[acomar]

Maybe this is the wrong thread for this comment, but I'm wondering if I'm alone in this. Anyone else find they procrastinate for reasons another than a habitual need to check e.g. reddit/HN? I find for myself, it's very rarely that I'm procrastinating without any reason, but instead that I'm actively avoiding whatever it is I think I should be doing for any number of reasons.

The list includes:

    * I don't have a clear handle on what I should be doing  
    * I don't understand how to do whatever it is I should be doing  
    * I'm tired/fried and not able to think clearly  
    * There are way too many different things vying for my attention (too many things I should be doing)

And probably more that I'm not recalling at this moment. So this extension, at least for me, would be solving the wrong problem and sometimes even making it worse. Anyone have strategies for tackling/mitigating these problems?

[jlbribeiro]

I know your first 2 points too well.

Most people would advise you to, calmly, break the task at hand into small tasks/steps. Personally, my problem is that the tasks are too high level (maybe an epic), which makes them overwhelming. By breaking them into easy-to-do-steps that forces you to plan your solution (1st point) and understand the problem (2nd point). You should break them into SMART goals (you've probably heart about this concept already). By having a list of really really small items you get a feeling of progress every time you tick an item off the list; that progress should keep you going! Starting is the hardest part, there's some inertia to it; so make the item so small you'll have no excuse not to do it. Remember: if you still feel confused about an item/urged to procrastinate you probably didn't break it down enough.

The sensation of ticking off items is what should get you going; that's what gives you the sensation of progress and that enables the feedback loop. Physically ticking off the item (pen and paper) is even better. So actually write your list (on paper or digitally using Trello, Todoist, etc.), don't just "think it"; that's key.

Meditation is also good to sharpen your focus.

P.S.: I'm also a procrastinator; there are good days and there are bad days; there's no cure. This is the kind of thing that is managed.

[gtirloni]

I still couldn't find a method for the worst source of procrastination for me: not having a clear understanding of where a task fits in the global picture or end goal. That coupled with highly abstract tasks kills my productivity completely.

In all my jobs, I've tried to ask more and more questions but I have come to the conclusion that few people have an answer for that. I suspect my experience hasn't been great on that front.

On the other hand, when the why's are clear, I don't have any trouble working at full speed to accomplish that goal (and will often put way more hours than I should).

Just writing this reply made me think I'm also often more productive when what I'm working on will be used by others or it solves a pressing issue. If it's just a "nice to have" I will have trouble focusing (after I realize nobody cares about the results, until then I might be working super motivated and unaware).

[acomar]

> Most people would advise you to, calmly, break the task at hand into small tasks/steps.

Yea, this seems to be the biggest takeaway from what everyone is saying here. I've tried to do this in the past and found that I don't do a good job of managing the list -- at some point, I'll just forget to add things to it or mark things off when I'm done; it's easier to just do them, right? But you're right, this is the right answer, if for no other reason than that it forces me to organize my thoughts, something I've noticed I'm bad at.

> You should break them into SMART goals (you've probably heart about this concept already).

Yea, I think this is key. When I do write a list, it's usually too abstract or in way too large chunks. What I'm trying now: put those large things down at the start of the day, then break them down when I decide to tackle that 'project'. I shouldn't start working until I've made the effort to break things down into atomic steps.

> Physically ticking off the item (pen and paper) is even better.

You know, I've never tried this... I'll give it a shot and see if that goes better than a list in vim.

> Meditation is also good to sharpen your focus.

Exactly how I narrowed down the vague feeling of 'agh, too much to do' in the first place :)

[whiteandnerdy]

I had a similar experience, but I think I've cracked this now. For me the two significant changes were developing a friction-free tracking system, and motivating myself to use it reliably.

For the tracking system, I use Bullet Journalling. You might not need the full power of the bullet journal, but I'd recommend whatever system you do use has the following properties: * You have a 'backlog' to-do list and a 'daily' to-do list. * Every day you copy a subset of the backlog into your daily and cross it off the backlog. Tick things off the daily as you do them. * Daily items should take under an hour, or else you need to break them up into smaller tasks (or alternatively specify "two pomodoros of work on X" as an action) * Whenever you want to track something that doesn't have to be done today, add it to the backlog. * Rewrite your daily list every day. This penalises overcommitting. Moving stuff back to the backlog is allowed, as is dropping stuff. * Rewrite your backlog every month so you can garbage-collect stuff you no longer care about. * Use a hardbound journal to contain all your lists. Bits of paper get lost or messy, and computer tracking is much harder to stick to for some reason. (For me my tracking system has to be distinct from the place I do work, so can't be digital)

Motivation:

The thing that really worked for me here was operant conditioning. Every time you tick off a task, eat a small candy (like an M&M). Every day when you write out your dailies, eat a candy. For everything you want to train yourself to do, eat a candy when you do it. Big tasks get two or three candies.

