Another trick is leave a simple tasks or error (syntax error) in the last place you were working the previous day/night. You'll jump right back in and get up and in production mode the next day, easy task to knock out and get coding.
Sometimes having another fun project that you can work on while procrastinating or thinking about your main project is helpful to keep in production mode. Procrastination sometimes is a battle of how to implement something and you should switch to a prototype mode and try them rather than overthinking the possible solutions.
Sometimes all those fail and you need something like Rescuetime but that also makes the blocked sites more desirable.
Whenever I get back to work, I can just jump in... any kind of work interruption benefits the same way.
http://www.secondactive.com/2009/08/boost-your-productivity-...
That's a great idea. I tend to get projects finished by the end of the day, which means I have to figure out what to do in the morning, which is always a little hard. I think I'll give that a shot.
With this constraint, what once looked like an overwhelming and nebulous task now seems manageable and concrete.
There's plenty of good research in to the benefits of mindfulness meditation, but I've never seen anything go quite that far.
In 30 seconds, we can go from fully intending to do something that we should do to better ourselves to reading HN submissions and commenting on them.
So, I tell myself, "I will either edit photos, vacuum the house or read the iOS Human Interface Guidelines." Then I may bounce from task to task, but I will finish at least one. After a while, the irritation of leaving a task half-done drives me to complete the other tasks as well.
[0]: http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastin...
Yet I'm keeping in mind that it isn't doesn't guaranteed to work for me. Everyone is wired different. I'm fallible and perfectly capable of misidentifying something as procrastination. I'm uncomfortable with "procrastination"s connotation of moral failing. One person's procrastination is another's Just in Time execution.
To add from personal experience, a similar method can be applied for daunting tasks. To give an example: If your todo-list seems overwhelming you may end up procrastinating or stressing out. The solution can be a variant of what's described in the article: Write a new list with only 3-5/fewer items and focus on those.
Definitely a different sort of procrastination.
I just need to sort out the definitions and overlapping boundaries with habits, tasks and projects and what I should be documenting and not documenting, and how I should keep a record in terms of time-stamps and how to structure my information.
One day I will definitely do something.
You could also just start the task, basically accomplishing the same thing. Skip the imagining part if it is a distraction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU&feature=youtu.be.
While I can certainly force myself into doing things better as I'm older and sick of the failures that procrastination leads to, I've not heard much useful advice for plain ol' (non-anxiety related) procrastination, where the person simply has inertia at rest and is disinterested at all levels from disrupting that. Stuff like the pomodoro method is probably the most relevant.
and again, not saying I know you or that you have anxiety but: it's inside that instinctive avoidance of commitment that the anxiety can hide without ever making you actually aware of itself.
Sitting down to do study my worst subjects reminded me of how much less I knew than I needed to - so I procrastinated by studying my best ones instead.
That was definitely an anxiety thing, and some well time counseling might have been life changing. It's a different thing to your laundry though, which is probably more about wanting to keep doing reddit than wanting not do laundry...
Most universities have exceptional resources available, even one on one counseling with qualified professionals, for free. More people should take advantage of these resources, but I assume people associate a stigma with mental health care.
- Isn't mean not to plan ahead of what do, which means not able to finish the task effectively. Of course it is better than postponing the task.
