[HN Gopher] Procrastination is connected to perfectionism
___________________________________________________________________
Procrastination is connected to perfectionism
Author : EndXA
Score : 497 points
Date : 2024-01-01 12:42 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (solvingprocrastination.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (solvingprocrastination.com)
| belter wrote:
| I would comment on this issue, but I am still thinking about what
| the best comment would be....
| ramon156 wrote:
| Same, I'll get back to it though
| justhereforthe wrote:
| Also, I'm concerned that readers would judge my whole existence
| and the entire library of my life choices if any part of my
| (theoretical) comment fails to be... well, perfect.
| gtirloni wrote:
| You probably want to read the New Oxford Style Manual first.
| Maybe check a course about writing on Coursera before writing
| the first draft.
| hoc wrote:
| bookmarked the thread.
| neverrroot wrote:
| Good intentions leading to issues? That's new... /s
| nottorp wrote:
| I thought most good intentions are bought up by road
| construction companies to maintain the highway to hell...
| neverrroot wrote:
| The older I grow, the more I see many good intentions at the
| micro scale hurting the big picture.
| sylware wrote:
| As a public open source (yep, open source can be private)
| programmer (currently x86_64 assembly), and I am very aware of
| this pitfall.
|
| It is very important to move forward in code, because you cannot
| predict how will actually end up a complex program: you need to
| have all the (sane) features in to actually know. Since code is
| all about trade-offs, there is "no perfect".
|
| You have to be carefull at avoiding falling into a mental
| spinning loop about this.
|
| Once you have a reasonable minimum of usable features in, publish
| it. It help breaking such mental loop.
|
| For instance, currently writing a printf implementation, and
| printf specs are already brain damaged by themselves, so I am not
| looking for perfection, far from it. I did set myself a minimal
| set of features (full format decoding, hexadecimal and byte
| strings) before publishing it. Until it does not require the
| complexity of a compiler, does a good enough job, I'll be happy.
|
| Sometimes it is not about perfectionism, but a question of
| resourses required to achieve something reasonably working: you
| have a montain to deal with just to get something minimaly
| working, and you are given a spoon... when you are lucky.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Pardon the tangent, but could you provide a link to that
| project?
|
| I'm curious to see why something like printf is worth writing
| in assembly.
| sylware wrote:
| As I said in my post, I did not release it yet, and it will
| be very incomplete. But I am not alone, and some did assembly
| written printf like functions (gogol).
|
| The actual real way to work around the inappropriate
| complexity of that function is to remove it and switch to a
| brutal "put string" with string conversion functions (with
| space allocated on the stack). In the end it would be not
| that much more work in most cases, then in the end I may not
| even use my assembly code, but lower some printf function
| usage to what I said.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Ah, thanks. I wrongly guessed from your post that this
| printf was part of some larger, already published OSS
| project.
| sylware wrote:
| Well, I ended up writing it because I was forking busybox
| for my custom file format for executables.
|
| It is not going as fast as I wanted, since I wanted it be
| finished "yesterday", but I may focus next on, shell
| matcher and basic/extended regexp.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| You piqued my interest: What's private open source?
| diggan wrote:
| I'm guessing it's referring to the "corporate open source"
| ecosystem where Google and similar companies make code public
| but everything else is closed. There is no collaboration, no
| public roadmaps, no influence given to the community and
| such. Not sure it's a vital distinction, for me both are as
| public/private as the other, but that's the only meaning I
| could try to extract from that...
| sylware wrote:
| Also, open source, legally, does concern the relationship
| between the user of the code and its author, and it is not
| required to be public at all.
|
| Open source works more than fine with defence stuff,
| actually would be a requirement...
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Isn't assembly programming already a form of perfectionism in
| itself. Compilers do the job well enough 99.9% of the times. If
| you are in the 0.1% where writing assembly is justified, you
| are probably also expected to put many, many times more effort
| on details most programmers don't care or even don't know
| about.
| norir wrote:
| Yes, I think it's even less than 0.1%. Assembly should mostly
| be written as a target for a compiler backend or to inline a
| hotspot only when it is proven that the compiler can't do it
| for you. Very few are in either of these two situations
| outside of artificial environments like a class.
| sylware wrote:
| Just to be independent from those grotesquely and absurdely
| massive and complex compilers(gcc|clang/llvm), justify the
| additional amount of work for myself.
|
| Not to mention that from the perspective of the life cycle of
| tons of system software components out there, the actual
| coding is not that much.
| robocat wrote:
| > you have a montain to deal with just to get something
| minimaly working, and you are given a spoon
|
| The spoon isn't the issue - why does that mountain need moving?
| The parable is about persistence and determination - necessity
| is ignored!
| st-keller wrote:
| If i can't have perfectionism without procrastination, i prefer
| to take both!
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| "The fall is worth the climb" -Mike Tyson.
|
| I think this is kind of like, if you don't fail, you can't
| succeed.
|
| To be happy, fail. -Me, 2024.
| frereubu wrote:
| In my more lugubrious moments I prefer Samuel Beckett's "Fail
| again, fail better".
| differentView wrote:
| That's just the push I needed to challenge Mike Tyson to a
| fight.
| DrBazza wrote:
| "Everybody has a plan until they're punched in the mouth."
| hartator wrote:
| Except if the fall kills you. Survivorship bias.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's very possible, however, to just fail without ever
| succeeding, and that's what the perfectionist worries about.
| The above sounds like an instance of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent.
| brainzap wrote:
| No advice article ever has the courage to say it: you need
| friends. Social support and accountability are our main pillars,
| we are social animals.
| diggan wrote:
| > Social support and accountability
|
| Reminds me of "Announcing your plans makes you less motivated
| to accomplish them (2009)" - https://sivers.org/zipit -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7496923 (74 points | March
| 30, 2014 | 21 comments)
| Lyngbakr wrote:
| That's interesting! Although I haven't invested any thought
| in it, I would've assumed that announcing plans would have
| the _opposite_ effect because people are now watching and
| know what you 're trying to achieve, so you'd be more
| motivated to avoid losing face. Thanks for the article --
| I'll have to check it out!
| eloisius wrote:
| Personally, it would make me feel a burden of shame to have
| announced a goal and then had a setback, which would become
| a greater discouragement then just facing a setback if I
| had not made a big deal about it in the first place.
| breakingcups wrote:
| That, and you've skipped ahead and gotten a bit of the
| social reward for the project without doing it yet. So
| the reward will be less too.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| I've heard about the paradox of announcing plans before. It
| is intriguing.
|
| In light of the need for community, talking about plans might
| be seen as a way to search for ideas that could have group
| buy-in and become something to undertake together. Failure to
| move forward on those plans would reflect that the group
| interest just wasn't there. The mistake would have been in
| assuming you would have ever pursued the goal independently,
| the social impulse to share could have been the hint.
|
| Shared interests between friends can help individual
| interests and goals become collective ones.
