[HN Gopher] Structured Procrastination (1995)
___________________________________________________________________
Structured Procrastination (1995)
Author : ipnon
Score : 427 points
Date : 2025-10-06 06:35 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (structuredprocrastination.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (structuredprocrastination.com)
| jclulow wrote:
| I think basically everyone with ADHD discovers this eventually;
| e.g.,
|
| > _Sympathetic Procrastination Rotor: a technique for Time and
| Task Management._
|
| > _To aid in the fight against procrastination, arrange all of
| your tasks in a cycle, such that the natural opportunity for
| procrastination is always another task on the roadmap. In this
| essay I will_
|
| https://x.com/jmclulow/status/1390544792946237442
| taneq wrote:
| Narrator: He did not.
| latexr wrote:
| It's a meme, just like your "narrator" quip.
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/in-this-essay-i-will
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-narrator
| taneq wrote:
| Yes.
| emil-lp wrote:
| I started writing a book as a form of procrastination, and after
| I had written the first (exceptionally bad) draft, suddenly
| finishing that book rose to the top of the list. Haven't worked
| on it since.
| ipnon wrote:
| This is a trick I use: Never release a finished product. All of
| my releases are WIPs. I feel like Zeno's Software Engineer.
| eru wrote:
| You better never learn about limits.
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| Zeno, meet Sisyphus
| taneq wrote:
| Gonna get that boulder to the top of the hill eventually!
| shermantanktop wrote:
| You're already halfway there!
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| That union man is going to be on strike for a long time!
| parpfish wrote:
| "We're gonna bump up up to 1.0.0 from 0.2.972 one of
| these days"
| Asmod4n wrote:
| I'm, after 10 years of building a eco system of around 40
| extensions for mruby, at the stage to start my first project
| using them.
| otikik wrote:
| I published the open source library I have been privately
| working on for several months this weekend. It was my way to
| avoid spending the day closing down my vegetable patch for the
| winter.
|
| So that is my advice to you: if you want to do the book, add
| more things to the top of that list :)
|
| Good luck and mention me on the acknowledgements! xD
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| Key strategy is to get a job in the past, as a professor, where
| you can get away with not really doing most things you "have" to
| do.
| siva7 wrote:
| > Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try
| to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a
| few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them
| done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the
| procrastinator and destroys his most important source of
| motivation.
|
| This is also true from my observations but what this writing
| misses is another much more crucial aspect: People with severe,
| general procrastination problems have a high chance of having
| (usually undiagnosed) AD(H)D. This is a neurobiological disorder
| (more precisely, a spectrum), not something you can trick away by
| reading self-help books/writings. There is effective medication
| available for those patients.
| eru wrote:
| As far as I can tell, ADHD exists on a spectrum. And treatment
| is also multi-faceted. Meaning you might want to take your ADHD
| meds and do whatever exercises your shrink suggests, and in
| addition see whatever self-help essays work for you, etc.
| dashdashu wrote:
| You're right but being medicated is usually the first step.
| The starting line so to say from which you can then explore
| various other methods and see what can help mitigate symptoms
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| As exactly you pointed it out, it is a spectrum. Therefore some
| things work for some people, while not for others.
|
| Not everyone should take amphetamines to be more productive.
| LoganDark wrote:
| My ADHD medication doesn't help me perfectly, but it does help.
| Maybe.
| anon7000 wrote:
| I have (diagnosed) ADHD, and take meds for it daily. It helps
| tremendously. For that window of a few hours where it has an
| optimal effect, I have what feels like an innate desire to do
| anything. Send those texts I've been putting off, coordinate
| doing an activity this weekend, do that mundane testing on that
| PR I've been putting off shipping, get started on a daunting
| project.
|
| I'm still a procrastinator, and the meds only solve so much of
| the problem. They aren't going to put me in that "optimal"
| state for 16 hours a day. This article rings so true for
| procrastination, and I think the technique is still useful.
| It's embracing the fact that my ADHD will let me focus on a
| difficult, but "less important," task.
|
| Interesting example. I have a weekend class next week and I'm
| supposed to read a book before it. Once it's the day before,
| odds are 99% I won't read the book. But I can sneak it in now
| while it feels less important. Ha, take that procrastination!
| MEMORYC_RRUPTED wrote:
| As someone who is a chronic procrastinator, and has diagnosed
| ADHD, I relate to this. While yes, scrapping tasks and limiting
| concurrent in-progress todo's helps with peace of mind and
| feelings of guilt, I am _significantly_ more productive the
| more I get on my plate. As long as A I have a clear set of
| small tasks for each project, I can actually make more
| progress.
|
| That said: there's definitely a price to pay for this. I'm very
| bad at managing energy levels, or making sure I do all of that
| in a sustainable way, so, it's super productive, until I'm not.
| At all. Usually quite suddenly. The risk for burnout is quite
| high.
|
| I'm starting to accept that I'll never find the right balance,
| rather, I'm just getting better at recognising the symptoms
| that I'm headed towards burnout, and just accept that it's
| alternating periods of very high, intense productivity, and
| periods of basically nothing.
|
| Putting one thing on my to-do list is the most surefire way of
| me not doing the thing.
| rikafurude21 wrote:
| Relying on medication to mask the symptoms of ADHD is effective
| until you have been taking that medication for years and end up
| depending on it to function at all. ADHD medication is usually
| just a stimulant, which your brain adapts to rather quickly,
| and the sense of "needing it to function" is just your body
| trying to reach a state of equilibrium.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| That is my fear and why I spend much time reflecting on how I
| am and how I can cope with being who I am. Growing up, there
| was no such thing as ADHD, it was always a case of a nervous
| boy who was unruly in class. And it has basically stayed that
| way!
|
| This post is totally me: I do exactly as the author says, I
| procrastinate (just as writing this comment - I really need
| to do something else) and I learnt to use that to order my
| todo list, i.e., I literally organise my life knowing that if
| I want to get my tax return done, then its a good time to
| repaint the ceiling. Loo and behold, my tax return is done
| ... followed but much arm waving around why the ceiling never
| got done.
| siva7 wrote:
| That's true for any medication that treats symptoms (majority
| of all meds) and where there is no known cure for the
| underlying issue - in this case a neurochemical imbalance.
| The medication helps you to get a more neurotypical balance
| and will often have adverse effects on people without this
| imbalance (e.g. neurotypical students abusing such meds).
| There should be no shame attached to taking stimulants to
| treat a disorder yet we have a deep cultural moral issue here
| to lump such medications as "bad" because they are generally
| associated with drug addicts due to a lack of understanding.
| rikafurude21 wrote:
| I dont write off ADHD medication completely, it obviously
| provides value for alot of people. The thing I'm most
| concerned about is daily use. I have used them myself once
| every week or so during crunch times and they have been
| very useful in that regard.
| breakingcups wrote:
| I've read enough nuanced takes on ADHD medication that I'm very
| reluctant to even seek a diagnosis because I'm very sure I
| don't want to depend on them, for a variety of reasons.
