am I
doing this?" (tricopter: because it's cool. Webapp: Might be able to make
money from this [Note: didn't make any money from it ): ]. Computer-controlled
room: It's cool, and it allows me to be incredibly lazy.)

I know that I'm not an idiot, I should be getting As, and I do get As in the
classes that genuinely interest me. Unfortunately, at least 75% of the classes
I take don't interest me, so I get lost in trying to answer "why am I even
bothering with this?"

~~~
TeMPOraL
Similar problem here - eg. I once almost failed a course because I decided
that writing a computer game for a Lisp competition is much more fun. I get
A's in courses I care about, which is a suprising minority, and learn some of
the rest while procrastinating, in completely different order than university
would like.

------
wccrawford
Had me at "procrastination, in my experience, is not a character flaw, but
instead evidence that you don’t have a believable plan for succeeding at what
you’re trying to do" but lost me again at "ancient brain" and not putting out
unnecessary energy.

While I've experienced procrastination that had nothing to do with not having
a good plan, I've also had the kind that does. And it's far worse.

Some procrastination occurs because we know we have time, and other things
seem more important or fun.

Lack-of-plan procrastination is worse, though. You delay until you have a
plan, but without a plan, you can't know if you have time to finish. That
-should- push you into making a plan immediately, but the whole enormity of
the situation causes a panic reaction that prevents you from thinking
rationally about the plan to start with. In the end, you put it aside until
you can deal with it. It doesn't matter what reason (tired, no time, need
something/someone, etc) you give, it all ends up the same.

The only way out of that kind (that I've found) is to seek help. Complain to
random people about it, ask people with specific knowledge, etc etc. Just find
help somewhere. Sometimes you just need a direction to start heading in.

~~~
rauljara
>lost me again at "ancient brain" and not putting out unnecessary energy.

A lot of evolutionary science talks about energy expenditure. For an animal to
survive it needs to take in at least as many calories as it expends, so
evolutionary scientists often explain behavior in terms of expending calories
and preserving calories. E.g, Predators tend to sleep a lot because hunting
takes up a lot of calories. It's better to preserve the calories they gained
hunting by sleeping a lot, rather then spend them on another hunt that may or
may not be successful. As opposed to large herbivores that don't gain that
many calories from grass, but don't spend so many eating it, either. They
sleep very little because foraging those extra hours turns out to be a caloric
win.

Our "ancient" brain (which is a crappy term, I know) refers to the set of
behaviors we evolved to survive in a society pre civilization. In that
environment, effort == calories spent. What the author is saying is that for
evolutionary reasons, we evolved to not want to waste calories (put forth
effort) if there isn't a good chance of getting them back. But, because our
food sources no longer in jeopardy, that evolutionary urge which led to our
survival in the wild now leads to the vice known as procrastination.

~~~
Pheter
I don't understand the logic behind this line of reasoning for predators
sleeping a lot.

Predators hunt to obtain food which provides them with calories. More calories
must be gained than spent from hunting, otherwise it would be pointless as
they would make a net loss and, ultimately, starve.

It is more likely that they hunt less, and sleep more, because hunting has
large payoffs, and therefore they don't need to continue hunting for a while.

~~~
dasil003
Also because they're full.

------
ForrestN
This strikes me as a somewhat naive understanding of human motivation. While
these kinds of reframing techniques might have some impact, most people
procrastinate because of subconscious motives they have rather than conscious
ones. If you procrastinate to the point that it negatively impacts your
ability to function effectively, by definition you have a psychological
disorder (of whatever severity) and would do well to tackle that in some form
of therapy.

Cognitive psychology might offer a more sophisticated version of this
article's strategy, where psychodynamic would try to identify and work through
the underlying cause of your motives not to work (e.g. part of you wants to
experience the sense of crisis that comes from being incredibly behind on a
deadline, so let's try to understand that part of you).

~~~
SatvikBeri
This kind of reframing _is_ a technique to align your subconscious motivations
with conscious ones. In contrast, there's very little evidence that
discovering the "cause" of a motivation really helps.

There's a significant amount of evidence that actively building positive
emotional connections to the activities you want to do is useful-see Switch,
or The Talent Code for examples.

