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When I punish myself I find I shrink or cringe away from the subject of concern, rather than motivated to engage with it

Depression is the greatest enemy of doing anything, feeling bad is basically always a net negative on productivity




I identify strongly with this. I’m overall functional, even reasonably successful, in work. But in work and even more strongly in personal matters, I can shrink away from unpleasant items well past the point of it being reasonable.

I’ve literally wasted dozens of hours avoiding a task that ends up taking 15 minutes. Could be a phone call, dealing with some minor tax or DMV issue, writing a simple but important email, or whatever. Often paperwork or tedious phone call related, but it’s clearly not productive behavior.




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