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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Or perhaps it's a multiple of things, and not just getting off twitter.
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.
Yes. There are various reasons to procrastinate. ADHD procrastination is more about emotional discomfort avoidance than perfectionism.
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).
The opposite of those symptoms - like hyperfocus, inability to switch tasks, decision-making inertia, etc.?
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.
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.
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. :/
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... )
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
It depends, do you define endless scrolling as boredom ? Because I think it’s not.
That's not what the post above you is talking about. "Endless scrolling" was never even mentioned
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?
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.
youve very succinctly explained an incredibly frustrating reality. it really helps to understand it clearly like that
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.
I’m sorry you had to go through this, and I’m glad you learned from it.
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!
Sounds awful. And I can guess exactly how that boss responded to any feedback or criticism directed in his direction!
Lol, imagining some bored unhappy middle aged neckbeard go with "unbeliavable...."
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.
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.
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.
“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.
That's just the push I needed to challenge Mike Tyson to a fight.
"Everybody has a plan until they're punched in the mouth."
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.
Except if the fall kills you. Survivorship bias.
In my more lugubrious moments I prefer Samuel Beckett's "Fail again, fail better".
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.
You piqued my interest: What’s private open source?
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...
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.
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.
I would comment on this issue, but I am still thinking about what the best comment would be....
Same, I'll get back to it though
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.
bookmarked the thread.
You probably want to read the New Oxford Style Manual first. Maybe check a course about writing on Coursera before writing the first draft.
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
So we are not in fact what we have made ourselves? What are we then? What are we supposed to be?
If you can figure out, you'd have bested all of modern philosophy. godspeed!
We are abstractions, with no substantial reality apart from everything else. And thus, not worth getting hung up on most of the time.
Good intentions leading to issues? That’s new… /s
I thought most good intentions are bought up by road construction companies to maintain the highway to hell...
The older I grow, the more I see many good intentions at the micro scale hurting the big picture.
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.
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.
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...
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.
This resonates so much.
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
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.
“One reason” doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a prevailing reason, and there are certainly other reasons.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
„ 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-...
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.
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 !
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 nå 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.
I'ma perfectionist!
Not regarding spelling, apparently. ;)
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.
Oh I feel you. I’m here reading your comment because I had something else to do.
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.
“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”.
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.
I think this is right, but it’s really a low predicted ROI. The problem is that we’re pretty bad at accurately predicting.
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.
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.
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).
If i can’t have perfectionism without procrastination, i prefer to take both!
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).
My take on with procrastination is just start things anyway and then eventually
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
100 percent. I even procrastinated for 2 minutes to write down this comment
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).
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.
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.
I feel like I've long reached the point of having zero friends, which makes getting friends actually quite difficult.
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 :)
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.
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 :)
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.
I'll be your friend. What's up?
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.
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.
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)
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!
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.
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.
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.
If you define "friend" as "anyone willing to cooperate with you" that makes sense.
Or even, "this isn't procrastinating, todo lists won't help, you are probably depressed".