~~~
klbarry
I also seem to remember that professional therapy in many psychological cases
is not significantly more likely to help a person than self
discovery/friends/environment change, etc.

~~~
ForrestN
I'd be interested to see this research. My understanding is that talk therapy
is generally considered to be effective, although there is much controversy
about which kinds are most effective and how that effectiveness compares to
drugs.

------
btcoal
"Deep procrastination usually strikes students later in their college career,
when the difficulty of their courses ratchets up. At this stage, their work
load gets harder and harder, and at some point some powerful part of their
brain says “no more!”"

My mileage definitely varied. I found that after my second (Sophomore in the
US) year in college I rarely procrastinated. It was getting through the
required classes the first two years, where the why at the end of a long chain
of questions was "because you have to to graduate from MIT." That's not as
motivating as it sounds.

Eventually I was taking only classes I wanted to be in. And if I didnt want to
do an assignment and wasnt going to destroy my GPA I just didnt do it.

Fast-forward to the real world and it returns. Deadlines from bosses help to
avoid procrastination but if the work isn't too challenging and expectations
are low enough you can still do some deep procrastinating.

But then again, maybe the reasoning my work isn't challenging enough is
because I didn't get the most amazing job in the world because I didn't just
push through those assignments in college that I really didn't want to do.
Hmmm...that's some meta-circular evaluation right there[1].

[1] No it isnt.

------
yread
_503 Service Temporarily Unavailable_

That works as well :)

------
thaumaturgy
o-f'r-cryinoutloud.

I can't believe everyone's actually discussing this as though it were
insightful.

Look, you're sitting at home, you're a student, and you have, let's say, three
things you can choose to do right now:

1\. You can study for your class tomorrow, working towards a degree. Effort
required: high. Reward: far future.

2\. You can go out with friends. Effort required: medium to low. Reward: near
future.

3\. You can play a video game. Effort required: low. Reward: immediate.

So which one do you really _want_ to do?

Before you answer that, let's add one more little piece to our hypothetical:
let's imagine that you have all the time in the world. You're immortal. There
is absolutely _no_ rush to get your degree. Whether you do it this year or in
thirty years will make absolutely no difference.

So which one do you do?

This is procrastination. I should know. I'm an _expert_ procrastinator. There
are about eleventy-seven things I should be doing right now -- and they are
_all_ things which require a lot of effort right now, and won't pay off today.
What am I doing instead? I'm wasting time on HN: low effort, immediate reward.
If I couldn't be on HN, I'd probably be in my garden. Again: low effort, quick
reward.

This guy's a book author. He wants to sell more books. He probably wants to
make a little extra money doing speaking engagements. So he has to set himself
up as an expert, and to do that, he's put together this notion about "ancient
brains" and evolutionary psychology (which is mostly bunkem) and the "wasting"
of energy.

And it sounds sort of OK, except that it skirts around the basic notion that
we're largely reward driven, and all of these distractions that we have today
are really good at pushing our little reward button, and we'll keep triggering
our reward button for as long as we can -- until we become that little mouse
that starved itself to death pushing its feel-good button.

Short-circuiting this requires two forms of self discipline: one, you have to
tear yourself away from pushing the reward button occasionally (and no amount
of telling yourself why you're trying to get a degree will do that). You have
to have enough self-awareness to realize that you've just blown your entire
afternoon on a game or online and you have nothing to show for it, and maybe
you should try to squeeze in some actual work before the day's over.

Two, you have to have the discipline to recognize the things that make you
procrastinate, and engineer around them. For me, it's barriers. Once I get
working on something, I'll plow through it like a bullet through jelly. But,
if I'm not yet working on it, and there's the merest little speed-bump of a
barrier to overcome before I can work on it ... then I don't want to start.

So, for that reason, I put a lot of extra effort into making it really
convenient to get things done. I write scripts that do things for me with a
single command. I keep things organized so that I don't have to find things
(which is a barrier) before I can get started. I try to keep things simple.

But that's just me. Maybe it's different for you.

But I seriously doubt that the approach in this guy's article will actually
help anybody.