|
| It's made me feel like it's not even worth getting a diagnosis
| because the only clear path forward is medication or eternal
| struggle with various much-less effective coping strategies.
| Anyone who can weigh in with their perspective on this is
| welcome and thanks in advance.
| intended wrote:
| Medication improves your life.
|
| Crucially, it improves the quality of life for your loved
| ones as well.
| rodrigodlu wrote:
| You can do what I do.
|
| My doctor let me change my dosage whenever I feel. She trusts
| me for this. She is also an ADHDer herself.
|
| I've found that depending on circumstances I can do well with
| 10~20mg of the cheapest generic methilfenidate, non
| LR/XR/whatever, so in my country is USD 10/20 per month. I
| went as high as 50mg of the USD 100/mo famous ones.
|
| Over time with my other therapist (psych) I trained myself to
| have some discipline processing my feelings, etc.
| Understanding the routines that were lacking.
|
| Here it's common to have regular meetings the
| psychiatrist/psychologist combo. So different perspectives.
|
| My biggest issues were knowing what to do, but not getting it
| consistently, like:
|
| - getting x minutes of sunlight during the morning, and be
| consistent almost everyday
|
| - drink water even on hyper focus moments
|
| - pay more attention to breathing even when I'm in the zone
| doing a lot of apparently rewarding tasks
|
| - trying to stop on unproductive hyper focus moments,
| realizing when they come
|
| But the medication is necessary, since changing habits,
| specially the bad ones is harder.
|
| I use the meds as an opportunity to understand myself and
| having easier time relearning my habits, and getting rid of
| the bad ones.
|
| good luck!
| siva7 wrote:
| Let me tell you, i had the same fear like you once in my
| life. Getting diagnosed and on the right medication (which
| takes time to identify as it is a spectrum disorder) changed
| my life. The meds are formulated in a way which usually
| doesn't cause drug addiction and they are also among best
| studied in all medicine.
| breakingcups wrote:
| Thank you. How long have you been on your current
| medication?
| codesnik wrote:
| two of my friends at different times called me and spoke for
| an hour each, how they suddenly realized that they have ADHD,
| got diagnosed, got meds, and how their life is completely
| different now. Sounded almost like they joined a cult or
| something, but I've been happy for them. In half a year
| initial joy subsided. I guess they got their new normalcy or
| something, it doesn't sound like they're having any adverse
| side-effects.
|
| I still don't want to go this route, I had my ups and that
| was glorious. Also I hope to get a pilot license one day.
| breakingcups wrote:
| I've heard that a lot, to the point where the advice was
| not to listen to the advice of people who have been on
| their ADHD medication for less than a year due to the
| initial boost.
| siva7 wrote:
| It's usually more helpful to base decisions on actual
| studies instead of random anecdotes where you have zero
| verifiable background information about the patient
| cases.
| margor wrote:
| My perspective is very simple.
|
| I can either struggle for the next 30 years with whatever I
| wished I was doing, and be always angry at myself, others,
| significant other and family, or I can take meds, bear the
| consequences (side effects really), but be happy for the
| moments where they do help and I can actually do what I
| wished for.
|
| Took me almost 10 years to come to that conclusion, so take
| your time, but once I started my therapy and medication I was
| so angry at myself for not doing it earlier that it took me
| almost 2 weeks to shake out of it.
|
| Feel free to check my other comment in my profile that
| describes my troubles.
| GreenWatermelon wrote:
| Meds are like glasses for your brain. I'm nearsighted, I put
| on my glasses first thing in the morning. I don't feel bad
| for having to depend on my glasses in order to see clearly
| like a normal person.
| jmbwell wrote:
| - Meds are just one of the tools available, just one part of
| a holistic approach that includes other accommodations,
| practices, and support from the people around you
|
| - Not everyone experiences these things in the same way
|
| - Your goals are for you to set; if incorporating meds into
| your plans doesn't help you reach your goals, fine. But if
| meds help you unlock goals you might not be able to access
| otherwise, maybe they're worth considering.
|
| - The vast majority of professionals really do want to help
| you reach your goals; most psychiatrists (for the meds) and
| psychologists (for your cognitive health) are going to be
| more valuable in terms of perspective than an Internet thread
| :D
| elcapitan wrote:
| Kind of fitting that this is currently #1 on HN
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| What's more, it's been posted 40 times, the first being back in
| 2007!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Ah yes, the "I'll read it later" flavour of procrastination.
|
| I don't read it later, HN is where I go to procrastinate,
| lol.
| tiniuclx wrote:
| I too struggle with procrastination. I have a big personal
| project that is nearing completion & very important to me, but
| also turning into a bit of a slog. However, because I'm
| procrastinating working on said project, I managed to do many
| other things that are also important to me, such as writing more
| & sharpening some skills.
| codesnik wrote:
| I'm doing the same, or at least trying to do it.
|
| Worst periods for me were when I had one clear, important goal,
| not particularly hard but hairy, and nothing else to do,
| sometimes because I myself cleared it up. I could spend months
| doing nothing _useful_ , and end up very, very tired and burnt
| up.
|
| I also _several times_ had a conversation with managers, whom I
| told that I 'd rather work on something very urgent, or otherwise
| give me something NOT (really) urgent and a big murky area of
| things to clear out which no one else knows how to deal with.
| That something won't probably be done, but that area will be
| improved a lot in creative ways. Typical managers' responses have
| been trying to micromanage my time up to personal hourly
| schedules, morning and evening personal reports, and scold me if
| I did anything out of the order of the list of priorities they
| imposed on me. Exactly the opposite of what's needed for me to be
| productive. And of course "let's just try that, and I'm not
| asking."
|
| Next time I'll see such a response, I probably will quit on the
| spot; this is unbelievably cruel.
|
| But it looks like the secret of the author is: just work in
| academia.
| klabetron wrote:
| > Next time I'll see such a response, I probably will quit on
| the spot; this is unbelievably cruel.
|
| Let me guess: you'd quit but your resume's out of date because
| you, like me, procrastinate updating it?
|
| (Sounds like a manager trying to manage you out; make things
| miserable enough for you that you'll quit without having to go
| through the redundancy process...)
| Sammi wrote:
| > Sounds like a manager trying to manage you out; make things
| miserable enough for you that you'll quit without having to
| go through the redundancy process...
|
| Dammit, now I have to live the rest of my life thinking about
| that this might be a thing that's actually happening.
| magnusmundus wrote:
| Mobbing is probably older than resignation as a concept.
| fhklabitz wrote:
| > Sounds like a manager trying to manage you out
|
| This is the norm from what management does to us.
|
| Evil techniques managers use: Isolate the IC. Put IC on a
| legacy or deprecated work stream. Don't give IC anything that
| could increase their longevity. Work politically to get
| others with you on an empathetic level, such that they
| understand this person is a drag, in some way that doesn't
| make you look frustrated or a poor leader. As a manager, you
| control popular opinion without the IC even knowing.
| Micromanage the IC. This is a sure-fire way of ruining any
| IC.
|
| While what the manager should do is: let the IC do their job,
| encourage them, foster their growth, and be positive about
| them to coworkers and others.
