The last two weeks I made it a goal to run 5km every morning. A few times, particularly today, I felt lazy and run down, but I got out of bed anyway and told myself that I'll at least walk. The next thing I know I'm running and feeling amazing and on to set one of my better times.
The point: When you tell yourself "just one more game" or "just one more post", or "just one more video" and end up doing 3-5 hours more, do that with your other tasks too! "just one line of code", "just one tutorial", "just one rep", "just one line of reading/writing".
We all have this amazing mental tool that we've been honing for years, the tool of self deception. Time to use it for good and not evil.
For me that doesn't work because then I learn that "yeah you say just walking but we both know it will end up in running."
What works instead is I promise I will walk. And then I actually only walk even if I feel like running. That way you will trust yourself. If I say "ok i go to the gym 30 mins. just for a quick training." Then even if I'm in the flow at minute 30, I stop and go home. Next time I remember that and I know that if I say 30 it will be 30 and not more, that creates a trust in yourself that you're not trying to trick yourself into doing something you don't want to.
I think the problem you have is that you don't know which 'you' is making the decisions. Let's call the 'tricking' you 'You' and the one you are tricking 'Body-You'. Then here is how the conversation goes:
You: "Time to get up and run."
Body-You: "Oh hell no. I'm tired. Plus we did a good job yesterday. And we have a lot to do today. Also, we don't want to over do it do we?"
You: (sighs) "Fine. Let's at least walk for 30 minutes."
Body-You (sighs): "Ugh. Fine."
10 minutes of walking pass.
Body-You: "This feels great! Let's run."
You: "Okay."
...
First notice that You said, "at least." You is not lying. If, at minute 30, Body-You is like "Ugh, still no," You can capitulate.
Second, notice that it is Body-You that makes the decision to turn it into a run. In your version, Body-You never gets what it wants. Both times You has to control the situation. The first time, to start the run, the second time, to enforce a more-or-less arbitrary contract for the sake of the contract, even though both parties want a new contract.
I've read in the book Atomic Habits by James Clear that the solution is to only do that much time and actually just stop right afterwards, even if you want to do more. Therefore, it's at most 30 min rather than at least. This teaches you rigor and in fact motivates you more because now you know it's not actually a trick.
"""
The Two-Minute Rule can seem like a trick to some people. You know that the real goal is to do more than just two minutes, so it may feel like you’re trying to fool yourself. Nobody is actually aspiring to read one page or do one push-up or open their notes. And if you know it’s a mental trick, why would you fall for it?
If the Two-Minute Rule feels forced, try this: do it for two minutes and then stop. Go for a run, but you must stop after two minutes. Start meditating, but you must stop after two minutes. Study Arabic, but you must stop after two minutes. It’s not a strategy for starting, it’s the whole thing. Your habit can only last one hundred and twenty seconds.
One of my readers used this strategy to lose over one hundred pounds. In the beginning, he went to the gym each day, but he told himself he wasn’t allowed to stay for more than five minutes. He would go to the gym, exercise for five minutes, and leave as soon as his time was up. After a few weeks, he looked around and thought, “Well, I’m always coming here anyway. I might as well start staying a little longer.” A few years later, the weight was gone.
"""
This is one of the most important empirical "truth" I've heard, now from several prominent people in the field¹.
You are, in effect, prioritizing (self-)discipline over short-term performance, learning or productivity gains.
I would surmise that your bodymind² has in effect realized, learned, that compound effect is the best strategy for long-term results; and/or that systems are better than goals. The invariant requirement of any long-term strategy is enough discipline to execute it.
“Never, ever break promises to yourself.” is the real lesson to learn and never forget. The usual rationale goes like this:
Imagine two people, one who always does what they said they'll do, and another who never does what they said. How do you feel about the first one? Trustworthy? Reliable? Someone you can count on? Now what about the second? Empty-worded? Unreliable? Unworthy of trust? Lazy, big mouth, etc?
Now consider how "you" (the "it", your third eye observing yourself) is going to feel about "you" (the "I", the one who carries all the emotional weight) if you behave like person #2 above?
You need to be able to trust yourself. And this is based on facts, not words, just like how you judge anyone else.
That's why it's important, critical, to pause and ponder before making any promise to yourself: make sure you won't break it, make sure you'll be excellent with your own word. Be person #1, the reliable, the trustworthy, for yourself. Give yourself the facts to back that belief, because words, well, they're empty, and you're the only one who can't lie to you.
[1]: Off the top of my head, you hear it from Stephen Covey in the 7 habits (honesty with yourself), you heard it from Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie well before that, you heard it more recently from Brene Brown (in Daring Greatly and her TED talk on vulnerability and courage). Iirc, don't quote me on these, check twice, but the gist is correct.
[2]: Bodymind = body + mind (no duality), i.e. "all of you", your being, your brain and all the things that connect it to the real world including its own, your entire body
I guess I'm in the middle. Sometimes "just walking" is actually just walking. Sometimes it turns into running. I have no expectations about where the initial push eventually leads, which makes it easier to take that initial push.
I prefer this approach as it ultimately results in a greater output than forcing myself to stop at some prior agreed point I made with myself but would now prefer to renegotiate.
Huh? You have a weird "relationship" with yourself.
I never did not trust myself anymore if I did more reps than I "promised" myself before.
Would a child ever grow distrust against her parents if she changes her mind and wants to do more dishes than initially asked for and they allow her to do it?
> because then I learn that "yeah you say just walking but we both know it will end up in running."
And this doesn't motivate you? For me it's actually more motivating: I only have to muster enough willpower to start walking, not to run, but I'll end up having a good workout anyway.
The verbal voice in your head is rationalizing. Don’t think. Just do.
(If you want a good resource that synthesizes a bunch of modern psychology research relating to that suggestion into a single, entertaining non-fiction book, see “Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior” by Leonard Mlodinow [0]).
This approach is interesting to me as it would have not crossed my mind.
I view goals I set myself as a minimum I of what I want to do. Doing more, because I feel like it, is a bonus that I think adds to the feeling of accomplishment.
I guess the main difference is that I actually want to do these things and just have to overcome the hurdle of starting while you describe them as "doing something you don't want to".
The grandparent didn't say, "I'll just walk", but rather "I'll at least walk."
Give yourself permission to only walk. That way, if you later feel like running, you can still get that extra benefit as well, without breaking some promise to yourself, and if you just feel like walking the whole time, no problem there, either.
Note that if this relationship of explicitly limited commitments with yourself is preeminent, your goal should be "go out exercising each day" rather than "run 5km each day".
You need to be more truthful with yourself, then! :P
My "I'll just do 10 reps" always comes with an implicit "but I can do more if I feel like it." Then if I'm feeling strong and have another rep or two left, I'm allowed to do them.
I’ve not heard of that perspective before however I’m not going to discount what you’re saying because everyone’s psychology is different.
For what it’s worth, most people I know feel pride and a sense of accomplishment if they’ve found motivation to do more than they promised themselves. But as I said, everyone’s psychology is different.
I toyed with this feeling. Not to repeat the dopamine theory we see everywhere.. but it feels that most of the web really ends up in the low hanging easy pleasure of our brain, and any moment of struggle will tickle that reflex. And when you ignore/fight it for a second... You (at least I) can sense blood pressure change in my brain and then the thinking side of my head goes back into rhythm again. Thinking is a pleasure too, but it's requires a bit of patience.
It doesn't always work, but at least you've done the one task. That's one thing you can tick off the to-do list, regardless of how productive your day has been otherwise.
As a lifelong realist (= pessimist) this is one of those things I struggle with too.
It reminds me of William McRaven quote: "If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed... If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed, will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you'll never be able to do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better."
> My strategy has become: Just do one task today, that's all. Doesn't matter how small. Leave the office feeling like you've done something productive.
I feel like this is just a way to make yourself feel better about doing basically nothing. Before you implemented this, were you really at risk of spending an entire day doing absolutely nothing productive whatsoever?
People ask me why I take cold showers regularly, post to my blog daily, and never miss my burpee-based twice-daily calisthenics over more than a decade (approaching 150,000 cumulative burpees).
Among many reasons, developing the skill to do what I said I would is tremendously valuable. Without these habits, I lacked discipline and thought to avoid tricks, which I thought of as short-term cheats. The habits developed discipline in me and revealed that developing tricks is the way to make habits work.
I have no doubt that the most accomplished people use tricks to do their most valuable activities -- athletes, politicians, business leaders, whatever.