|
| Ecclesiastes: one may be overcome (by the exhaustion of going
| to the gym), two can defend themselves (against lapsing on
| their New Year's resolution). A three-ply cord is not easily
| broken.
| sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote:
| Friends help with everything in life. I can't think of an
| aspect of my life that is not improved by my friends.
|
| Making friends is ,,easy" too - treating people how you would
| want to be treated is a good first step.
| gizajob wrote:
| I feel like I've long reached the point of having zero
| friends, which makes getting friends actually quite
| difficult.
| diggan wrote:
| It doesn't though, as long as you're willing to throw
| yourself out there. Meetup groups is a great way to meet
| fellow nerds, especially if you share interests. You'll
| probably meet some shitty people sometime, just stay clear
| and keep trying, you'll eventually find at least one or two
| people who you fit with :)
| gizajob wrote:
| Acquaintances perhaps, but I wouldn't say actual friends.
| I could try it again though. I don't/can't use social
| media so when I got rid of that years ago, almost
| everyone I knew then went with it.
| diggan wrote:
| Friends are just acquaintances you know better than
| others. You start as acquaintances and as you develop the
| relationship, you'll eventually be friends.
|
| Some people have so good relationships they even use the
| label "bestie", which is just a really good friend, who
| at the beginning surely was a acquaintance :)
| gizajob wrote:
| Thanks for your input. Being honest, my situation has
| been like this for so long now I've given up hope and
| lost interest in it ever changing. Used to my own
| loneliness nowadays so it doesn't really matter. Fine
| with being someone who is only ever in the background of
| other people's day.
| rickdicker wrote:
| I'll be your friend. What's up?
| sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote:
| Sorry to hear that. I'm not in a position to help you but
| there are many selfhelp support networks in your
| neighbourhood that can help(most likely, assuming you live
| in a city).
|
| Showing up is already a giant step forwards.
| gizajob wrote:
| I'm really just not someone people enjoy the company of
| or want to get to know or have around. Kind of my
| conclusion after 40 years of living in cities. Have tried
| all kinds of groups and programmes. Have tried putting in
| the interest but everyone I know or meet fades out,
| either quickly or slowly. Don't have any family either,
| or a significant other.
| imjonse wrote:
| Or even, "this isn't procrastinating, todo lists won't help,
| you are probably depressed".
| makeitdouble wrote:
| If you define "friend" as "anyone willing to cooperate with
| you" that makes sense.
| 147 wrote:
| I've struggled with perfectionism procrastination. For example,
| I've tried in the past to start a weekly newsletter for my blog
| but was never consistent with it.
|
| In the middle of November, I started a daily (M-F) newsletter on
| topics related to DevOps. I've been consistent with it ever
| since.
|
| The strategies the article outlines that have helped me the most
| are breaking things down into small pieces and starting small.
|
| Also, by making my newsletter daily, it took a lot of pressure
| off me. I didn't feel like I had to have a "hit" every article
| like with weekly or monthly cadences. If the article sucked, then
| tomorrow is a new day with a new article.
| devnonymous wrote:
| I have a pet peeve about the term perfectionism - it assumes the
| target of the idealized 'perfect' state is something other than
| the absolutely guaranteed limited resource in the world - time.
|
| Every self-proclaimed perfectionist should start caring about
| time as much as they do about the object they are obsessing over.
| They'll then see the tradeoff in being less of a ^perfectionist^
| in that thing and being more ^perfectionist^ about time.
| ayhanfuat wrote:
| If you are into the psychological aspects of procrastination,
| I've found the book Procrastination by Burka and Yuen [1] an
| amazing read. Perfectionism is one of the themes but apparently
| there can be multiple, independent sources.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Procrastination-Why-You-What-
| About/dp...
| rq1 wrote:
| My take on with procrastination is just start things anyway and
| then eventually
| sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote:
| ,, We need to think about failure differently. I'm not the first
| to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an
| opportunity for growth. But the way most people interpret this
| assertion is that mistakes are a necessary evil. Mistakes aren't
| a necessary evil. They aren't evil at all. They are an inevitable
| consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen
| as valuable; without them, we'd have no originality). And yet,
| even as I say that embracing failure is an important part of
| learning, I also acknowledge that acknowledging this truth is not
| enough. That's because failure is painful, and our feelings about
| this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth. To
| disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to
| recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the
| resulting growth."
|
| - Ed Catmull (from the book Creativity Inc.)
|
| edit: by way of the marginalian, which is excellent, one of the
| best sites out there- go read it:
| https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/05/02/creativity-inc-ed-...
| jimmydddd wrote:
| When in high school, I returned home after a ski weekend with
| friends. When I returned home, my relatives, who didn't ski,
| asked if I fell at all during the weekend. I remarked that I
| had, especially while navigating some expert trails. They
| consoled me saying "that's OK, maybe you'll do better next
| time." I was confused at first until I realized that they
| thought of falling as a tragic outcome instead of a natural
| part of the learning process.
| sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote:
| Probably mostly a function of them having no idea what skiing
| is like. If you never fall you either only use boring routes
| or ski very slowly - or you are professional skier and have
| such a breakneck speed you can't fall (but even then it
| happens looking at Schumacher)
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Arguably, not falling means you're limiting your progress
| by not pushing yourself enough. Most likely, not falling
| means you're a worse skier.
| smugglerFlynn wrote:
| Lots of tongue in cheek comments for such a very serious issue.
|
| Please know that perfectionism is often fear-based and trauma-
| based. Learning to recognise the underlying fear and trauma, and
| working through them, _will help_ with both perfectionism and
| procrastination. In my experience, there are very few quick wins,
| only long methodical work to get through the underlying issues.
|
| The best way to do that is with the help of a mental health
| professional (should be first # in that article).
| janmarsal wrote:
| A true perfectionist such as myself must go through every social
| media feed before doing more demanding work. Those unclicked
| links, notifications and red dots must be cleanced.
| njsubedi wrote:
| Oh I feel you. I'm here reading your comment because I had
| something else to do.
| jokoon wrote:
| there's nothing wrong with procrastination
|
| doctors say people work too much, and there's an epidemic of
| burnout
|
| homo sapiens are not made to work and feel guilty when they don't
| complete tasks
|
| it's a problem of work culture and productivism, nothing else
| getlawgdon wrote:
| So we are not in fact what we have made ourselves? What are we
| then? What are we supposed to be?
| slumberlust wrote:
| If you can figure out, you'd have bested all of modern
| philosophy. godspeed!
| electrondood wrote:
| We are abstractions, with no substantial reality apart from
| everything else. And thus, not worth getting hung up on most
| of the time.
| jokoon wrote:
| you cannot turn mammals into efficient obedient workers and
| expect them to have a sane mental health.
|
| we're mammals with inflated brains, anxiety and depression,
| and it's too soon since we were hunter gatherers living in
| caves, we barely started working in cubicles and that's a
| small sample of the population.
| njsubedi wrote:
| Two tiny hacks changed my lifelong procrastination and people-
| pleasing nature.
