I have been remote working for many years. And I have done a handful of office working. I would have considered myself (probably wrongly) the worst procrastinator. It seemed like most of the people I worked with were able to get things done better than I could.
And I have been on the "overwork" part of the spectrum where I'm all about working until burnout.
It's about emotions, yes. But that's not very specific. This is one of those subjects where 10 different people could give 10 different explanations and nobody would be wrong. It's a rat's nest of issues. A bunch of threads tightly wound to create a mess of a problem.
Fixing a procrastination problem probably takes more of a gut feel than an attempt to understand it.
I don't know what causes it, but most of the time what fixes it is focus.
Why do students cram? Because time constraints strip away the BS and they're only left with figuring out a strategy for studying.
What are my best strategies to stop procrastinating? I'm out of money. Time is running out. I have a gun to my head.
Getting things done is sometimes like trying to reach through a heavy fog to snatch a pin head size blinking orb of light. The moving swirling fog distracts and makes you lose site of the blinking thing you're trying to keep in sight.
What you have to do is mentally banish the fog and go straight for that blinking thing and grab it.
Another issue for me is a failure to commit. The more I think about all the stuff I want to do, the less I'm willing to put the effort into doing one thing. Possibilities are more interesting than reality. Even as reality kills off possibilities, I can always spin up more. Reading HN is like a staging zone where I'm not having to commit to anything. I'm not getting anything done, but at least I'm still keeping all the possibilities in play. It's like a dude who likes to play the field rather than settle down and get married. ;)
As I mentioned above, certain realities I can't ignore. Paying bills is a major one.
"I have been remote working for many years. And I have done a handful of office working. I would have considered myself (probably wrongly) the worst procrastinator."
Same here.
I have the feeling the trick is to get guidance but not too much.
I have many "startup ideas" but I never execute them.
I hate it if I get a manager above me that makes too much decisions for me.
But working with some nice people who let me do my job without imposing some working hours, tech stack or whatever on me and only give me some interesting problems to work on and I stop procrastinating.
>The more I think about all the stuff I want to do, the less I'm willing to put the effort into doing one thing. Possibilities are more interesting than reality. Even as reality kills off possibilities, I can always spin up more.
Well put. I suffer from that as well. Setting aside the maddening aspects of that, it does have a bright side:
If you spend years weaving together complimentary possibilities, and the rate at which you spin them up is greater than the rate at which they die—you can come up with some really interesting composite ideas that over time will seem more compelling to execute.
>Fixing a procrastination problem probably takes more of a gut feel than an attempt to understand it.
The article mentions mindfulness and I think it can replace the gut feel as a way to understand the root cause of procrastination. One can literally observe what is happening in your mind and body and what is happening around you before, during and after procrastination events and work from there to address anything you want to change. Learning about and practicing self-compassion [1] should, IMHO, help deal with it as well.
And I have been on the "overwork" part of the spectrum where I'm all about working until burnout.
It's about emotions, yes. But that's not very specific. This is one of those subjects where 10 different people could give 10 different explanations and nobody would be wrong. It's a rat's nest of issues. A bunch of threads tightly wound to create a mess of a problem.
Fixing a procrastination problem probably takes more of a gut feel than an attempt to understand it.
I don't know what causes it, but most of the time what fixes it is focus.
Why do students cram? Because time constraints strip away the BS and they're only left with figuring out a strategy for studying.
What are my best strategies to stop procrastinating? I'm out of money. Time is running out. I have a gun to my head.
Getting things done is sometimes like trying to reach through a heavy fog to snatch a pin head size blinking orb of light. The moving swirling fog distracts and makes you lose site of the blinking thing you're trying to keep in sight.
What you have to do is mentally banish the fog and go straight for that blinking thing and grab it.
Another issue for me is a failure to commit. The more I think about all the stuff I want to do, the less I'm willing to put the effort into doing one thing. Possibilities are more interesting than reality. Even as reality kills off possibilities, I can always spin up more. Reading HN is like a staging zone where I'm not having to commit to anything. I'm not getting anything done, but at least I'm still keeping all the possibilities in play. It's like a dude who likes to play the field rather than settle down and get married. ;)
As I mentioned above, certain realities I can't ignore. Paying bills is a major one.