I wish I had this written down somewhere, but I don't; perhaps it's well known enough that someone else can correct my mediocre paraphrasing:
A Marine once told a civilian that everyone is programmed to believe their 80% remaining is their 0% remaining, and the courageous work of realizing that limitation is what unlocks the extreme feats that someone so well physically and mentally conditioned can undergo.
I'm not military, don't know anyone military, and have no particular leanings, but I have always been absolutely invigorated by the apparent, quiet force that service members project. It's inspirational even devoid of agenda.
> everyone is programmed to believe their 80% remaining is their 0% remaining
Of course. When I do my reps in the gym, I know I could do more if someone put a gun to my head. I stop because I don't want to hurt myself, not because I cannot do anymore. When I feel sleepy in the evening, I am fully aware that I could go 48 more hours without sleep if I really needed to. But would it be a good idea? No, it would not be.
And even if we ignore obvious health risk of pushing yourself to the limit, in general, I would rather be more comfortable than more productive. There are always things to be done, so why stress about doing a little bit more?
In general people have way more capacity than they believe. Our worlds are built around immediate, short term gratification. I find that doing something everyday that's uncomfortable helps me stay out of the short term gratification trap. Getting up early when the alarm goes off, exercising, intermittent fasting, BJJ, are all things that at times are hard and uncomfortable, but they are a constant reminder of the capacity that we as humans have to excel.
It's primarily because in the military you get used to the ideas that you are in big trouble if you are not on time and also that you cannot fail (failure may mean death). That plus the quiet confidence you gain in yourself and others helps add some of that extra sauce.
Sometimes I have a really hard time to start working on some tasks and I think it is linked to anxiety and stress, not mere laziness. As long as there are no big expectations (like when exercising), I have usually no procrastination issues.
Sometimes I'm kicking myself that I should really start work on this now, and it doesn't work, and I get more and more anxious.
Upon reflection (sometimes I get to that point sooner, sometimes later) the problem is usually that the task is too vaguely defined to start working on it.
Anxiety is an emotion that you feel when you expect something bad to happen in the future.
Anxiety can be measured, your body segregates hormones in order to change the state of your entire body in order to prepare for this danger.
Unfortunately danger for primitive humans are different than current society dangers.
It usually prepares you either for a fight or a flight (running away as fast as possible).
If you get too anxious for example fighting for your life or your children, you can break your bones and don't feel pain.
But this natural response is of no help if you feel that you will lose your job, or break your relationship...
In fact some work can't be done at all under these hormones influence, like intellectual work. Your body prepares you for action, not for reflexion.
On my last contract, working with very competent people, I got struck with one of the biggest procrastination wave I ever experienced. Thanks to a bit of introspection and awesome support from the team, I Realized this was just anxiety due to the imposter syndrome.
I've faced that issue. Not totally solved it. I found some help in a YouTube channel on ADHD in a couple of videos from "How to ADHD" titled "wall of awful." That gave some good ideas to make it past that point and start.
I damaged my shin bones because I was running too much too soon and currently taking 2 months break. Side note, I used to run 20k every week, then stopped.
Be careful of the problem on the opposite side of the spectrum: your body might not be able to keep up with your motivation.
Couch to 5k (a.k.a. C25K) is a popular way to build up slowly and steadily.
Once you're up to running 5k three times a week (which is roughly where the plan leaves you) you can limit both volume and max distance increases to 10% per week.
I used to run 5-6 times a week with a usual volume of 50k/week so adding in another 1-2 gentle 5k recovery jogs to do a minimum of 5k every day wouldn't be difficult at all. But that's an entirely different prospect to just going out and trying to run 5k every day (although some people do exactly this and get away with it) with minimal existing running fitness or conditioning.
To quote an amazing motivator, Jocko Willink, "Good". Now you have more time to do cycling or strength train or some other exercise instead of running.
That's a fascinating idea, our bodies may not be able to keep up with our motivation. I've been pondering a lot about how our minds can live in a fantasyland of imagination that can hold long runs of time never being put to the test. Physical reality is the great check and test for many things.
I had to stop playing basketball with the guys when my knee couldn't keep up with my joy of playing.
I think this could do more with your running form and listening to your body than your will that kept you going. It might be worth checking out your form with a running coach. Either way, wishing you a speedy recovery.
It’s so amazing how making it easy to get started is basically priming your brain to complete the task.
I’ve gotten fit by hanging up a chin-up bar on a spare door frame. When I had a trainer, I was always amazed at what I could accomplish - even on days when I swore I felt dead in the morning - just by getting there and starting. I’ve gotten good at coding by keeping my IDEs of choice in the taskbar and working on small tasks during downtime. I study better and more often when I leave out my notebooks and calculator.
The lower you set the barrier to entry, for a given activity, the better a chance you give yourself to actually complete that activity later.
I have never in my life regretted working out, but I regularly regret not working out. It is so weird to me that, despite hundreds of trials of this dynamic, by brain still hasn't totally internalized this lesson and I end up having to tell myself "dog it if you want to, just show up", then proceed to have a great time.
I regret running all the time. There are wild swings in the difficulty of doing the same run depending on weather, hours of sleep, time of day, what I’ve eaten, and apparently just random chance. Digestive system tends to be unhappy early in the morning, and the times I ignored its warnings and went out anyway were the most physically uncomfortable I’ve ever been.
The lifestyle discipline required to make running consistently tolerable is overall a good thing. But on days when I know conditions are going to make it miserable, I don’t go. I’m not in it for competitive greatness, I’m out there for an enjoyable and sustainable habit.
In 2014, I ran 5km every morning. 356 days. I hated every single one of these runs. I did get better at it, but I did not end up enjoying it. Certainly was never "feeling amazing".
Eventually dropped the habbit. Now spending more time in the Gym and on the Bike.
First, I'm not saying this would've helped you (I don't know), it's just a story and perhaps someone who is like me gets inspiration from it :)
If I hadn't created three excellent mix tapes (that I still use to this day!) when I started running 10y ago, I might have ended up in your boat. I didn't care much for the running, but having a burn out meant I shouldn't be on the computer as much, and I didn't know what to do with the time. In the beginning I was having fun with how far into the mix I could get before running out of breath (I didn't sprint or anything, just no physical condition to speak of), and adding to the mix as I got further. At some point I decided perhaps I needed another mix with alternating running and walking parts[0]. I adjusted the BPM to my natural running gait. Added a little intro for when I leave the house to when I'm on the street. Everything was chosen with the idea that I wouldn't get bored during running, so it was a sequence of the "best", most uplifting, powerful parts of each track, each lasting about a minute (or 128 beats maybe). Between runs I kept optimizing the mixes for a while, improving the splice points and crossovers etc. Unfortunately I lost the original Ableton project files to a fire. Thankfully I had shared the mixes to friends, who could at least provide me with the mp3 renders.
One day I'm going to add a fourth mix :) But I don't use pirated software any more, and not being a professional musician I can't really justify the cost of buying Ableton (or Bitwig, which at least runs on Linux). Unfortunately I've found no other free (or cheap) software that comes close to the ease with which you can simply splice and beat-match audio clips. Or just navigating and zooming a large audio file. Audacity is there when you really need something done, but it's hardly a smooth workflow.
[0] it's as if psytrance and psydub were made for this, one is exactly half the BPM of the other!
I read a book called 80/20 running, that pointed out that most of us run most of our runs too fast. It made a huge difference in my training, to run at (say) 60% of my pace most of the time instead of 90% as most of us do. I felt better, I enjoyed it more, it created less anxiety to start a run, I recovered faster, and I could log more miles per week.
I'll go ahead and fire off a recommendation to find a muay thai gym that has dedicated conditioning classes and some cool people. I wish I would have discovered it 10 years earlier when I started running cross country.
Running, for me, was the Runescape of sports. Very grindy, with very little room for me to use my mind.
There is a company dedicated to tricking (voluntary and conscious) people from procrastination to actual sport, see https://www.squadeasy.com/
The main idea is to leverage the brain's sensitivity to cooperative team goals or competitive goals, plus some gamification. And it works!
Disclaimer: the main founder is my brother, I was involved in the very first steps of the project, and I'm currently on a freelance mission with the company. And the team is looking for a freelance or a permanent Typescript coder in Paris.
Then tell your brother that they need to work on cheaters because my company uses Squadeasy and every year it's just a disgraceful experience.
