Ask HN: How to do that you need to do but not motivated at all? variations of this question would be how to stop procrastination, how to be disciplined, how to be productive... Some days it's better, but those are when my sleep goes REALLY well... but that's like having motivation, not everyday is gonna be a perfect day, it'd be really advantageous to be able to maintain a good amount of momentum consistently. |
At least this is what I've been trying for the past five years, specially after the pandemic (which sucked the last drops of motivation) and a child (which showed me that I can indeed do stuff that's required but not desired).
It sometimes works, it somestimes doesn't work. But sticking to it seems to be the whole point, so I'm trying. What could I lose, right?
Also take all the advice from this thread and experiment with it as tools: find the tools that work for you and keep them around. Reach for them in moments of need, but also accept you can't always use them all the time and it's OK.
Seeking an ADHD diagnosis/treatment might also help, but it won't magically solve everything. It's a tool just like the others.
There are pros and cons (washing the pots up before eating dinner is never popular, but oh so necessary..) but I feel better than when I used to be tomorrow-man. It helps if you live with people who tolerate this approach. Am I always doing the right things? Ha, no - that's a separate challenge orthogonal to having the motivation to act at all.
If you really are struggling doing things you absolutely have to do, my suggestion is using an exhaustive TODO list where each action item takes ~10 minutes, that can get you rolling relatively fast. Happened to write about it recently here[0] as I was experiencing something similar.
[0] https://andersource.dev/2022/11/25/the-exhaustive-todo-list....
Now though, it's hard to do the same thing when I spend all day looking at code, but I know once I get started again the momentum and enjoyment of my hobby turned career will drive me
Not sure if this was really helpful lol... but hopefully
Its important to recognise that its going to take time to change your day and its not reasonable to expect yourself to change how you spend half of your waking day (8hours) quickly. I don't know of any reliable science on the realistic adoption rate of new habits but it could be as low as 1% a month. Given that you need to make incremental changes that move you towards how you want your day to be gradually and adopt a habit or extension of a habit for at least 4 weeks to bed in.
It's not a magic bullet though, so here are some other things that help.
Accountability. A person checking in on doing what you need to do.
Timers, alarms, reminders. I have have an Amazon Echo in every room of my house and set reminders whenever something pops into my head.
Pomodoros: just do a couple of minutes and then stop. It's usually not as bad as you imagine.
Above all, forgive yourself. You are a not a machine. You will have better days and worse days. Keep going in the right direction.
Usually once I start a task the desire to procrastination abates.
If you have problems that you think cause procrastination, because you mentioned sleep, definitely address those for your health. Maybe you will be more productive, maybe not, that's not the important part.
One that works is to line up a lot of things that must be done, so you can choose the less painful :D.
Also stop reading news, it makes your mind wander/think about irrelevant things. Read news only before going to bed. News is 98% noise.
If your brain is really rioting, then use a pomodoro timer.
Bonus: Be young and don't have the burdens of life on your plate. When you have to deal with death, loss, illness, financial hardships, etc. you'll realise that those are the real motivation killers — simply not feeling it because you're stuck with a coding problem is not a reason to not get back to work.
Every day I will pick one boring tiny small step from the TO DO list and do it. And after that I can do whatever I want without feeling guilt.
Do one small step ea day and you will be blown away by how much you get done in a year.
At one point you just decide to do it. Ignore the feeling that you lack motivation. Grind through even one laughably small bit. Then repeat that, every day. Nothing changes, you just do it.
Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't.
*) adhd, medicated_depression, passed_one_therapy
I have this suspicion that often people who thrive at "school" suck at doing things, their whole life they are getting programmed to: a) do things for an quick and clear reward
b) always be in extremely well defined rules (when semester starts you see how people obsess over edge cases and their impact on grade with a professor)
c) always do it for pleasing someone else and get their admiration (teachers, parents, peers, etc)
d) only be motivated by fear
In a way the better you adapt to that system the more 'slave' minded you become and only do what is asked, when rewarded, given clear instructions and a threat of leashes is near. Often Top students in HS end up mediocre at college and life.
Lack of motivation plagues them all life as they have no clear guidelines, external threats, or third person providing validation.
Motivation ebbs and flows, but if one is not completing at least some tasks, it makes it that much harder to create momentum
* Just start doing it anyway
* Think about why it's necessary to do it. Think about the benefit that will bring. Think about any other benefits it will bring, ranging from skills you'll learn to the pride or peace of mind of having done it. Draw intrinsic motivation from that.
Not that I'm good at either of these...
100% not motivated to do it. The trick I used was to just start. Now is the scheduled time to do it. Do you want to do it? Nope. Ok go get the tools and equipment. Didn’t you hear? I’m not motivated.
