Ask HN: How do you fight procrastination?
I often find myself with piles of work to do and many projects to complete but yet distracted by social media, investigating new technologies, and other less important tasks. I'm sure many of you are the same way so my question is how how do you buckle down and start working? And I don't mean simple technical solutions like resolving https://twitter.com to localhost but instead strengthening your mental resolve. What have you tried? What are your recommendations?
77 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadI often fall victim to the distractions of the inernetz; email, twitter, HN, etc...
That being said, I have found that the best way to stop procrastinating is to set goals with hard and fast deadlines. Nobody is going to accomplish those goals on-time except for me. If they are missed, I only have myself to blame. For me this is a great motivator to get things done during my waking hours.
I have an extremely huge and looming deadline approaching in the next couple of weeks, and like patio11 said in a comment earlier today, I am efficient because I have to be [1].
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1189284
[edit] found link to patio11's comment
[edit2] I also use a "Legal Pad Computer" to manage my TODO list. Making sure the list doesn't overflow to more than one page is another good motivator. I wrote a more extensive post about the concept here: http://bootstrapd.me/?p=62
The secret, though, is to solve it from scratch each time. If you're really having trouble concentrating, do it in a new language (COBOL - seriously, this will keep you up at night).
Some examples of my problem list: recursive function to show classified ads; FSM for reading old-style INI files; simplest possible chat protocol, either client or server
I'm no psychologist, but I suspect that, once you get used to doing this kind of thing, it works a bit like self-hypnosis. Just create problems that you would find interesting.
So what I did was get a simple task management tool (I use RTM) and started off by just setting 2 tasks per day.
It's only 2 tasks, anyone can accomplish 2 tasks in a day.
Soon after I got accustomed to it, and I simply ramped it up, first 3 tasks, then 4... very easy.
After I got used to the idea of accomplishing things often, then I worried about efficiency, but the secret is to just get started.
Seriously, when I really need to concentrate, I try to place myself in environments where the temptations are minimized. Turn off the wifi if I don't actually need it and put on headphones with mild background music and focus on the work at hand. It is no cure, but it helps me.
This is the WoWification of life for me: the thing about dragonslaying is that you're not spending 720 hours to be able to slay the dragon. You spent 30 minutes rescuing this one village and then 2 hours pillaging this one dungeon and then 5 minutes finding this one slipper and... whoa, you just killed a dragon. And then it turns out that killing the dragon was, itself, just one more small goal.
Your business, or your other arbitrary goal with real meaning to it, is a lot like WoW. It has projects rather than raids, milestones rather than achievements, and A/B tests rather than quests, but you can break it down into arbitrarily fine units and conquer them one at a time.
I don't completely WoWify my business just because I think it would be frighteningly successful at manipulating my monkey brain, to the exclusion of other things of importance to me.
Other things that help me: having routines, social support via HN & etc (here we go with WoW again: sure, you could quit, but what would your guildmates say?), structuring my business such that almost all deadlines are flexible (I know that shouldn't work, but it does for me), and having a life away from the computer.
In fact, WoW appears to be very addicting, to an extent you usually don't want to have in a game. (Unless, of course, you are the one who sells the game.)
However, for the work you consider to be important, this is exactly the kind of addiction you want. In that regard, we can learn a lot from WoW. I'm sure they have more "tricks" than just splitting big tasks into smaller ones. A study about that topic would be very interesting.
For example, the dishes. I hate doing them. And I don't mind a few days of accumulation of dirty dished. So, I don't beat myself up trying to wash them every day. It takes time to wash dishes. Time I could better spend doing something else.
My solution. Wait until there are enough dishes to take a couple of hours to wash them, then I listen to an audio book while washing the dishes. I call this consolidating the work-load, which allots me time to listen to audio books. Saves water, too.
I have a lot of systems for various things. It's kind of fun, refining these tricks.
Great advice though.
1. I create "Today's list". This is little different than "To-do" list. Today's list contains tasks that I want to finish today - with each task assigned some deadline. Tasks are quite detail tasks - which takes 1-2 hrs. Like breakdown to features, bugs, reading chapter, etc.
2. I don't sit for long in front of computer in one stretch. I drink lot of water, so generally have to take breaks quite often. During that break (from computer) I talk to myself 2 things - "1. You're doing good - push more. 2. Now the next thing I want to do is _______."
3. Keep the browser/chat window closed if it's not required.
4. Even if I start reading HN/Twitter - I don't read everything. I know my time limits, I know things I want to build, so I know I cannot spend lot of time in consuming information. So just browse headlines, don't click every link. If headline is compelling, or source is trusted, then click it.
