My problem is that my procrastination is an addiction. There is a voice in my head telling me of all the productive things I need to do, and I enjoy rebelling against that voice and doing my own thing.
And then there is the nature of working for others, in that it requires a "sacrifice of ego." I shut down everything and become a work horse. I work for hours on end, because this is what I'm supposed to do for a living. I can't question if I really want to be doing this because that would cause me to procrastinate. Instead I become my work. Sometimes I enjoy what I do, but I am specialized in specific technologies so I'm doing a variation of the same tasks over and over. That's the life of this "modern worker."
Along those lines, I've found that a big part of my procrastination and resistance to work (or doing anything productive, really) is that I enjoy my own thoughts too much.
Thinking freely is fun. It's creative. It always feels productive. When you're letting your mind wander, you're laying the groundwork for a million future possibilities.
Deciding to actually do something that requires cognitive effort removes the freedom. You can no longer think about whatever you want. If you have a cool thought, you need to ignore it because it's distracting. Instead, you need to narrowly focus on one task. It feels like losing part of yourself.
Of course that's a terrible way to think about work and life, but it's how I find myself feeling at times.
"The need for cognition (NFC), in psychology, is a personality variable reflecting the extent to which individuals are inclined towards effortful cognitive activities."
In all honesty you sound a little disconnected. You'd have the strength to do that, too, if your (children's) livelihood depended on it. It's really not that hard if the other option is being evicted from your house.
Agree with the sibling comment. I've heard that tune (how come your kids don't motivate you, etc) so many times when dealing with crippling depression and anxiety. I have 3 children now and much better mentally, but holy shit did I have my share of trite, flippant advice.
You seem to suggest that my comment was (trite, flippant) depression advice. I'm not entirely sure how you can read my comment as depression advice given that nothing in the thread had anything to do with depression.
It's like
A: Wow I respect people who can lift heavy stuff
B: Oh come on it's just a matter of workout
C: Holy shit I've had my share of trite flippant workout advice but I have myasthenia so workout won't cut it, come on.
(I react a bit strongly because I'd never give depression advice. I have no fucking clue about depression except that well-meant tips from people like me don't help, at best. I stay out of the way and leave depression to trained shrinks and people with experience)
A: "Im not sure I'd have the strength to do it myself if I had to" [because I'm depressed / have anxiety issues / am utterly burned out mentally].
B: "You'd have the strength to do that, too, if your (children's) livelihood depended on it. It's really not that hard if the other option is being evicted from your house."
C: You missed the [...] part.
The depression link is in square brackets. Can't say if it applies to 'HiroshiSan, but it applies to some people (to some extent, including myself - I had moments when I was barely hanging by a thread). Some people doubt they'd be able to handle it because they know they lack the psychological strength. And in depression, being threatened ("you have to do it, or else your family starves") may only makes things worse - it might just push someone past their breaking point.
Dont take it too personally. You are right you didnt MENTION depression but a lot of the underlying drivers for the phenomena are just that-- depression and one of the biggest and most painful places is in the arena of parenting. Not clear if you have kids, but divorce, economic hardship and separation create a great deal of pain which can feed things like procastination and rebellion as described in the original post
Thats the conventional wisdom. It might work if your kids are in front of you every day crying, but if you are separated from them and have to maintain a mental picture of their need in the same brain, its a disaster.
The thing with menial work is that it doesn't require much mental strength - just get on with it, or, have a boss tell you to get on with it. There's something liberating about it. Which is counter-intuitive because some will associate manual labor with slave labor, communist propaganda, lower-class stuff, unworthy work for unworthy people, that kinda thing - but it really isn't.
One of my siblings, the best educated in our family, had what we'd generally call a good career from university until kids arrived. She then went through a couple of jobs at the schools and once our parents started getting old she moved to kitchen staff & waiting jobs.
Talking it through with her one day, it made great sense. At the end of her shift, once she'd tidied up and set up for the next shift, she would just walk of of the door and there would be no thoughts of work again until she clocked in the next time.
When I was programming my mind was always working, even on holidays ideas would pop up and I'd follow them. I am now in a family business which is with us 24 hours a day. There are times I'm envious of her ability to completely switch off.