Motivation not required. Just start.
I really enjoyed Atomic Habits by James Clear. He outlines both a philosophy for creating habits, as well as a toolbox of specific techniques to help you. I've found it enormously useful in my own struggles with motivation and focus.
When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad!
Starter tip! Any task can be broken into:
1. Look at the task.
2. Figure out the next step.
Nonono don't wait with step 1 until you feel you have a plan for step 2. Forget step 2. Do step 1 first. Then do step 2.
1) Know myself. So much can be unpacked here, but this boils down to a couple broad categories. First, I need to be realistic with myself about what I am capable of, what tends to distract me, what my needs are, etc. Second, I have to be in tune with myself in the moment. Am I drifting? What do I need to do right now to stay on track?
2) Have a plan. This isn't so much a commitment to "prep" for each day as it is being willing to learn and employ strategies that I can combine with #1 to meet my needs and accommodate for my weaknesses. Sometimes this means having a way to limit noise around me. Sometimes it means ready access to coffee or a snack. Sometimes it means turning off email/chats/etc. Sometimes (ironically) it means taking a break.
3) Have a "why". I am the sole income-earning in a family of 6, so the "why" for me is pretty strong. If I don't make it happen, we all suffer. I have to be careful, though. Workaholism isn't that much better than being a chronic procrastinator in terms of its ill effects on my life/health.
4) Eliminate distractions. Sometimes this means using one of my strategies to find a quiet place. Sometimes it means going and doing that chore my wife keeps bugging me about so I can just focus on my work.
5) Don't white-knuckle it. In other words, don't be religious about work. Usually when I'm feeling burned out or unmotivated it's because my mind and body are being deprived of something. It's better for me to understand what that is (even if it means taking a day off) than to keep pushing myself. That just leads to more burn-out. It's important to have grace with myself so I don't just feel guilt and shame when I need a time-out. Feelings of shame often perpetuate procrastination anyway.
6) Make healthy choices. This is touched on in several of the other points, but it's important enough to be its own bullet. Sometimes it takes effort just to know what the healthy choice is. Having someone who can help you (like a spouse or close friend) is huge here. This also covers everything from sleep to eating to other things you consume, screen time, social time, etc.
In my own life, lack of motivation and my mental health are closely connected. I could write on this subject for a long time, mostly because I've spent a lot of time studying the nature of mental health and addiction in order to help myself. Hopefully this helps someone else add to their own regimen.
Motivation is typically short lived, building discipline allows you to not be subject to its fickle nature. (some people call it habit, I call it discipline)
"How do I do X when I don't have Y?"
"You do X even though you don't have Y."
"Okay, but how? My problem is that if I don't have Y, I don't do X."
"Well just do X without Y, and then you won't have that problem."
"Right but..."
"You know the problem you have? Stop having it. Then you won't have it."
Threads like this are a great way of getting a wide variety of tips and ideas that you might not have thought of, but you need to keep in mind that there is no universal strategy that works for everyone. You should treat threads like this as a way of gathering ideas, not as a way of getting concrete advice.
Different people literally just react differently to different motivators, so there really isn't a shortcut around trying a lot of different things, seeing what works and what doesn't, and trying to figure out how your brain in specific processes this stuff.
----
That being said, idea list:
- focus on habits, not motivation. Do the same thing every day.
- give yourself permission to do an imperfect/bad job. Cooking a simple meal is better than not eating at all. Exercising in just one way for 20 minutes rather than doing a routine is better than not exercising. Repeat the mantras: "anything is better than nothing"; "anything worth doing is worth doing poorly."
- aggressively automate and restructure tasks. What is the most annoying thing about the task in front of you? Is there a way to make that specific part easier?
- focus on time spent on the task, not the task itself (ie, don't "do the dishes", instead "clean for 30 minutes").
- alternatively, focus on the next task and not the time (ie, don't do "I'll clean today", do "I'll take the dishes out of the dishwasher", then "I'll put the dirty dishes into the dishwasher", then do "I'll turn the dishwasher on."
- sleep more and eat better. Sleep/diet makes more dopamine available for your brain to use. This really isn't optional, you will not be motivated if you don't take care of yourself.
- preload rewards (if you're not motivated by rewards) so that you'll have dopamine immediately available. Purchase the game before you clean your room, not after.
- or, alternatively, do the opposite of that if you are motivated by rewards.
- cycle through productivity systems so they'll continue being novel and easier for you to focus on.
- body double, have someone work alongside you on their own tasks (if you have people around you that are available to do that).