|
| 1. Instead of "what will they think?" always ask yourself the
| alternative question, "what do I want?". This saves you a lot of
| time and trouble. Do what you like to see what people will say.
| Make it a fun game.
|
| 2. If something takes less than 2 minutes, just go do it. Make it
| your "kick". After few weeks, work your way to turn 2 minutes to
| 5 then 10 minutes. You will get so much done because of the
| inertia.
| kitsune_ wrote:
| Yeah, or maybe it's "just" ADHD. "Just" in parentheses because
| it's a horrible condition to have.
|
| Russel Barkley with a succinct video on "ADHD as Motivation
| Deficit Disorder": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR3RJU6838c
| dmvdoug wrote:
| Nailed it. With a small caveat. It's more a matter of executive
| functioning [1], less one of (strictly speaking) motivation
| (although that _is_ how it often feels, so I understand why
| that's used as a kind of shorthand). I can very easily feel and
| _be_ motivated to accomplish some task, but still fail to make
| any progress (or even begin) until it's deadline time. Then
| comes feelings of guilt and self-loathing because I just can't
| seem to get my shit together (despite _knowing_ that that's a
| wildly wrong way of framing it).
|
| It _is_ horrible. But it's manageable on most days (and yes,
| I'm medicated and have been since early adulthood). And
| honestly, having people in your life who understand your
| condition and can help pick you up sometimes [2], is a huge
| part of coping.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions
|
| [2] I do _not_ mean do stuff for you. For me, when I'm in that
| place where I'm so frustrated that the only options are either
| to primally scream or to sit in the corner and cry, a simple
| fucking hug is like a miracle drug.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > less one of (strictly speaking) motivation
|
| FYI, the Russel Barkley video from the grandparent comment is
| a controversial figure. He presents a lot of his own pet ADHD
| theories as if they were facts.
|
| He's one of the OG internet ADHD influencers, back when ADHD
| was still commonly stigmatized. Someone I know joked that if
| you watched enough Russel Barkley videos, anyone could
| convince themselves they had ADHD.
| layer8 wrote:
| Nope, I don't have any of the typical ADHD symptoms
| (inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity -- rather the
| opposite), but still procrastinate to problematic levels due to
| perfectionism.
| ycombinete wrote:
| Yes. There are various reasons to procrastinate. ADHD
| procrastination is more about emotional discomfort avoidance
| than perfectionism.
| layer8 wrote:
| _Procrastination_ due to perfectionism (instead of working
| on the thing you want to do perfectly) is also due to
| emotional discomfort avoidance (because the procrastination
| takes your mind off the imperfections associated with what
| you ought to be working on).
| growingkittens wrote:
| The opposite of those symptoms - like hyperfocus, inability
| to switch tasks, decision-making inertia, etc.?
| LoganDark wrote:
| ADHD has totally ruined so many aspects of my life. It's a
| straight-up disability for me. It stops mattering how "gifted"
| I am when the ability to use that gift is constantly revoked
| whenever I find something new to use it on. It's like my brain
| is constantly trying to patch an exploit, like it never wants
| me to actually use any of my potential.
|
| Meds helped for only a few months. Then my brain patched that
| exploit too. :/
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Procrastination is not a new thing. And ADHD is a pretty rare
| condition - just look at the diagnosis rate from country to
| country. The US has the highest one because doctors here are
| basically legal Speed drug dealers - for children.
|
| The author of the Search Engine pod just had a two-parter about
| his "ADHD":
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/whyd-i-take-speed-for-...
|
| (The history of regulating Speed in the US is actually
| fascinating).
|
| I could focus just fine all my life, then suddenly I couldn't.
| I've talked to other adults who are experiencing the same.
|
| And it's funny how people get super torqued when you say
| something like this. There is a lot of room between "I have
| legit ADHD" and "I am addicted to my phone".
|
| Sometimes I could not start a project at work for weeks - then
| I got off Twitter.
| neon_electro wrote:
| Just remember adults here are also dealing with being
| diagnosed for the first time, and all of the stigma around
| how this affects kids affects adults, too.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The speed for children scare mongering is pathetic and
| ignorant and betrays your lack of experience with children
| with this and related condition.
|
| Lots of kids have behavioral and impulse control problems. If
| you give them amphetamines you see exactly the same problems,
| but with the boundless energy amphetamines give you. When you
| give amphetamines to ADHD children they visibly and
| noticeably become calmer, quieter, and more focused. If you
| did not come into it with the predetermined idea that this
| drug is "speed" you would certainly not arrive there from
| watching the behavior of medicated children with ADHD.
|
| You were addicted to twitter good for you for solving your
| problems. Don't extrapolate that experience out to kids
| though. ADHD is fucked up, life ruining stuff. Look at the
| rates for drug abuse, car crashes and incarceration for
| adults with untreated ADHD. This sort of scare mongering
| makes it less likely for children to access effective
| treatment when it can be most impactful on their lives. It is
| harmful and you should be ashamed.
| sersi wrote:
| Thanks for your comment. I was diagnosed with ADHD as an
| adult late (after 4 x 2 hours sessions with extensive
| questionnaires and iq test). Originally I was really
| worried that I'd be incorrectly diagnosed with ADHD despite
| not having it so was reassured by how serious the process
| was.
|
| One thing that jumped out at me though with regards to your
| comment about medicine. I started taking concerta and
| quickly noticed that if I'm the slightest bit sleep
| deprived, concerta doesn't amp me, it doesn't make me have
| more energy but instead it makes me sleepy. With it, I'm
| visibly calmer and quieter and I also have a lot less
| craving for chocolates (which I'd keep eating non-stop
| during the day). It's quite magical actually.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Or perhaps it's a multiple of things, and not just getting
| off twitter.
| dboreham wrote:
| My personal family experience had been that today in the US
| it's very hard to get an ADHD diagnosis, at least if the
| patient is smart and manages to achieve decent school grades.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Counterpoint: ADHD diagnoses are a hot topic among kids and
| junior devs right now. Many of them self-diagnose based on
| Reddit, Twitter, or TikTok information that tells them that
| ADHD explains away all of their perceived shortcomings: It's
| the reason they're not motivated, it's the reason they didn't
| attend an Ivy League school, it's the reason they don't earn as
| much as their peers, it's the reason their last significant
| other broke up with them, and so on (these are all real
| examples from conversations I've had with mentees since ADHD
| started trending on social media during COVID)
|
| One of the most concerning patterns I've seen is that these
| people go out and find a doctor who will prescribe them
| stimulants (during COVID it was as easy as following ads on
| TikTok, filling out a form, and having a <5 minute virtual
| visit with a doctor, believe it or not) and then many of them
| _get worse_.
|
| By this I mean the stimulant medication supercharges their
| actual underlying problem: The anxious procrastinators become
| even more anxious. The perfectionist procrastinators become
| even more obsessed with perfecting things. The video game
| procrastinators now game for harder and longer with stimulants
| in their system. The hobby/side project procrastinators are now
| putting in more hours on their side project and have even less
| time for the work or studies they're supposed to be doing.