| typewithrhythm wrote:
| This way of working really requires a small company, (and is
| one of the reasons I think small places have a chance of
| outsized impact). But at bigger places, either a manager is
| being judged on a team outcome -> where an individual not on
| topic is budget not going towards what they get paid to
| achieve. Or you need seniority enough to work directly with a
| project director (but most structures expect people at that
| level to have leadership responsibilities as well).
|
| Unfortunately, while people that work like this can be
| exceptional, big projects run on organised measurable work. I
| have found few places big enough for a specific "Manager" role
| to be flexible enough to get a good match to tasks.
| codesnik wrote:
| I avoid working in big companies, fighting bureaucracy is not
| my thing. But ordered-micromanaging-managers do happen even
| in companies of 10 people. One of the worst experiences like
| that I had in a company of _four_ people, CEO was just
| insufferable, we actually spent an hour every day creating a
| schedule for a day for everyone with 15 minutes granularity.
|
| One thing slightly bothering me is that I have zero problem
| managing people both like me, and ordered stable focused
| guys, because I try to use people's strengths and put them on
| tasks which suit them the best. I've been CTO twice and can
| speak from experience. The only requirement for me is wanting
| to be useful in some form, we'll find a task, occupation, or
| feature lifecycle stage.
|
| And managers who tried to put on me some kind of "personal
| improvement plan" clearly can work productively only with
| people exactly like them. Maybe they shouldn't be managers, a
| lot of good devs have some degree of ADHD, cutting them out
| or putting them in the box can't be good for business.
| typewithrhythm wrote:
| I have spent a fair amount of time in very large companies
| (single projects involving thousands of devs). You end up
| producing a whole lot of management training (and managers)
| in this environment, just due to its size.
|
| You end up with not exactly an intentional bureaucracy, but
| one where the idea of fairness from somehow "objective"
| numbers becomes a focus.
|
| This kind of works at this scale, because you need to have
| a way to abstract and reason about the capabilitys of far
| too many people than you can know individually.
|
| The training and materials don't scale down though, so you
| get someone trying to apply metric driven performance in
| cases where it just doesn't fit.
|
| It's generally "ok" for big business, because projects at
| this scale can survive on rigid organisation, simply
| because achieving anything at that scale is a challenge
| enough to be valuable.
|
| Occasionally you see inspired leadership, but every level
| of management it has to go through erodes it. It's part of
| why it's so rare for a big company to produce anything
| unusualy good at scale, it takes a real alignment of stars.
| cnnlives546 wrote:
| > I'm doing the same, or at least trying to do it.
|
| This post gives me hope as someone with ADD. I have a MTHFR
| mutation and cross-dominant eye, with a little autism spectrum,
| psychosis, OCD tendencies, depression, injury, sleep apnea, and
| insomnia.
|
| I recommend eggs, spinach, potentially fasting, walking, and
| maybe some kind of fidget device.
|
| I also recommend giving yourself a little slack.
|
| If you're like me, we don't belong. We're pirates when it comes
| to what's expected of us. We don't fit in. We're made that way.
| We go all out until we can't, and then we don't until we do
| again. We're hard on everything, but we care immensely and at
| the same time, we can't feel. We exist to be that agent of
| randomness that does the unexpected thing that saves everyone
| that one time in a thousand.
| FakeBlueSamurai wrote:
| Im a fellow pirate and yes eggs, spinach, etc. help me. As
| does neurally dense music. I no longer have a micromanager
| boss. My life is better as long as I see a flotilla of non-
| sense to raid and an idea I get the silent treatment on.
| KETHERCORTEX wrote:
| > cross-dominant eye
|
| Is it relevant to the topic of this conversation? Does it
| cause any effects, either positive or negative?
| IanCal wrote:
| This is exceptionally early days (hours really), and perhaps
| over sharing a little personally but I found the same things
| hard and easy that you describe for working - personally I
| would work either by rapidly jumping between things (becoming
| the fix-it guy or go-to person for short things, I was totally
| fine being constantly interrupted because my head is doing that
| anyway), or working when exhausted so I found it harder to be
| distracted, or working last minute for deadlines.
|
| I started some ADHD medication today. I have been able to see
| distractions and just _not engage_. I 've got a bunch of things
| done. I've been able to cleanly focus blocks of time that I'd
| drift away otherwise. I do not have music in my head for the
| first time in *many many years*. I can stop and breathe.
|
| I have absolutely no idea what would or could work for you, but
| your comment resonated with me and I wanted to help share
| something that feels like a big change for me personally and
| hopefully others. I waited decades to ask a professional and I
| absolutely should not have done that.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You shouldn't be evaluating your diagnosis and the effects of
| a drug upon it, to the point of _advocacy_ , within hours.
|
| Your perception that you have been helped is not coming from
| the drug, it's coming from the conditioning before you got to
| the point of trying it. I was willing to put up with a lot of
| bullshit that would have to be rolled back if RFK just
| _stopped prescription drug advertisements,_ which are
| definition targeted to the weakest people in their weakest
| moments, but that immediately disappeared from the agenda.
| Super_Jambo wrote:
| What on earth makes you think you could know what's going
| on in someone else's brain with such confidence.
|
| Wild.
| lukan wrote:
| Likely because of own experience and shared experience of
| others?
|
| Medication here is not exactly new.
| IanCal wrote:
| I have not advocated for anything. At best you could say I
| advocated for talking to a professional, and I do. I
| certainly didn't say it would help them (try reading all
| the words).
|
| > Your perception that you have been helped is not coming
| from the drug, it's coming from the conditioning before you
| got to the point of trying it.
|
| I've had lots of things that were supposed to help and
| didn't. I was told this may or may not help and is the
| first thing that has made a real difference in decades.
| Other than taking stimulants before and finding it weird it
| made me very calm.
|
| I do not live in your country and do not see any
| prescription drug adverts.
| parpfish wrote:
| i've always wondered why I eagerly jump in to some big tasks
| whereas others fill me with anxiety and trigger
| procrastination, and recently I've come up with a working
| theory:
|
| if the task requires requires leaving a stable equilibrium and
| moving to another, I _will_ procrastinate. So things like
| "fixing these bugs" or "build a prototype" are fine, but
| "migrate this system from X to Y" are a problem.
|
| It's because these are the tasks where you know things are
| going to get worse before they get better.
|
| When I work, I want to fix things and shrink my to-do list (why
| yes, I _am_ an inbox-zero kind of guy). These big migration
| tasks are the type of work where once you start, your to-do
| list gets bigger.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I tend to like "make the line go down to zero" type tasks
| (not burndown charts but like "# of integrators with old
| API"). IMO it feels good to have a solid definition of done
| and realistically most tasks don't.
| jbstack wrote:
| > The procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and
| important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing
| something more important.
|
| This is the reason this method has never really clicked for me,
| despite coming across the concept in various procrastination
| blogs. It's the more important tasks that need doing the most,
| and this method aims to avoid doing those in favour of less
| important tasks. Yes, the article acknowledges this:
|
| > At this point you may be asking, "How about the important tasks
| at the top of the list, that one never does?" Admittedly, there
| is a potential problem here.
