
Procrastination Has Nothing to Do with Self-Control - noego
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/smarter-living/why-you-procrastinate-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-self-control.html
======
placebo
This whole thing about character flaws and self control reminded me of the
following passage from Raymond Smullyan's "This Book Needs No Title":

 _I know one woman who smokes. She says: “It’s not that I have to smoke; I
choose to. I could easily give it up any time I wish to, but I see no reason
why I should. But I can assure you, I could if I wanted to.” Her husband says
to her: “That 's only a rationalization! You couldn’t give up smoking even if
you wanted to. You are not strong enough to give it up; you have to smoke. So
to make yourself feel better, and to avoid having to confess your own weakness
of character, you fool yourself into believing that you choose to. But it’s
only a rationalization!” I know another woman who smokes. She says: “It’s not
that I want to smoke; I can’t help myself! I have tried several times giving
it up, but I have failed! I'm afraid I just don’t have a very strong
character. I would love to stop, but I simply can’t.” Her husband says to her:
“That's only a rationalization! You certainly could stop immediately, if you
really wanted to. No, you choose to smoke (after all, nobody is making you)
and you feel ashamed and guilty for doing that which you know to be harmful.
So to avoid any moral responsibility for your acts, you fool yourself into
believing that you ‘can’t help it. But this is only a rationalization.” My
only question about all this is: “Why are people so incredibly stupid?”_

Pity he didn't expand on the last line, but I think deep introspection is
required to understand what is really under our control

~~~
samstave
I used to smoke until I was about 26 or so.

I really wanted to quit, but I couldnt "chose to quit" \- so I went a
different route that worked well for me, but with an odd cost:

I convinced myself that "smoking will make you nauseous" \-- and then, when I
attempted to smoke, I would feel sick to my stomach, and I would gag a lot.

This worked for me - and I was able to quit nearly cold turkey.

The cost, is that now, any time I smell cigarette smoke, I begin to gag and I
cant control it. Further, now my gag reflex is so strong that brushing my
teeth makes me gag heavily....

~~~
rmwaite
Interestingly, I use the same method to stick to my diet. I repeat to myself
and others how gross fast food is and just say things like yuck, eww, etc when
I think of eating it. It took a short time before I just naturally avoid it
and have no desire or cravings anymore. And this is from someone that once
consumed at least 1, most times 2, meals a day from fast food places.

~~~
StavrosK
My problem with dieting was different, I eat normal food, I just eat a lot of
it, even if I'm not hungry. I realized this was because the long-term gain of
not eating is just too long-term, so I set up a points system where I reward
myself with points any time I eat less than maintenance, and I lose points
whenever I eat more. It's been working quite well so far!

~~~
tasty_freeze
I've done something in the same vein, but not so detailed. Say I'm out for
dinner and they offer desert. I have a sweet tooth, so I look at the menu. If
it sounds absolutely great, I'll give in. But if it appears to be just OK, I
say to myself "I'll save those calories for something better another day."

Likewise, if potato chips are served with a meal -- if I ate them I'd get some
marginal pleasure from it, but I can think of 20 ways to get more pleasure
from the same number of calories.

Mentally, I'm not denying myself pleasure; I'm banking it for future pleasure.
The overall effect is I have fewer low-yield calories and fewer calories
overall.

~~~
StavrosK
That's interesting, I'll try to keep that in mind as well! Especially since I
just ate a goddamn can of Pringles out of gluttony.

------
EndXA
I find the article to be a bit misleading.

The title says that procrastination has "nothing to do with self-control",
which is obviously an appealing sentiment.

However, the first paper that they reference says that "...if we have a great
deal of self-discipline and dutifulness... we may exert the self-control
necessary to engage in the task in a timely manner despite the lack of
immediate reward or the negative mood that the task elicits. Procrastination,
however, is the lack of this self-control, whether as a state or trait.
Procrastination is the self-regulatory failure of not exerting the self-
control necessary for task engagement... this failure at self-control may be
the direct result of a focus on regulating moods and feeling states in the
short term."

Overall, a better argument would be that a lack of self-control isn't the
driving force behind our decision to procrastinate. Rather, what causes us to
procrastinate are things such as anxiety or fear of failure, and a high degree
of self-control is what allows us to overcome these issues.

If anyone is interested in learning more about the factors that can cause us
to procrastinate, such as anxiety, perfectionism, and reliance on abstract
goals, check out this article: [https://solvingprocrastination.com/why-people-
procrastinate/](https://solvingprocrastination.com/why-people-procrastinate/)