|
| I'm not saying that ADHD isn't real, because it's definitely
| real and debilitating. I'm saying that we have a real problem
| with the current trend of "ADHD explains everything". Social
| media has supercharged this trend by bombarding people with
| videos that position ADHD as a perfect excuse and explanation
| for their frustrations. They are frighteningly good at finding
| a video or TikTok or Reddit post that tells them exactly what
| they want to hear, and they're also good at skipping past any
| content that doesn't confirm their beliefs.
|
| I have extended family who are in grade school education, and
| the trend goes all the way into 5th and 6th grade from what
| they tell me: Kids using "I have ADHD" as an excuse for
| _everything_ and then trying to show their teacher a TikTok
| that explains why they shouldn 't be held accountable for late
| homework, low grades, or behavioral problems. They're not
| alone, it's a common topic in /r/teachers on Reddit too (
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/comments/12cfdj3/i_have_ad...
| )
| kpw94 wrote:
| > It's the reason they ...
|
| A recent nytimes opinion on the subject:
| https://twitter.com/emmma_camp_/status/1726390207740608823
|
| >> It's generally a sign of progress when diagnoses that were
| once whispered in shameful secrecy enter our everyday
| vocabulary and shed their stigma. But especially online,
| where therapy "influencers" flood social media feeds with
| content about trauma, panic attacks and personality
| disorders, greater awareness of mental health problems risks
| encouraging self-diagnosis and the pathologizing of
| commonplace emotions what Dr. Foulkes calls "problems of
| living." When teenagers gravitate toward such content on
| their social media feeds, algorithms serve them more of it,
| intensifying the feedback loop.
| robocat wrote:
| Part of a general trend? Another two keywords related to the
| same issue: trauma and self-medication.
|
| I think the same ADHD diagnosis problem is happening in New
| Zealand too.
| wingspar wrote:
| I've found some help with perfectionism and procrastination by
| using procrastination to overcome perfectionism.
|
| Get a project to a "good enough" point, then tell myself "I'll
| fix it next year", when I really just want to rip it out and
| start over.
|
| Of course 'next year' never comes as later I come to see that the
| project is totally fine and doesn't need a re-do.
| nixass wrote:
| I'ma perfectionist!
| layer8 wrote:
| Not regarding spelling, apparently. ;)
| spintin wrote:
| The reason we fear shipping is that we know there is an absolute
| truth out there that nobody made any effort to find. ONLY if you
| ship that eternal fundamental solution have you made anything
| interesting.
|
| Everything is shit, think before you act! It's better to do
| nothing, than to deliver more shit.
| diggan wrote:
| > It's better to do nothing, than to deliver more shit.
|
| How are you supposed to get better at delivering anything if
| you won't deliver until you have something "perfect"?
|
| Part of the process of getting better is to be shit for a
| while, while you figuring things out.
|
| Common saying when making music is that probably your first 100
| songs will be absolutely trash, so better get those out of the
| door ASAP, so you can get to the good stuff :) Practice is the
| only way to get better, and your output will probably suck for
| a while, but we all sucked at one point so it's OK.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Is this why some people take a long time to submit a PR? During
| morning standups, they say the work is nearly done, but the PR
| never comes.
| layer8 wrote:
| "Nearly done" is sometimes a hidden euphemism for "I feel bad
| about not having finished this yet, and I fear that others may
| accordingly look upon me unkindly, so I try to verbally
| minimize the unfinishedness, and I may yet get lucky and be
| able to finish it reasonably quickly, so it's not an outright
| lie".
| hoc wrote:
| I just saw a simple differentiation between daydreaming
| (creative/analytic) and detailed planning and execution
| (productive).
|
| Seen that way you'd need to take care to not fall back into that
| creative-only daydream mode when you actually need/want to be
| productive. So you would need to steadily remind you to actually
| continue with concrete execution planning instead of mentally
| optimizing models (which of course itself is - and feels -
| productive and maybe even more important/urgent, but not in the
| ouput-oriented way you'd like/need to achieve in that actual
| production task).
|
| Not sure if it actually helps, but besides that perfectionism and
| "just do it" issue/solution pair it might be a useful perspective
| and concrete criterion to keep one focused on the task of
| finishing. I'll try to include it in the repertoire at least.
| submeta wrote:
| Fear of losing control (and the thought of everything blowing up)
| => Perfectionism => ,,Let me be 1000% prepared before I start
| doing it" => Prepares endlessly => external pressure rises above
| threshold => fear of consequences creates panick => starts doing
| the job => creates a reference experience (,,this was traumatic;
| next time I need to be prepared to avoid this kind of stress") =>
| until next ,,important" task lands on desk.
|
| I tend to think that mostly people with a lot of capacity for
| creating mental images (who can freak themselves out) are prone
| to procrastination.
|
| Edit: Apparently it is more complex than that. I believe that
| self-worth also plays a role (fear of not delivering as good as
| one would like to), also ADHS (jumping to a thousand other things
| and losing focus). Generally fear plays a role. Meditation helps.
| Anything that helps to relax (running, breathing exercises).
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I had an instructor for a seminar that I took, keep repeating the
| phrase "We need to know what 'done' looks like."
|
| Another manager I worked with, said "The #1 feature of this
| product is 'Ship'."
|
| In the app we're about to release, we don't have any schedule
| pressure. We can release when we want.
|
| I found that the rest of the team was in "Perma-Tweak" mode. Lots
| of "Just one more thing."
|
| I realized that it was never going to ship, so I set an arbitrary
| date of ... _today_.
|
| In true software development tradition, we'll be late, but not by
| much. Also, we have a great excuse. The CEO had a baby (ahead of
| schedule, but the deadline was quite firm).
| drtgh wrote:
| In recent years the increase in launching products and updates
| without in-depth checks and with unfinished features is becoming
| routine... as if achieving the introduction of low quality
| products in the market were the goal, under the "productivity"
| shield.
|
| "Productivity", the abstract word that looks as if it were
| invented by the "flat-earthers" to sell books. Just a drug for to
| make the clients to pay for being alpha-testers, without remorse.
|
| Not easy to talk about perfectionism. In the last decade the
| threshold changed much, unfortunately. The main problem with this
| is in the retro-feeding, low quality here, there, affect the time
| needed for to advance in better products because there are more
| issues to solve, that of course will be "un-productive" to solve,
| in loop. Enjoy.
| revskill wrote:
| I'm both a procastinator and a perfectionist.
|
| I'm happy about that fact, so that i can avoid "useless actions"
| until i fully understand what to do first.
|
| Another word, solving problem before implementation !
| sfn42 wrote:
| I'm similar and I get what you mean, but I'm not sure it's a
| positive. Some times I waste a lot of time trying to find the
| perfect solution, can't find it, give up and just do the best I
| know how to do. Almost always, while doing that, I discover
| better ways to do things and often this is na iterative process
| where I pretty much start over multiple times until I'm happy
| with the result.