~~~
Periodic
But here's where his idea helps you combat the desire for immediate rewards
without "willpower".

Let's look at the impact on what sort of respect others will give you with
your three options:

1\. Studying for a degree: high - hard worker, smart 2\. Going out: medium -
friends like you, but you're a party-person and don't really do anything
respectable. 3\. Video games: low - lazy bum.

I think the argument is that the part of your brain that is trying to
procrastinate understands enough about society to realize that making yourself
a better and more respectable person is a worthy goal and will help you work
towards it. The trick is having that goal in mind. With the goal in mind, not
making progress is an immediate negative reinforcement.

I used to play video games all day instead of working. Now I feel almost dirty
if I do that. I know that the person I want to be is not someone who sits
around and reads HN and gets no work done in a day.

Of course, there's a balance. If I'm ahead on a deadline, good luck getting me
to finish it early.

~~~
goblin89
The challenge is explaining the brain why exactly is making yourself a better
and more respectable person a worthy goal. And then, how getting a degree
would help you on that road (also not obvious, with lots of counterexamples
and without a solid explanation of what does being a good person mean). Or
maybe it's just my brain that doesn't understand enough about society.

------
Produce
As an alternative explanation for why we procrastinate, I'd like to introduce
the idea that modern society is fundamentally broken. If we have social
structures (software) in place which go so deeply against the grain (wetware)
then the problem is not the grain but the direction that we are sanding in. In
essence, modern society is trying to run ARM instructions on an x86 CPU. It's
a testament to how broken it is that someone would suggest that the effect is
the thing to be cured, as opposed to the cause.

The fact of the matter is that we have orders of magnitude more knowledge
about how we work and what makes us happy than even 50 years ago. Yet we do
not apply it. It's the same as the issue in software development where we have
accepted industry standards for producing quality work yet relatively few
teams use them, and hardly any use all of them.

Ofcourse, the reason for these inefficiencies at processing new information is
the same as the one which causes procrastination - the wetware simply isn't
built for it. And so we have a vicious circle. There is, however, light at the
end of the tunnel. Whatever we are aware of at a given point in time will
shape the next moment. Yes, our wetware is at odds with the environment it has
created, but our wetware is capable of self-modification, hence the author's
suggestion being a perfectly good one until we can reach the tipping point as
a collective. But I still argue that curing procrastination is putting a
bandage on a rotting limb which desperately needs to be amputated and replaced
with a tentacle.

------
MaxGabriel
Hmm, Cal is the only one who has pinpointed a very real, seemingly unexplored
phenomenon. The problem is, he's just one person and seems to really struggle
to grasp this phenomenon. Not struggle like he doesn't have any clue where
he's going, but a kind of grappling with the essence of dp. So, his theories
sort of feel like hypotheses that hes refining over time. This is very much
how I read Cal, as if I'm reading a log of his ongoing research and suspicions

------
gfunk911
BODY OF THE ARTICLE (currently 503):

The Deep Procrastination Crisis

Above is a snapshot of my blog e-mail inbox, filtered to only show e-mails
from students struggling with deep procrastination. Notice that there are
close to 60 such messages. If I include blog comments in the search, the
number jumps into the hundreds.

Deep procrastination is a distressing affliction. Students who suffer from it
lose the ability to start school work. Deadlines pass and they hand nothing
in. Professors provide special extensions, but the students still can’t bring
themselves to do the work. And so on.

As evidenced by my inbox, this issue is surprisingly common, especially at
elite colleges. Yet it’s also almost entirely off the radar of traditional
student counseling, which is why I dedicate time to it here.

In my previous post, I introduced a dubious evolutionary explanation for an
otherwise very real phenomenon: procrastination, in my experience, is not a
character flaw, but instead evidence that you don’t have a believable plan for
succeeding at what you’re trying to do. In this post, as promised, I want to
