[loneranger_11x]

Spot on argument.

Especially valuable piece of advice is to find 25-30 minutes of uninterrupted time and aim to knock out one small task. Even if you didn't finish it, note down progress and next steps. Go at it again in the next slot.

Taking notes will both help you track progress and give you a sense of movement. It will also make sure that you can easily regain context in the next attempt.

[bru3s]

I agree wholeheartedly. I've been stuck in a rut of procrastination for the last several years, during which I hardly ever started side projects or experiments due to tired old excuses such as "I simply don't have enough time", "This would at least need x hours per day", etc.

When I eventually tried to start something, it would inevitably be delayed by other daily things to carry out (work, family, other life related stuff), so not taking notes would always result in "" have no idea what I was aiming for last time".

Add to that a fairly (un)healthy dose of perfectionism coming from working in the same field, and you have a recipe for years wasted on complete inactivity.

Another fiend of this kind, friendly to procrastination, is the inability to decide what to actually work on, especially when you have a lot of interests. Then the question becomes "I have hours available to work on something, but I cannot pull the trigger on any of those things that interest me", so back again to square 1 with year wasted on indecisiveness with nothing to show for it.

[thoughtFrame]

For both of your cases, the "25 to 30 minutes task" trick won't work at all. For a case that persists for years, what I've learned is that it's either real ADHD, or some emotional problem around the topic. For me, it was 100% an emotional problem, though I do have a bit of a scattered mind, but I can focus it, whereas I've seen people with serious ADHD who can't do it at all and need meds (among other things).

For example, having many interests is fine, but when it comes to choice, what keeps you stuck can be something like a complete fear of regretting the choice. Words like lazyness or perfectionism are usually the sheep's clothing that the wolf (emotion) is wearing. How can some organizational trick from a blog post help here?

I've read lots of self-help books (among other things) when I faced these issues a few years ago, and there's a curious commonality: it's all small tricks developed for the author's personal experience. But what I've noticed is that there are two kinds of people in these situations: the ones who don't a solution and get out of the problem (which is the group that happens to include most of those authors), and the ones who stay stuck looking for an answer, a quick solution, a trick to escape. The first type can get out by using something like the GTD book. That means their problem really was that they lacked some crucial bit of organizational knowledge to unlock their path towards whatever they want to do.

But the latter type (the ones who're stuck in the cycle) need to let something go rather than accumulate new things (in this case, tips and tricks about Getting Things Done).

There's the DIY path (hard, involves journaling, introspection, noticing and categorizing your emotions, reading Jung, reading ancient texts like the Bhagavad Gita) and the psychologist path (you need to find a good paychologist who doesn't just ask "and what do you feel about it?" over and over but actually takes an active role in your situation and your circumstances)

[bru3s]

> For both of your cases, the "25 to 30 minutes task" trick won't work at all. For a case that persists for years, what I've learned is that it's either real ADHD, or some emotional problem around the topic. For me, it was 100% an emotional problem, though I do have a bit of a scattered mind, but I can focus it, whereas I've seen people with serious ADHD who can't do it at all and need meds (among other things).

I'm not so sure about that. Mind you, I had already been thinking that putting some effort in limited amount of time instead of doing nothing at all before reading the article, so if anything the latter gave me some more confidence that it's actually a solution that at least worked for someone

> But the latter type (the ones who're stuck in the cycle) need to let something go rather than accumulate new things (in this case, tips and tricks about Getting Things Done). On that front, I thing you're perfectly right.

> There's the DIY path (hard, involves journaling, introspection, noticing and categorizing your emotions, reading Jung, reading ancient texts like the Bhagavad Gita) and the psychologist path (you need to find a good paychologist who doesn't just ask "and what do you feel about it?" over and over but actually takes an active role in your situation and your circumstances)

Admittedly I don't feel 100% sure that what you just wrote doesn't apply to me, so would you mind expanding a bit more on the details? Why would procrastination in a case like mine be linked to emotional issue? Actually even better, was it that for you? In which way did this link exist, and how did you find out? How did you managed to solve it, if you solved it at all?

Thanks for replying

[thoughtFrame]

(there's a typo in my post: "the ones who don't a solution and get out of the problem" ought to be "the ones who find a solution and get out of the problem")

> I'm not so sure about that. Mind you, I had already been thinking that putting some effort in limited amount of time instead of doing nothing at all before reading the article, so if anything the latter gave me some more confidence that it's actually a solution that at least worked for someone

Yes, absolutely, but for the kind of people I'm talking about, it's like telling an overweight person to "just go to the gym, bro". It works, yeah, but there's some who do buckle up and go to the gym, and there's others who stay stuck in a cycle and don't take any steps out even thought from the outside, what they have to do is obvious (for example, some cope with stress or anxiety by eating. How can they become healthier without tackling the root of the issue, which is the source of the stress/anxiety? This is what I mean by things having emotional causes) For ADHD, you needn't look too far. There's a top comment in this thread about someone who spent 40 years with these issues until they got actual help. Once the root is identified (diagnosed) then the difficulty in dealing with the problem goes down.

------------------

> Actually even better, was it that for you?