|
| But the offered solution is to put fake important tasks to the
| top of the list: tasks which have deadlines and appear to be
| important but really aren't. I don't think the human brain is
| stupid enough to trick itself in this way. If I put a fake task
| at the top of my list, I'm going to know its fake (because I
| deliberately put it there for the reason that it's fake!), and
| it's going to be the actual important tasks which get neglected
| instead of the fake one.
| anon7000 wrote:
| I mean, the crux of the problem is you might have a problem
| space where everything has a very, very strict, tight deadline.
| It's not gonna work for that.
|
| But this is simply not true in the real world. As the author
| notes, he has papers to grade and a mess of work to do in the
| evenings. These are important and have deadlines.
|
| But the reality of the matter is that procrastinating them
| really doesn't hurt anyone that much, and the benefit of just
| spending time with students is incredible.
|
| If every problem is deeply important and has to be done
| yesterday, you wind up stretched very thin. It's stressful!
|
| I don't think this is about creating a fake task at the top.
| It's more about recognizing that it's very frequently ok to
| procrastinate important things if you get value from what you
| did instead, and aiming to maximize that value. You're tricking
| yourself, but in a way that fits how some procrastinators
| think. As he says, it relies on some level of self-deception.
|
| And it should go without saying that there are obviously
| exceptions, and that it's just one tool in the toolbox.
| jbstack wrote:
| The part I'm not convinced about is that the self-deception
| actually works. In order to achieve it, I have to go through
| the thought process of "I have papers to grade and a mess of
| work to do which are important and have deadlines, but
| actually if I don't do them it won't hurt anyone". Once I go
| through that thought process, I now know that the task isn't
| genuinely important. Writing it down at the top of some list
| doesn't change what I know. Somewhere else on that list is
| the _real_ important task (the one that will cause harm if I
| don 't do it) and my brain knows which one it is and will try
| to procrastinate it.
| sigilis wrote:
| Task selection is the tricky bit. It has to actually be
| important in some dimension. The easiest is something with an
| amount of social pressure. If someone is waiting for you to do
| something that you have promised, then it acquires a kind of
| urgency and importance even if it wouldn't harm you not to do
| it in a timely manner.
|
| It's not fake importance, it's just taking advantage of the
| fact that you want to be seen as dependable and effective to
| other people.
| jbstack wrote:
| > If someone is waiting for you to do something that you have
| promised, then it acquires a kind of urgency and importance
| even if it wouldn't harm you not to do it in a timely manner.
|
| I don't agree with this though. If someone is waiting for me
| to do something that I've promised, and I don't do it, I'm
| going to suffer the harm of stress, guilt, shame, etc.
| related to breaking my promise and people thinking I'm
| unreliable. I think this idea only works if we define "harm"
| in a very narrow sense to exclude the types of harms that
| come from the "important" task that we're going to
| deliberately avoid doing.
| sigilis wrote:
| You are correct. This strategy is not for making you happy
| with your procrastination. The main goal is to make you an
| effective human being. As a result, this excludes personal
| emotional effects from the definition of harm.
|
| Furthermore, what an effective human is also something that
| you have to define for yourself.
|
| Procrastination is considered a negative trait for a
| reason.
| tpoacher wrote:
| I had fun reading this. Unfortunately the infinite list of tasks
| doesn't work for me, because in the end they fade into oblivion
| but are still somehow important to keep track of, putting them in
| some sort of no-man's land ...
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > one is in effect constantly perpetrating a pyramid scheme on
| oneself
|
| This is wonderful framing. I love it
| s20n wrote:
| Ah yes, yak shaving <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving>
| boerseth wrote:
| I swear this is how I've gotten good at most of my hobbies.
| Playing guitar for 20 years has gotten me to a great level for a
| hobbyist, but not at all because of any virtues like discipline,
| self control, or routine.
|
| Rather, every day whenever other more important chores or duties
| loomed, I'd notice one of my guitars laying around, in my couch
| or my bed or leaning next to my desk. And most times, I'd give
| in. There's always a new skill, technique, lick, or song that I'm
| working on, or something I've recently mastered that gives me joy
| to play.
|
| If anything I think discipline would have hurt my guitar skills
| over the years.
| Sammi wrote:
| This is why "follow you passion" is terrible career advise. If
| you make your passion your work then it stops being your
| "passion".
|
| Much better career advise I've heard is: What kind you shit are
| you much better at suffering than other people around you seem
| to be?
|
| Because work is work. There's a reason you get paid to do it.
| Sure it might be something that you are good at and care about,
| but if you need to work on it 8 hours a day, then you will
| inevitably start to feel the grind. This is why you get paid
| and go on vacations.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This is what software development is for me; "just learn
| coding lol" is terrible career advice because it's simply not
| for everyone, just like management or marketing isn't for me.
|
| I could do blue collar work, but preferably factory work.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Man I wish I had a hobby like that instead of video games, lol.
|
| (I'm very much into video games that scratch the same itch as
| software development does, but with games they give more
| instant gratification and they present you the next objective
| in a fairly structured fashion, but often without pressure.
| I've binged Factorio, now I'm back on Rimworld, where my people
| just do the tasks they are supposed to and only procrastinate
| when I allow it and / or when they have a mental breakdown from
| seeing too many dead bodies)
| Rendello wrote:
| I did this for many years, but pretty much just got worse.
| There's probably a threshold of skill you need to reach on an
| instrument. I decided that if I pick up guitar again, I'll be
| sure to do a few months of structured lessons, because I'm
| tired of noodling around on the same two scales!
| leventhan wrote:
| Make procrastination your superpower.
| srean wrote:
| Over the years I have become more or less convinced that I have
| adult ADHD. The overlap in symptoms are too difficult to leave
| unacknowledged.
|
| But, at the same time I have been procrastinating on getting
| myself diagnosed. Oh, well.
| siva7 wrote:
| That's a classic pattern in adult ADHD. I had the same issue.
| Getting help is sometimes the most difficult step and it can
| change your life (and those of your loved ones) for the better.
| srean wrote:
| Just the thought that I have to (i) find a doctor and then
| (ii) speak at length about myself and symptoms, is a massive
| deterrent.
|
| Then there are worries that I might get dependent on the
| medicines and /or my tendency to form whacky spontaneous
| connections between things (a trait that I find amusing and
| unwilling to lose).
|
| I know. I know, these are excuses. Thanks for the push.
| siva7 wrote:
| They are excuses and i had the same for a long time. Part
| of the reason for these delays are also the symptoms of the
| disorder which impairs functions responsible to be able to
| make changes.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| I suspect I have ADD as well and did the same thing for the
| longest time, that is putting off getting help, but I have
| an initial appointment tomorrow to either confirm, or rule
| out, a diagnosis.
|
| I ended up needing a nudge from someone else to finally get
| to it, so let this be a sign that you can do it too! ;)
| srean wrote:
| Good job and all the best.