~~~
pmoriarty
_" what causes us to procrastinate are things such as anxiety or fear of
failure, and a high degree of self-control is what allows us to overcome these
issues"_

Self-control seems to be a behavior rather than a characteristic, quality, or
a skill. When one has controlled oneself, one has exhibited self-controlling
behavior by definition. But what causes someone to exert that self-control?

~~~
beat
Right. "Self-control" is a _process_ , a system of habits and procedures for
handling various situations.

But our language of self-control is about morality, and "lack of self-control"
is seen as a _character flaw_ , not a problem that can be solved with
repeatable processes.

In other words, "lack of self control" is a failing of society, not a failing
of individuals.

------
juandazapata
Sleeping has a _huge_ impact in procrastination. The lack of sleep translates
into an hyperactive amygdala (which has a big influence in processing emotions
and impulses) and an under-active frontal cortex (which influences our
rational thinking, etc) [1]

According to my experience, a good night of sleep is the best cure for
procrastination, sadly, our current society don't optimize for sleeping well.

\---

1: [https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-
Dreams/dp/1501...](https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-
Dreams/dp/1501144316)

~~~
dawhizkid
Hm. Not convinced of the link between the two. The article is arguing that
procrastination is the proactive delay of making a hard decision to the
detriment of our mental wellbeing. A good night's sleep isn't necessarily
going to make you want to confront that decision.

~~~
EndXA
Research has shown that there is absolutely a connection between sleep and
procrastination, with low-quality sleep increasing the likelihood that people
will procrastinate, particularly among people who are naturally prone to
procrastination.

This is attributed to the fact that sleep is crucial when it comes to
replenishing the mental resources that you need in order to self-regulate your
behavior effectively.

This article contains a summary of research on the topic which came out
recently: [https://solvingprocrastination.com/study-procrastination-
sle...](https://solvingprocrastination.com/study-procrastination-sleep-
quality-self-control/)

------
CompelTechnic
The way I usually formulate these lines of thought is as follows:

I have the desire to play video games (a waste of time), but I wish that I did
not have this desire. I want it, but I do not want to want it.

If we do not have strong enough character to regulate our short term desires,
our long term goals suffer. This tradeoff is implicit in how we spend every
second of our day. Ultimately, actions reveal preferences.

If your long-term goals are unclear, or if your working conditions/ social
circle are not congruent to your long-term goals, you will remain anxious over
failing to progress towards these goals.

~~~
kmote00
Apparently this phenomenon predates video games:

"For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do
the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law,
that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells
within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.
For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it
out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I
keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it,
but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do
right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner
being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my
mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Paul of
Tarsus, circa 57 a.d.)

~~~
bdefore
Reads like a prologue to the new offering in town around then (Jesus Christ)

~~~
nyokodo
It's an Epilogue. Paul of Tarsus is St Paul the author of many letters in the
New Testament of the Bible. The text is from Romans 7:15-24. Verse 25 says
"Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

~~~
rsyring
Thank you for finishing the quote. It's arguably the most important verse as
it offers the solution.

~~~
sooheon
It _asserts a_ solution.

------
IBCNU
I know he's not for everyone but Nassim Taleb's quote is salient - “Few
understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take
care of themselves and exercise their antifragility; it results from some
ecological or naturalistic wisdom, and is not always bad -- at an existential
level, it is my body rebelling against its entrapment. It is my soul fighting
the Procrustean bed of modernity.”

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I could be wrong, but I strongly suspect that humans were procrastinating well
before the first nail was hammered into the first plank of the Procrustean bed
of modernity.

~~~
debacle
Procrastination was much more difficult before the modern age (1960+)

~~~
beat
Why do you think that?