|
| I don't think the procrastination is useful. I think it's
| better to just get started and do anything. That way you learn
| and make progress.
| hartator wrote:
| > One reason why people procrastinate is perfectionism.
|
| Is it though? Or is it something nice to tell ourselves?
|
| I don't know if there is correlation here. I have seen poeple
| procrastinating with no sense of details and the reverse is true
| too.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Seems like it. I don't think the correlation described is
| false.
|
| What you're saying about people procrastinating for other
| reasons, is the difference between the phrase " _one_ reason
| why people procrastinate is perfectionism " and the phrase "
| _the only_ reason why people procrastinate is perfectionism ".
|
| As in, people can procrastinate for any of multiple reasons,
| and perfectionism is one of those reasons.
| layer8 wrote:
| "One reason" doesn't mean it's necessarily a prevailing reason,
| and there are certainly other reasons.
| avindroth wrote:
| In my experience, perfectionism is crafted post-procrastination.
| It probably makes no sense, but the mind often does this
| convoluted thing in order to protect procrastination.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| The article hints at psychology and then fails to dive into it.
|
| Perfectionism, only when intentionally and cognitively executed
| in an orderly fashion, is linked to extremely high consciousness
| and extremely high consciousness when not properly managed is
| highly correlated with anxiety. The slang for this is _anal-
| retentive_.
|
| This becomes complicated because anxiety is most typically
| concerned with high measures of neuroticism but a person can
| score extremely low in neuroticism and yet still suffer symptoms
| of anxiety from too high of consciousness when their concerns for
| orderliness prevents timely accomplishment of a task. That
| specific set of personalities defines obsessive-compulsive
| disorder in contrast to anxiety in general.
|
| The solution to this is to learn to accept and contribute a wrong
| outcome, as opposed to taking no action at all, which requires a
| tremendous amount of careful practice. The ability to accept that
| solution is even culturally reinforced as identified in one of
| the Hofstede cultural indexes: uncertainty avoidance.
| machomaster wrote:
| The solution is to understand that no amount of guilt/regret is
| going to change the past and that no amount of internal anxiety
| is going to help the future.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| > This becomes complicated because anxiety is most typically
| concerned with high measures of neuroticism but a person can
| score extremely low in neuroticism and yet still suffer
| symptoms of anxiety from too high of consciousness when their
| concerns for orderliness prevents timely accomplishment of a
| task. That specific set of personalities defines obsessive-
| compulsive disorder in contrast to anxiety in general.
|
| Just to clarify, you're still referring specifically to
| "perfectionist" personality types? Because last time I checked
| anxiety is _not_ correlated specifically with any personality
| traits but rather spans a broad spectrum of personality types.
| exolymph wrote:
| *conscientiousness, distinct from consciousness :)
| ghoomketu wrote:
| The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom.
|
| This may not work for everyone but for me it works exceptionally.
| Most often the reason why you don't want to work on something is
| because you find it too hard, too boring, or too irrelevant. But
| if you force yourself to be bored for a while, you will
| eventually crave some mental stimulation.
|
| And that's when you can pick up the task you have been avoiding
| and work on it with renewed interest and focus.
|
| Of course, this requires some discipline and self-awareness. You
| have to resist the temptation of checking your phone, browsing
| the web, or doing anything else that distracts you from your
| boredom.
|
| Maybe there is some psychological reason for it but I have found
| this technique to be very effective for overcoming
| procrastination and getting things done.
| almostnormal wrote:
| An alternative to boredom is something else more important even
| less desirable that needs to be done, that drives progress on
| what is being procastrinated. Unfortunately, it only shifts the
| problem elsewhere.
| OldHunter69X wrote:
| As in, pursue something else that seems even more important,
| yet less desirable than what we were already considering? Or
| am I mixing something up?
| machomaster wrote:
| This does not solve the issue of procrastination at all. A
| common myth is that procrastinators are simply lazy people
| who don't do anything useful. This is not the case. Many
| procrastinators are super-efficient at working on what they
| need to do; it's just that they are procrastinating on
| another useful task/project that objectively should have a
| priority.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| I call this procasti-working and it is absolutely my most
| productive space. I don't really see it as a problem though;
| I might be completing lower-priority tasks, but they would
| have later become high- or critical-priority tasks; it's
| ultimately a net win.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I have seen it called "structured procrastination".
|
| The idea is that instead of trying to focus on what's
| important, leaving out everything else, make a long task
| list, including things that are not that important, but still
| productive. So that you have plenty of things to do to avoid
| doing the top items.
|
| To avoid shifting the problem, it suggests self-deception, so
| that you put items on top that appear important, but are not
| really. So that you do the really important ones in order to
| avoid doing the falsely important ones.
|
| I don't know how effective it is though.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I'd be curious how quickly neurochemical stimulation levels
| reset to baseline, on order-of-hours scale.
|
| Given that afaik tasks seeming "hard" can be a consequence of
| bathing in hyper-stimulation from media/games, thereby raising
| the "much be this stimulating" minimum about what normal tasks
| provide, does 30 minutes or an hour of boredom reset some of
| that?
| Aurornis wrote:
| > The easiest antidote for procrastination is boredom.
|
| From my experience with young people, the worst procrastinators
| will often choose boredom over the task they're avoiding. Doing
| nothing at all is less painful to them than doing the work
| they're avoiding.
|
| This is even more true for the perfectionist procrastinators:
| They are avoiding some exaggerated hypothetical pain that might
| come from failing at a task. If they never finish the task,
| they can't experience that disappointment. Some of them will
| happily do nothing at all, walk around, or daydream to avoid
| even engaging with their computer, because engaging with the
| computer would remind them that they're procrastinating, which
| would remind them that failure to deliver is also imperfection.
|
| > Of course, this requires some discipline and self-awareness.
|
| Unfortunately, the people with the worst procrastination
| problems are in their situation largely due to a lack of
| discipline and self-awareness in some variation.
| pjerem wrote:
| It depends, do you define endless scrolling as boredom ?
| Because I think it's not.
| skeaker wrote:
| That's not what the post above you is talking about.
| "Endless scrolling" was never even mentioned
| nradov wrote:
| My daughter would literally sit and stare at the wall instead
| of doing her English class homework.
| kaba0 wrote:
| I guess the alternative has to be mentally stimulating for
| it to work. Maybe she finds it too easy or meaningless?