I know it's tough, especially when a giant like Strava that gamifies the hell out of sport barely does anything, but for the sake of giving an example, a cheater from my company basically took a tcx from someones marathon and uploaded every other day with shifted timestamps. I know it because they used Strava and with summit I saw the gpx from their workouts and the lat/long data was always identical. Also from averaging like 10k a week, he shot up to 200k, magically.
At least I managed to get some people's points revoked because they tagged each other on Strava for every workout even if only one/two of them were actually working out.
Now if I couldn't stalk on them on Strava there's absolutely no transparency on Squadeasy and I wouldn't have been able to point anything out to the team. These guys for sure are setting their profile private next year to prevent people from calling them out (since they did mid competition last year, actually).
> Typescript
So frontend, it certainly needs work too. If there's any work foreseen in backend, especially crushing cheaters, let me know.
Very correct! I love the thought. We have to replace the lazy tasks into the active ones by telling our brain just "one more time". And I have realized that whenever I tell myself to do something which requires getting out of bed and be active, the thought is itself exhausting. But ones you do that you feel amazing and your day just go right! You just have to push yourself for that one time again and again.
This is a technique often employed to help people suffering from anxiety, you can always break something down into smaller tasks and eventually you'll get to a point where the task feels doable.
I like the idea and I'm glad it works for some people but I tried it and often I would get out the door with all my running gear on and then turn back around and give up. Something about thinking about it like this made it easier to give up.
I recently started mountainbiking, and I often excert myself way too much to the point of having to get off the bike and just resting. After watching the tedx talk "How "normal people" can train like the worlds best endurance athletes" I made it a thing to go out on the bike and _be slow_. Just go as slow as possible up the hills instead of almost collapsing.
Now I feel like going out almost all the time instead of thinking "ooh, wow I was sooo tired the last time I was on the trail!". Made it much much easier to keep a routine of getting out regularly. Also my pace is much more even, and actually not much slower in total on my "slow" runs, since I never have to stop and rest.
I mean you did not start the activity. This trick works only when you have already started the activity.
I suggest that next time you become serious about it: There is no way you could let yourself not doing the minimum activity BUT you can leave after you have done your minimum.
For example: Your minimum activity is going out and running for a minute. You do it, period.
Your mind will try to put excuses, like "I don't have time", but because the activity is minimal you don't have to think about that, you spend less time doing it than thinking about it.
Another suggestion: Only complete minimal activities first, and feel good about it,until you get used to going out each day.
Going out for running just minute over 30 days is much much better than running kilometers one day, being exhausted, feeling pain( and guilt) the next.
After 30 days you will have established a routine. It becomes harder not going out each day than staying home.
This is a good reason to break your tasks up into smaller chunks too. One more thing checked of the list is easier when its something like "add a button" and not "implement entire feature".
If you can pull it off and restrain yourself, there is this trick of leaving one easy bug (or task) open, to get a nice start of the next day. You could start looking out for that task or bug half an hour before quits, maybe?
Sometimes when you feel the worst when starting, your performance is best. And professional athletes have documented the reverse, ca. a fresh pitcher getting knocked out in the 1st.
I did this last summer. Simply walking early to get some bread. It quickly turned into an automatic alarm clock, gave me a good 30 min of "warm up" walking that also let my brain coast while watching the woods. You come back both refreshed and all warmed up blood wise. It was very very beneficial altogether.
If it wasn't for the wrong job I took next and winter killing the morning sun I'd still be doing this. Actually now that spring is here, I feel the need. The need for .. walk.
> A few times, particularly today, I felt lazy and run down, but I got out of bed anyway and told myself that I'll at least walk
This is also used with people who suffer from some kind of limb paralysis. You first start to tell them to wiggle the extremity of their finger (or toe). Then part of the of the finger. Then the whole finger. And so on.
Basically the concept is the make every single effort leading to the end result as effortless and frictionless as possible.
Looks like most of use discover this rule one way or the other. I had a simple rule, where I would try not to give up for the smallest period of time I could hold on to a thing.
Often that is like the next 5 minutes. Like I just tell myself, we are not trying to do this the whole year or even years. Just the next 1 hour, and then tomorrow we will try again.
This helps me get to the gym every morning at 6am. I go every morning, even if I don't plan on working out and just stretching. The simple 8 minute walk to the gym is the main blocker, so once this step is done it's easy to start working out anyway.
I used to be sceptical that the concept of overtraining was a thing, but it definitely is. Just saying that running every day consistently might not necessarily be good for you in the long run. Listen to your body.
Agreed, "listen to your body." is really important advice. I've been running every day without exception for 1252 days now, and there have been really slow, really short (2k) runs whenever I felt my body needed a bit more leeway for recovery. It takes some practice and it's not for everyone, but daily/streak running can be transformative (and was/is for me).
Crucially, when you tell yourself "at least walk" or "at least one more X" you have to allow yourself to sometimes just walk and not have it have to turn into a secret run.
Just waking up at the same time every day and kickstarting yourself (practically no matter what time you end up going to bed) seems to work absolute wonders.
Without knowing the op’s condition (so take this with a grain of salt), I’d advise against running 5km each & every day as it could wear out your knees, specially running on harder terrain (as most do).
For amateur practitioners it’s good to alternate different activities so that certain muscles get to recover.
Agree but the point was to try a light version of the challenge and you may get the determination to do the full version. Sure, running or any high impact sport can do damage to joints.
Do you have some evidence to back that claim? I run long distances, and whilst I have been given repeated advice of this nature, I have never seen any actual evidence that this is a problem?
Fitness routines and work are not the same thing. The former is IMHO pretty much a pointless waste of time (nothing bad will happen if you skip one day) and work usually just needs to be done eventually or there are serious consequences. The former thus needs self deception, while the latter just requires realization/visualization of its necessity and of the dire consequences.
Your argument is a bit contradictory: I can skip one day of work just like I can skip 1 workout ("nothing bad will happen").
However, I am pretty sure there are dire/severe consequences to not maintaining your physical health over time [1], just like there are if you do not perform at work.
>Another trick to start sloppy - you might have high expectations of your finished work.
>You want to write a great book, not just a good one. Or create a stellar artwork, or start a great business.
>All those expectations can put more pressure on you than you can bear, leading you to avoid it by procrastinating.
>Instead, you can escape those expectations by starting deliberately badly.
I use this one a lot. I always heard it called a 'vomit draft'. It really works. It's easier to see how truly terrible thing could be improved than it is to just start working from a blank slate.
This idea is captured nicely in the book "Art and Fear" with the following anecdote:
"The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."
David Bowie and Tin Machine used this technique on their album Tin Machine.
>The Sales’ also pushed for a punishing first-take philosophy, which Bowie found enticing. No overdubs unless necessary for guitar solos, no synths (the old Queen boast), and most of all, no lyric rewrites. The band would go to lunch and return to find that Bowie had written out a complete provisional lyric for whatever song they were working on. But that was as far as he was allowed to go: he was forced to keep to his first instincts. Sometimes this worked out, sometimes it didn’t (see “Crack City”).
>Given these strictures, Bowie and the band stuck to music “that didn’t have too much orchestration about it,” as Bowie said in a 1989 interview. “If it got too chordy and arranged, it wouldn’t be anything what we wanted to do. The structure had to be as loose as possible so that we could improvise.” Rather than reworking songs, they just kept cutting more, with as many as 35 to 40 pieces coming out of the sessions. So most of Tin Machine is basic blues-centered rock, with the average song having no more than five chords: it lacked the harmonic ambiguity and structural games of Bowie’s older work. While the record often worked on a song level, with 14 tracks on the CD version, the album was a wearying listen. Few records are as exciting in miniature and as draining as a whole as Tin Machine.
I can’t remember the name of the ceramicist, but hearing him interviewed on Radio 4, his apprenticeship in (China|Japan) involved every pot he made being deliberately smashed at the end of the day for a year. A way to get over a fear of failure and to learn to keep repeating the process of learning.
I don't find it now, but I've read that anecdote is made up. And I don't think it make sense. Except for when you are an absolute beginner, you won't improve if you don't put in any effort in the quality of your work. See deliberate practice etc..
Maybe this works for potters but I don't think it'd work for developers. If a compSci lecturer suggested one group would get an A for writing a perfect, bug free app and the other group would get an A for writing 50,000 lines of code, I wouldn't expect the group writing as much code as they could to make the best app.