------
adolph
Recommended related: If Self-discipline Feels Difficult, Then You’re Doing It
Wrong [1] by author of "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A
Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life"

1\. [https://markmanson.net/self-discipline-youre-doing-it-
wrong?...](https://markmanson.net/self-discipline-youre-doing-it-
wrong?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social-
posts&utm_content=2019-02-08)

2\.
[https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8529755.Mark_Manson](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8529755.Mark_Manson)

------
pmoriarty
_" Cultivate curiosity: If you're feeling tempted to procrastinate, bring your
attention to the sensations arising in your mind and body. What feelings are
eliciting your temptation? Where do you feel them in your body? What do they
remind you of? What happens to the thought of procrastinating as you observe
it? Does it intensify? Dissipate? Cause other emotions to arise? How are the
sensations in your body shifting as you continue to rest your awareness on
them?"_

This sounds very much like meditation, and while it may well be beneficial,
someone with a serious procrastination problem may have problems following
through with their intention to meditate like this as well, and instead just
compulsively do whatever makes them feel better.

~~~
WalterSear
Moreover, if anhedonic depression is involved, it can exacerbate that -
serious anhedonia is a sensation that shares a lot with mindfulness
meditation.

------
cableshaft
> The particular nature of our aversion depends on the given task or
> situation. It may be due to something inherently unpleasant about the task
> itself...but it might also result from deeper feelings related to the task,
> such as self-doubt, low self-esteem, anxiety or insecurity.

That may be what I'm doing with something right now. I have a couple of
publishers interested in something I've designed, but I need to update a
couple of things first before I submit it, and I keep putting it off, saying
I'm too tired, not in the right mindset, I have too much other things going
on. Might be because I'm worried they're going to reject me, though, and as
long as I haven't submitted it yet they can't reject me.

I do have a lot going on though and it does seem like it's getting in the way.
Work is being stupidly demanding of my time, and I had a job interview pop up
last week that superceded all other tasks, and I was out of town for half the
weekend and needed to pull my weight around the house and bring it back from
the sty it got into from the past week of preparing for the interview the
other day.

~~~
jules
What helps me in those situations is to make a list of arguments for and
against doing it now. This seems silly, but view it as communication between
your subconscious and your rational self. Your subconscious self feels that
its obviously not a good idea to do it now, and your rational self feels that
it obviously is a good idea. The arguments against doing it now are actually
the most important part. Try to articulate why your subconscious feels that
way, even if those arguments are silly. Recognising that they are silly is the
point.

------
curtis
I am a terrible procrastinator, and for me procrastination seems to be very
much like writer's block. The problem isn't doing something so much as it is
_starting_ something. In the case of writer's block, I try to start by free-
writing. I start writing with the intention that it's going to be crap and I'm
going to throw it away. In fact, I might even start with complete gibberish.

Along with general procrastination and writer's block I also suffer from the
closely related _coder 's block_. I address this the same way: instead of
free-writing I start "free-coding", where I write code with the intention that
it's going to be crap, and I might even start writing gibberish, before I move
on to writing code that compiles and maybe runs, but does nothing useful. The
goal is just to get started.

In the case of both free writing and free coding, once I start I pretty
quickly move on to writing stuff that's decent even if it's not great. That's
something I can work with, and once I get in that mode I have much greater
resistance to distractions.

To circle back to procrastination, I might use a similar approach. Say I need
to clean up my work area, and I just don't want to (even though I also do want
to). I need to reduce the scope of the problem to something absurdly simple,
or maybe even just absurd. So I decide I'm just going to move all the loose
items on my desk to another table so I can dust the desk. But I'm not even
going to dust the desk, I'm just going to move the stuff off of it. For the
immediate moment that's all I've got to care about it. Just moving stuff
around.

But once the desk is cleared, dusting it and wiping it down is easy. It's so
easy in that moment that that's all I care about. Then once that's done, I
move the stuff back. But as I'm moving the stuff back it's easy to address
each item one-by-one. Old papers can go in the trash or recycling, the books
can go back to their regular place on the book shelf, the stapler can go back
in the desk drawer where it regularly resides, etc. Then I realize now would
be a good time to wipe the dust off my monitor, sort through the nearby stack
of mail, etc.