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Agree with this, from personal experience. The conventional
| idea of "boredom" doesn't fit well, because we have
| everything we need and love already in our head, which makes
| leaving it painful and staring at a wall for hours a great
| time. Incidentally my "bad boss" was my father, who had two
| emotions; Preoccupied and angry.
|
| This is further complicated by things like demand avoidance,
| ADHD, burnout (autistic people may have difficulty even
| recognizing that they are chronically stressed and anxious to
| the point of shutdown, until they just crash completely) or
| other executive function related pathologies, of which there
| are likely multiple involved if there is a noticeable
| problem.
| dboreham wrote:
| There are well known psychology experimental results to support
| your hunch. When the alternative is total lack of mental
| stimulation, people will perform all kinds of otherwise
| unattractive activities.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| For me, I procrastinate to get the reward of making progress
| without having to do the hard thing that I'm supposed to be
| doing. It is an emotional thing, almost entirely; I feel low
| (perhaps for unrelated reasons - I was bereaved of my mother 18
| months ago) and so seek quick rewards through "work", just not
| the work I'm being paid for.
|
| So, I got diverted from a difficult task and spent time doing a
| task that created a very useful and time-saving tool but which
| I want being paid for and which I know I can't share because I
| was doing something other than my job ... it was rewarding in
| the sense of 'I created something useful' and so made me feel
| better about myself until I reflected that I was further behind
| on the task I was getting assessed for.
|
| I found Tim Pychyl's writing/videos and
| http://www.procrastination.ca/ useful on this topic.
| bjornsing wrote:
| I've long held the belief that procrastination is the rational
| response in a low return on investment (ROI) situation. This
| seems to fit nicely into that framework: if significant
| investment is required, you only value perfect output and are
| doubtful it can be achieved, then the expected ROI is pretty low.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I think this is right, but it's really a low predicted ROI. The
| problem is that we're pretty bad at accurately predicting.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| > For example, perfectionistic students might be so critical of
| themselves for making mistakes in school assignments, that they
| will postpone doing homework to avoid dealing with the associated
| negative emotions.
|
| From the very beginning, I skimmed the rest. Surely, this can be
| reduced to
|
| > Avoid dealing with the associated negative emotions.
|
| Start there, and work through those emotions.
| hyperthesis wrote:
| https://structuredprocrastination.com/
| Aurornis wrote:
| I developed a bad case of perfectionism-procrastination after
| working for a toxic boss.
|
| It didn't matter how polished our product was, he'd find a way to
| tear it apart. When he'd have a bad day, he'd start picking apart
| a random team's product. "Unbelievable!" he'd say in Slack,
| dropping a screen recording of the app that showed something we
| were supposed to be embarrassed about. It could be that the app
| took 3 seconds to load and show fresh data from his hotel WiFi,
| or it could be as simple as the UI not matching some directive he
| gave to the UI designers who failed to update the designs or tell
| us about the change. He would rant about how disappointing we
| were. At his worst, he fired some people on the spot for a
| problem that wasn't even their fault.
|
| I quickly learned that the only way to avoid that pain was to not
| ship anything. The people he liked most were the ones who were
| operating in hypotheticals: The people who made UI designs in
| Figma, or the architects who drew nice diagrams about how things
| would work, or the people who wrote long design documents to hand
| to other teams. They never shipped anything for him to critique,
| so he thought they were the geniuses of the company. As long as
| they could avoid having to actually implement anything, they
| continued to be favorites.
|
| It took me longer than I like to admit to shake that habit when I
| finally escaped. I found myself delaying shipment, pivoting from
| design doc to design doc, and trying to operate in that
| hypothetical space as long as I could. Fortunately I learned to
| get over it, but it was scary how much that single job could
| shape a large part of my personality.
| neon_electro wrote:
| I'm sorry you had to go through this, and I'm glad you learned
| from it.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| youve very succinctly explained an incredibly frustrating
| reality. it really helps to understand it clearly like that
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| Lol, imagining some bored unhappy middle aged neckbeard go with
| "unbeliavable...."
| lacrimacida wrote:
| Why bring age into something that has to do with a shitty
| personality? That could be at any age.
| Chungjiloll wrote:
| Aurornis really hit the nail on the head about how a toxic boss
| can twist your work habits into a loop of perfectionism and
| procrastination. It's wild how avoiding criticism can lead to
| playing it safe in the land of hypotheticals, instead of
| actually getting stuff done. And hats off to the_cat_kittles
| and neon_electro for recognizing the struggle and the learning
| curve that comes with such experiences.
| baz00 wrote:
| I love places like this because I can thrive quite happily on
| doing fuck all and getting paid for it.
|
| Edit: I made some logical comment about doing something useful
| with half that time but deleted it because it would be
| hypocritical.
| jahewson wrote:
| Sounds awful. And I can guess _exactly_ how that boss responded
| to any feedback or criticism directed in his direction!
| primitivesuave wrote:
| This so accurately describes my own experience a couple years
| ago, down to the specific anecdotes, that I had to double check
| the username to make sure it wasn't something I drunkenly wrote
| last night.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| 1. Use a issue tracker to report issues. If a ticket doesn't
| exist, create it.
|
| 2. Stick to the facts: what happened, and what should have
| happened instead? Remove all the noise such as blame, emotional
| reactions, etc. Less drama, more clarity.
|
| 3. If the root cause is something dumb such as the hotel WiFi,
| close the ticket as "can't reproduce" and add an explanation.
|
| You can avoid reading the text, then use a LLM prompt such as:
| "Can you rephrase this removing all emotional reactions and
| extracting only the parts that relate to reproduction steps".
|
| Do not waste energy on toxic people. You are not a therapist,
| an emotional support animal, a sandbag or a doormat. You are a
| software engineer.
|
| Unless you are getting rich you should avoid working there.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Hmm, that is an interesting idea. I bet someone could write
| an app that rephrased incoming messages through an LLM to
| match some metric you chose. You'd definitely need the
| ability to read the original message and there's about a
| million and a half ways out could go wrong but it's
| interesting nonetheless. Just evaporate toxicity from all
| communications before they even reach your brain.
| zestyping wrote:
| It seems like a good idea at first... but it also would
| mean everyone could communicate as toxically as they wanted
| with no consequences. Uh oh.
| metabagel wrote:
| Be proud of yourself for surviving that toxic environment and
| eventually recognizing and overcoming the negative effects it
| had on your own performance and behavior. You're a survivor!
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| You put into words something I've had a hard time understanding
| for a long time. Some people really do have a clear preference
| for people who don't ship.
|
| Out of curiosity, what kind of background did your toxic boss
| have? Is it technical or business side?
|
| I have a couple hunches for why this happens: 1. These people
| are dreamers and dislike people who bring them back down to
| reality, even if they need those people to actually build
| things.
|
| 2. They feel superior to people on the ground doing the
| building. Like they're above getting their hands dirty.
| Teever wrote:
| These are possibilities but I think you missed a much more
| likely one -- they're just bullies who like to pick on
| people.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| If they were just bullies, then there shouldn't be a
| preference for hypothetical UI and architecture folks.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Is this true? Are bullies indiscriminate and swing in all
| directions or do they focus on where the power dynamic
| benefits them? I feel like I've seen both.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I'd call that the difference between bullies and
| sociopaths.
|
| At least to me, one of the defining bully characteristics
| is an inability to moderate their own behavior, even for
| their own benefit.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| Even bullies can be lazy in their metier - it's quicker
| and easier to find a tangible target for abuse in a
| finished product, and, perhaps more importantly, it
| doesn't risk an ego brusing when a critique of an
| abstract proves to be incorrect.
|
| I've certainly seen my fair share of these types - too
| busy (ie. lazy) to really get stuck into detail during a
| project even when invited to do so, but very quick to
| point out an issue after a few minutes of expressly
| looking for one when it's too late.
|
| They seem to see it as demonstrating their experience and
| superiority over others ie. "I only need a few minutes to
| find an issue". In my experiences, they also tend to
| insist on saying "everything needs to go through me", but
| never make time to follow through - out of laziness. This
| gives a high ROI on effort expended to stress created.
|
| The best times I had with these people (when I was beyond
| caring) was laying low and doing launches semi covertly,
| so that there was time for clients to provide positive
| feedback and praise first. Then play dumb and deliver
| news about launch and feedback as a package.