- block distracting stimuli (I regularly block HN on my computers for weeks at a time or even months). If you don't have an adblocker installed, install uBlock Origin.
- see if you can rephrase the task in a way that's more motivating.
- give yourself permission to be imperfect (most people don't have consistent momentum in their day-to-day life).
- forgive yourself for not having already started. If you meant to get something done and you didn't do it, don't spend an hour feeling guilty, instead release those emotions and just try again starting now.
- find someone who will verbally/directly praise you when you finish a task. If you clean your room or finish a work project, send a text/photo to a friend/significant-other/family-member who knows your situation who will tell you "good job." Be vulnerable around those people, show them the before picture of your room when it was dirty too. Let people congratulate you on progress, not just results.
- Consider extensive therapy. If you find a good therapist, they can be great, and telehealth has made this a lot easier. I often treat my therapy session as a kind of review session and planning session, almost like a sprint review/planning meeting. Therapy can be expensive and inaccessible, and it is work to find a good therapist, but if it is accessible to you, then I can not stress enough how useful therapy can be just in general, even just as a way to force you to vocalize your emotions and describe them.
- If you think you're abnormally struggling with this, consider looking into an ADHD diagnosis and medication (alongside therapy, it's not an either-or situation). Too long to get into here. Not all procrastination is the result of ADHD, it can have a lot of causes, from depression to anxiety to environment to perspective to pure organization. And most people aren't perfectly productive. But sometimes it is ADHD.
* Try to recognize that you work in cycles and try to structure your life and your work according to those cycles. Try to really, viscerally understand that "not every day is gonna be a perfect day" means that some days will be amazing and some days will be terrible and that's part of living life.
* Try to recognize that arbitrary measures of productivity are a part of capitalism that we get taught to buy into at a very early age, at least in the US.
* Think about taking some online ADHD quizzes and if you score reasonably high, maybe think about bringing it up with your doctor. Doing that was a turning point for me personally, both because it's a very useful lens for framing my life and because, right now at this stage of my life, medication really does help me get through my days without the sudden realization at the end of the day that I just spun in circles for 12 hours.
That said, I don’t think you’re wrong:
> Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.
- Chuck Close
Caution: Your Mileage May Vary.
Are you Procrastinating on tasks? Mindfulness, full stop. If I'm in a youtube/wiki/gaming rabbit hole (oooone more short vid, ooone more click, ooone more quest) There are natural breaks between these activities. The more you practice being aware of these things the easier it becomes to notice the break. I literally say to myself, "Okay time to do the dishes" and I put my computer to sleep, get up, and head in the direction. Once you get started on the task its quite easy to finish it.
Can't put your phone down when you're at home chillin, even if you're watching a movie? Literally put it somewhere inconveniently out of reach. I leave my phone on my nightstand in my bedroom. Now I literally can't look at it if I should be working on my comic or something. Everything my phone can do that is actually important I can hear it from the other room. You might scoff at this advice but imagine if an alcoholic scoffed at you for telling them "Get rid of the alcohol in your house". Not a "cure" but it'll go a long way in helping.
When I share with my good friend that I'm trying to wake up earlier he told me, "You're getting the same amount of day regardless because waking up earlier doesn't mean you sleep less". I think about that a lot when I reflect on what I choose to spend my time doing when I'm up at 2 am.
Habits > Motivation. Do things in small chunks. Literally remind myself "A step a day will get me to my destination"
I refuse to beat myself up for starting and then only being able to go halfway. I mentioned a comic earlier. I prefer to complete a page in a workday. But if I don't, that's fine? Like I still worked on it and that's better than not working on it at all!
I like carving out a schedule - I used to be really wound up - In the Art community there's this idea that you have to "Draw everyday (or else!)". I think that's bogus. The people I know who take this to the extreme neglect other areas of their life. As an outsider looking in - that sounds horrible.
Too Depressed to get out of bed? Get out of bed anyway? Like, the way I see it, I'm going to be depressed in bed, I might as well be depressed doing the dishes. If anything I'm getting a two-fer. The dishes get done (A task I'm procrastinating on because its 'unpleasant', and I already feel unpleasant so win win)
Take breaks.
It takes more than a week to really build a habit - Since you're already asking about how to solve the problem you're doing the first step!
Good luck!
(PS: Be careful with the 'trap' of productivity. I find that a lot of my peers ask themselves, "What is the point of doing 'X' if it isn't how I make a living?". I find this to be a terribly bleak outlook on life. I know money is important but money is just a tool for having our needs met. It puts food on the table and a roof over your head but it isn't the end-all-be-all of human endeavors. Same with attention. Like, as an example, Make cool Art because Art is cool and worth making not because you're going to get X number of followers or whatever. Everything else is gravy imo.)