|
| I have found that having a compassionate partner who
| knows when not to take your (meaning mine) bullshit and
| when to yield somewhat, helps a great deal. I am very
| lucky in that sense, but wish she was stricter. So yes,
| non-judgemental but unyielding nudges help a lot.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Thing with adult diagnoses for these is that most adults have
| adapted and are managing fine. But, the adults I've seen that
| did end up getting a diagnosis were no longer managing fine. I
| theorize there's two factors, one is family life - where you
| can't do your own decompression or coping as much anymore
| because you are Needed. The other is mental and physical
| resilience, once you're past 30 this starts to decline so your
| mental energy levels etc aren't as strong anymore.
|
| Most adult diagnoses I've seen around me are people in their
| mid-30s, which is the same rough age as people start having
| burnout after spending their 20s doing all the things and
| growing into more responsible roles.
|
| But that said, thanks to the internet, people learn to
| recognise the symptoms and know that there is help when they
| need it. In theory anyway, I know in the US and UK adult mental
| health care is expensive and/or unavailable.
| srean wrote:
| Burnout wise, I lasted a couple of decades longer but at
| times it sure was quite a hell.
|
| I now suspect I would have had a better time had I opted for
| treatment. Perhaps not burned out in the first place.
|
| My best time professionally was when I had a boss who was
| tolerant of my working style - disorganized, spread across
| multiple projects, no two consecutive days on the same
| project, happy to help other groups for the smell of novelty,
| sometimes rather too happy to do that, but able to solve
| technical problems deemed hard and engaging.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| In the UK, currently, adult ADHD care is basically broken.
|
| The NHS will accept you on waiting lists, if you're in one or
| two lucky regions, you have to wait a few weeks, otherwise
| you have to wait years. If you are in a very unlucky region,
| you can randomly get dropped from the waiting list, and
| effectively barred from ever getting back on it, because
| someone looked at the referral and diagnosed you as not
| having ADHD. Under the NHS you are not entitled to a second
| opinion (hence why you don't get to go back on the list).
|
| So the NHS has this system called "Right to Choose" (RTC)
| where private care providers can register to offer services
| to NHS patients, charged to the NHS. You go to your GP and
| you say: "Hi, I noticed that if I go on the NHS waiting list
| for an ADHD diagnosis, it's uncertain if it will come before
| or after the heat death of the universe. Can you please refer
| me to this private provider of my choice instead?" And if
| your GP knows what RTC is, you get on the private provider's
| waiting list which is often between to 2w and 1y.
|
| Cool, so that solves it right? Okay, but what happens once
| you're diagnosed? If you decide to go with the medication
| route (somehow it's either Meds or therapy but not both -
| what?), they give you a prescription. You take it to your
| local pharmacy to fulfil, and you fulfil it at the NHS
| prescription cost (currently just under PS10 per
| prescription). You do this for a few months, trying different
| things until you find something that works for you. Now what?
|
| Most providers will tell you to move to a "Shared Care
| Agreement". They contact your GP and say: "Hi, this person
| needs meds, they're stable on these meds, can you take over
| prescribing them." and for a while some GPs would be like:
| "Sure, that seems like the right thing to do in this
| situation."
|
| Recently the advice has been for GPs to drop SCAs for ADHD
| medication. Why? I honestly have no complete picture. But the
| gist seems to be that it costs the GP practice time and
| money, that the NHS doesn't reimburse. IDFK. To me it sounds
| like people with ADHD are being used as a pawn in some
| idiotic game of chess between the regional NHS authorities
| and whatever higher-ups set the budgets for those regional
| NHS authorities. The current move is "People with ADHD get
| fucked+". I guess we're waiting for the reply from the higher
| ups. This is a conference chess game and who knows if the
| privately owned Royal Mail is going to actually deliver the
| letters in a timely fashion.
|
| So now people who have been stable on medication for months
| to years are suddenly being told that they have 6 months to
| get an NHS diagnosis (which in most cases takes at least a
| year) or switch to a private provider that the practice likes
| (whose waiting list is now almost inevitably close to a year
| because everyone else is in the same shoes).
|
| So now that you've successfully managed to deal with a bunch
| of bullshit, get a diagnosis, deal with the pains of
| titration etc, you are suddenly told you have 6 months before
| you'll undoubtedly become unproductive and struggle to hold
| your job.
|
| And on the Nth day, the devil started creating Hell, and then
| stopped 5 minutes later because he realised that the UK
| already existed and would suffice.
| lucideer wrote:
| I feel like this seemed a plausible strategy when I first read it
| as a serial procrastinator struggling through university 17 years
| ago.
|
| Now, after many years of applying stuff like this successfully
| for a couple months only to immediately regress at the first sign
| of life disruption, after an ADHD diagnosis & a bunch of therapy,
| this all seems like a fairly immature avoidant coping strategy in
| retrospect. I'm now fairly productive & don't procrastinate much
| (relatively speaking) and tbh I wish I'd read less of this crap
| in the past: I might've gotten help earlier.
| throwaway295729 wrote:
| I'm on the same boat. What do you think the root causes of
| procrastination were in your case?
| zachrip wrote:
| They did mention their adhd diagnosis..
| lucideer wrote:
| ADHD definitely doesn't help but I don't find there's a
| direct link between ADHD & _why_ I procrastinate. The why
| is personal to me & unlikely to be the same for everyone
| but I find these kinds of tools & strategies are a means to
| ignore the why & "get by" without addressing any
| fundamental issues.
|
| One example (of which there are many) is that external
| validation as a motivator is a big cause of procrastination
| in some people - working on things "for others" hits on a
| lot of complex issues around personal insecurities & ego.
| The idea that your work will be seen & judged can be a big
| factor in pressures & subconscious negative emotions around
| doing the work. Addressing motivation properly involves
| addressing those insecurities, rather than just "getting on
| with it" & using a temporary strategy to get it done.
|
| That's an example, but it doesn't apply to everyone & it's
| never that simple for anyone.
| dceddia wrote:
| I'm coming to see the root is usually some kind of
| avoidance, always emotional, often subtle. I think this
| actually is pretty universal but the specifics vary
| wildly. It's taken a while to unpack this. For a long
| time, when I'd about of a task I was avoiding, I'd just
| get this wave of a feeling of "ughhh" and turn away.
|
| There's something the feeling is trying to warn me about,
| and sitting with it can help figure it out and let it go.
| A lot of my own stuff stems from school I think. The
| funny thing is it's often totally illogical. Like a sense
| of panic comes up - "oh no! Someone will be mad I haven't
| started this yet!" - yes well wouldn't getting it done
| avoid that outcome? "no but it's too late! They'll yell
| at me when I turn it in!". My brain associated "doing the
| task" with "getting in trouble" in a weird way, and that
| emotional program runs whenever something vaguely similar
| comes up.
|
| The surface-level fear might cover up a deeper fear
| underneath too (something like, I won't be ok, or good
| enough, or loved anymore).
|
| All this emotional stuff has been a recent focus of mine
| ever since finding Joe Hudson's work. There's a good
| playlist on procrastination that's relevant here: https:/
| /m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrbct081G13-ot5FviKz1bt...