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| That falls under the "feeling superior" bucket. And like
| others have said it doesn't explain bias towards certain
| people.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| You have described a major problem with tech "leadership". They
| are incompetent and don't want to hear it.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Almost everyone, given the power to avoid it, would rather
| not hear they're incompetent.
|
| Hence why telling truth to power, in a productive way that
| gets things done, is an important skill.
| EarthLaunch wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning this in a work context. It describes one
| of my parents, with the results you'd expect.
|
| Do you remember any of the thoughts or techniques you used to
| shake it?
| xyzelement wrote:
| Perfectionism is too positive a word for this ("my greatest
| weakness? I am a perfectionist.) Fear of failure feels more apt.
| I hesitate starting/taking the next action because I am not
| confident I can land the goal all the way. IE - I fear trying to
| do X and not nailing it more than I fear not even trying it in
| the first place.
|
| Like many fears it is usually inappropriate and unhelpful. In
| reality you are almost always further ahead in life if you try
| even if you don't get to the outcome you envisioned.
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| I probably have a whole personal blog of my own on the topic,
| dear as it is to my soul.
|
| My two main pieces of advice: The bar is very very low, and share
| your burden quickly.
|
| 99 times out of 100 you are _way overestimating_ the value of
| what you 're delivering and people's expectations for it, and
| _underestimating_ the value of time i.e. shipping quickly.
|
| I've turned in so many things I'm not happy with and gotten a
| "this is great" that now I frequently just send over pseudocode,
| whiteboard sketches, and bullet point design docs to just get
| going on the feedback loop. Nobody has ever said "this is so bad
| we can't use any of it."
|
| I also realized I do much better finishing other people's work
| than starting my own .. and so does almost everyone else.
| Bringing other people in overcomes "the boredom paradox" of a
| looming deadline - working with other people has its own
| challenges, but it is definitely not boring!
|
| One specific thing I did that helped a few years ago at my
| precious company was I told my team, wrote in my email signature,
| ran a small study group, etc. On grit, procrastination, and
| "growth mindset" and just made a very intentional effort to tell
| people how I struggled with this problem.
|
| So many people shared the problem! It really gave us a nice
| community and helped us (and management) recognize some of these
| issues, lesrn some new techniques, and get better at coaching,
| setting expectations, and ultimately managing the work.
|
| So maybe last piece of advice is be open if you have these
| issues.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| > 99 times out of 100 you are way overestimating the value of
| what you're delivering and people's expectations for it, and
| underestimating the value of time i.e. shipping quickly.
|
| Agree with this. Shipping is the most important quality. The
| faster you ship the faster you would be enjoying anything
| groestl wrote:
| > Shipping is the most important quality.
|
| So.. Can you trick yourself into directing the perfectionism
| into shipping fastest?
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| The best I've been able to do is: if perfection == high
| quality, then shipping smaller iterations faster is the
| most cost-effective means of improving quality.
| groestl wrote:
| I did that too :) I learned that sometimes, I'd ship the
| perfect wrong thing. And to avoid that I'd ship earlier
| versions faster and get back to it after feedback.
| Vinnl wrote:
| That's roughly what I did. I often do side projects with
| two goals: there's something I want to exist, and something
| I want to learn. And I'll learn that thing by using it to
| build something I want.
|
| At one point, the thing I wanted to learn was "call
| something done". So I did that, and because it was a side
| project with learning as an explicit goal, I was able to
| actually do that - it was literally impossible to ship
| something imperfect, as shipping would already mean I'd
| perfectly reached my goal.
|
| But that turned out to be enough faking it to make it - the
| feeling of shipping it felt good, and gave me the
| confidence to spend a small amount of time to polish my
| side projects up enough for shipping, rather than a large
| amount of time to do everything I want. And it's way more
| fun now to be able to occasionally pull up an old side
| project of mine that's still usable, because I got it to a
| usable state in the first place.
|
| (In case anyone's interested, you can see the project, and
| how small its scope was, at
| https://agripongit.vincenttunru.com.)
| gloryjulio wrote:
| Basically I want TDD(make it run!). I want something runs
| and everyone can see it. Ship faster, get it run faster,
| get feedback faster, improve faster, iterate faster.
|
| Perfectionism comes from iterations
| waihtis wrote:
| This resonates so much.
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| This is one of my favourite things I've read on here, and it
| frames working on a team the way it should be framed!
|
| Going to adopt every part of it. Thank you for sharing.
| adhrit wrote:
| 100 percent. I even procrastinated for 2 minutes to write down
| this comment
| electrondood wrote:
| The most effective antidote to procrastination for me is to get
| up at 5am.
|
| I have literally nothing to do for 4 hours, and I'm awake, and I
| have loads of energy, and no one else is up, so I may as well
| just do that thing I've been putting off.
|
| Also, literally just starting the task, regardless of how I feel.
| That works too.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Can't you just read the Twitter feed?
| motohagiography wrote:
| Life is harsh, sure, but "perfectionism," is a terrible and over-
| freighted word for someone stuck in a double bind and suffering
| as the result of it. Consider the situations from which someone
| might acquire a pathological fear of some kinds criticism. A huge
| likelihood is that as the result of submitting to uncertainty
| they have been:
|
| - personally abused and shamed
|
| - made the object of sadism or cruelty
|
| - humiliated to their peers
|
| - had important things taken from them
|
| - been isolated
|
| - lost an important relationship
|
| If you know someone suffering from a bind like that, find a way
| to tell them that "this is not that," and you can have a big
| impact on their life.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't understand the purpose of taking a good word
| "perfectionism" for a pathological fear of criticism and
| rejection, and replacing it with a random incomplete list of
| things that might have caused a pathological fear of criticism
| and rejection.
| motohagiography wrote:
| If you consider what the perfectionism is the effect of, it's
| easier to unwind than just saying, "oh, you're in a hole, you
| should stop being in a hole."
|
| Describing anything as an 'ism' is a thought terminating
| judgment of it, and not a meaningful abstraction for it that
| yields information about what it might be caused by.
|
| This article might help your understanding as it talks about
| what concrete thinking is and how to recognize it:
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-and-
| psychopat...
| pessimizer wrote:
| This page seems like a nearly empty site someone put up imitating
| Hillary Rettig's work, looking for life coaching gigs.
|
| https://hillaryrettigproductivity.com/overcome-perfectionism...