No one is motivated to do stuff 100% of the time. Do you think superstar athletes like getting in the weight room and doing cardio everyday?
I think a lot of the problem is that modern life allows people to have this attitude when it wasn't an option in the past. No one used to care about whether they wanted to do stuff because if they didn't they would die.
"Oh I don't feel like getting firewood or hunting today" - Dead Caveman
What Removal of choice in practice looks like is going to the gym in the morning isn't a choice, it's just what I have to do. In the same way that going to work on the weekdays isn't a choice, it's what you have to do.
As for removing small obstacles, getting to the gym early in the morning is hard. When you wake up early it is extremely tempting to stay in the comfort of you bed or scroll social media while you have your coffee, or [insert easy dopamine hit here]. I have my gym bag packed, my coffee machine set so all I have to do is hit the brew button, my whey/creatine powder is in the mixer bottle, and (recently) I've cleaned the snow off my car, in the evening. This is so when I wake up weak willed, it's as easy as I can possibly make it to follow through on my intention.
For baby steps, when instituting a new habit from motivation, make it easy, like really really easy. The gym habit is a new one for me this year. I started building it by simply setting the intention that I would show up to the gym for a couple minutes. No pressure to work out, no pressure to get fit, the only requirement on myself was that I spend 2 minutes at the gym on my 'workout' days. This helped build and lock in a routine and notice the small obstacles that I needed to overcome to get to the gym. As the habit of going got locked in, it became trivially easy to be like well I guess while I'm here I'll do some curls.
Imagine not understanding basic things about your environment like: why wife die of sick, why sky open and pour ocean, etc.
Now imagine how terrifying and demotivating that type of thing must have been.
You can find rewarding work.
a) do things for an quick and clear reward
b) always be in extremely well defined rules (when semester starts you see how people obsess over edge cases and their impact on grade with a professor)
c) always do it for pleasing someone else and get their admiration (teachers, parents, peers, etc)
d) only be motivated by fear
In a way the better you adapt to that system the more 'slave' minded you become and only do what is asked, when rewarded, given clear instructions and a threat of leashes is near. Often Top students in HS end up mediocre at college and life.
Lack of motivation plagues them all life as they have no clear guidelines, external threats, or third person providing validation.
It's unhealthy, but I get a great deal of satisfaction when I think about others seeing me as a success. And a great deal of stress when things aren't going right, which has been a motivator for turning things around.
If at some point I fail and can't recover, my mental health would probably decline significantly.
The author has a book called Tiny Habits. It's short, but packs a bunch. Essentially: (B)ehavior = (M)otivation + (A)bility + (P)rompt.
Edit: Direct link to the paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19LYba4fuceGM3KhqxTXByV4msmb...
Stress can be a healthy motivator, but it's generally unhealthy for stress and immediate survival to be your only motivator. Be very careful about over-relying on stress. Besides the physical effects, stress can also sometimes lead to sacrificing long-term habits that aren't immediately necessary but that are still important to build (exercise, career building, relationships, sleep, etc...).
There are two pieces of advice here that (in my opinion) are kind of contradictory:
- form habits (good advice)
- "no one used to care about whether they wanted to do stuff because if they didn't they would die" (this is a recipe for burnout, regardless of how well it might work for someone in the short term).
A good habit usually should not be stressful, it shouldn't be something you do out of persistent fear. There is something to the idea of having stimuli/motivators around chores that are difficult to ignore, lots of people benefit from that kind of setup. But... not because you're worried about dying if you don't do them.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609433-the-power-of-ha...
I have issues building habits where people say do it for 21 days and then you’ll start loving and “will do it for the rest of your life”.
No you won’t.
Sometimes you won’t feel like doing it, even if it’s your habit.
What keeps you going is discipline.
Regardless of the external circumstances, whether it’s cold, raining, you didn’t sleep enough or you feel sad, you still do it.
That’s the basis behind the 75 Hard too. I say it’s not a fitness program, it’s a mental toughness program, you do what you agreed to do.
I can't say I've been able to apply it to everything in my life. Certain things like working out and meditating I've finally been able to make it something that's not a choice. It's pretty much like drinking water or taking a dump. It just has to be done now.
Cardio eventually feels good. The physical response to working out is endorphines which make our monkey brains feel good after.
Mentally exhausting work on the other hand is far more delayed than that.
> "Oh I don't feel like getting firewood or hunting today" - Dead Caveman
Both of those have both immediate and delayed rewards.
Finding those records was easy, energized by that easy win I picked another easy task, "I'll get together my bank interest statements" and in a couple of hours I was done.