| lucideer wrote:
| One other thing that trips many people up I think is the
| idea that they shouldn't be feeling "avoidant" about
| certain tasks that they love, enjoy & are passionate
| about (why would you). Often that comes down to being
| more invested in a perfect outcome for those "passion"
| tasks which ultimately builds more pressure to do it well
| & associated anxiety around not living up to ones own
| invented standards. "It's my passion therefore I must not
| fall short" can be a massive avoidance trigger.
| danielbln wrote:
| All the systems in the world break down eventually. Todo lists,
| GSD, tickets, notes, accountability plans, mental trickery, and
| so on. It all seems like a panacea at first, until it doesn't.
| What really helps the ADHD mind is diagnosis and meds, and
| these days LLMs. Turns out they make for exceptional personal
| assistants that can be used to automate all the boring and
| unexciting stuff that is nevertheless needed, and focus on the
| fun creative problem solving.
|
| That said, people with different executive function need
| different things. "Just do it" is about as helpful as "don't be
| sad".
| TheCapeGreek wrote:
| Can you elaborate on LLMs as assistants for ADHD? What are
| you automating with them?
| danielbln wrote:
| Anything, really. Structuring work and breaking it into
| smaller chunks, keeping track on tasks, getting back up to
| speed on past tasks. Mundane stuff like planning out
| furniture purchases, having it walk me through the
| requirements etc. It just lowers the barrier to start, as
| starting is just a single sentence away and everything else
| flows from there.
| elevatortrim wrote:
| For me it is the psychological barrier.
|
| e.g. I would never do something that's challenging, not
| mandatory, yet potentially beneficial like disputing a
| charge, requesting renumeration etc.
|
| But I can put the docs in a folder, ask AI about the next
| step, ask it to take it or at least write the copy.
|
| That seems to be a lot of reduced mental load and gets me
| do things I otherwise could postpone for months or never
| do.
| lachlan_gray wrote:
| They have helped me a lot with chunking tasks, and guiding
| me through tasks that I can't hold in focus.
|
| There's a prompt I used while moving out, where I had
| claude ask _me_ questions, what is in each room. And then
| once we had this item list, organizing it.
| danielbln wrote:
| > where I had claude ask me questions
|
| That's a powerful pattern also for engineering. Can
| recommend.
| lucideer wrote:
| > _" Just do it" is about as helpful as "don't be sad"._
|
| To be clear, I'm not saying "just do it" or suggesting
| anything quick or easy. Quite the opposite: coping strategies
| like this are imo the "easy way out". I'm suggesting a much
| slower, harder path that leads to long term results (& can't
| be generalised, packaged & sold in a neat article as it's
| entirely different for everyone).
| danielbln wrote:
| Oh for sure, I was not referring to what you wrote. It's
| just that it's a common thing people who are, let's say,
| executive function challenged get to hear.
| dvdkon wrote:
| What's the "mature" coping strategy you've found, then? Did
| therapy get you to stop procrastinating?
| avianlyric wrote:
| Can't speak for GP, but can speak to my own experiences with
| this. My friends euphemistically called me a productive
| procrastinator.
|
| Via therapy I've come to realise that the procrastination is
| ultimately driven by underlying anxiety. That anxiety comes
| from growing up in an environment where my ADHD frequently
| resulted in me being punished for not working the same way
| other children did, not completing tasks as expected, and
| generally struggling with school work despite being
| "intelligent". In short being in an environment that simply
| didn't accept it was possible to be "intelligent" and
| struggle with school life at the same time, and thus punished
| me for being "lazy".
|
| The procrastination becomes a coping mechanism to put off the
| expected punishment from attempting to do a task, and
| failing/struggling with it. Along with deep associations with
| those tasks being given by authority figures and having
| arbitrary deadlines.
|
| The mature coping mechanism has been to confront the anxiety
| head on, which is much easier said than done, and working on
| the underlying causes of the anxiety via therapy,
| mindfulness, and other pretty standard mental health
| techniques. It's hard work, and I fail often, but I've been
| failing less and less as time goes on.
|
| The side effect of dealing with the anxiety directly is less
| procrastination. Not because I'm better at _not_
| procrastinating, but simply because I'm getting better at
| coping and dealing with the anxiety that triggers
| procrastination.
| lucideer wrote:
| A coping strategy is something you turn to to "cope" with a
| problem when the underlying cause of your problem is beyond
| your direct control.
|
| If you are in a position to address the underlying cause
| directly, I've found it to be a better option than "coping".
| Therapy was a big part of identifying the problems.
| Ultimately, as a sibling commenter mentioned, task avoidance
| is often a sign of (usually very well disguised from oneself)
| underlying anxiety. I was always extremely confident &
| presented as "capable" but ultimately that was a shallow
| facade that became impossible to maintain over a long period.
|
| I haven't stopped procrastinating but I do it far less & have
| a pretty good success rate with overcoming it when I apply
| myself. I'm not using any "tools" to do that beyond (hard
| fought) self-awareness.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| My problem is that I know the underlying cause is anxiety,
| and I still can't bring myself to do anything about it.
| Like, I have to book a flight for travel in a month. I
| don't much like traveling so I don't do much of it, and I'm
| traveling by myself. That anxiety, coupled with my anxiety
| from flying, have had me planning to book this flight for
| over two months unsuccessfully. There's a good chance I'll
| just make up some excuse to not go, even though I really,
| really want to. The anxiety is literally crippling.
| d--b wrote:
| If this is your first time reading about structured
| procrastination on HN you're not procrastinating enough!
| owenpalmer wrote:
| I felt this when I decided to do dev work while going to school.
| The structure of work was a break from the chaos of school, and
| the novelty of school was a break from the monotony of work.
|
| I want to understand the mechanism and purpose behind
| procrastination. It seems like there's a reason evolution chose
| for ADHD to exist.
|
| In my experience, sometimes the frustrating signal telling me not
| to do the superficially "productive" thing is a defense mechanism
| against doing meaningless shit. It's a voice screaming at you,
| informing you of your mortality.
| niek_pas wrote:
| > It seems like there's a reason evolution chose for ADHD to
| exist.
|
| Well, evolution is not an actor. It didn't 'choose' anything.
| It's just that people (organisms?) with ADHD have not failed to
| reproduce in the past, so it still exists.
| gyomu wrote:
| > organisms with ADHD have not failed to reproduce in the
| past
|
| Yes, that's the real insight. You can be terribly
| unsuccessful by society's standards and yet immensely
| successful by evolutionary standards.
|
| If you're broke/in prison/homeless/addicted/(whatever else
| you want to include) with 6 kids, you're evolutionary more
| successful than someone who has it all put together with 0
| kids.
| owenpalmer wrote:
| This is the bell curve meme.
|
| Evolution chose -> NOOOO, evolution doesn't "choose" anything
| -> Evolution chose
|
| Personification of natural selection is a common way
| biologists speak about evolution.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes, we have an entire part of the language for talking
| about what actors do. And we have nothing at all to talk
| about how non-acting structures mold complex systems.