It's often easier to add to something that already exists than to start something new from scratch. And when you're the one who created the thing in the first place, it's that much easier to make the improvements.
Even if the initial thing is so terrible it needs to be redone completely, at least you figured out what you don't want. All while getting into the habit of doing the thing.
I stumbled upon this when trying to get started with my master thesis. In frustration, I threw a bunch of buzzwords and random thoughts at LaTeX and then stashed it for a day or two. After that, I picked it up, looked at it critically and went "well, this paragraph is obviously wrong, here's what it SHOULD say..." and two hours later I had a very rough draft finished.
Reminds me of an idea from Ira Glass's lecture circuit: as you learn a craft, you develop the taste to recognize that your own work is crap long before you get good enough to satisfy your own standards. You just have to push through and trust that it eventually ends.
As Ernest Hemingway never actually said, "write drunk, edit sober". Which I don't take to mean literally getting drunk before you start working on something, but do it as if you were drunk, i.e. with little to no inhibition.
I also like how they mention marathon. Indeed, you don't start training for marathon by running all 42km on the first day, are you? No, for some of us in our current shape even running 5km is hard! So we should start with smaller things - those we can do - and tell ourselves that we have achieved something - and that tomorrow we probably will achieve slightly more.
I agree a lot with this. A blank page is the worst - I find it hard to get started. But if I just put something (probably something bad) it is much easier to just continue improving it.
For me it's different. It's easy for me to start a project. I get overly excited over a week, banging a lot of code. But as soon as I get stuck, I often get stuck forever and never come back to the project.
Or I decide to "refactor" a piece of code, and then spend days thinking about how I'll "refactor" it, rather than just doing it or not doing it in the first place.
Make it work, make it right, make it fast [1]. This has helped me tremendously in my programming career and especially in my side projects, where I have very limited time and energy. Its a solid strategy for breaking down complex work.
> Start in a way that you could enjoy.
Start doing in in a way that you could have fun, even if it's not as efficient as other boring/normal ways, so that the fun itself is the motivator.
Many people do! This is the 'architect' vs 'gardener' debate. A lot of writers start out with the notion of a story, then let it develop in the writing. If I remember correctly, Stephen King writes this way.
>Does this mean that, for instance, if you're writing a novel, you start without a structured outline?
It could, but there's no reason you couldn't start with a terrible outline instead of diving right into prose. The point is just that when you see something your brain will stark noticing all the ways it sucks and it gets things going.
Make sure the thing you have to do is something you want to do. While you can procrastinate on the things you're truly interested in, ultimately you're more likely to follow through with the things that interest you than the other random tasks that require doing.
Writing that design doc, report, or review at work? Meh. I drag my feet until I'm the last person in the office and I have to finish.
That obscure side project that really interests me? Hell yeah. It's called hyper-focus, and those with ADHD know what it's like.
Check out my Github streak. I think I've got the world's fastest faster-than-realtime CPU-only neural TTS and Voice Conversion (VC) systems with multi-speaker embeddings outside of Google. And I wrote an entire data ingestion, cleanup, and curation engine to build massive data sets for training. A year ago I didn't even know what any of this stuff was, and now I can't pull myself away from it. Building is magnetic and addictive, but it's not the thing I need to do.
Sometimes you can pivot the energy you have from a desirable task into an undesirable one. I tell myself I can't work on the fun thing until I get the mundane one done. It's a hack that doesn't always work.
I want to structure my life around things I want to do to the exclusion of all else. I think I'm starting to get there. I've trimmed a lot of unnecessary things from my life.
My dream is to get rich enough doing desirable side hustles that I can pay people to take care of all the undesirable tasks. Delegation to achieve efficiency.
I can work like there is no tomorrow on random side projects. I just wish I could redirect all that focus and energy at will into the areas that need them.
>Sometimes you can pivot the energy you have from a desirable task into an undesirable one. I tell myself I can't work on the fun thing until I get the mundane one done. It's a hack that doesn't always work.
It can even backfire: sometimes you end up just browsing reddit or doing some other nonsense thing for hours just so you can avoid doing the mundane task. At the end of the day you wonder how you wasted an entire day without doing the fun side project or the mundane task.
>My dream is to get rich enough doing desirable side hustles that I can pay people to take care of all the undesirable tasks.
Hiring somebody to do the cleaning at home seems to help quite a few people. People in tech probably earn enough to be able to afford to just hire someone to clean the apartment/house once in a while. It's probably a better option than to either hate yourself for it or to just not clean for a long period of time.
I don't have an ADHD diagnosis, but I struggle with procrastination.
Does it help you at all to have external recipients of your work, or does it not factor in at all in what gets done?
It helps me if I tell someone else "I'll send you the report today", because it makes me more accountable. I'll probably delay it until panicking at the end of the day, but I will at least hammer something out and send it off. Or worst case finish it tomorrow morning, after having started, but having to leave work the day before, which is still better than postponing even longer.
For me to do tasks, I need to reach the "Screw quality and completeness, I need to send _something_!", which usually turns out to be plenty good enough based on feedback. I just need to find someone to promise sending the result to for my more important tasks.
Your post resonates with me greatly - often I'll find myself making up _new_ side projects to take the place of the things that actually need to get done.
How do you push yourself to get the right things done now, that is, until you get rich enough to do otherwise?
I wish we could switch. I had the same maker drive but something changed in me as I've gotten older and now I struggle with tasks. I could easily spend the rest of my life writing/reporting/reviewing/etc and never get any actual work done ever again. I know, it's crazy.
I'm not going to discount advice like this, because it is helpful. But it is only one piece of the puzzle. There's a stark difference between "I don't quite feel like starting this yet, so I'll put it off for a little bit" and "I absolutely want nothing more than to start this but I can't force myself to", between laziness and a genuine inability to begin.
Not to give medical advice in the comments section of a web article, but if the latter description describes you, understand that most people don't go through those struggles. This may be an issue that needs more work to solve than reading self-help articles; it may be caused by burn-out or ADHD or some other executive functioning issue. Do look into this is procrastination is something you are constantly struggling with in your life.
I wrote [an article][1] about my experiences with procrastination and ADHD, if you're interested in more. I'd also recommend the fantastic [ADHD Alien comics][2] for a nice digestible summary of what ADHD is like.
There is a third type of blocker. Being too sick or fatigued. Knowing when to push through but risk having less energy later or the next day, or hold back can be a challenge.
If you don’t get fatigue think of t like the decision to do an all nighter: you can’t do one every night!
Awesome article, I definitely relate to a lot of the things mentioned. Wondering if I have ADHD as well. I was always smart enough to make it through school without applying much effort, so perhaps it went undiagnosed..
I read your writeup on ADHD. I really appreciated the advice that you give (seeking help, finding ways to commit, etc), but you (as any other existing resource on ADHD) could not convince me that ADHD is a thing.
The symptoms you described, you explicitly say, are rather unique. If I think about most of the people I know, I would instead say that they are quite common. Either everyone around me, me included, has ADHD, or the definition for this disorder is quite fuzzy.
Just think about the astonishing number of people that buy books, watch videos, read threads - like this very one - that propose solutions to procrastination. All these people have similar symptoms, but I wouldn't say they are ill (even though they all have problems, and they all would greatly benefit from help, don't get me wrong). Nor I would be satisfied with the simplicistic way of classifying some of those as "sick and allowed to legally do amphetamines" and the rest in the negative set.
I read the official set of symptoms to diagnose ADHD that you linked in the article.
I found that embarassing. Lacking in scientific soundness. Please pardon my bias as a data scientist, and allow me to distort a quote for an increased dramatic effect, but a thing like "if you have at least 6 symptoms among: moving too much, not wanting to do your homework since before you were 12, etc. - > then you have ADHD. But if you are more than 17, you only need 5 symptoms. Because you know, 5 is the magic number" doesn't strike me as a sound classification method.
I'll add that the sole fact that there are significant differences in the percentages of diagnosed ADHD cases among different continents should convince anybody that believes in science (=statistics/scientific method) that the model "if you check these boxes, then you have ADHD" is a horrible one to fit a very complex reality. Symptoms are like a mixture of mostly independent gaussians, and we are trying to force a binary classification on it, clumping variables together and imposing arbitrary thesholds. But we'll never get a decent representation of reality in this way. Having only a few classes, if having classes at all, is conceptually wrong in this case.