apply this evolutionary perspective to help better understand, and therefore
better combat, the deep variety of this common issue.

The Question of “Why”

Deep procrastination usually strikes students later in their college career,
when the difficulty of their courses ratchets up. At this stage, their work
load gets harder and harder, and at some point some powerful part of their
brain says “no more!”

An evolutionary perspective on procrastination helps explain this reaction.
The student is asking his or her brain to expend lots of energy (from a
biological perspective, studying for an orgo exam is an expensive thing to
do). One way to see this process is that there’s an ancient part of our brain
that has evolved to evaluate any such plans — a filter, of sorts, to prevent
the wasting of precious energy.

“Why are we going to expend so much precious energy?”, it asks.

The more modern, abstract-reasoning, rational part of the student’s brain is
quick to respond: “Because we need to expend this energy to pass the test
which we need to earn our degree!”

“What the hell is a ‘degree’ and why do we need one?”, the ancient brain
counters.

“Because that’s what you’re supposed to do,” the rational brain responds.

And this is where the problem occurs.

The rational part of the brain is promoting an abstract societal value. It
knows that for a middle class American, earning a college degree is an
expected milestone on your path to integration into the middle class economy

But the ancient brain doesn’t do well with abstract societal values, which are
a recent addition to humankind on the scale of evolutionary time. One way to
understand deep procrastination, therefore, is as a rejection of an ambiguous,
abstract answer to the key question of why you’re going through the mental
strain required by the college experience.

(As in my previous post, I’m using an evolutionary explanation metaphorically
— as a way to help explain a concrete phenomenon I’ve observed in my research
and writing on this topic. Whether the evolutionary explanation for the
phenomenon is strictly true is somewhat beside the point and beyond my
expertise.)

The good news is that this understanding provides a clear strategy for
combating this scourge: form a more concrete and personal answer to the
question of “why.”

Combating Deep Procrastination

From my experience, an effective answer to this question of why you’re at
college can be constructed through the following process:

First, devise a (tentative) answer to the following question: What makes a
good life good? This is the foundation on which everything else in your life
will be built. Your goal is not the identify the “right” answer, but to
instead identify a working hypothesis. This answer will evolve along with your
life experience, so this is not a time for perfectionism. If you’re religious,
your starting point for finding this answer is obvious. If you’re not
religious, you could jump into philosophy — as this question has been at the
core of human thinking since the time of the Greeks — but I’ve found it’s more
approachable to start with biographies of people whose life you admire,
looking for evidence of their own responses to this prompt. Second, decide how
your experience at college can best be leveraged to support this vision of a
good life. If, for example, you decide the key to a good life is to master
something useful to the world, this might lead to you to see college as an
opportunity to master a hard skill while exposing yourself to examples of
people applying this skill in useful ways. Third, identify the set of specific
student tactics that will help you succeed in this leveraging. In our above
example, this thinking might lead you to the concrete strategies I espoused in
my romantic scholar series. This process provides a more personal and concrete
answer to the fundamental question being posed by your ancient brain.

“Why should I expend all this difficult energy?”, it asks once again.

“Because it’s part of a well-thought through plan for leading a good life,”
you now respond.

“Sounds good,” it agrees while you head to the library.

As I noted in an earlier post on this subject, this self-reflection is not an
easy process. But college really is a fantastic time to face these basic
questions. Deep procrastination, once you understand its source, doesn’t have
to a Jobian affliction. It can instead be seen as the prompt you need to get
your internal shop in order.

If you’ve had success combating deep procrastination with answers to these
basic questions, please share your experience. Concrete examples help deep
procrastinators commit to a way out.