I ponder that frequently, too. But then I realize that to pull it off, I'd have to somehow move family into the "unskilled job" part of the schedule - so the whole scheme is unworkable.
I have the ability to completely switch off after work. I put my 8 hours in and come home. I don't generally have any thoughts about programming when I am home. I switch to "relaxation mode."
I guess I adapted after working a stressful job at a gas station with lazy coworkers and bosses. I was also going to college and working at the same time. So I guess I needed to be able to leave work at work and do homework at home.
When I come home from work and I do some programming, the next day at work I am generally burnt out and don't do as well as a job if I had spent my time relaxing and resting.
> There are times I'm envious of her ability to completely switch off.
I’m not. For me the hardest part is the switching back on bit. I’d rather not ‘switch off’ if it means having to ‘switch on’ a little while later.
I really don’t like weekends, for example. Not that I don’t like having two days off, but the fact that it is only temporary makes it somehow worse than not having it at all. Like you get a little taste of freedom and then it’s taken away. If given the choice I would rather work 7 shorter days than 5 normal days and a 2 day weekend.
I've done menial jobs; I remember a summer job that involved picking up a little foam square and putting it right-side up on a bit of plastic, one per idk, two or three seconds. It was glorious in a way, I could let the mind wander, listen to a bit of music, and time just flew by. Oh and I got paid too.
I think everyone should do some boring work from time to time.
I just wonder what it'd be like to be unable to take your work home with you. Writing software allows me to do my job from wherever I want/need. Oftentimes that ends up being in my bed or at my desk late a night because I fucked around too much during the day.
> My problem is that my procrastination is an addiction. There is a voice in my head telling me of all the productive things I need to do, and I enjoy rebelling against that voice and doing my own thing.
Replying to the article I thought this would be, rather than the article that’s here:
I feel this really hard right now. I’m in a polyamorous relationship with a married woman; I live with her and her husband.
I’m trying to build a practice around writing every day. I found a hole in the functional programming literature that I’m well suited to fill. Every time I sit down to write, words are flowing effortlessly, and I’ve gotten positive feedback so far.
What I find is that engaging with day to day, normal relationship affirming behaviors (“good morning!”), going on dates, etc edge out space in my head for this other thing. I have space to think deeply about one and a half things. Frequently I feel like I need to disconnect from her emotionally to have space to think about anything else.
I haven’t ever heard anyone else describe this experience. I wonder if others experience this?I thought this article might be about it. I have a lot of symptoms of high functioning autism, though, so maybe this is just the less maladapted version of getting upset that I can’t go read train schedules.
I've had similar problems in past relationships - for some of my partners, if they were anywhere within earshot of me, I could not get anything productive done. The mere feeling of their presence made me think of them, feel like I had to interact with them, etc..
The partners with whom this did not happen were people who were as, if not more, driven than me when it came to working on side projects. They might be 3 feet away from me, but they're so deeply focused on what they're doing that it's contagious. It's hard to retroactively put into words, but the reality is that for some partners, any presence of theirs distracted me whereas others were so good at behaving as if they were alone that it made me believe that I was alone as well.
My take is that some people, even if you really like them in many ways, are just not great for you to be around.
(It is worth noting that I have a hard time focusing in general.)
> I've had similar problems in past relationships - for some of my partners, if they were anywhere within earshot of me, I could not get anything productive done. The mere feeling of their presence made me think of them, feel like I had to interact with them, etc..
This happens to me a lot. I have found 3 things are key to solving the problem:
1) Having an honest conversation with your Person about interacting with you during work hours. When you're working you do not exist. Eventually they get the hang of it and leave you be.
2) Noise cancelling headphones or some other form of controlling the soundscape around you. I find music helps me ignore distracting things happening around me.
3) A physical space dedicated to working. This helps both from building healthy habits and tricking your brain into work mode and from signaling to people around you that you are now working and are not to be disturbed unless you come out and interact first.
The part I have yet to figure out and probably never will is how to translate these habits into the day job office. Coworkers have a hard time understanding the idea of "leave you alone" because part of the job is to be available for questions and teamwork.