I think this simplified way of doing things can be ok for doctors that want an easy life (tick some boxes, get paid, feel you helped somebody) and for people that want a quick improve in performance and/or that want to feel relieved/justified by being labeled as ill (it may be adults wanting this for themselves, or anxious parents for their children. And both could be not fully aware about their drives. Therefore I'm not attacking anyone here. I'm highlighting a diffuse social problem and trying to raise awareness).
But this cannot be accepted by people that care about grasping all the nuances of complex phenomena, and that want to sensibly improve people's lives (by reducing the stigma around psychological problems, which we all have, by pushing for a culture with less simplification - especially in medicine and psychology - and that acknowledges observables as being continuous, by fighting for more equality around the world in the access to drugs and nootropics and for more education on drugs and mental hygene).
Pardon my English (it's not my first language) and pardon my tones (I may sound salty but I am really just looking for a high quality discussion in a beautiful place like HN, and I would love to be proven wrong on the ADHD existance).
(((And pardon all my lispy parentheses.)))
TL;DR I rant about ADHD just being a label attached with poor criteria. It does not capture the complexity of reality, which is made of all shades of unsatisfaction, lazyness and interconnected psychological issues.
I'm prepared to bet folding money that the folks who worked on the 5th Diagnostic & Statistical Manual (DSM-5) have given at least as much thought as you have to these matters.
The implication that research and practicing psychologists and psychiatrists, as a profession, are unaware of the profound variability of human beings is just silly.
I have a nagging feeling that any time we have to force ourselves to do a task, something is wrong at a fundamental level; that we are somehow out-of-tune with nature; that contemporary society is missing a key insight about our minds and the way we organize our work.
An eagle doesn't force itself to hunt for food; it just hunts. I can't imagine it having to psych itself up simply to be. Looking for and harnessing that level of purity seems ultimately more fruitful than playing psychological tricks on your mind. Easier said than done, unfortunately.
What you're thinking of is delayed gratification. An eagle doesn't have to force itself to go hunt, because physiological processes tell it that it needs to hunt. It's the same reason you don't have to psych yourself up to go have lunch - your body desires lunch.
Humans have evolved to sometimes delay their gratification. That is, we don't hunt and eat our catch immediately, but instead we hunt and preserve the food to eat next time. This has been an immensely successful strategy, because it allows us to do things like plant crops and use that as food later. Modern society is essentially built upon delayed gratification. You go work, but get paid later.
The problem is that this delayed gratification is constantly under attack by things that you could do right now that would make you feel good. Delayed gratification tends to lead to better outcomes in the long term, but our base instincts are still about getting pleasure right now. This is why people with ADHD have no problem playing a video game for hours upon hours, but have difficulty doing their job - in the video game they get the rewards immediately, but at work the rewards are significantly delayed.
I'm talking about something much deeper, more fundamental, than delayed gratification. For example:
> Delayed gratification tends to lead to better outcomes in the long term
These outcomes are mostly considered better because they are made in the context of the system we live in. Often they are only better in the sense that they solve a problem which the system caused in the first place. E.g. if you can delay the gratification of eating food now, you'll be fitter later. But is this actually a problem (being overweight) that existed for human beings prior to the current system?
What I'm saying is - perhaps we should question whether being successful within our societal system is actually the same as being successful as human beings. There are plenty of people considered "successful" which are miserable and unhappy on a day-to-day basis.
I think what he's talking about is different than delayed gratification, although they might coincide together frequently.
For example, consider animals that bury their food. This is an example of a delayed gratification process that happens naturally.
Also consider the act of striving for monetary wealth. This is an example which I don't think is tied to delayed gratification, but rather of seeking fulfillment within our current social system.
Marc Andreessen advises to do whatever we feel like doing, because it's a good way to stay in flow.
I think he's in a lucky place to want to do important things though. Most of us just want to lie down and watch TV. It's probably the side effect of addiction. If we bore ourselves, we tend to get inspired to try something else.
I kind of agree, but if you take the premise of Sapiens that homo sapiens is distinct from other animals in ability to organize around stories rather than more immediate drivers of behaviour - then this may just be part of the human condition.
Yeah, I'm not arguing that we are simply like other animals, but rather that we aren't organizing our work efforts in a way more cognizant of our nature. Instead, most productivity advice seems to be about fooling or 'hacking' yourself into being some sort of machine.
I completely get you. You also mentioned that it is easier said than done.
Someone asked an Indian guru that what would happen if Jesus had a second coming now. The Indian guru replied that in old days Jesus was able to gather 12 dedicated followers. Today he will not be able to gather even 1 because of student loans and 30 year mortgages.
This sums it up. Even if something is very close to my heart and I don't need any motivation to do it, my first thought is "Will I earn some money from it". I suppose it is the same for a lot of people
It may not always be wise to start working despite not feeling it. One could burn out that way. Scott H. Young write an article about this recently. https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2020/01/13/too-tired/ I have also experienced this. When I got my first job I actually tried to work all the time, besides the occasional breaks, ignoring feelings of tiredness. This got to the point where I was feeling tired pretty much all the time I was awake. Then I concluded I should give into my cravings for purposeless web surfing sometimes.
I wonder how much of this is because of physiological aspects that have to change to keep up with your other lifestyle changes. Brain exercise takes energy, and you might just not used to eating and sleeping enough to maintain that level of exercise.
Agree, the way should be instead how to make myself feel like starting that task. Ask yourself why you are not feeling it, but obviously it’s because there are more fun tasks, so you need to solve why it isn’t fun, and devise a way to make it fun for you. As opposed to treating the task as torture.
> Every small win is motivating. Every small win builds momentum. Momentum energizes.
Starting small is an unreasonably good way to hack your brain. A book called "Tiny Habits" describes a system of behavior modification based on the idea:
It gives the example of flossing. Instead of resolving to floss every night, resolve to floss one single tooth every night. It takes less than five seconds. As you take on the habit, it becomes easier to expand it. Starting big in contrast is a good way to fall off the wagon.
One of the book's key insights is that the new habit you want to take on needs an anchor - something else you already do habitually that will precede your new habit.
You can pick up any new tiny habit, but you need to attach it to something you already do habitually. This will be the trigger without which no new behavior can stick.
In the case of flossing, that anchor could be brushing your teeth. So if you don't regularly do that, you might want to start there by brushing your teeth every day for five seconds. You could anchor that to the finishing dinner. Or getting out of the shower.
Something I’ve learnt about fitness recently, and particularly recovery from injury, is that you have to push your body very very very slowly up. Much more slowly than I ever thought was necessary. And too much, back off. Gently gently catch the monkey.
Is it that you’ve discovered the mental equivalent of this attitude to physical training?
Pet peeve: when people take phrases intended for one thing and uses them for a slightly modified purpose. I take Branson's "screw it, let's do it" mantra as something entreprenurial, a call to break the rules (and stuff like that). Using it in this purpose feels more like "screw it, let's work even though I'd rather stay in bed", which is different emotionally, and kind of saturates the sayings power.
(Maybe nikes "Just do it" would fit better, but I get that its associations to big corporations isn't as well suited for the startup atmosphere we're surrounded by.)
Especially as the root of that phrase is in really wanting to do something, in the face of overwhelming external pressure to not do it (I think he coined it when launching Virgin Atlantic and noone thought the business plan looked solid).
Readit News
The last two weeks I made it a goal to run 5km every morning. A few times, particularly today, I felt lazy and run down, but I got out of bed anyway and told myself that I'll at least walk. The next thing I know I'm running and feeling amazing and on to set one of my better times.
The point: When you tell yourself "just one more game" or "just one more post", or "just one more video" and end up doing 3-5 hours more, do that with your other tasks too! "just one line of code", "just one tutorial", "just one rep", "just one line of reading/writing".
We all have this amazing mental tool that we've been honing for years, the tool of self deception. Time to use it for good and not evil.
Copied from: [0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/cdir3g/trick_...
You: "Time to get up and run."
Body-You: "Oh hell no. I'm tired. Plus we did a good job yesterday. And we have a lot to do today. Also, we don't want to over do it do we?"
You: (sighs) "Fine. Let's at least walk for 30 minutes."
Body-You (sighs): "Ugh. Fine."
10 minutes of walking pass.
Body-You: "This feels great! Let's run."
You: "Okay."
...
First notice that You said, "at least." You is not lying. If, at minute 30, Body-You is like "Ugh, still no," You can capitulate.