~~~
brianleb
> The student is asking his or her brain to expend lots of energy (from a
> biological perspective, studying for an orgo exam is an expensive thing to
> do).

I have wondered for some time: is there research that can put a number on how
much caloric energy the brain (just the brain) uses when it's being
worked/stressed (as the article suggests, studying for an organic chemistry
exam) compared to when it's relatively relaxed or even asleep? Some cursory
searching hasn't gotten me past "the brain uses about 20-25% of consumed
energy a day," but that doesn't really answer my question. I acknowledge it is
difficult to define when the brain is "relaxed," because it's always doing
_something_ , but I suppose what I'd like to know is if there is a truly
significant difference in energy expenditure due to intense activity or if
comparatively it's just background noise because the brain is always working
hard.

To take it to an extreme/absurd point, could thinking hard help you lose
weight?

p.s. thanks for posting the article due to the 503

~~~
skittles
I used to start sweating while doing math homework. I still get hot when I am
deep into some complex code.

~~~
westicle
Sounds like you were overclocking your brain.

------
qaexl
The general doctrine sounds great. The specific solution outlined sucks. My
hypothesis: easier to get in touch with primal survival instincts and
twiddling that directly. The author is still answering those self-reflection
questions with abstract thoughts that has nothing to do with survival
instincts.

Meaning: Interrupt yourself every time you feel procrastination -- that heavy,
draining, depressing, oppressing feeling -- that sudden drop in energy when
thinking about taking the next step -- or even planning and deciding the
course of action to take you to your goal. Catch yourself feeling this. Then
directly manipulate that.

------
lincolnwebs
Conversely, sometimes you decide it _isn't_ worth it. My senior year of high
school, I was being pushed to take 3 AP courses. I thought about what I wanted
out of my senior year, and decided I already had what I needed to get into
college and wanted to enjoy it. I took 1 AP course instead - and
procrastinated in it horribly, but at least my GPA didn't suffer horribly from
1 course.

Sometimes you don't need to convince yourself of anything, you need to change
course.

------
snorkel
I found that tackling a project is easier if you just do one fast and simple
setup task without obligating yourself to do anything more than that.

The fast simple setup task could be something that takes less than one minute
of your time, such as open an application, create a new document, type a few
notes, save the file.

Procrastination is friction. Doing the first simple task without any direction
or commitment gives you that initial push force needed to get the project
moving.

~~~
keeptrying
This is for "regular" procrastination. Thi "deep procrastination" is a
different animal.

I can actually give an example from my own life. And this is totally legit.
Imagine having todo a parallel Masters in Physics so that you'd have the
opportunity to do a Bachelors in EEE so that you could get a job working with
computers!! I literally was "deep procrastination" for 4 years!

One good thing that came out of this is that I can handle really intense
situations which others cannot psychologically handle for long periods of
time. But on the flip side Im really bad at Prioritizing my own immediate
happiness but I'm making progress in that regard.

Great post!!

------
squasher
If you liked/needed this post, you'll LOVE The Now Habit:
[http://www.amazon.com/Now-Habit-Overcoming-
Procrastination-G...](http://www.amazon.com/Now-Habit-Overcoming-
Procrastination-Guilt-
Free/dp/1585425524/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1310753244&sr=8-1)

------
sardonicbryan
How to stop procrastinating:

1) Stop reading articles about procrastination. 2) Start doing what you're
supposed to be doing, you lazy asshole.

~~~
mannicken
Define procrastination. Perhaps I'm working on research for procrastination
articles, or studying design of that web-page.

I understand what you're trying to do but a bit of advice for the future: do
not offend your reader. You can offend something else they might hate, e.g.
"fuck procrastination".

I just downvoted you solely on the lazy asshole comment because I took it
personally, because I'm reading this. If you were to say it personally to
someone, in certain cliques, you would've gotten the shit beaten out of you
for saying things like that unless you aren't their teacher. I would
personally just flip you off, told you to go fuck yourself, and then never
spoke to you again.

Just friendly advice.

------
bitwize
"Choose life. But why would I want to do a thing like that> I chose not to
choose life; I chose something else."

------
keeptrying
I wish I had read this post in college! Any course I didn't like ended up with
me being happy with a "D"...

------
smcl
503 error - "Please try again later"

Oh the irony

------
swah
Now I'm curious about the Good Will Hunting email.

------
bborud
I added it to my Read-It-Later queue.

I win.

------
checoivan
Do something you love.

------
Uthros
Suggestion 1) Stop looking at Hacker News

~~~
MaxGabriel
If you read Cal's article, and especially his other DP articles, he is quite
clear that this type of procrastination is NOT what he's talking about. Deep
procrastination is about feeling completely _unable_ to start a task, and has
symptoms like getting extensions and still not meeting them.

~~~
jsavimbi
Suggestion 2) Stop visiting turntable.fm

------
garyrichardson
I'll read it later.

------
pier0
I've been meaning to contribute something helpful to the discussion, but I
keep putting it off.

