This whole thing about character flaws and self control reminded me of the following passage from Raymond Smullyan's "This Book Needs No Title":<p><i>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?”</i><p>Pity he didn't expand on the last line, but I think deep introspection is required to understand what is really under our control
I find the article to be a bit misleading.<p>The title says that procrastination has "nothing to do with self-control", which is obviously an appealing sentiment.<p>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."<p>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.<p>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: <a href="https://solvingprocrastination.com/why-people-procrastinate/" rel="nofollow">https://solvingprocrastination.com/why-people-procrastinate/</a>
Sleeping has a <i>huge</i> 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]<p>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.<p>---<p>1: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501...</a>
The way I usually formulate these lines of thought is as follows:<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.”
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"<p>1. <a href="https://markmanson.net/self-discipline-youre-doing-it-wrong?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social-posts&utm_content=2019-02-08" rel="nofollow">https://markmanson.net/self-discipline-youre-doing-it-wrong?...</a><p>2. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8529755.Mark_Manson" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8529755.Mark_Manson</a>
<i>"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?"</i><p>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.
> 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.<p>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.<p>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.
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 <i>starting</i> 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.<p>Along with general procrastination and writer's block I also suffer from the closely related <i>coder's block</i>. 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
> 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.
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.<p>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.
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"?<p>I know I have. I added the <i>noprocrast</i> 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.
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):
<a href="https://medium.com/s/the-complete-guide-to-beating-procrastination/how-to-use-psychology-to-solve-the-procrastination-puzzle-6e6a56cdd535" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/s/the-complete-guide-to-beating-procrasti...</a>
So say you're a procrastinator. Do you?<p>a)read the article so you don't have to do xyz<p>b)not read the article because learning how to stop procrastinating feels like self sabotage<p>c)start the article but don't finish it because you have ADD from surfing the internet as a means of procrastinating<p>d)something else.<p>edit: e)skim the article and write an HN comment about it.
This makes me think of the book <i>Atomic Habits</i>, 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.<p>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 <i>that day</i> - 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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Paper is how I manage my time. It gives me positive habits and positive reinforcement.
I wrote something on a related topic recently: <a href="https://dimitarsimeonov.com/2019/02/13/how-people-turn-their-life-around" rel="nofollow">https://dimitarsimeonov.com/2019/02/13/how-people-turn-their...</a><p>"""<p>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.<p>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.<p>"""
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.
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.
> <i>“It’s self-harm,” said Dr. Piers Steel, a professor of motivational psychology</i><p>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?<p>As I understand it, self-harm (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-harm" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-harm</a>) 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.<p>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.<p>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?<p>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.
I wonder if procrastinating may be a healthy response to having too little leisure time and being over committed to too many things.<p>We are evolved for more immediate concerns. The TPS report lacks the same importance as catching dinner.<p>Unfortunately in the modern era the TPS report <i>is</i> what you catch dinner with.<p>What to do.
I have two objections:<p>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.<p>2- Quoting from the article<p>> 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.<p>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).
I normally don't read NYTimes articles but this one was pretty good with a couple of useful external links.<p>But then they dropped this line:<p>"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."<p>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!<p>Jokes aside though, it's worth a read if you're afflicted by procrastination and its related friends.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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.
meditation to slow down turmoil, and be able to reflect on your thoughts<p>sports to revive mental strength and thoroughness<p>life rhythm for efficiency<p>on a higher level: desire to deflect procrastination as a metalevel trick to find pleasure in doing something depth first