| simianparrot wrote:
| I interpret it differently; it's usually a signal that my
| current approach to an activity is not effective. And it's not
| static. For example if I feel this signal when practicing piano
| songs I otherwise want to improve on, I will try an entirely
| different or new sheet. If I still feel it, I'll just do some
| technical practices and then stop. If I feel it when it's a
| chore I know I should do, I give myself the option between that
| chore and another. Whenever I challenge the feeling like this I
| end up being more in control than simply giving up altogether.
| rjprins wrote:
| Evolution is a continuous random branching and selective
| pruning process. And there is not a lot of pruning going on in
| the current human explosion. So unless ADHD is an old branch
| and we see other mammals survive because of their
| distractability, I remain skeptical.
| bradley13 wrote:
| An old friend of mine had a saying: if you want something done,
| ask a busy person to do it. Fits right in with this article.
| blinkingled wrote:
| If you truly enjoy the procrastination as opposed to fighting it
| or distracting to another thing - sooner or later you'll want to
| do the thing you were supposed to do.
|
| Try that out. There is a reason why you don't want to do
| something and that fundamentally has to do with your mental
| relationship to the task - the repetition fatigue, the way you
| think and feel about it etc. needs a reset and enjoying the idle
| procrastination time gives you that.
|
| IOW Zen mantra - when you procrastinate just procrastinate
| without resistance.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| This is great if you have that freedom, but the person that
| wrote the article needs to do tasks for their job; other people
| depend on it. Same with me and my job, I am paid to perform a
| specific task at the moment. Same with people in a family
| situation, you can't procrastinate daily routines like picking
| your kids up from school... which leads to procrastinating
| about everything else because you have something coming up
| later so you can't hyperfocus on something else.
| blinkingled wrote:
| Yeah, what I do is make use of the freedom fully when I can
| and that way it's like I have fulfilled my quota for
| procrastination and it's easy sailing for the stuff then I
| need to do :D - complicated and works for me but YMMV. Feels
| intuitive to me lol.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| I like this approach, feels like something Mark Twain would've
| advised
| kaffekaka wrote:
| I have found that when someone (someone else, not me) asks for
| help in the work slack and noone replies, the best way to get
| people engaged is to send a simple "hm..". This seems to trigger
| colleagues that are actually busy into being "the first to help".
| Like they don't want me to be the hero.
| Sammi wrote:
| Us nerds cannot stand a good nerd bait. Have you tried just
| answering something obviously wrong so someone can jump in and
| correct you?
| kaffekaka wrote:
| Actually no, I dare not wield such power.
| maffyoo wrote:
| +1 for a "this has been posted before" check
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Structured+Procrastination
| dbacar wrote:
| This is gold, I will read it fully later .
| merek wrote:
| Precisely my response to many articles, which is why I have
| many 10s of browser tabs open at any given time.
| srean wrote:
| 10 ? LOL
|
| My low normal is about 800, median is double that.
| qwertytyyuu wrote:
| I feel like anything that get onto that list is going get
| procrastinated on ...
| techstrategist wrote:
| There's a great book about this, the author writes a bit at
| https://www.lichtenbergianism.com/ but a paper copy is much more
| useful imo.
| FranklinMaillot wrote:
| Also known as 'procrastivity'.
| cowpig wrote:
| This article had a debilitating effect on one of the most
| talented engineers I've ever met. A charismatic force of nature,
| whose impact was tragically chaotic.
|
| He read it as a teenager, and it became part of his personal
| philosophy. And so he used it to avoid feeling responsible for
| his own priorities, and struggled in every role he had for years.
|
| He routinely derailed projects and created chaos by switching
| away from projects as soon as they became mission-critical. And
| he demanded an infuriating amount of managerial attention.
|
| His absolute brilliance and charisma made this far worse, as his
| attitude was inherently culture-setting. The more impressionable
| employees around him would inevitably become worse than useless,
| while the more senior, mature employees ended up hating working
| with him despite his incredible impact on the thing he was paying
| attention to at a given moment.
|
| Be convinced of this article's ideas at your own risk.
| jaberjaber23 wrote:
| most people don't procrastinate because they're lazy, they
| procrastinate because their brain rejects meaningless work
| alganet wrote:
| It all comes down to doing things you don't want to do.
|
| Procrastination as a concept exists to trick you into thinking
| that you should want to do the thing you don't want to do.
|
| It's much better to just recognize that there's a lot of things I
| don't want to do, and there is no trick to make me like those
| things, and it will be miserable doing those things. Sometimes,
| I'll need to do things I don't want. No way out of it.
|
| In my opinion, it's also beneficial to keep it simple. Instead of
| playing a game of "if I finish this side project, I'll be able to
| show it to others, then maybe I'll be recognized, then...", just
| keep it simple: do you want to work on it or not (does it make
| you happy?), right now? Do you need to work on it (to pay bills,
| to support children, etc), right now?
|
| This way, you never procrastinate. You either succeeded at
| avoiding doing something you don't want to do, or you failed
| doing something you need to do.
| dadzilla wrote:
| My dad, John Perry, wrote this essay and followed it up with a
| book - The Art of Procrastination. I love to see the essay
| rediscovered & will share this thread with him.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Does anyone know why the newest Firefox isn't showing the button
| for the reader view on this page? The shortcut doesn't work
| either. It seems to work fine on plenty of other articles on
| other websites.
|
| Normally I don't rely too much on that feature, but this website
| is hard to read as-is.
| fedeb95 wrote:
| This article seems great, I will finish it later.
| jackallis wrote:
| if this article resonates with you, please go talk to a therapist
| to see if there is/are any underlying "issues" that is leading
| you to procrastinate; you might have ADHD. i am really tired of
| reading numerous artciles on how procrastination is matter of
| lack-of-will, not disciplined, time-waters to gets things done.
| vishkk wrote:
| Didn't have vocab for it, but seems like I have been doing
| something similar. For example, having a JIRA ticket on my board
| that I don't want to do will make me finish all the other
| tickets. I will procrastinate till the last minute -- kind of
| pitting one ticket against all others for myself to get the stuff
| done.
| tomhow wrote:
| We've been procrastinating for years here...
|
| _Structured Procrastination (1995)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36433304 - June 2023 (1
| comment)
|
| _Structured Procrastination_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33515388 - Nov 2022 (4
| comments)
|
| _Structured Procrastination (1995)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30292440 - Feb 2022 (37
| comments)
|
| _Structured Procrastination_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24884347 - Oct 2020 (9
| comments)
|
| _Structured Procrastination (1995)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941717 - April 2018 (38
| comments)
|
| _Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and
| Succeed Long-Term_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10151481 - Sept 2015 (79
| comments)
|
| _Procrastination and Perfectionism_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287817 - March 2011 (29
| comments)
|
| _Structured Procrastination - "the art of making procrastination
| work for you"_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=212590 -
| June 2008 (3 comments)
| beacon294 wrote:
| This is a testament to ADHD in the software industry.
|
| The hallmark of ADHD is an "interest based attention system".
