alt Hacker NewsProductive Procrastination
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I have a few tricks for handling procrastination that are in this ballpark:
1. When I see myself wanting to procrastinate, I ask myself 'If I follow this feeling, will it increase my power (i.e. capacity/agency/utility) or decrease it?'. Then I have a dialogue with myself: Nope, let's refocus, maybe try reading things out loud or draw a diagram or some other perspective change OR Yeah, I should stop for now, do something else, as long as that increases my power.
2. I observed that usually procrastination really is tied to novelty, quite similar with how it's presented in the article so I did this thing: instead of going on YouTube or games I started typing exercises online. After some time, I realised that I could get better at typing and get some extra-novelty by typing an existing book! So I have a Tampermonkey script that, whenever I try to go on a random typing website, redirects me to a website where I can type books (I could push it as a gist if anyone's interested). It stores in Local Storage what page I reached and from where I left them of. I got to read On the Origin of Species this way and now I type around 100 WPM from 80 WPM.
The article identifies novelty and avoidance as separate drivers, but they're one mechanism viewed from two angles. The productive side tasks aren't just novel. They're safe. They generate evidence of competence without risking a verdict on the thing that actually matters.
The temporal discounting data is the most interesting part because it reveals something the article doesn't quite name: the older a task gets, the more it shifts from "work I'm choosing to do" to "work I should have already done." That transforms its emotional signature from opportunity to obligation, and obligations trigger avoidance regardless of whether you enjoy the underlying work.
The Zeigarnik point works against its own framing too. Multiple productive side projects create multiple open loops, all competing for the same working memory as the main task. The "productive" procrastination isn't just avoiding the main task. It's actively fragmenting the attention budget that the main task needs.
I think novelty-seeking is a symptom rather than cause of procrastination.
If you're in an impulsive mode, that's what causes procrastination. Being impulsive will obviously lead to novelty seeking.
Here's how I model the action loop (image at the top): https://wisedayplanner.com/blog/action-loop-impulsive-vs-eff...
Sometimes procrastination means I’m not even suppose to do it. Maybe I just overheard an idea that sounded something “I should do” but there is nothing more to it.
How I hack this: I say to myself “I’m never going to do it” and there is an instant feeling if that statement is true or not. Then I either start it right away or let it go.
I believe everyone has a different strategy for this, so here’s mine in case it’s useful to someone:
I noticed that when I procrastinate, it still weighs on my mind, often more (cumulatively over time) than the actual discomfort of doing the task in the end. Now whenever I have the chance and enough mental energy, I attack the task immediately, so I don’t have to worry about it. Basically I've trained myself to want to avoid procrastination-induced stress. It only works if I have enough mental energy for the task tho.
The second trick I use, for bigger or more (perceived) challenging things, is saying to myself I’ll just start it and get it rolling today, so I don’t feel bad about completely avoiding it. Sometimes, I get carried away and just complete it, but even if not, it’s still easier to pick it up (a short while later) - a win in any case.
I hate that in our modern world, we are obsessed with being "productive". Why is this important? Why do we punish ourselves for being "unproductive"? Maybe we should try and spend as much of our time in things that are unproductive or unquantifiable as possible. Is having a relaxing afternoon the beach "productive"?
We've lost our ability to just "be". We must always "do". A sad state of affairs.
The whole of it seems more a question of an easily distracted mind. For one side because caveman brain looks away and does not adress the negative emotion , from the other because it's easily diverted from new shiny object. It's a question of effectively polish focus.
Budhist monks would simply do a mandala for the sake of it. Then they destroy it afterward, the whole purpose is to get some reps training focus.
Great article, especially appreciated the graphs. The idea of "keep adding novelty" is probably what separated my successful long term projects from the unsuccessful ones.
I previously attributed that to having lots of variety and freedom, but the consequence of those factors was indeed novelty.
I want to mention Neil Fiore's excellent book The Now Habit, which is a practical manual on overcoming procrastination. The core thesis is training yourself out of the Victim Mindset, with language like "I have to", and into the Producer Mindset, with language like "I choose to."
What's interesting to me is that this isn't an arbitrary choice. "I have to" is actually a delusion.
Think of the most extreme scenario. Someone has a gun and is "forcing" you to blow up a school. Do you "have to" do it? Or would it be better to say no?
If that freedom holds even in the most extreme scenario... doesn't it always hold?
Sometimes your options are truly terrible, but you always have a choice.
That might sound too philosophical, but I think that's an important distinction to learn to recognize in everyday life.
Because the failure to recognize it is what supports this delusion of "I have to", which seems to be the main cause of procrastination: the resentment and pushing against perceived loss of autonomy.
So my meaning here is that it isn't just more useful to think this way, as some psychological trick, but that it is actually more true as well.
I get it but I still believe that the most efficient answer to productivity is discipline, all the tricks to trick (sorry for the word play) are just effort taken away from our work
Stop minmaxing. Not everything has to be perfect.
See structured procrastination for a slightly different approach.
How to disable seeing other viewer cursors on screen? Makes it unreadable
If you struggle with procrastination please get assessed for ADHD.
A positive diagnosis is life changing.
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I recently heard the saying “if you wait to the last minute, it’ll only take you a minute!”
For some tasks I have, I need to live this way. Obsessing over a task next week takes away from what I’m doing now. I have to trust in my ability to pull it together efficiently. And when it’s due, the work often needs to be fresh in my mind - not something from weeks ago.
Sometimes that means unexpected late nights. But it’s mostly worked out.