It's kind of depressing that this is more effective than willpower, but it builds good associations and trains your brain to associate productivity with reward, promoting that dopamine kick. If candy isn't a motivator for you, substitute some other small reward - ideally something you don't indulge in otherwise - but make sure the reward comes immediately after the good behaviour or you won't get the reinforcement.

Hope that's helpful. Productivity tips are very individual, so I don't know whether this will work for you or not.

[redpanda_ua]

> a list in vim

I love your style though.

[criddell]

What type of meditation works well for you? Have you tried Calm or Headspace? Any opinions on that type of guidance?

[ivm]

Headspace is a classic Samadhi+Vipassana meditation wrapped into casual language. I used it a bit for a couple of years and it's a great intro into the practice before going guideless.

I also highly recommend "Mindfulness in plain English"[0], I wish I found it sooner.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-English-Bhante-Henepola-G...

[criddell]

Thanks for the link. That's exactly what I was hoping for.

Maybe if my mind was quieter, Amazon pricing the Kindle version higher than the print version wouldn't enragiate me so much. :)

[hyperbovine]

You forgot the #1 reason:

    * I don't want to do what it is I should be doing.

:)

[acomar]

I've gotten much better about that one and making a call about whether it really needs to happen or if it's just not happening. Takes a lot of the pressure off when I'm making an explicit choice.

But you're right, that used to be #1 by a huge margin for me.

[Exuma]

Very astute... I agree.

I NEVER procrastinate if I am on a roll and have a strong grasp of things, say 80% of a project.

Theres always that 20% though, maybe 10% that can be extremely challenging when you're right at that extremely complicated bit and you just spaz out and just open Facebook, reddit compulsively until you can get your footing.

I've been doing this the last 3 days :(

[Klathmon]

IMO it's very similar to what I've seen with writers.

There will be literally days sometimes where I just can't get past a "block". Generally they come at points where I need to start something new, or work on the next "phase" of a project, and I just can't get started.

But then something will "click" and i'll be hyperfocused on it, and before I know what happened it's 7pm and even if I stop now my mind won't let me stop thinking about it. I'll lay in bed thinking about it, i'll dream about the project, i'll be excited to get to work in the morning to do what my mind was toying with the night before.

And then i'll start to "clean up", start to dot all the i's and cross all the t's and i'll get it to a point where that part is "done", then i'm back at square one.

[Kluny]

Ahahahah yep, this is a very familiar feeling. Including the part where you're on reddit for three days.

[reitanqild]

My possible #1:

I am afraid that I will will be interrupted before I get anything done.

If this is the case: don't work from home unless you live alone or with understanding people, put headset on, turn phone off (or only sound for trusted allies) etc.

Make trusted allies, but be careful: I recommend framing it as a matter of being more effective and reaching flow state quicker instead of framing it as impediment.

Edit:

As others have mentioned: pomodoro. I'd also like to mention the autofocus system by Mark Forster.

[ChuckMcM]

Absolutely, I can check all of those boxes. The worst one is #4 for me, because when I work on task A I realize that I am not working on task B, C, or D. Of course it is somehow less bad to work on nothing rather than favor one task over the other :-). That said, there are many techiques for pulling through these issues. For #4 I set a timer and plan to work on task A for only 1 hour or what ever, and give myself permission to work on something else in hour 2 etc. But at the same time if I feel bad I'm not working on other tasks I know that I'll have used up my time for this task soon enough.

Self inflicted mind games to be sure but they can be helpful.

[oceanghost]

You're describing what ADD/ADHD+OCD feels like. I recently realized I had a problem and went to a psychiatrist. The meds they prescribed helped quite a bit.

[acomar]

I doubt we're talking about the same things. I generally don't have any trouble focusing -- long lectures/tests, projects when I find my flow, etc.. I tend to prefer reading entire books in a single sitting, for example. In fact, if anything my problem goes the other way -- I get way too engrossed and have trouble breaking away.

What I'm talking about here is a tendency I've noticed in myself to put off starting things sometimes but not others. When I do put things off, I've noticed they fall into the above buckets. I've gotten much better about this over time as I've learned to manage it.

[cutety]

I just want to say that, ADHD is misnamed disorder. I have it, and thought for most of my life I couldn't because although I do have trouble with focus when it comes to boring stuff, if I found something interesting it was all I could focus on.