Maybe this could work for you.
I also find the actual task of breaking something large down into small pieces gets me thinking about the actual task rather than the abstract "big task" and gets me more motivated. Think of it like brain storming.
I think a lot of procrastination is breaking down a large, nebulous task into a loop of investigate and then resolve until the task is complete, but our brains naturally tell us to avoid this kind of thing, its riskier to go after the food that you really don't know how to acquire and takes a lot of investigation than the food that you've been able to acquire easily in the past
2) Break your tasks into sub-tasks, and consider the breaking-apart a task in itself.
3) Timebox solving an appropriate amount of sub-tasks at the right time.
I'm supposed to "redo my budget" -- but that's not actionable. What's actionable and simple is prepare a spreadsheet in the right folder, download bank statements for the appropriate months and save them next to. And before I do (I'm supposed to be working right now), write those down on a list as well as "Sketch out this list more."
Most problems that seem hard to overcome (either because you don't know how, or because you don't want to) were not broken down into simple enough tasks. Some warrant a reward (frienship, drugs).
I'm supposed to "do the dishes" -- but if I just take the dishes to the kitchen, empty the drying rack while my coffee is brewing, or rinse the dishes without washing them, the next task is getting simpler. I carry out one or two steps on each visit to the kitchen, so I rarely take off 10-20 full minutes to "do the whole damn thing at once."
Of course, from their perspective, you're the supervillain.
It's just one thing, you know.
- Psychiatrist Explains Why You Feel Tired All The Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sppw7Zq35w
- Why Don't You Want To Do Anything After Binging 4 Hours of Youtube Videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBgCRJluWTc
Alternatively you can read the "Procrastination" post on the Wait But Why blog about the same subject. That might be more scientifically accurate.
I think my procrastination comes from some combination of ADHD, low-level depression, and existential dread (i.e., does anything really matter anyway?).
If you think ADHD is part of your issue, you might find some videos by Tracy Marks [0] useful. (And if you're not sure about ADHD, you might consider getting tested for it.)
There are 8 billion people on this planet, nobody else will look out for your well-being except you.
Of course there are people who will mention motivation related advise, set habits, discipline etc. but these things make a real difference only for very few people.
You might also want to try psychotropics nootropics amphetamines or whatever, but I wouldn't advise to that, just mentioning it.
Essentially, when doing a task with someone else, we are more likely to focus and perform that task better. There are tools like Double [1] that are built just so you can pair up with others to do these activities and get that motivation to start!
I'm not saying that a new lamp will fix your problems but try to be mindful of your working environment and conditions and see what changes you can make to make yourself generally more comfortable.
Other examples include finding a way to further compartmentalise your work, for instance by becoming uncontactable on your work channels outside of work hours.
Further, improve your general health: drink more water and less coffee, make sure you see the sun for at least half an hour a day, take vitamins, socialise more, do more exercise; all the usual health-nutjob advice in as large a dose as you can stand - all of these things have tangible effects on mood which is a huge player in motivation.
You said sleep has a big impact so try getting really strict about your bed time and waking up on time. Try anything and everything and don't be put off when 90% of the new habits you try to cultivate don't stick. You'll figure out what is important to maintaining your mental health by experimentation and observation.
Concentrated mindfulness and a rigid attitude towards work/life separation have done more for my executive dysfunction than any revolutionary to-do list app or task organising framework.
If there are more than 3 tasks, Use the Eisenhower matrix (important vs urgent?) To plot them and filter out all except the ones which are BOTH most important and most urgent.
I find that I get a lot of dishes and not-important/easy-but-urgent cleaning done when I have a big nasty task pending. But at least then I'm still doing something productive with my time. Plus once you've finished & checked off some small stuff often I feel better about the tasks in general.
I think for me it takes a lot of energy to start a hard/important task, especially if I'm doubting if I can do it - or if I have never done it before or have to look it up to figure it out... If I'm also feeling anxious about the huge pile of other things I've got to do (even if they're small chores) then this can get to a crippling state where I don't want to do anything.
So again, sometimes just starting with some easy tasks to just get yourself moving, and saying "I am doing a good job, and I am getting stuff done" can then help me reduce the list. Make a written, physical list, and physically check it off. I know it seems trite for computer people to Not use tech to solve a problem, but you need to see it and get that dopamine hit when you check it off.
1. Break down required activities into emotionally manageable tasks. (Sometimes this necessitates rendering it down to a level where it seems trivial.)
2. Cut deals with yourself. Permit yourself to procrastinate on one thing, but only if you work on this other priority task. (This works well within a task even, if you have done #1.)
3. Build momentum by completiing easier things first. (This is especially effective if you find satisfaction in checking items off a todo list.)