|
| If you have ADHD, it may be completely shocking for you to hear
| that most people prioritize "extrinsically", meaning, whether or
| not something is "interesting" is *not* primary information in
| their prioritizations.
|
| I never knew I had ADHD until I had a baby and had to start
| prioritizing tasks based on time.
|
| And guess what, I can't easily prioritize on time constraints.
| Which is one of the two fundamental prioritization dimensions,
| the other being space (eg you only need one auth backend, pick
| one). I can do space.
|
| Now I have no problem writing hours for each segment of a project
| and getting it within 100% error bars.
|
| Where my life breaks down is daily tasks. I used to have a 5-7 PM
| sink. If I had a good day, I wrapped at 5 or just kept momentum
| to 7 PM. If I had a bad ADHD day, I just worked to 7,
| manufacturing urgency.
|
| With a child you don't work til 7, so just lop off 10 of your
| 25-30 core productive hours for the week, unmedicated.
|
| I suspect as I adjust I will come to see 2-3 PM as "ahh this is
| urgent because at 5 PM, death". But, at least I am medicated now
| and can work consistently at 9 AM.
| SJMG wrote:
| I assume you mean the sharing of the article, because the
| author was a philosophy prof.
|
| Do you have anything I can follow up on for,
|
| > most people prioritize "extrinsically" meaning, whether or
| not something is "interesting" is _not_ primary information in
| their prioritizations.
|
| I would have thought the quest for dopamine was pretty
| universal and there's a good friend in my life who has a
| serious case of ADHD.
| beacon294 wrote:
| Yes, this article is very helpful. The website is very noisy,
| maybe to keep hyperactive ADHD people around, but it's
| horrible for me. Try a reader mode:
|
| https://www.additudemag.com/secrets-of-the-adhd-
| brain/?srslt...
| im3w1l wrote:
| I got a perspective on procrastrination by playing chess.
| Sometimes in the past I would try to do something like write an
| essay, read a book or, program something. And I would get this
| heavy feeling in my brain. Thinking would be like running through
| molasses. No useful thoughts would pop out. I would have read the
| same sentence over and over, because as soon as I finished
| reading it I would have forgotten what I just read. And then I
| would drop what I was doing and "procrastrinate".
|
| Well, I started playing chess. And the same thing would happen, I
| would get this feeling. And I would start dropping pieces. I
| would play the opening out of order. I would try my very best to
| prevent these things and then run out of time. And it made me
| realize something - because chess is a microcosm model of
| thinking and knowledge work, more quantifiable and objective - it
| made me realize that I wasn't being lazy. I had in fact been
| completely correct when I thought to myself that I can't do this
| right now. It wasn't an excuse.
|
| But also it made me reflect on my "a-game". It's simply not
| possible to always be on your a-agame, and you have to plan
| around that. Somethings are acceptable to do at a lower standard.
| Maybe it's okay having half-understood the book? Also doing
| things at your "b-game" is still practice even if the work is
| garbage.
| danielfalbo wrote:
| How do we know it's from 1995?
|
| > Site designed by the author's granddaughter, who did the work
| while avoiding the far more weighty assignment of her literature
| test.
|
| Impressive for 1995, he must've thought her HTML and how to use a
| computer first
|
| HTML 2.0 came out in 1995
| danielfalbo wrote:
| update: the HTML doctype string is
|
| > <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0
| Transitional//EN"
| "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
|
| that's HTML 1.0
| Scarblac wrote:
| XHTML 1.0, the attempt to write HTML in XML. It came out in
| ~2000 and was a thing for some time while HTML 4 was also
| around.
| dadzilla wrote:
| Heh, that's my daughter - mostly self-taught with just enough
| misdirection from me to keep her guessing. The essay was from
| 1995, but was just in a listserv. The webpage was done in the
| early 2000s.
| tolerance wrote:
| - This year's submission as of the time of this comment has ~38
| references to "ADHD" (not counting multiple references in a
| single comment).
|
| - The 2022 submission
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30292440): 6
|
| - 2020 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24884347): zero
|
| - 2018 contains a single reference to "ADD":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16948527
|
| - 2017 contains neither "ADHD" nor "ADD" but a single reference
| to "ADDeral": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13618985
|
| - 2015 has no references but I thought this comment was funny:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10163857
| hungryhobbit wrote:
| Never in my life have I wanted a single line of CSS more!
|
| To the author: humans with large monitors can't read text that
| spills across those entire monitors! Add a max-width: 1000px or
| _something_.
| ishouldbework wrote:
| Can you make the browser window smaller?
| jimnotgym wrote:
| (1995)
| Rendello wrote:
| New enough to have Google Ads embedded!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45492546
| roncesvalles wrote:
| As someone who procrastinates, I've intuited this exact thing
| over time. I need a dozen open threads at once -- unfinished
| software projects, unfinished books, work projects, areas that
| I'm just thinking about, topics to learn. At any given time I
| might pick up any of those threads and make progress on it. Maybe
| I might spend a few days on it, maybe a few minutes. But over the
| long term, I do finish them.
|
| It helps to maintain extensive and detailed context notes so that
| doing this context-switching is easy.
|
| Many great individual works in history were not produced in a
| "straight line" by the creator just sitting down and powering
| through them. They were produced as I described, in disconnected
| sprints over years and decades.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Structured Procrastination_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33515388 - Nov 2022 (4
| comments)
|
| _Structured Procrastination (1995)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30292440 - Feb 2022 (37
| comments)
|
| _Structured Procrastination_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24884347 - Oct 2020 (9
| comments)
|
| _Structured Procrastination (1995)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941717 - April 2018 (38
| comments)
|
| _Structured Procrastination: Do Less and Deceive Yourself_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13617083 - Feb 2017 (78
| comments)
|
| _Structured Procrastination: Do Less, Deceive Yourself, and
| Succeed Long-Term_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10151481 - Sept 2015 (79
| comments)
|
| _Structured Procrastination_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2514972 - May 2011 (2
| comments)
|
| _Procrastination and Perfectionism_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287817 - March 2011 (29
| comments)
|
| _Anti-Akrasia Technique: Structured Procrastination_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=939656 - Nov 2009 (4
| comments)
|
| _Structured Procrastination - "the art of making procrastination
| work for you"_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=212590 -
| June 2008 (3 comments)
| kanodiaayush wrote:
| Okay so how are we to do the actual hardest thing on our list?
| All else is resolved (let's say) (I genuinely agree). I just want
| a nice complete framework to remember this article and what's
| missing is how to get the top item/hardest thing done.
| jll29 wrote:
| I've been using what the OP discusses for several years now, and
| it works.
|
| In particular, as a scientist I can report that the brain is
| particularly creative when it is expected to work on something
| else; it comes up with very interesting and original research
| topics that are worth being captured in writing (to be executed
| later on).
|
| The main task can be attacked (better) with Structured
| Procrastination by making a TO DO list on which we divide it into
| many small tasks. During procrastination, picking and completing
| a small task from the list is typically possible, and relatively
| effortlessly so.
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