ADHD is just the misregulation of focus, people with ADHD get Hyperfocus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocus) and that sounds exactly like what you are describing.

If you're remotely, or anyone else, about ADHD Dr. Russel A Barkley's Essential Ideas Everyone Needs to Know is a great watch: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzBixSjmbc8eFl6UX5_wW...

And P.S. the guy was correct, what you described above is exactly how I feel when I procrastinate. ;)

[acomar]

Thanks for this, looking through the wikipedia page on Adult ADHD hits a little close to home. Having never been someone prone to hyperactivity, or lacking in attention once it's set to something, I never really thought to look into the disorder. The sleep onset insomnia and disorganization seem especially relevant personally.

[prashnts]

Agreed. I had my diagnosis little over a year and half ago, and I know all of these too well. In any case though, without a professional evaluation, one can never be sure.

[cel1ne]

> * I don't have a clear handle on what I should be doing

Just start anywhere, maybe with routine/maintenance work. The idea and the clearer understanding will come a while after you started.

I guarantee you'll feel a lot better, knowing that you started.

> * I don't understand how to do whatever it is I should be doing

Same as above, just start without thinking about it. Postpone every critique of your work ("Is this ok?" "Will this be refactored"? "Is this necessary?") for at least 15 minutes and just produce something. If it's spell-checking code-comments, then it's spell-checking code-comments.

> * I'm tired/fried and not able to think clearly

Truth is you don't have to be wide awake to be able to work. It's perfectly possible and ok to work when you are tired or otherwise not feeling on top. Tell that to your immortal soul.

> * There are way too many different things vying for my attention (too many things I should be doing)

I have Bruce Lee's quote on a little paper card on my desk for this: "It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential."

And keep in mind: Hating yourself for procrastinating is really a hidden way of procrastinating.

[douche]

The tired/fried and not able to think clearly is I think the most insidious. Some days, you just don't have the capacity to delve into the mass of spaghetti shitshow that you know you need to rectify and straighten it out during the 9-5 business hours. Maybe those hours of clarity strike at 2 AM, or 8 PM, or whatever, and you can work through it then when your brain is in the right mode in a couple of hours, rather than fiddle-fucking around through it for days or weeks of the normal, butts-in-the-seats business hours.

Having to still be there and try to force yourself to be kind of useful when you just don't have it, is pretty demoralizing, and engenders a resentment and apathy towards exploiting those "off-work" hours when inspiration does strike.

[kweinber]

Great advice given years ago, "When you don't know what you want, what you want is sleep."

[sdl]

"When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep." -Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

[markbnj]

Absolutely true for me as well. Often what feels on the outside like procrastination is, I think, just providing idle time for my brain to work out a way forward.

[orthoganol]

You could try the "Pomodoro", a timer that has you focus for 25 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of relaxing or distracting yourself. Repeat. It assumes you are actively avoiding your work, and apparently it is a type of brain trick that has some support in brain science. It's advocated in the "Learning how to Learn" Coursera course, which uses brain science to teach learning strategies.

[wincy]

I recently stopped taking Adderall as therapy for ADHD. While it made me excellent at learning, the toll it took on my ability to feel pleasure and do anything not work related made it a double edged sword. Pomodoro has really helped me avoid distraction despite being much more distraction prone than I was on stimulant medication.

[supersan]

My main reason for procrastination is that I'm mostly undecided on what to do next. This looks urgent but this is more important trap.

So far I've solved it by planning things in an excel sheet with all the work I have to do as atomic tasks with the next column I can mark as (pending, done, defer, much later) using which the excel sheet automatically sorts my tasks.

[vanderreeah]

A couple of points that don't seem to have been mentioned (hopefully because you're all better-adjusted than I am):

1) Fear: I am scared of mess, of failure, of feeling incompetent or overwhelmed. I will therefore avoid tackling a task because that way I avoid the feelings of inadequacy, disappointment, or failure in the face of an incomplete result. In other words, I want everything to be perfect right away, and since that can never be the case, things don't get done.

2) I believe there is simply something (which I am in no position to specify) addictive in internet-based fora. Whether it's the bite-sized demands on our attention, a voyeuristic synapse being tickled by viewing the opinions, arguments, etc. of others, or the illusion of connectedness - both of things to each other and of us to the world - the internet in itself (for me at least) encourages procrastination.

[V-2]

I fear that once I start a task, it will turn out it's more complex than I thought, and therefore unpleasant (the bad scenario). So it's kind of like your point #2, but indirectly.

[verroq]

    * I've hit a hard problem and not sure what to do

[ianlevesque]

1. Sleep (if possible).

2. Make a to do list for the project, stream of consciousness style - then put it in order after everything you can think of is already on the page/editor. Breaking it down helps more than you'd think, try it.