1. Just Get Started. One common cause of procrastinating is avoiding negative thoughts. "This will be too complicated", "This will take too long", "I'll have to make all kinds of compromises on the design", etc. If you Just Get Started then you'll likely find out it isn't as bad as you thought.
2. How You Feel Doesn't Matter. Procrastination often continues because you're waiting until you feel like doing it. We lie to ourselves, "I'm going to goof off now, but wake up at 5 am and I'll feel like doing it then". Then 5 am comes around and you feel even less like working on it. We need to stop fooling ourselves that we will feel like it at some point.
3. Pomodoro Technique. This works pretty well for me. I'll do 4 sets of 25 minutes of focused time separated by 5 minute sets of whatever I want time. When I think, "Wow I have a lot of work to do, I have to focus for the next 8 hours" I just dread it. Instead if I reframe it as, "I just need to focus for the next 25 minutes" I often blow right past the timer because I get so interested in the work.
It's hard to actually do it, and it's hard to be bored. Being bored is... well, boring. Your brain will have all sorts of impulses and drives to derive any kind of entertainment from anything.
But if you stick with it, it's one of the best strategies to make yourself do something.
By doing this as a habit, you train yourself to keep some momentum even when not motivated. Kind of an auto pilot thing. If you'd even struggle with this block of work, look for ways to make it more fun. Play some music, take short walks outside, play with your pet. Yet avoid things that suck you in, like Youtube.
As for the rest of the day and tasks, I ride my energy flow instead of fighting it. When I feel slow and weak, I read email and update notes. When I feel better, I do more challenging tasks.
I bought a pair of decent reusable earplugs and built a ritual of throwing them in whenever I want to be productive. To my surprise it was incredibly effective. When the ear plugs go in, I get right into the zone in minutes.
Another trigger I use to tell my mind it’s time to focus is to close my door. Even if I’m home alone, something about closing the door serves as a cue to my mind.
These are low cost things you can try and you will know immediately if they help you. If they don’t, maybe you can identify similar triggers that do work for you.
Either you can make yourself do what's necessary or you can't. What you can reasonably focus on is:
- making sure that you are motivated more often and don't need to rely just on discipline all the time
- looking for ways that you are more disciplined and can rely upon it when necessary
- if you find that you lack motivation altogether or have no discipline, look into whatever the cause for that might be
Something like coffee, exercise (if not a habit) or a divide and conquer approach, or the pomodoro technique can all be temporary bandaids, but if there are underlying problems you might eventually still feel too bad to get things done.
For example, I have enough motivation to do the things at work that are actually nice to deal with: writing my own code that's testable, well commented and reasonably simple, using new technologies and improving development processes in general.
I have enough discipline to force myself to deal with the other aspects: particular mindsets held by certain individuals that can sometimes be an impediment to getting things done, dealing with code that isn't commented or user friendly, legacy codebases and so on.
I acknowledge that some things will get done later: a growing list of ideas for personal projects, that I can't fit in my current life circumstances.
- Creating a hard deadline, such as booking a meeting to share the work. Then "If you leave it to the last minute, it only takes a minute" can work and be efficient
- Carving out time for that thing, such as going to a coffee shop and telling myself I won't leave until that 1 thing is done
- "Structured procrastination" which is finding a task that's even less pleasant and putting it beside the other unpleasant, but easy task on a todo list, and when I'm avoiding the really really unpleasant task I can get the other thing done
- Waiting for an altered mind state. Some tasks I know I can't bring myself to do unless I'm at peak mental energy at 10am, so I let them take up that slot to get them done. Other unpleasant tasks such as badgering people to do things they dropped the ball on I might tackle when I'm feeling more in an angry mood brought on by some unrelated frustration, but lingering. When I'm feeling frustrated generally I sometimes pick up the phone to deal with annoying customer service at companies I've been putting off
- If I'm really stuck in a rut I'll listen to the Andrew Huberman podcast and try to lean abut brain chemistry and sometimes find that learning about some underlyling mechanism of why motivation helps me fix thigns
- If I'm really stuck sometimes I'll go for a run. Resets my mind, gives a bit of dopamine and motivation from runenrs high - Avoiding carbs and alcohol is helpful for me. Carbs make me lethargic, and having low motivation makes me want to eat carbs, which is a self reeinforcing negative spiral
- I try to be mindful of how meaningful social connection improve wellbeing and motivation. Saying something nice to my wife, showing heartfelt appreciation for someone at work helps lift mood and give me energy to tackle the least motivating items on my task list
I was also pointed to this resource by Neel, you could use to it to re-frame the goal of the task (e.g. instead of "do well on exam" -> "pass exam with as little effort as possible"): https://mindingourway.com/half-assing-it-with-everything-you...