Now mind you, I still procrastinate way more than I should, but these
techniques work for me and I procrastinate a lot less than I used to.

~~~
Inu
Reminds me of Raymond Chandler's technique:

"Raymond Chandler and I discussed this once, and he admitted to the most
bitter reluctance to commit anything to paper. He evolved the following
scheme: he had a tape recorder into which he spoke the utmost nonsense – a
stream of consciousness which was then transcribed by a secretary and which he
then used as a basis for his first rough draft. Very laborious. He strongly
advised me to do the same … in fact became so excited that he kept plying me
with information for months about the machine that helped him."

(from an interview with S. J. Perelman)

------
paulsutter
> Procrastination isn’t a unique character flaw or a mysterious curse on your
> ability to manage time, but a way of coping with challenging emotions and
> negative moods induced by certain tasks — boredom, anxiety, insecurity,
> frustration, resentment, self-doubt and beyond.

~~~
johnchristopher
Yikes. That's a lot of negative emotions. But don't we judge our characters
and other's by how we manage despite that ? So it's back to square one and
procrastination is a character flaw ?

~~~
pmoriarty
_" But don't we judge our characters and other's by how we manage despite that
?"_

 _Some_ people do judge, but maybe they shouldn't be so judgmental, as it's
not clear how much control people have over their own behavior, and without
such control one can't be blameworthy.

~~~
johnchristopher
Why can't they be judgemental ? I mean, it's not clear how much control they
have over being judgmental.

------
tombert
I noticed that my tendencies to procrastinate greatly reduced (though never
completely vanished) upon me taking antidepressants, after a very unpleasant
conversation with my boss (at the time) telling me that I was underperforming,
and it could lead to me being fired.

I remember the feelings I had then; there was this feeling of "I'm not stupid,
why am I constantly pushing things off to make it seem like I am?", and it
became this vicious cycle of "I do poorly because I'm depressed, and I'm
depressed because I do poorly". I could definitely see it as an act of "self-
harm", as this article describes.

------
0xCMP
How many visitors to HN or Twitter are often here because they reached a hard
or tedious part of their task and you rationalized "giving yourself a break"?

I know I have. I added the _noprocrast_ setting to HN to interrupt this habit
and I often try logging out of Twitter so I would actually need to login to
use it. But this article rings true that often I'm using that "break" as a
coping mechanism to avoid doing something I assume will be hard.

------
tonystubblebine
Tim Pychyl, one of the quoted researchers, is fantastic. If you want to hear
more from him, this is a great article by him (I was the editor for it):
[https://medium.com/s/the-complete-guide-to-beating-
procrasti...](https://medium.com/s/the-complete-guide-to-beating-
procrastination/how-to-use-psychology-to-solve-the-procrastination-
puzzle-6e6a56cdd535)

~~~
OscarTheGrinch
Seconded, Tim is both wise and kind. His podcast is also well worth checking
out for anyone currently stuck on the horns of the procrastination bull:
[http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/webpage/category/general](http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/webpage/category/general)

------
forgotAgain
So say you're a procrastinator. Do you?

a)read the article so you don't have to do xyz

b)not read the article because learning how to stop procrastinating feels like
self sabotage

c)start the article but don't finish it because you have ADD from surfing the
internet as a means of procrastinating

d)something else.

edit: e)skim the article and write an HN comment about it.

~~~
sudosteph
d.) something else - I didn't read the article because I've wasted enough time
in my life figuring out why I procrastinate and it doesn't bother me any more.
But I still read most of the comments because I enjoy learning about the range
of human experience around procrastination, because I do acknowledge it's
something I cared about in the past.

edit) also lurking in comments is my preferred method of wasting time. Though
I'm not wasting time to procrastinate at the moment. I'm just waiting for a
scheduled event to start which I prepared for already. I think that's
different.

------
beat
This makes me think of the book _Atomic Habits_ , which is all about how to
form good habits and break bad ones. Procrastination can be seen in many cases
as a lack of habit triggers to start down the path to work.

Keeping a daily to-do list (I use bullet journaling, but other processes can
work) has done wonders for my procrastination. I have a habit of writing down
everything I need to do _that day_ \- even if I've already done it. I have a
habit to check at the end of the day to complete what isn't yet done. I have a
habit of marking things completed. So my to-do list habit leads to not
procrastinating. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than where I was.