Second, notice that it is Body-You that makes the decision to turn it into a run. In your version, Body-You never gets what it wants. Both times You has to control the situation. The first time, to start the run, the second time, to enforce a more-or-less arbitrary contract for the sake of the contract, even though both parties want a new contract.
""" The Two-Minute Rule can seem like a trick to some people. You know that the real goal is to do more than just two minutes, so it may feel like you’re trying to fool yourself. Nobody is actually aspiring to read one page or do one push-up or open their notes. And if you know it’s a mental trick, why would you fall for it?
If the Two-Minute Rule feels forced, try this: do it for two minutes and then stop. Go for a run, but you must stop after two minutes. Start meditating, but you must stop after two minutes. Study Arabic, but you must stop after two minutes. It’s not a strategy for starting, it’s the whole thing. Your habit can only last one hundred and twenty seconds.
One of my readers used this strategy to lose over one hundred pounds. In the beginning, he went to the gym each day, but he told himself he wasn’t allowed to stay for more than five minutes. He would go to the gym, exercise for five minutes, and leave as soon as his time was up. After a few weeks, he looked around and thought, “Well, I’m always coming here anyway. I might as well start staying a little longer.” A few years later, the weight was gone. """
From https://jamesclear.com/how-to-stop-procrastinating
You are, in effect, prioritizing (self-)discipline over short-term performance, learning or productivity gains.
I would surmise that your bodymind² has in effect realized, learned, that compound effect is the best strategy for long-term results; and/or that systems are better than goals. The invariant requirement of any long-term strategy is enough discipline to execute it.
“Never, ever break promises to yourself.” is the real lesson to learn and never forget. The usual rationale goes like this:
Imagine two people, one who always does what they said they'll do, and another who never does what they said. How do you feel about the first one? Trustworthy? Reliable? Someone you can count on? Now what about the second? Empty-worded? Unreliable? Unworthy of trust? Lazy, big mouth, etc?
Now consider how "you" (the "it", your third eye observing yourself) is going to feel about "you" (the "I", the one who carries all the emotional weight) if you behave like person #2 above?
You need to be able to trust yourself. And this is based on facts, not words, just like how you judge anyone else.
That's why it's important, critical, to pause and ponder before making any promise to yourself: make sure you won't break it, make sure you'll be excellent with your own word. Be person #1, the reliable, the trustworthy, for yourself. Give yourself the facts to back that belief, because words, well, they're empty, and you're the only one who can't lie to you.
[1]: Off the top of my head, you hear it from Stephen Covey in the 7 habits (honesty with yourself), you heard it from Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie well before that, you heard it more recently from Brene Brown (in Daring Greatly and her TED talk on vulnerability and courage). Iirc, don't quote me on these, check twice, but the gist is correct.
[2]: Bodymind = body + mind (no duality), i.e. "all of you", your being, your brain and all the things that connect it to the real world including its own, your entire body
I prefer this approach as it ultimately results in a greater output than forcing myself to stop at some prior agreed point I made with myself but would now prefer to renegotiate.
I never did not trust myself anymore if I did more reps than I "promised" myself before.
Would a child ever grow distrust against her parents if she changes her mind and wants to do more dishes than initially asked for and they allow her to do it?
And this doesn't motivate you? For me it's actually more motivating: I only have to muster enough willpower to start walking, not to run, but I'll end up having a good workout anyway.
(If you want a good resource that synthesizes a bunch of modern psychology research relating to that suggestion into a single, entertaining non-fiction book, see “Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior” by Leonard Mlodinow [0]).
[0]: https://psychcentralreviews.com/2016/subliminal-how-your-unc...
It might be better for your narrative to be that you're only gonna walk and see how you feel.
Give yourself permission to only walk. That way, if you later feel like running, you can still get that extra benefit as well, without breaking some promise to yourself, and if you just feel like walking the whole time, no problem there, either.
Note that if this relationship of explicitly limited commitments with yourself is preeminent, your goal should be "go out exercising each day" rather than "run 5km each day".
My "I'll just do 10 reps" always comes with an implicit "but I can do more if I feel like it." Then if I'm feeling strong and have another rep or two left, I'm allowed to do them.
Dead Comment
For what it’s worth, most people I know feel pride and a sense of accomplishment if they’ve found motivation to do more than they promised themselves. But as I said, everyone’s psychology is different.
I have found myself paralysed by procrastination at times (normally when whatever project I'm currently on has lost its initial zing).
My strategy has become: Just do one task today, that's all. Doesn't matter how small. Leave the office feeling like you've done something productive.
My thought process then becomes, OK, let's do my one task early then I can browse Reddit/HN/wherever.
And of course, what happens is that that one task gives the ball its initial push, and becomes 2 tasks, or 3, or more.
It doesn't always work, but it helps take the expectations and guilt off yourself, and gives you space to breathe.
As a lifelong realist (= pessimist) this is one of those things I struggle with too.
It was very frustrating time because knew exactly that I wanna do it. Like I like doing something like it and saw clear benefits doing it.
I tried everything from the procrastinator handbook.
Ritalin helped immediately
[0] - https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break-eboo...
I feel like this is just a way to make yourself feel better about doing basically nothing. Before you implemented this, were you really at risk of spending an entire day doing absolutely nothing productive whatsoever?
Among many reasons, developing the skill to do what I said I would is tremendously valuable. Without these habits, I lacked discipline and thought to avoid tricks, which I thought of as short-term cheats. The habits developed discipline in me and revealed that developing tricks is the way to make habits work.
I have no doubt that the most accomplished people use tricks to do their most valuable activities -- athletes, politicians, business leaders, whatever.
A Marine once told a civilian that everyone is programmed to believe their 80% remaining is their 0% remaining, and the courageous work of realizing that limitation is what unlocks the extreme feats that someone so well physically and mentally conditioned can undergo.
I'm not military, don't know anyone military, and have no particular leanings, but I have always been absolutely invigorated by the apparent, quiet force that service members project. It's inspirational even devoid of agenda.
Of course. When I do my reps in the gym, I know I could do more if someone put a gun to my head. I stop because I don't want to hurt myself, not because I cannot do anymore. When I feel sleepy in the evening, I am fully aware that I could go 48 more hours without sleep if I really needed to. But would it be a good idea? No, it would not be.
And even if we ignore obvious health risk of pushing yourself to the limit, in general, I would rather be more comfortable than more productive. There are always things to be done, so why stress about doing a little bit more?
Upon reflection (sometimes I get to that point sooner, sometimes later) the problem is usually that the task is too vaguely defined to start working on it.
Anxiety can be measured, your body segregates hormones in order to change the state of your entire body in order to prepare for this danger.
Unfortunately danger for primitive humans are different than current society dangers. It usually prepares you either for a fight or a flight (running away as fast as possible).
If you get too anxious for example fighting for your life or your children, you can break your bones and don't feel pain.
But this natural response is of no help if you feel that you will lose your job, or break your relationship...
In fact some work can't be done at all under these hormones influence, like intellectual work. Your body prepares you for action, not for reflexion.
Realizing that really helped.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Uo08uS904Rg
Be careful of the problem on the opposite side of the spectrum: your body might not be able to keep up with your motivation.
Once you're up to running 5k three times a week (which is roughly where the plan leaves you) you can limit both volume and max distance increases to 10% per week.
I used to run 5-6 times a week with a usual volume of 50k/week so adding in another 1-2 gentle 5k recovery jogs to do a minimum of 5k every day wouldn't be difficult at all. But that's an entirely different prospect to just going out and trying to run 5k every day (although some people do exactly this and get away with it) with minimal existing running fitness or conditioning.
I had to stop playing basketball with the guys when my knee couldn't keep up with my joy of playing.
You should always consider starting again tomorrow, if it hurts.
You don't have to conquer the world in a day. This is a long fight. One needs to rest, recover and try again.
I’ve gotten fit by hanging up a chin-up bar on a spare door frame. When I had a trainer, I was always amazed at what I could accomplish - even on days when I swore I felt dead in the morning - just by getting there and starting. I’ve gotten good at coding by keeping my IDEs of choice in the taskbar and working on small tasks during downtime. I study better and more often when I leave out my notebooks and calculator.
The lower you set the barrier to entry, for a given activity, the better a chance you give yourself to actually complete that activity later.
Indeed, same reason why some people sleep with their gym shorts on so they are already dressed for exercise in the morning.
The lifestyle discipline required to make running consistently tolerable is overall a good thing. But on days when I know conditions are going to make it miserable, I don’t go. I’m not in it for competitive greatness, I’m out there for an enjoyable and sustainable habit.