5. Keep deadlines - have pressure, and tell your deadlines to someone - friend, wife, colleague. Be answerable to someone. This trick worked quite often for me.
No, seriously: I have more important things to do, like figuring out how to pay my rent (and hopefully make 6-7 figures) without having to take a soul-crushing job at a gigantic company, again.
Maybe you need a better job. Maybe you need a better reason to do the important things. Maybe the 'important things' really aren't, in which case you need to come up with a list of genuinely important things to do.
Maybe you should see a therapist. I dunno; at least those people are theoretically well-qualified to talk about this stuff. Ask me about about beer, F/stops, Objective C or Ruby on Rails, and I'm your guy. The rest of it is a big mystery to me.
Good luck, though.
You do spend your spare time answering them, though... interesting.
YMMV, especially with really difficult or irritating tasks. It's all about overcoming the barrier of entry, be it due to a lack of experience, interest, or value.
It doesn't matter whether you are 2, 3 or 4 people. And it also doesn't matter whether you meet with a co-founder or a customer. It helps to meet in RL, but sometimes a plain phone call can be sufficient, too.
Also, learning how to suffer through really painful exercise has improved my ability to focus at work.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/1sm/akrasia_tactics_review/
Prioritize your list of things to do. That way you only have 1 thing to do next. It may seem daunting to have a pile, but if you line everything up in a neat row, you can only see 1 thing to do until it is finished.
A good way to eliminate things from your immediate workload is to only do things that will make your life more efficient. Some projects are fun but will not make it easier to get more things done later.
If you have a unifying reason for completing a series of projects, that can help inspire you- especially, if it is a great reason. I think I read somewhere that Stravinsky said you have to force yourself to be inspired. . .
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9781576754221/ch00 http://www.amazon.com/That-Frog-Great-Ways-Procrastinating/d...
But when I am working on my own thing, setting my own goals, with little interaction, I tend to get easily distracted and start my things I don't finish.
So from now on, unless I'm working on something I'm passionate about, I'll find the right team first, before even deciding what to work on.
That being said, willpower is a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. Practice willpower whenever you can.. for example, try not zipping up your jacket when it's cold. (I'm talking about mental-discomfort cold, not hypothermia-cold.)
My friends are all amazed at my willpower at things like dieting, and the truth is I just build willpower by practicing on the little things.
In conclusion, as Eckhart Tolle says, when used correctly, the mind is a powerful tool. Otherwise, your mind uses you.
Since then I've changed a few things. Here is what I am doing now:
1) Make a list of what I want to do tomorrow before going to bed.
2) Write down what I am doing during the day on a time sheet of one hour blocks. I was using 30 minute blocks initially but got sick of it.
3) Try and do hard stuff first (coding) and easier stuff after (everything else). I try and start work as soon as I get up as well.
4) Disconnect the internet. I physically unplug the cable. My current work allows me to mostly get away with this and I only go online about twice a week.
Since my previous comment I'm now working for myself on my startup too. I've found a few additiuonal tricks to cope with being on my own:
5) Go outside every day. I have to make a conscious effort to do this or I end up staying inside sitting at my computer for a week at a time. I normally just go for a walk around the park, or sometimes arrange to meet a friend for a coffee etc.
6) Pretend I am only going to do four hours coding per day. If I sit down at the computer at 8.00AM thinking "I'll stop at noon and go for a bike ride" then I have much less difficulty in getting started. I almost always end up spending more time coding than this once I get started though, because I hate leaving something unfinished.
Focus, discipline & strategy. You have to focus on getting your tasks done. Be disciplined in not being unintentionally distracted and plan a strategy to avoid or discourage distractions.
- Focus by planing exactly what you need to achieve in a given time.
- discipline your self by sticking at the required task
- I plan thinking tasks in the morning, with short breaks. then in the afternoon more unstructured tasks.
I also keep 2 browsers open for instance if I'm working. One for work, the other for distraction. Then avoid looking at the distraction browser. Keep posting, reading and non work activities to a minimum by scheduling time wasters for short periods.
Another way is to optimize away loops. The first example that pops ups is that I was at one point manually visiting >20 news-sites, webcomics and blogs, and when I'd reached the last one, I started checking if the other ones had updated while I was reading. RSS saved me from most of that. Now if I could only drop reddit and hackernews ;)
Oh, and this is the home page firefox shows when I open it: http://phylab.mtu.edu/~nckelley/Focus/