I also have a habit of taking my journal and a pen with me everywhere. I'd
rather be without my phone than without my journal.

I don't use a phone for my reference calendar or (especially) to-do lists,
because a cell phone is full of all sorts of nasty bad-habit triggers, many
designed by giant corporations that prey on my attention for money. It's
basically a digital crack pipe I carry everywhere. So marking my tasks for the
day without also checking email, weather, facebook (removed that app entirely
and went cold turkey), etc... it's very difficult.

Paper is how I manage my time. It gives me positive habits and positive
reinforcement.

------
mitko
I wrote something on a related topic recently:
[https://dimitarsimeonov.com/2019/02/13/how-people-turn-
their...](https://dimitarsimeonov.com/2019/02/13/how-people-turn-their-life-
around)

"""

We like to refer to that effort as willpower. But, from the point of view of
looking at emotions fighting for dominance inside our brains, willpower is
simply the strength and effort of the constructive emotions. The emotions
which lead to long term happiness and comfort, even at the expense of short
term pleasure. Logical, sober thought is one such constructive emotion, and we
call it willpower whenever we are able to make our actions agree with the
constructive emotions.

Yet… there is such a thing as “destructive” willpower. You might have seen it
under the name of “rationalization”. It is what destructive emotions use to
take over our action. If people say and think “I’m gonna be OK to drive with
one drink,” that’s their drink addiction emotion convincing them to drink.
That’s destructive willpower. It’s not the absence of willpower, but the
redirection of willpower towards a destructive emotion.

"""

------
mbrock
I mostly associate procrastination with the inability to make myself want to
deal with chores that seem alienating and dumb and like impositions from a
boring bureaucratic external system that makes fundamental demands on me as a
person with no personal connection—bookkeeping, entering long numbers into
bank web apps, registering my residential address by filling out a form, going
through KYC questionnaires over the phone, writing a report I know nobody will
read, etc. And it’s worse the more the task is imbued with some kind of fake
urgency by prudish pedantic adults while I also know that the negative
consequences of not doing the thing on time are likely to be rather tame like
a small fine or just a little bureaucratic slap on the wrist. I procrastinate
with the same chores that might make me imagine dropping out of society to
live on a homestead or as a monk. Probably I would get through these things
easier if I had some “ADHD medicine” as the kids call it these days.

------
hashberry
Chronic procrastinator here. Procrastinating feels like an addiction for me
because it offers instant pleasure. Right now I am procrastinating instead of
trying to fix a dumb JavaScript bug. When it comes to "bad mood," I've noticed
a pattern from my self-centered ego: 1). The work is "beneath" me, and/or 2).
The work threatens my ego.

------
adrianmonk
> _“It’s self-harm,” said Dr. Piers Steel, a professor of motivational
> psychology_

I'm in the unfortunate position of being a layman who disagrees with an
expert, but isn't it a bit inaccurate and confusing to call it "self-harm"?
Doesn't that term already have a specific meaning?

As I understand it, self-harm ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
harm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-harm)) is a behavior where someone
seeks out pain (such as by cutting themselves). It can be because focusing on
pain allows temporary escape from other thoughts, or maybe for other reasons,
but in any case the pain is something the person seeks out and is an essential
part of the process.

It seems like "self-destructive" might be a better term to use when talking
about procrastination. If I put off cleaning my bathroom, I'm avoiding
something I can't/won't face, and that is going to come with feelings of guilt
or shame, but I'm not seeking out that suffering as a tool for dealing with
something else. It's just a side-effect of the choice to avoid something.

Or, if it really is (a non-physical form of) self-harm, can someone explain
how? Are they saying the feeling of guilt over not cleaning my bathroom
alleviates the feelings of unpleasantness associated with having to scrub the
shower?