This applies to anything really, be it work or chores at home or anything else I either really find boring or can't quite solve. If there is a problem I can't think of a solution for it must be split up more.
If it's something like doing the laundry or something you can just do a little bit here and there. Just 5 minutes of doing what needs to be done, even if it's a quick few dishes in or out of the dishwasher and a few clothes folded up. I don't need to be motivated to manage 5 minutes of doing something. Just 5 more minutes!
For some things though like going to the gym when I really don't want to, refer to the first sentence. I'm not motivated, but I am stubborn so I'm going anyway. :)
Blocking habits that induce procrastination by rearranging your life or home can do a lot to break that cycle long enough to re-orient your life toward one where you do the things you need to do because "eh, I've got nothing better to do".
See e.g. things like this: https://www.oliverburkeman.com/onething https://ckarchive.com/b/xmuph6hrzxwrd
Seriously. It really helps to power through the "ho-hums."
I have found that the reward of a finished product, at the end, works well as a "carrot" for me.
Also, as has been mentioned elsewhere, establishing habit is, in my opinion, essential.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act, but a habit."
- Somewhat incorrectly attributed to Aristotle
That's what I do.
It will be called "TheGoldenFart™".
YMMV (literally!)
I think this is a little dismissive.
The most successful people I know all learned to be productive and to break apart tasks. I don't think it's unreasonable for people who don't have that skill/muscle for whatever reason to try and figure out how to build it. It is possible to get better at this.
And the "there's nothing to learn, just do it" argument that pops up so often in these kinds of threads to me ends up reading as a kind of moral/essentialist reduction of discipline and executive function. It's just super-unhelpful when going to someone and telling them "I don't know how to do X" to get a response back of "well you'd better learn." The whole point is that they don't know how.
> There’s no secret, shortcut, magic pill.
Highly agreed, but I think this is also part of the reason why "just do it" is such bad advice; it assumes that there is some kind of switch in someone's brain they can just flip to change their behavior. In reality, getting better at productivity is the result of a long, difficult, everyday effort to learn about yourself and to learn what strategies work and what strategies don't.
Most people can not decide to "just do it." They can't just make a resolution to not struggle with something. They have to instead take an inquisitive attitude about themselves and daily work on getting better little by little. And part of that process involves asking questions and getting tips. Even advice like exercise and sleep is not really useful if someone is struggling with getting the motivation to do that stuff in the first place.
> magic pill.
There is no universal magic pill, but medication in conjunction with therapy for some people does unlock additional strategies that would not be available otherwise. Half of the productivity strategies I use would not work if I was unmedicated. Keep a calendar so I don't miss events? The only reason I can do that is because I'm medicated.
Medication doesn't magically solve problems, it doesn't mean you don't have to care about the other stuff, but for some people, medication is an important part of the process. At its best, medication prompts a kind of spiral of success. If medication helps you eat/exercise more often, that gives you more willpower to do even more stuff. If it removes enough anxiety to get rid of insomnia, that can be a game-changer for motivation.
So not exactly a magic pill, but definitely occasionally a process that can kick-start other processes. Very individually dependent though.
> nobody else will look out for your well-being except you.
I guess as long as I'm quibbling; asking for help and taking proactive steps to better yourself is looking out for yourself.
You owe it to yourself and to the people around you to take your mental state seriously and to take your problems seriously, and if that means asking for help, then that's better than staying where you are and struggling to handle that entire process on your own.
Do what you have to do to better yourself, and let go of any ego about self-reliance. Don't let embarrassment about where you are prevent you from moving to a better place.
The point is that until very recently no one had the luxury of sitting around and worrying whether they felt "motivated" to do things. They just did them because they didn't have a choice if they wanted to survive.
"OH I feel like shit and don't want to get off my ass today" ok.... it doesn't really matter. Still need wood for heat, need to cook, need to feed my pigs etc.
Yeah you can get away with doing essentially nothing now and still survive but people need to change their mindset and form a habit that doing nothing long term results in a very unhealthy lifestyle. Simplify your day into just doing SOMETHING and remove that anxiety of having too many choices. Pick one and go.
Seems like a big assumption. I haven't yet, and I keep trying.
I know from experience that I'm happiest doing 2-3 part time jobs. But in order to get things like benefits, job security, a salary over 15/hr, etc. I'm stuck with a single place of full time employment. I try to find jobs that let me do a bunch of different things, but it's not really the same.
Being a generalist sucks.
While the real reward is admission to a good college, you get the feeling that you are progressing towards that goal often.