It's good that you ask this, because I don't know your situation. As for me, I basically tried to exhaust the possibilities by reading self help books, then moving into philosophy (mostly eastern) and then moving into psychology (via Jung's books, and Alok Kanojia's youtube videos). No tip or trick helped me, and intellectually, I knew what the right answer was all along (an equivalent of "just go to the gym"). But that still didn't translate to action, which surprised me. In the end, I was forced to leave my overly intellectual/rational view of the world, and delve into what Jung called Eros, a contrast of Logos. But don't be distracted by the name. Perhaps it's better to talk about "intelligence quotient" (IQ) and "emotional quotient" (EQ). My underdeveloped EQ was causing me quite a bit of problems, because I wasn't aware of my emotions, of what I was feeling, of why I moved towards some things and not towards others. EQ is related to motivation, among other things. That's where what I wrote in the DIY path comes in. It took me a year of work. And it taught me a very interesting meta-lesson: I noticed in hindsight the amount of effort that I had put into this problem. It made me feel so desperate that I spent hours and hours going through books, taking notes every day, and learning a lot. But for the areas that really mattered to me, I had been led away. The lesson is that the more intellectually important something is to me, the harder it becomes to deal with it. This can manifest as perfectionisn. For example, I don't care at all about how my books are arranged in my bookshelf. So I place them as they fit. But if I care a lot about organization, I may keep them in boxes for years while I fret over the best way to implement the Dewey system for my 1000+ books and also planning (but not writing!) an app to scan my books into a local database and so on. (What do I mean by "intellectually important"? It's whatever we aren't led to by our emotions yet still matters to us. When I was led by the emotion of despair, I studied ceaselessly to get rid of it. But when I think about wanting to do something without a strong emotion backing it, it's harder to jump into it without forcing yourself)

So I care about a lot of things, and I care a lot. Also, I want to work on everything. So my inaction here was because I was scared of the possibility of letting go of the others if I dedicate myself to a few things, and truly focused on them, devoting my time and energy to that endeavour.

That's what annoyed me when I saw others, who spent years on making their passion project (whether a game, a set of paintings, a program or a tool to help others, a web novel they self-published, or whatever else)... And I knew what I had to do. Do what they did but for what I care about, for my ideas that I feel so strongly about. And I wasn't doing it. It's fucking annoying, like trying to lift your hand (which you know works perfectly) but you can't.

As for your case, only you can find out. The first link that therapists will try to find inside you is trauma, because that kind of stuff has far-reaching consequences on everything in your life, including motivation. But it's not always trauma, so don't think that there must have been something suppressed inside you or whatever.

For example, I had a lot of problems from having been a "gifted kid", being treated like I'm super smart and whatnot. That pushed me away from hard work and from things that weren't immediately easy, and that a big root cause. But it wasn't a trauma of any kind - I had a normal childhood

About my progress... I'm working on it and getting much better. I recently passed a big exam, and I'm honing some of my skills, putting in the hard work.

Good luck on your path

[dboreham]

Try viewing this as "I'm so effective at doing things that other people want me to do way more things than I have time for".

[sanderjd]

Honestly, I really don't relate to this.

I don't have tasks I can do in 25 or 30 minutes, except for the exact kind of "marking messages read" tasks that leave me feeling empty at the end of the day.

> Even if you didn't finish it, note down progress and next steps. Go at it again in the next slot.

For me, these notes would mostly be "spent 25 minutes rebuilding context, got pulled away" over and over again.

I think there are some good techniques in this article. Taking notes is good.

But I don't think embracing the chaos is the way to go, I think being a lot more proactive and firm about giving yourself the time you need to focus and do high quality work is the better approach.

If every day is becoming a mess, start by figuring out how to fix that.

[LoganDark]

This is part of my issue, too. Not having no things to do in a short amount of time, but knowing that I don't have time, preventing me from starting. A lot of people have the ability to just dive in regardless of how much time they foresee having. I don't. I need to have time in order to feel safe starting anything.

In the hours preceding something like a doctor's appointment, I can't do anything. Anything I start will be interrupted by the appointment, so I can't even try.

[adadadadadad]

Having endless uninterrupted time surprisingly doesn’t help either. “I cant start because the weekend is in 4 days”.

Some of my most productive times have actually been sporadic bursts before appointments mainly for annoying tasks. The fact that you don’t have enough time seems to break the perfectionism blocker “I don’t have enough time so I’ll do a rush job of whatever I can knowing it will not be completed” and also avoids the self-disappointment pressure that would come from “I have plenty of time now but I still can’t work so I will never get it done”. It’s a time for building momentum. And it’s not like you are running away from the task purposely to procrastinate…it’s that you have no choice.

It’s like how some people are calm and productive when everything is in chaos, because the chaos makes it obvious exactly what needs to be done and no one is judging how it’s done they just need it resolved and you will be a hero.

[dboreham]

This is just how the brain works. People who claim they can do a hard focused task in 20 min chunks are faking it. The article is trying to say I think "don't worry about that, because on average you will have some uninterrupted stretches in which to do the hard task, but right now get some simple shit done because that needs done too".

[dboreham]

I didn't read it as embrace the chaos, rather to not fixate on the perfect non-chaotic day that's coming (it isn't). Instead adopt a "continuous improvement" stance where any little deviation from total chaos is a win. Iterate that process. Basically the same thing as continuous delivery: start delivering a crappy thing and progressively fix issues / add features until it's done.

[adadadadadad]

Sometimes I said to myself: just spend 2 mins on this side project and get as much done as you can. Surely I can do as little as 2 mins regardless of where it gets me.

Yet I simply can’t. It’s a total mind fu*k.

Yet we all do this all the time. Maybe someone has always wanted to learn some language, and then they’ve never spent even a few minutes starting.