That doesn't seem right, but maybe there are two types of procrastination, a
"light" one where the task is just unpleasant and says nothing about you
(cleaning the shower) and a "serious" one where the task might reflect on you
(learning to do something you don't think you're capable of)? I could imagine
how self-harm might fit in with the "serious" form because maybe guilt over
not trying could serve a purpose distracting you from the more-unpleasant
feeling of doubt over whether you actually can do it.

~~~
ComputerGuru
The presumption here is that the task you are avoiding is - somehow - in your
best interests (directly or indirectly, e.g. going to the gym directly makes
you healthier while completing that report for your boss might not directly
help you but it is certainly in your best interest to have a job and not be
fired) or otherwise you wouldn't be doing it.

Not doing something that is good for yourself is doing something bad to
yourself, i.e. self harm. If it were phrased as "someone throwing a fit at
work and insulting everyone with the intention of getting themselves fired so
that they would no longer have a means of income," I think we can both agree
that going out of your way to not have a job (not just _this_ job) is
definitely self-harm. It's in the same vein.

~~~
adrianmonk
I'm trying to make a distinction between harmful (or self-destructive)
behavior and self-harm. As I understand it, "self-harm" is a term with a very
specific meaning that goes beyond making choices that lead to bad
consequences.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I guess I wasn't clear. I understand that, "self-harm" is a very specific
psychological term that encompasses activities like cutting and attempted
suicide.

I meant that certain non-physical, indirectly harmful activities could be
interpreted as falling under the category of self-harm while not meeting the
classical definition. As I mentioned, if someone _with the intention of
hurting themselves or causing theirself pain_ (and not with that just being a
side-effect/result) instigated a fight at work to get themselves fired and out
of a job, you don't have to squint too hard to see it in that light.

e.g. classic self-harm: someone feels like they don't deserve to be happy or
need to feel some physical pain to wake up or what have you, and engages in
cutting, directly bringing that harm to themselves.

Someone feels like a fraud (without having engaged in any deception or the
equivalent that would objectively result in others labeling them as such) and
decides that they don't deserve the job they have with its pay and benefits,
and so takes measures to make sure they are out of a job and a livelihood, and
end up homeless and eating out of trash bins. Self-harm, no?

Someone gets angry at a boss/colleague and can't restrain themselves from
starting a physical altercation and gets fired/loses their livelihood.. not so
much self-harm.

So it's a question of perspective.

------
tylerjwilk00
I wonder if procrastinating may be a healthy response to having too little
leisure time and being over committed to too many things.

We are evolved for more immediate concerns. The TPS report lacks the same
importance as catching dinner.

Unfortunately in the modern era the TPS report _is_ what you catch dinner
with.

What to do.

~~~
manicdee
Eat the rich.

Admit that our lifestyles are designed to drive the consumption based economy,
rather than to actually make life more enjoyable.

The Australian Aborigines has a stable, sustainable civilisation for tens of
thousands of years. European “civilisation” is set to make the world
uninhabitable within two thousand years of inventing the steam engine.

------
csomar
I have two objections:

1- It says we procrastinate against our better judgement. But isn't the
science gearing toward the fact that it is not the conscious brain that is
controlling our behavior and actions? In that case, you can't solve
procrastination by simply being aware of it.

2- Quoting from the article

> We really weren’t designed to think ahead into the further future because we
> needed to focus on providing for ourselves in the here and now.

Yet, every night I go to bed and I'm dreaming about a better future. Obviously
the scenarios I'm dreaming about can't be for tomorrow and are quite distant
in the future (better country, top job/career, traveling but mostly a hotter
girl with big/nice house).

~~~
moate
To point one: What's the objection here? You do something (like say, posting
on HN instead of driving home from work) instead of doing the thing that you
feel would be better for you. If you hadn't felt the 2nd option was better,
either in the moment or in retrospect, then you wouldn't feel you
procrastinated. You just did something. And the article isn't suggesting that
being aware of it fixes it, it's saying that it has more to do with anxiety or
other causes than simply not wanting to do something. It's trying to say WHY
you're on HN instead of driving home.

2- What does your example prove here? The human mind almost always prioritizes
immediate needs over future needs and has poor understanding of how to achieve
long term goals. This is very well understood by psychologists and
sociologists. It's part of why people find game theory so interesting. It's
why people act against their own self interests. Saying "I want things in the
future" doesn't GET you those things, so you haven't really proven that you're
great at planning a future.

------
nickjj
I normally don't read NYTimes articles but this one was pretty good with a
couple of useful external links.