Eventually dropped the habbit. Now spending more time in the Gym and on the Bike.
If I hadn't created three excellent mix tapes (that I still use to this day!) when I started running 10y ago, I might have ended up in your boat. I didn't care much for the running, but having a burn out meant I shouldn't be on the computer as much, and I didn't know what to do with the time. In the beginning I was having fun with how far into the mix I could get before running out of breath (I didn't sprint or anything, just no physical condition to speak of), and adding to the mix as I got further. At some point I decided perhaps I needed another mix with alternating running and walking parts[0]. I adjusted the BPM to my natural running gait. Added a little intro for when I leave the house to when I'm on the street. Everything was chosen with the idea that I wouldn't get bored during running, so it was a sequence of the "best", most uplifting, powerful parts of each track, each lasting about a minute (or 128 beats maybe). Between runs I kept optimizing the mixes for a while, improving the splice points and crossovers etc. Unfortunately I lost the original Ableton project files to a fire. Thankfully I had shared the mixes to friends, who could at least provide me with the mp3 renders.
One day I'm going to add a fourth mix :) But I don't use pirated software any more, and not being a professional musician I can't really justify the cost of buying Ableton (or Bitwig, which at least runs on Linux). Unfortunately I've found no other free (or cheap) software that comes close to the ease with which you can simply splice and beat-match audio clips. Or just navigating and zooming a large audio file. Audacity is there when you really need something done, but it's hardly a smooth workflow.
[0] it's as if psytrance and psydub were made for this, one is exactly half the BPM of the other!
You clearly fell into the latter camp.
Running, for me, was the Runescape of sports. Very grindy, with very little room for me to use my mind.
At 5k your body is only just about warmed up - I never really enjoy a run until after the 5k mark, it gets easier after that point
The main idea is to leverage the brain's sensitivity to cooperative team goals or competitive goals, plus some gamification. And it works!
Disclaimer: the main founder is my brother, I was involved in the very first steps of the project, and I'm currently on a freelance mission with the company. And the team is looking for a freelance or a permanent Typescript coder in Paris.
I know it's tough, especially when a giant like Strava that gamifies the hell out of sport barely does anything, but for the sake of giving an example, a cheater from my company basically took a tcx from someones marathon and uploaded every other day with shifted timestamps. I know it because they used Strava and with summit I saw the gpx from their workouts and the lat/long data was always identical. Also from averaging like 10k a week, he shot up to 200k, magically.
At least I managed to get some people's points revoked because they tagged each other on Strava for every workout even if only one/two of them were actually working out.
Now if I couldn't stalk on them on Strava there's absolutely no transparency on Squadeasy and I wouldn't have been able to point anything out to the team. These guys for sure are setting their profile private next year to prevent people from calling them out (since they did mid competition last year, actually).
> Typescript
So frontend, it certainly needs work too. If there's any work foreseen in backend, especially crushing cheaters, let me know.
(There are other effective ways to exercise and keep healthy than running. Find one that you find fun.)
Now I feel like going out almost all the time instead of thinking "ooh, wow I was sooo tired the last time I was on the trail!". Made it much much easier to keep a routine of getting out regularly. Also my pace is much more even, and actually not much slower in total on my "slow" runs, since I never have to stop and rest.
I mean you did not start the activity. This trick works only when you have already started the activity.
I suggest that next time you become serious about it: There is no way you could let yourself not doing the minimum activity BUT you can leave after you have done your minimum.
For example: Your minimum activity is going out and running for a minute. You do it, period.
Your mind will try to put excuses, like "I don't have time", but because the activity is minimal you don't have to think about that, you spend less time doing it than thinking about it.
Another suggestion: Only complete minimal activities first, and feel good about it,until you get used to going out each day.
Going out for running just minute over 30 days is much much better than running kilometers one day, being exhausted, feeling pain( and guilt) the next.
After 30 days you will have established a routine. It becomes harder not going out each day than staying home.
If it wasn't for the wrong job I took next and winter killing the morning sun I'd still be doing this. Actually now that spring is here, I feel the need. The need for .. walk.
This is also used with people who suffer from some kind of limb paralysis. You first start to tell them to wiggle the extremity of their finger (or toe). Then part of the of the finger. Then the whole finger. And so on.
Basically the concept is the make every single effort leading to the end result as effortless and frictionless as possible.
Often that is like the next 5 minutes. Like I just tell myself, we are not trying to do this the whole year or even years. Just the next 1 hour, and then tomorrow we will try again.
If run as fast as you can, I agree that you should take breaks.
For amateur practitioners it’s good to alternate different activities so that certain muscles get to recover.
> lazyjones
Ya'll gonna take fitness advice from the lazy guy?
However, I am pretty sure there are dire/severe consequences to not maintaining your physical health over time [1], just like there are if you do not perform at work.
1 - https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/about-physical-activity...
>Another trick to start sloppy - you might have high expectations of your finished work.
>You want to write a great book, not just a good one. Or create a stellar artwork, or start a great business. >All those expectations can put more pressure on you than you can bear, leading you to avoid it by procrastinating. >Instead, you can escape those expectations by starting deliberately badly.
I use this one a lot. I always heard it called a 'vomit draft'. It really works. It's easier to see how truly terrible thing could be improved than it is to just start working from a blank slate.
"The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."
>The Sales’ also pushed for a punishing first-take philosophy, which Bowie found enticing. No overdubs unless necessary for guitar solos, no synths (the old Queen boast), and most of all, no lyric rewrites. The band would go to lunch and return to find that Bowie had written out a complete provisional lyric for whatever song they were working on. But that was as far as he was allowed to go: he was forced to keep to his first instincts. Sometimes this worked out, sometimes it didn’t (see “Crack City”).
>Given these strictures, Bowie and the band stuck to music “that didn’t have too much orchestration about it,” as Bowie said in a 1989 interview. “If it got too chordy and arranged, it wouldn’t be anything what we wanted to do. The structure had to be as loose as possible so that we could improvise.” Rather than reworking songs, they just kept cutting more, with as many as 35 to 40 pieces coming out of the sessions. So most of Tin Machine is basic blues-centered rock, with the average song having no more than five chords: it lacked the harmonic ambiguity and structural games of Bowie’s older work. While the record often worked on a song level, with 14 tracks on the CD version, the album was a wearying listen. Few records are as exciting in miniature and as draining as a whole as Tin Machine.
from here https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/heavens-in-here/
Even if the initial thing is so terrible it needs to be redone completely, at least you figured out what you don't want. All while getting into the habit of doing the thing.
It's just an avenue for having a discussion about what we actually want to say.
Or I decide to "refactor" a piece of code, and then spend days thinking about how I'll "refactor" it, rather than just doing it or not doing it in the first place.
[1]: https://wiki.c2.com/?MakeItWorkMakeItRightMakeItFast
> Plan to throw one away. You will anyway.
It could, but there's no reason you couldn't start with a terrible outline instead of diving right into prose. The point is just that when you see something your brain will stark noticing all the ways it sucks and it gets things going.
Make sure the thing you have to do is something you want to do. While you can procrastinate on the things you're truly interested in, ultimately you're more likely to follow through with the things that interest you than the other random tasks that require doing.
Writing that design doc, report, or review at work? Meh. I drag my feet until I'm the last person in the office and I have to finish.
That obscure side project that really interests me? Hell yeah. It's called hyper-focus, and those with ADHD know what it's like.
Check out my Github streak. I think I've got the world's fastest faster-than-realtime CPU-only neural TTS and Voice Conversion (VC) systems with multi-speaker embeddings outside of Google. And I wrote an entire data ingestion, cleanup, and curation engine to build massive data sets for training. A year ago I didn't even know what any of this stuff was, and now I can't pull myself away from it. Building is magnetic and addictive, but it's not the thing I need to do.
Sometimes you can pivot the energy you have from a desirable task into an undesirable one. I tell myself I can't work on the fun thing until I get the mundane one done. It's a hack that doesn't always work.
I want to structure my life around things I want to do to the exclusion of all else. I think I'm starting to get there. I've trimmed a lot of unnecessary things from my life.
My dream is to get rich enough doing desirable side hustles that I can pay people to take care of all the undesirable tasks. Delegation to achieve efficiency.
I can work like there is no tomorrow on random side projects. I just wish I could redirect all that focus and energy at will into the areas that need them.