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13417133-the-7-secrets-o...
| mklepaczewski wrote:
| The site is full of good information, but I agree it feels too
| search-engine optimized. It's not well structured for a large
| portion of the target audience (ADD/ADHD people). Articles are
| too wordy, there are no article or section summaries, and the
| number of internal links does not help people focus on the
| article they read.
| mynameisnoone wrote:
| It's also easy to conflate perfectionism with excellence to
| rationalize shit work. Excellence is ships good shit but doesn't
| waste time on unreasonable shit or analysis paralysis.
| Experimentation, learning, and multiple iterations allow
| improvements to eventually reach a satisficing threshold good
| enough to ship.
| aatd86 wrote:
| It's a correlation, not a causation, in my experience.
|
| It's likely that the brain chooses the path of least resistance
| toward dopamine.
|
| Sometimes, just choosing to not be lazy clears it because then
| not being lazy and doing the darn thing provides enough of a
| dopamine hit in itself.
|
| It can be changed consciously.
|
| There is also the fear of the unk own but one has to then know
| that no matter what, they will figure it out. That can be a self-
| confidence issue. Related to the first point still.
| tamimio wrote:
| Fantastic article, I'm perfectionist to the bones, and as the
| article states, it does cause procrastination for the "personal"
| tasks I have (one time it took me 3months to perfect a resume,
| and the same reason why my personal site is not yet complete),
| however, for work related, I do not procrastinate but I ended up
| overworking extra hours from my personal time to perfect the
| little details about whatever I'm doing, mostly details no one
| notices except me!
|
| > Forgive yourself for past procrastination
|
| And this is an important point too, for the personal tasks and
| especially when some time passes due to procrastination without
| doing the task, it gets even harder to get back into the tasks
| simply thinking "if I didn't procrastinate I would have done by
| now.." and it demoralizes me more and never start that said
| task..
| pilgrim0 wrote:
| People suffer from "perfectionism" as much as everyone else
| suffer from reductionism.
| chmod600 wrote:
| One of the best ways for me to avoid procrastinating on task X is
| to have some other task Y, and to procrastinate on Y by working
| on X.
|
| Obviously this requires some mental gymnastics to eventually
| complete both X and Y, or to come up with some task Y that feels
| important but actually is not. But it works great.
| bertr4nd wrote:
| I've never really thought of my procrastination as coming from
| perfectionism as applied to the work I'm producing, but on
| reflection, I realized it often comes from self-disappointment
| (which is perhaps a form of perfectionism). Eg, I procrastinated
| on writing my research papers in grad school, but it was because
| I was disappointed in my ideas (or lack thereof), not because I
| feared not being able to make the current work sufficiently
| perfect.
| UberFly wrote:
| There is truth that at times procrastination is tied to
| perfectionism, but I'd wager that the cause of procrastination
| 9/10 times is that we choose to do something that is more
| enjoyable to us over something that is less.
| mklepaczewski wrote:
| That's an oversimplification. What you describe fits the
| behavior of a hedonistic procrastinator, but people
| procrastinate for many, many reasons.
| nsagent wrote:
| I don't know if I'm in the minority or the majority, but I can
| say my experience definitely doesn't match the view you're
| invoking.
|
| When I procrastinate due to my perfectionism, I pretty much
| never do something enjoyable instead. Rather, I frequently
| lament that I don't have enough time for fun activities.
|
| When I'm procrastinating in a WFH setup I could easily play
| video games, watch a show/movie, read a book instead, but
| don't. It's almost as like a punishment, rather than a reward.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| I think I struggle with this as well. I was recently watching an
| episode of Adam Savage on YouTube and he said something that
| reasonated with me related to this. He said, it's not about
| getting it right it's about trying new things.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| I think I struggle with this as well. I was recently watching an
| episode of Adam Savage and he said something that reasonated with
| me related to this. He said, it's not about getting it right it's
| about trying new things.
| yetanother12345 wrote:
| Uhm... I didn't read. And, I'll comment anyway. Sorry if I miss a
| point or two. I did read the whole thread, though (116 comments
| as per now).
|
| Reason was not "Too long" as I never even clicked the link. It
| was due to the link title "solvingprocrastination", as that name
| framed procrastination as a thing that needed to be "solved"
| somehow.
|
| I'm sure that for some, sometimes that is the case. For me, not
| much so.
|
| See, _procrastination is a tool_. It allows my subconscious to
| review and analyse a problem field while I keep my conscious self
| engaged with something else. Preferably solving some other issue.
| Rarely entertainment. I guess the situations where I 'd want to
| peruse entertainment are not that often situations where I have
| important stuff to do, but I don't know. (I'm thinking mostly
| @job here, not leisure time)
|
| What I do when faced with a problem that needs a solution, but
| for some reason or other I have no obvious "attack vector" (just
| to make a poor pun on the HN site name) it this: I do nothing.
| That is, I do something of course, especially if it's at $job: I
| do something else. Go solve some other task. While I do that the
| part of me that excels in solving really complicated stuff does
| what it does best.
|
| This will not bring me the perfect solution. Most of the time it
| will not even bring me closer to the solution. All the while I'm
| doing something else entirely, so I don't even expect progress on
| the issue I put on the mental parking lot for a while.
|
| But, somehow, when I start the task that I postponed, this
| happens: I really start it. I focus, I get going. Implement
| things, analyze and break down, and become productive. From
| square one. Thanks to, I believe, doing nothing for a while.
| devhe4d wrote:
| For me usually procrastination happens in two scenarios:
|
| - the task is too simple which makes it boring to do - the task
| is too complex and needs an effort which I don't want to face so
| I defer doing it.
|
| Best scenario happens when a task is both exciting and is in the
| scope ( or slightly upper ) of my expertise
| danvoell wrote:
| I feel like the term perfectionism should be changed. Most people
| use it as a crutch. Friend - "I don't do things bad because I'm a
| perfectionist. " when in fact he didn't do _things_ because he
| was a "perfectionist". Just call them non-risk takers.
| abathur wrote:
| Maybe it's paradoxical, but I think some combination of working
| on OSS broadly and using Nix in particular have helped me fight
| an inclination towards perfectionistic procrastination.
|
| I still prefer to build a working prototype in private rather
| than flail in public, but the relative ease of integrating
| publicly-available sources means I get immediate leverage from
| ~publishing everything I depend on.
|
| I've had less success extending that to writing, though.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I get analysis paralysis which just prevents me from doing
| anything because I can't decide on the optimal thing to do.
| elwell wrote:
| Is it bad that I favorite'd this post so I can read it later?
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Procrastination _can_ be related to perfectionism.
|
| And chronic stress. And anxiety. And trauma. And clinical
| depression. And avoidant behaviour disorders linked to autism and
| ADHD.
|
| _can_ be. It is an important distinction, usually one lost on
| people selling something (be it a product, themselves, their ego)
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