But then they dropped this line:

"On the other side of the coin, Ms. Rubin also suggested that we make the
things we want to do as easy as possible for ourselves."

So what you're saying is I should tweak my vimrc file to make it easier to
write code instead of working on my next project, got it!

Jokes aside though, it's worth a read if you're afflicted by procrastination
and its related friends.

------
zemnmez
rather unsurprising that a psychologist describes procrastination as a
mismanagement of 'emotion' rather than a dysfunction of the dopaminergic
reward systems. as someone taking ADHD medication, i can tell you that
procrastination is fundamentally just a failure of dopamine management.

For some unlike me perhaps it is true that there is a 'one little trick' to
make your brain act rationally. I don't know, maybe it's possible via the
brain's sheer neuroplasticity to evolve a dopaminergic flaw from a
psychological failure or trauma.

But at the end of the day, procrastination is very much neurological, with a
fairly clear pathway and a chemical which is objectively known to drive it.

More people absolutely need to know procrastination has nothing to do with
self control, but psychological research like this will always appear to show
the issue stemming from a psychological issue when this is known to be
virtually always untrue. Treatment of ADHD with psychological approaches like
CBT have a nearly non statistically significant effect, but ADHD medication
has a 70%+ success rate.

~~~
jrochkind1
Is "treatment of ADHD" the same thing as "treatment of procrastination"? Are
you suggesting anyone who is displeased with a regular procrastination habit
has ADHD?

Are you recommending medication for anyone who is displeased with their
procrastination?

I don't think the OP is suggesting there is "one little trick", but if,
alternately, medication is in fact "one little trick" that worked for
everyone, that would probably be welcome news to everyone!

~~~
zemnmez
ADHD is a diagnosis based on a group of issues primarily owing to dopamine
management. ADHD at the end of the day, is just a word.

The way I see it, there's a spectrum of procrastination issues and those that
are explosive enough to be diagnosable get the ADHD label and medication. If
you have ADHD symptoms but they're not bad enough to warrant a diagnosis you
get nothing.

It's well known that ADHD medication is incredible for procrastination --
statistically speaking any student should be able to tell you that.

~~~
jrochkind1
So you are in fact recommending that anyone with procrastination problems take
medications prescribed for ADHD, if they can? (And that they should be able
to?) Any downsides in your opinion?

------
rb808
I've often found myself procrastinating when working on a project where I've
been thrown in not knowing enough and thought I could figure it all out. Often
the solution is to step back and learn the technology/library/tool first, then
I dont procrastinate any more and get the job done. I haven't seen this
explanation, but I suspect it occurs often.

~~~
adrianmonk
I think this is definitely valid and real, but there also is a danger of
pretending you're in this situation when you're not.

For example, suppose you have some electronic item you want to repair but
you're horrible at soldering, so you put it off because you don't want to face
the negative feelings of failing at soldering again or the negative feelings
of destroying that item you think you should have been able to repair. You
could get past this by watching some videos on soldering, getting some better
equipment, or practicing with a friend who's actually good at soldering. Once
you don't suck at soldering, the negative feelings around fixing your
electronic item are gone, and you can stop procrastinating. (And you can do it
faster and better.)

On the other hand, maybe you need to write a complicated and annoying SQL
query that is going to be tricky to get right, and you already know SQL, but
you go off on a huge tangent reading SQL documentation looking for a function
or trick that will make it easier when there really isn't one. Pretty soon
you're just learning about esoteric SQL functions that don't have anything to
do with your problem. But maybe one of them could if you read long enough, so
you keep reading and reading.

------
Data_Junkie
Self-harm in the sense that is causes you pain, but it is really just not
doing what others want even though you know that they will hurt you. It is
intellectually dishonest to to portray people not doing something that they
don't REALLY want to do as an issue with their brains and leave out the brains
causing the harm. Not self-harm, just not protecting the self.

------
agumonkey
meditation to slow down turmoil, and be able to reflect on your thoughts

sports to revive mental strength and thoroughness

life rhythm for efficiency

on a higher level: desire to deflect procrastination as a metalevel trick to
find pleasure in doing something depth first

------
User23
Is this why amphetamines make avoiding procrastination so much easier?

------
deadalus
It has everything to do with genes.

