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.
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.
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.
> 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 résumé’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…)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
> "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).
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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! ;)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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 ...
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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 résumé’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…)
> 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.
Mobbing is probably older than resignation as a concept.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
What's the "mature" coping strategy you've found, then? Did therapy get you to stop procrastinating?
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.
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.
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".
> "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).
Can you elaborate on LLMs as assistants for ADHD? What are you automating with them?
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.
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.
I’m on the same boat. What do you think the root causes of procrastination were in your case?
They did mention their adhd diagnosis..
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.
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...
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Thank you. How long have you been on your current medication?
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!
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.
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.
Medication improves your life.
Crucially, it improves the quality of life for your loved ones as well.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
My ADHD medication doesn't help me perfectly, but it does help. Maybe.
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.
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
This is a trick I use: Never release a finished product. All of my releases are WIPs. I feel like Zeno’s Software Engineer.
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.
You better never learn about limits.
Zeno, meet Sisyphus
Gonna get that boulder to the top of the hill eventually!
You’re already halfway there!
That union man is going to be on strike for a long time!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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! ;)
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.
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.
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.
Kind of fitting that this is currently #1 on HN
What's more, it's been posted 40 times, the first being back in 2007!
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.
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.
Us nerds cannot stand a good nerd bait. Have you tried just answering something obviously wrong so someone can jump in and correct you?
Actually no, I dare not wield such power.
This article seems great, I will finish it later.
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.
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
Narrator: He did not.
It’s a meme, just like your “narrator” quip.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/in-this-essay-i-will
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-narrator
This is gold, I will read it fully later .
Precisely my response to many articles, which is why I have many 10s of browser tabs open at any given time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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 ...
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.
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.
+1 for a "this has been posted before" check
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Structured+Procrastination
most people don’t procrastinate because they’re lazy, they procrastinate because their brain rejects meaningless work
> one is in effect constantly perpetrating a pyramid scheme on oneself
This is wonderful framing. I love it
Also known as 'procrastivity'.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
I feel like anything that get onto that list is going get procrastinated on …
I like this approach, feels like something Mark Twain would've advised
If this is your first time reading about structured procrastination on HN you're not procrastinating enough!
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.
Ah yes, yak shaving <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving>
Make procrastination your superpower.
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.
Previously...
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)