Most habits form gradually and it can be hard to see them taking effect, and that can be really demotivating. For me, being able to look back at photos of what my house used to look like and being able to go over some of my old sprint logs is sometimes a good way to combat these kinds of brain worms and to get a sense of the general direction I'm headed and what progress I've made.
I never found a reason to force myself to form any kind of habit, life lead me to my habits, either out of a specific need at the time or some kind of inner drive, but that's it.
I think this self-betterment I keep reading about online is nonsense, maybe we aren't talking about the same thing tho.
Not at all. It is very much real. I used to lack confidence as an overweight shy teenager and decided to start doing kick-boxing. It completely changed my life. Not only did I loose weight but I also learned that I can do so much more than I ever imagined. Walking into a ring to fight a 6’3” bouncer and realising that he was afraid of me blew my mind.
I'm not sure what your specific definition of self-betterment is, but mine is that you can through guidance, external help, environmental changes, personal reflection, (occasionally) medication, and (importantly) personal repetition, practice, and conscious effort slowly fix problems with your behavior/attitudes and pick up working/life strategies that make you more productive and healthier, and it is good for most people to try and do so.
This is a kind of out-of-left-field comment that I'm not sure how to reply to. I don't think I understand what you're saying, because obviously there are good reasons to force ourselves to form habits? A huge percentage of learning any skill is in learning fundamentals in such a way that they become instinctive and where practicing them becomes habitual. Even day-to-day life habits like brushing your teeth are ingrained in us via conscious effort and conscious reinforcement, they're not something we accidentally pick up. So I have to assume I misunderstand what you mean by self-betterment and habits because I assume you're not arguing that people shouldn't consciously try to form habits, and I assume you're not arguing that it's impossible for people to learn to be better people or to pick up healthier habits than they have currently. I mean, that argument wouldn't even be a philosophical difference or a perspective difference, it would just be observably false.
If self betterment in general the way that most people understand it was nonsense then nobody would ever stop smoking, rehab would always be a waste of time, no one would ever lose weight or improve exercise habits, etc... And that's so clearly not the case that I have to assume you're using those words differently than most people.
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In any case, OP asking for help at the top of the thread is a kind of self betterment (although HN might not be the best place to do it or to get advice), and it's healthy for them to be putting in effort to understand themselves better and to get better at controlling their productivity. And it's extremely possible for them to see results; I bring up the records advice out of personal experience with it and out of personal experience looking back and seeing, "oh wow, I am way better at day-to-day tasks than I used to be." You can get better at this stuff. It's not a matter of just magically deciding to (which is part of my objection to the "just do it" advice I was replying to above), but self-improvement is a totally feasible thing for most people to do.
I thought it meant to alter yourself, far more than just the results of adopting a healthy lifestyle, and i really believe it's not possible to really alter oneself.
In terms of what you talk about, confidence, muscle, productivity even... these are ways to become a better narcissist. But a better person? Nah... I'd argue you're worse now that your ego is pumped.
This is also a somewhat unique definition of narcissism that I'm not familiar with: narcissism is not just another word for confidence and struggling with body image is not the same as humility.
About narcissism... where do I even begin. Let's just say that narcissism is the norm nowadays, especially in first world countries. I feel it's futile to describe further but I like the fact that people (me/you/anyone) see certain things in a different way.
:shrug: Even if this was true, reducing harm and doing more good even in the short-term is a pretty worthwhile goal. Eventually people will slip up, and then they'll have to start again. I mean, I also have to shower every day to stay clean, but I'm not nihilistic about that just because I know I'm going to occasionally miss a few days.
But I also think this is also kind of observably false? I've seen racist/bigoted people become genuinely less bigoted over time. I'm not worried that they're going to suddenly relapse, and even in instances where they still have areas to work on or where they might slip backwards, it's still not really comparable to where they used to be.
> Let's just say that narcissism is the norm nowadays, especially in first world countries.
How does this make sense if people are immutable? Are they being born narcissists because of a new genetic problem? Is it that people's morals can improve or degrade, but only while they're children?
I don't see how you're squaring the idea that people can't change with the idea that society is becoming more narcissistic.
I've never seen this, and I won't be fooled if I do see it as it will be temporary/circumstantial I think.
> How does this make sense if people are immutable?
We aren't entirely immutable but I find it challenging to draw the exact line.
People can and do become more narcissistic in a pathological sense, you get into contact with such traits from your environment, you eventually contract the decease.
That doesn't mean you can change who you are in any meaningful way, it's just that (even unconsciously) adopting narcissistic traits is now in effect a positive adaptation (higher chances of becoming more "successfull" etc).