Can't have it all I guess.
Also, I have found this to be an issue more when I'm writing than when I'm coding and mostly just when I'm getting started. Once I'm in the flow you could set off a bomb near me and even if I did notice I'd just get right back to it.
I think that's a pretty normal experience. If you look at HN threads about remote work, you'll always find a few people saying that they rented offices specifically because they need to be away from their partners to be productive.
I know that my partner tends to feel neglected if I'm there, in the room, concentrating on something, and now I get too anxious about this reaction to go into flow-state around her anyways. So I actually go to the office a lot more than when I was single.
I always wonder if this sort of inspiration is so one sided in a relationship that people can't understand and accept when/that you're just not mentally available.
My partner definitely also concentrates intensely on work or a project sometimes, and will snap at me for interrupting. She just gets upset about being "ignored", which is basically being in the same room with her and not mentally available (with strict requirements on response latency).
Luckily for our relationship, this is triggered by my physical presence, so I can be productive as long as I get out of the house.
Also polyamorous, also living with symptoms of autism, also feeling the need to disconnect emotionally from my partner(s) when I need to focus on my side projects or work. My last primary partner was technical and so we would hack for hours on stuff and it was very much a different experience. My current primary partner is non-technical so the things we do together are non-technical. Maybe your partner isn't a good fit?
Edit: Or maybe it's a fantastic fit and you ought to get used to being less of a technical fanatic.
That sounds lovely. Mine is a therapist, and in lieu of hacking we have a rich dialog on how to live in a world with other people.
I am fortunate to have a partner who is willing to face head on that I will never consent to making her my first priority. Just gotta keep making changes until something works. Worst comes to worst, an in-law suite will probably do the trick.
I'm going to keep your phrase about needing to disconnect emotionally; I have something similar but I didn't have the right words to explain it. Thanks <3
This is a pretty common experience. Thinking Very Hard about something challenging takes all of my head, and I kind of have to lock myself in a bare room to make it really work.
If you don't want to do it, perhaps you shouldn't do it. RescueTime and similar tools/practices might well be just an internalized social pressure. You put on a mask that others want to see on you only to then helplessly observe your psychological immune system reject the mask through procrastination, depression, or whatever.
It is better to see procrastination and other subconscious work avoidance as a symptom that you are trying to divorce your actions from your inner motivation. Needless to say, such split personality isn't going to last and your inner motivation will win one way or another.
So fuck the work and do something you actually enjoy for a while. You will be more happy that way and chances are you will be more productive too.
Sometimes moment when you need to start something and getting fun is not at the same time. These events could be separated in time by years or seconds and you deleay it anyway. Trivial example: I know that I'll feel fantastic after cold shower, it's just
impossible for me to be depressed after it, but most of the time I have different reasons why I'm not doing it this time. When the fun is few years away it's event harder.
But yes, it's good idea to ask yourself is it actually fun for you.
In Buddhist thought, one of the afflictions (Kleshas) is that of Attachment to a desire (Raga). It is seen as just as debilitating as other Kleshas (Ignorance, Ego, Aversion and Clinging).
For Raga, it prescribes the following mind exercise:
-Observe your mind – what is it drawn to?
-Recognize the desire you feel (This being the core of the affliction called Raga)
-Give this feeling a name and a space inside you
Now observe what happens if you don’t automatically follow through with it. Experience what it’s like to create some space between feeling a want/need and acting on it.
(An easier to read version is here - shrunk it for cosmetics - https://goo.gl/vo4En4)
One thing has never sat right with me when it comes to Warren Buffet's 2 List approach. After making two lists, Mike says he will prioritize the top 5 list, but that he will also of course spend some time on the second list, because those are important, too. Warren says that he has it all wrong, and that the second list should be his Avoid-At-All-Cost list.
It's an interesting way to think about priorities, but I think the missing step is to then go and make the lists again. My first cut of the lists included lots of individual skills that I wanted to build, and ignoring some felt wrong. I realized that I actually do have a high priority goal of building a broad set of skills, and that I care more about that then mastering any one of my top 5.