[thewhitetulip]

I wrote a blogpost a few months ago on this. I was facing the exact same problems, http://mytechbooks.blogspot.in/2016/04/the-everything-syndro...

If it helps :-)

EDIT: i also wrote an app for it! In Go, a self hosted webapp which has a cli version to interact with the server, it might not be the trello killer, but it works for me

link: http://github.com/thewhitetulip/Tasks

[bobbles]

For me it's "This task needs time to process, but not enough time to focus on and complete another task, so let me check something. Oh crap its been an hour"

[dalai]

My #1 reason is that I don't have enough to do.

I've complained about it so often to colleagues and supervisor it has become a running joke, but nothing changed. Previous job was even worse. I've been doing 2-3 weeks of work, followed by 1-2 months (if not more) of just sitting there, even when I have 2 or 3 projects in parallel. Somehow everyone else seems to be busy all the time.

[namaemuta]

If your job is done and they don't assign you new tasks there are a few things you could consider:

- Find something to improve

- Work in side projects of your own

- Find new stuff to learn / practice

[dalai]

I know, but somehow the motivation is not there, especially with side projects. I started a couple that aimed at improving our internal stuff, but they are sitting there. Everybody is positive until it is time to deploy/use something new. I did manage to read quite a bit and try new things the last couple of years though.

In the end, it is always lack of motivation I guess.

[sjnair96]

I haven't read any other replies or comments on this post, but for me this is what it all boils down to -- outcome anxiety. If I cannot be 100% certain of the outcome, I have an exaggerated feeling of uncertainty and my mind performs wholly unnecessary (given the situation) risk aversion.

[drcode]

It doesn't work for everyone, but based on your symptoms you are the target audience for the classic book "Getting Things Done"- That book is all about getting rid of those "fuzzy" tasks that are ill-defined and leading to poor productivity.

[amelius]

Another reason could be you're waiting for that compile to finish, that simulation to complete, or that neural net to be trained, so you start slacking, and you forget to get back to work when that compute job is finished.

[Dowwie]

You are not alone, friend. I share the struggle and for the same reasons. Taking the next step is sometimes harder than taking the 10 that follow. Self Management is a lifelong process.

[neximo64]

Perhaps it is those things, but then I end up taking too long to get back to whatever I should be doing

[SeriousM]

My number one: have to wait until my build / test execution is done

[MaulingMonkey]

I try to burn the candle from all five ends.

> * I'm tired/fried and not able to think clearly

Keep up with your health - eating well, exercise, and sleep are all things I could do better at myself. Taking some breaks, too, can help - a walk to the coffee shop (I don't even drink coffee!) can clear the mind, or give you a chance to chat with coworkers (if you invite them along). Sometimes they'll bring a fresh perspective to your problem, and sometimes their problems give you a break from your own.

While I hate exercising for the sake of it, I've gotten pretty good at walking to lunch - especially if it's with coworkers.

> * ...

A lot of these seem to fall under a general category of task management. Breaking things down into smaller steps, prioritizing - or just plain picking one specific thing to work on - getting external feedback or prototyping... lots of stuff out there, different things seem to work for different people.

Most recently, I'm thinking of going back to TDD just for the sake of really helping push the "break things down into smaller steps" angle. Failing tests? Pick the one on the top of the list and fix it. No failing tests? Add a test that fails. Indecision paralysis for what test to add? Make even a poor choice if necessary, and refactor later. Perfection is the enemy of good enough.

> Anyone else find they procrastinate for reasons another than a habitual need to check e.g. reddit/HN?

It's usually not even that I want to check reddit/HN, it's that I'm unmotivated to work on whatever I'm procrastinating on. At work, this isn't a problem - I'm motivated to earn my pay, contribute to the team, generally get things done and kick ass. The problem for me is at home.

I've read a ton about motivation for tips and tricks with limited success. Although I have had some luck with the concept of "precommitment" as a form of generating extrinsic motivation - in the form of weekly bets with coworkers, for things we'd plan to do over the weekend. Fail to meet your commitments? Owe your buddy a coffee ;). Bonus points: It really forces me to realize just how bad I am at task duration estimation. Fortunately (?) so are my coworkers.

I've also noticed that, as a means of distraction, for me the internet seems to be particularly insidious. It's an infinite stream of content, where there's always something new. I've had some minor success with playing games instead. More enjoyable, and much more finite - both in the sense that games can be completed, and in the sense that I'll eventually get properly bored, at which point I'll be much more motivated to do something productive.