I can't. So I have to become what interests me.
It can even backfire: sometimes you end up just browsing reddit or doing some other nonsense thing for hours just so you can avoid doing the mundane task. At the end of the day you wonder how you wasted an entire day without doing the fun side project or the mundane task.
>My dream is to get rich enough doing desirable side hustles that I can pay people to take care of all the undesirable tasks.
Hiring somebody to do the cleaning at home seems to help quite a few people. People in tech probably earn enough to be able to afford to just hire someone to clean the apartment/house once in a while. It's probably a better option than to either hate yourself for it or to just not clean for a long period of time.
Does it help you at all to have external recipients of your work, or does it not factor in at all in what gets done?
It helps me if I tell someone else "I'll send you the report today", because it makes me more accountable. I'll probably delay it until panicking at the end of the day, but I will at least hammer something out and send it off. Or worst case finish it tomorrow morning, after having started, but having to leave work the day before, which is still better than postponing even longer.
For me to do tasks, I need to reach the "Screw quality and completeness, I need to send _something_!", which usually turns out to be plenty good enough based on feedback. I just need to find someone to promise sending the result to for my more important tasks.
It helps, because eventually people will start to call you and inquire about the thing you promised them. This of course causes anxiety.
Eventually, after spending enormous amounts of energy on riding that guilt wave some work gets done, typically at night.
How do you push yourself to get the right things done now, that is, until you get rich enough to do otherwise?
I'm not going to discount advice like this, because it is helpful. But it is only one piece of the puzzle. There's a stark difference between "I don't quite feel like starting this yet, so I'll put it off for a little bit" and "I absolutely want nothing more than to start this but I can't force myself to", between laziness and a genuine inability to begin.
Not to give medical advice in the comments section of a web article, but if the latter description describes you, understand that most people don't go through those struggles. This may be an issue that needs more work to solve than reading self-help articles; it may be caused by burn-out or ADHD or some other executive functioning issue. Do look into this is procrastination is something you are constantly struggling with in your life.
I wrote [an article][1] about my experiences with procrastination and ADHD, if you're interested in more. I'd also recommend the fantastic [ADHD Alien comics][2] for a nice digestible summary of what ADHD is like.
[1]: https://invisibleup.com/articles/27/ [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHDAlien/
If you don’t get fatigue think of t like the decision to do an all nighter: you can’t do one every night!
These are brilliant, both of them it seems !
The symptoms you described, you explicitly say, are rather unique. If I think about most of the people I know, I would instead say that they are quite common. Either everyone around me, me included, has ADHD, or the definition for this disorder is quite fuzzy.
Just think about the astonishing number of people that buy books, watch videos, read threads - like this very one - that propose solutions to procrastination. All these people have similar symptoms, but I wouldn't say they are ill (even though they all have problems, and they all would greatly benefit from help, don't get me wrong). Nor I would be satisfied with the simplicistic way of classifying some of those as "sick and allowed to legally do amphetamines" and the rest in the negative set.
I read the official set of symptoms to diagnose ADHD that you linked in the article. I found that embarassing. Lacking in scientific soundness. Please pardon my bias as a data scientist, and allow me to distort a quote for an increased dramatic effect, but a thing like "if you have at least 6 symptoms among: moving too much, not wanting to do your homework since before you were 12, etc. - > then you have ADHD. But if you are more than 17, you only need 5 symptoms. Because you know, 5 is the magic number" doesn't strike me as a sound classification method.
I'll add that the sole fact that there are significant differences in the percentages of diagnosed ADHD cases among different continents should convince anybody that believes in science (=statistics/scientific method) that the model "if you check these boxes, then you have ADHD" is a horrible one to fit a very complex reality. Symptoms are like a mixture of mostly independent gaussians, and we are trying to force a binary classification on it, clumping variables together and imposing arbitrary thesholds. But we'll never get a decent representation of reality in this way. Having only a few classes, if having classes at all, is conceptually wrong in this case.
I think this simplified way of doing things can be ok for doctors that want an easy life (tick some boxes, get paid, feel you helped somebody) and for people that want a quick improve in performance and/or that want to feel relieved/justified by being labeled as ill (it may be adults wanting this for themselves, or anxious parents for their children. And both could be not fully aware about their drives. Therefore I'm not attacking anyone here. I'm highlighting a diffuse social problem and trying to raise awareness).
But this cannot be accepted by people that care about grasping all the nuances of complex phenomena, and that want to sensibly improve people's lives (by reducing the stigma around psychological problems, which we all have, by pushing for a culture with less simplification - especially in medicine and psychology - and that acknowledges observables as being continuous, by fighting for more equality around the world in the access to drugs and nootropics and for more education on drugs and mental hygene).
Pardon my English (it's not my first language) and pardon my tones (I may sound salty but I am really just looking for a high quality discussion in a beautiful place like HN, and I would love to be proven wrong on the ADHD existance). (((And pardon all my lispy parentheses.)))
TL;DR I rant about ADHD just being a label attached with poor criteria. It does not capture the complexity of reality, which is made of all shades of unsatisfaction, lazyness and interconnected psychological issues.
The implication that research and practicing psychologists and psychiatrists, as a profession, are unaware of the profound variability of human beings is just silly.
An eagle doesn't force itself to hunt for food; it just hunts. I can't imagine it having to psych itself up simply to be. Looking for and harnessing that level of purity seems ultimately more fruitful than playing psychological tricks on your mind. Easier said than done, unfortunately.
Humans have evolved to sometimes delay their gratification. That is, we don't hunt and eat our catch immediately, but instead we hunt and preserve the food to eat next time. This has been an immensely successful strategy, because it allows us to do things like plant crops and use that as food later. Modern society is essentially built upon delayed gratification. You go work, but get paid later.
The problem is that this delayed gratification is constantly under attack by things that you could do right now that would make you feel good. Delayed gratification tends to lead to better outcomes in the long term, but our base instincts are still about getting pleasure right now. This is why people with ADHD have no problem playing a video game for hours upon hours, but have difficulty doing their job - in the video game they get the rewards immediately, but at work the rewards are significantly delayed.
> Delayed gratification tends to lead to better outcomes in the long term
These outcomes are mostly considered better because they are made in the context of the system we live in. Often they are only better in the sense that they solve a problem which the system caused in the first place. E.g. if you can delay the gratification of eating food now, you'll be fitter later. But is this actually a problem (being overweight) that existed for human beings prior to the current system?
What I'm saying is - perhaps we should question whether being successful within our societal system is actually the same as being successful as human beings. There are plenty of people considered "successful" which are miserable and unhappy on a day-to-day basis.
For example, consider animals that bury their food. This is an example of a delayed gratification process that happens naturally.
Also consider the act of striving for monetary wealth. This is an example which I don't think is tied to delayed gratification, but rather of seeking fulfillment within our current social system.
I think he's in a lucky place to want to do important things though. Most of us just want to lie down and watch TV. It's probably the side effect of addiction. If we bore ourselves, we tend to get inspired to try something else.
Someone asked an Indian guru that what would happen if Jesus had a second coming now. The Indian guru replied that in old days Jesus was able to gather 12 dedicated followers. Today he will not be able to gather even 1 because of student loans and 30 year mortgages.
This sums it up. Even if something is very close to my heart and I don't need any motivation to do it, my first thought is "Will I earn some money from it". I suppose it is the same for a lot of people
Starting small is an unreasonably good way to hack your brain. A book called "Tiny Habits" describes a system of behavior modification based on the idea:
https://www.tinyhabits.com
It gives the example of flossing. Instead of resolving to floss every night, resolve to floss one single tooth every night. It takes less than five seconds. As you take on the habit, it becomes easier to expand it. Starting big in contrast is a good way to fall off the wagon.
One of the book's key insights is that the new habit you want to take on needs an anchor - something else you already do habitually that will precede your new habit.
You can pick up any new tiny habit, but you need to attach it to something you already do habitually. This will be the trigger without which no new behavior can stick.
In the case of flossing, that anchor could be brushing your teeth. So if you don't regularly do that, you might want to start there by brushing your teeth every day for five seconds. You could anchor that to the finishing dinner. Or getting out of the shower.
And so on.
[0]: https://jamesclear.com/habit-stacking
Is it that you’ve discovered the mental equivalent of this attitude to physical training?
(Maybe nikes "Just do it" would fit better, but I get that its associations to big corporations isn't as well suited for the startup atmosphere we're surrounded by.)