A lot of the advice in the article is aimed at folks trying to focus on one skill or habit. You can identify as the kind of person who masters chess, for example, practicing every day. It's equally valid to identify as somebody who has a passing interest in many games and prioritize accordingly.
Building the lists didn't make me focus on the top 5 items, but it did help me better express what I care about.
> In this interview, we asked James to apply his unique blend of academic research and personal anecdote to the biggest issues facing the modern worker.
“Worker” is not a noun I would apply to myself. I'd say “person”. Yes, I “do work”, but that doesn't mean I “am a worker”. Turning the verb into a noun implies that that activity is somehow fundamental to your identity. (Look at a few bios and it's clear that being a parent and a spouse is very important to a lot of people.)
If you “are a worker”, you'll have no problem doing your work — that's who you are and what you do. If you're just a person who “does work”, well then the ideas around identity in this article won't be applicable.
The article talks about considering deeply what you really want to achieve, what type of person you want to be. And it kind of assumes the answer to that question is a glib “productive” or an exasperated “the sort of person who doesn't spend 2 hours on Facebook every night”. It doesn't ask “why?”, and I think that's more fundamental. This article seems quite shallow.
Do you also object to the terms "programmer" or "actor"? Would they be better called "person who programs" and "person that acts"?
Perhaps if we're down the pub and I responded to a question about who I am by saying "I'm a programmer" it would be odd. If we're in a meeting at work and I'm just trying to distinguish the number of people available to program software rather than design UI, saying "we have x programmers and y UI designers" seems pretty reasonable to me. I think that also applies to the context where "worker" was used in the article.
I would object to someone applying them to me, because I am not fundamentally a programmer or an actor.
But it's a perfectly cromulent way to use words! I'm not objecting to the turn of phrase at all.
My point is just that I draw this distinction (between “an Xer” and “a person who Xes”) when describing people, and I think it's a useful nuance.
I don't know whether the writer (and the word somehow loses its special significance after the definite article — I'm not saying it's logical; it's just how my mind reads these things) consciously chose “worker” rather than “hobbyist” or “busy person”.
But I think it shows how they see the (abstract) people they're describing. It made me realise that, yes, this advice is useful, but perhaps only to people who “are workers” rather than “do work”.
And I agree completely that in this context, “a programmer” or “a worker” is precisely what you need — you don't need a person, you need a function.
Is there any serious research on gamification of work?
I mean, the abundance of advice that tell you that to be productive you need to cut distractions is maybe evidence of the opposite. Maybe it is deeply wrong. I am most productive when someone distracts me with urgent and somewhat game-like short task. Maybe creative one, or a small investigation.
Small tasks, small random rewards seems like way to go for me. Can we gamify most of work?
I've noticed this as well. From a software perspective, even while working on an extended task that I mostly enjoy, if I'm presented with a novel, seemingly short task I usually have no trouble at all getting motivated and switching gears so I can figure it out and get the quick win. I wonder if it's the anticipation of a quick, clean solution that my brain's reward system desperstely needs?
I did this before moving to putting my phone on silent and also installing an app which prevents any number not in my contacts list from ringing my phone or even going to voicemail. Just drops the call silently with no ring on their end, either. Everything on my phone is silent except for a very short list of contacts (two people, my wife and my best friend) and a single pipeline for work alerting which is tightly-regulated.
It is the single most effective countermeasure I've taken to reclaim my own thoughts, though slowly phasing out my use of all the shitty social media is a close second.
The app is no longer maintained even though it's still for sale in the various Android app stores. It doesn't work for Nougat or higher versions, and I would rather not reward the developer for that behavior. Also, from my understanding, it may not be possible to programmatically produce this specific behavior in Nougat or higher versions (hangup, no ring, no voicemail), but I'm not totally certain.
And then there is the nature of working for others, in that it requires a "sacrifice of ego." I shut down everything and become a work horse. I work for hours on end, because this is what I'm supposed to do for a living. I can't question if I really want to be doing this because that would cause me to procrastinate. Instead I become my work. Sometimes I enjoy what I do, but I am specialized in specific technologies so I'm doing a variation of the same tasks over and over. That's the life of this "modern worker."