Ask HN: How often do you experience self-control issues?

32 points by basdevries 8 years ago | 18 comments

Related to this HN post on how to overcome instant gratification: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751439

I find myself a lot of times that I go to bed 1 or 2 hours too late, get distracted a lot from work by all variations of bs (especially when working from home), and think that there should be easy steps to solve this problem.

Does the HN community feels the same way? I'm curious as to when it's particularly annoying/relevant. For instance sleep, studying, working, doing chores, etc. Let's discuss!

girvo 8 years ago |

Used to be all the time, which is one of the factors that lead to my heroin addiction at the age of 16 until I was 22. Clean for five years now, and one of the key things for me has been cognitive behavioural therapy, along with having reasonably defined mid-term goals.

The other thing is not to beat myself up when I slip up; to use the "going to bed" example, if you miss your bedtime by 20 minutes and beat yourself up mentally, it's much easier to rationalise "may as well stay up another couple of hours, I've already ruined it".

Instead, let it go; this alone has helped me tremendously :)

hugodahl 8 years ago | |

Great advice on your point to not beat yourself up at slip ups. I was also advised to learn to forgive myself (it's seriously much more difficult than it sounds).

Also, major kudos on being clean for five years. While I can't relate to it, I can certainly appreciate the accomplishment that it is.

yawz 8 years ago | |

> The other thing is not to beat myself up when I slip up

Great advice! This is somewhat similar to what I observe about the things that people "want" to do but give up on easily as well. A good example is to go to the gym. Just because one's workout is an-hour long one has to give up on the gym if one has 50 mins. It takes time to form good habits. I always say "go to the gym even if it's for a 20-min workout today because tomorrow it'll be easier to go".

livingparadox 8 years ago |

I experience self control issues on a fairly regular basis.

Computer, phone, daydreams, etc. I'm just recently keeping bad sleep habits at bay (usually, still occasionally let the lure of the shiny keep me up).

On a solution-level, I've found that exercise + proper rest tends to have the greatest singular impact on my self control. My willpower tends to scale with my energy-levels. In addition, adding little obstacles between you and the distraction (noprocrast setting on hackers news, forestry app for phone, etc) can often give me just enough time to pull myself back to important things.

hammock 8 years ago | |

In my experience using the blocking apps/obstacle method helps, but it will only help you not do those activities. It won't motivate you to do what you want to be doing. You will just find some other time wasting activity unless you attack, understand and reframe your desired activity

basdevries 8 years ago | |

What percentage of that is phone and computer related? If you were unable to visit particular sites (maybe during particular timeslots), how much would that solve the problem? What other things could solve the problem without changing your actual habit?

livingparadox 8 years ago | | |

Hard to say currently, as my phone broke about a month ago and I intentionally didn't order a new one until just recently.

I'm also just bad at quantifying anything as a whole. I generally have trouble getting distracted whenever important things aren't attention-grabbing and shiny things are few clicks or taps away...

brad0 8 years ago |

I find my self control issues all stem from not having a solid plan to do something.

I know that I could be doing things "better" but I don't have a strong enough emotional reason to.

I've found if you want to change something then you need to think of a concrete plan and attach emotion to it (good or bad).

SyneRyder 8 years ago |

>I find myself a lot of times that I go to bed 1 or 2 hours too late...

I've dealt with this one a lot. For me, it's partly caused by having bright lights everywhere while I work through the evening. The bright lights are really helpful while I'm working, but not when I need to wind down.

What helped me was setting up a 'night mode'. I put tealight candles everywhere (in Australia, Dusk is a great store for that sort of thing). I also have a lamp with one of those "vintage" bulbs with long straight filaments that outputs an orange-yellow glow (in Australia they're called Mirabella Vintage). For bonus points, I run Netflix's "Fireplace For Your Home" on the TV. Whatever it is about that dim light ambience, that signals my body to start winding down for sleep, and it's usually about 1 - 2 hours earlier than without it.

[I took a photo at the beginning of my night mode setup here: https://twitter.com/syneryder/status/766299439489097728 ]

As for work distractions, I work solo so I don't get many intrusions that way. But I am ruthless in turning off notifications on my phone (and I deactivated Facebook, because it was a constant stream of distraction). I got a Pebble Time Steel watch, and set it up so only urgent notifications go to the watch (like downtime alerts). If my watch isn't buzzing, it isn't important enough to interrupt what I'm doing.

bykovich2 8 years ago |

Do you feel passionate about what you do? Do you /like/ what you do? (Don't confuse those.) I constantly struggle with distraction at work -- and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the problem is, at least in significant part, that I /just don't like it/.

drakonka 8 years ago |

All the time. My big things are:

* Going to bed too late

* Cleaning the house (that is, I have trouble doing it)

* Sticking to my eating plan (I'm not too bad at this, but need to get better)

* Buying crap I don't actually need. I'm not rich, there are better things to do with my money.

* Inability to let things go - that is, if I am stuck on a problem at work but still have ideas for what to try next, I will have trouble going home until I've tried all of them. I'll keep thinking "I'll just try this one more thing..." If I do force myself to go home, it will often haunt me until the next morning.

afarrell 8 years ago |

I use a three-pronged approach:

1) Put my vices out of reach. I don't keep candy in my house and I use https://freedom.to/ and https://selfcontrolapp.com/ to block distracting websites.

2) Build habits and structures to take care of my physical health. I use a spaced-repetition flashcard app https://ankiweb.net/ on my phone to remind myself of the habits I should be following. I go to sleep at 11:30 and wake up at 8:30 (+/1 30 minutes either way) so I get 9 hours of sleep a night. If I feel anxious when going to sleep, I put on an audiobook. I do a 20 minute workout (run 1km, bench press, situp, back-up, lunges) before work. I'm not building muscle, but it makes my mind clearer.

3) Reinforce mental toughness by explicitly saying to myself "this is frustrating, but it is worth it to work through it and I'm stronger than I think."

twobyfour 8 years ago |

All the time. The solution is usually mindfulness. When you're lost in HN at 2AM when you should be sleeping (or when you're coding and in the zone), your focus is _inside_ what you're doing. You won't stop doing it until you pull your focus back and look at _what_ you're doing. That allows you to assess whether it's what you want to be doing _now_, and whether it's a good use of your time.

To prompt yourself to pull your focus back , you can condition yourself to respond to certain cues - typically sounds - and program your phone or computer to produce those cues every N minutes. Meditation can also help develop your ability to be mindful of what you're doing and why instead of getting caught up in the moment.

danm07 8 years ago |

Interesting to read the experiences of others.

I experience difficulty with task switching. When I latch onto a problem, I feel like I cannot do anything else until that problem is solved. This makes for very inefficient studying as often I just need time to digest. This also creates problems for multi-tasking.

What I find strange is that I have much less of a task switching problem when it comes to programming.

As others have pointed out, will-power comes and goes with energy levels. On afternoons I'm practically useless. In my experience the disparity between what one wants to do and what one ends up doing is function of available energy, as a form of mental agility.

weishigoname 8 years ago |

keep one habit all the time, and never try to change it, like do some running every morning, I think it can help you coming back very soon.

yellowapple 8 years ago |

I'm pretty sure my whole life is one long lapse in self-control.

dnh44 8 years ago | |

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” - Oscar Wilde

SirLJ 8 years ago |

Sometimes I do after few drinks...