How Do You Get Work Done?

canuck asks: "I am currently a university student and have a major problem: being able to simply sit down and get work done. I can set aside a day to work, whether it is homework or contract work, and I will be lucky to have an hour done before dinner time. The only time I can actually get solid work done seems to be after midnight under a lot of pressure (ie. a deadline the next day). This has led to too many 5 a.m. nights and turning down too many invitations to go out only to stay in and accomplish nothing. I have stopped playing games, stopped watching TV, tried reading the Seven Habits book, and am currently seeing what classical music does for me. I don't think I have ADHD, and I am not sure what else to try. If it is computer work, the web is always a click away, and I can always escape to my imagination. I know many of you will have had the same problem. Can anyone please give advice on how to overcome this problem, be it a little trick, medication, or anything else?"

Comments

I would recommend some exercise

[Delphix]

Exercise would be my first recommendation. It will keep your sleep habits in line pretty well. Physical activity seems to be what's missing from most of our lives today. If I don't make it to the gym, my schedule will slip quickly to 1AM, 2AM, 4AM...which isn't good since I left college years ago ;-) The other thing I would recommend is finding a buddy to go do exercise with you. It helps if you're both accountable to each other for showing up. And just having someone to do it with you doesn't hurt. This carries over to work as well. I'd imagine you sit there thinking about a million things, but you can't concentrate on what you need to do because it seems like you can put it off. The later, you wind up with many things to do and little time. You get a bunch of work done at this point, but there's so much you have trouble keeping up with it. I had the very same problem in college. Another thing that might help you is getting a job a couple hours a week. As long as I've had something constant to do, it's kept me going. Just don't get something that follows you home...go there, do your work and then head to class or do some homework. Honestly, part of it is just sheer will as well. You have to resist the urge to just read a page and put stuff down. Set a bedtime for yourself and a wake up time for yourself and follow them. That's about the best advice I can give you. If you do have some mental disorder such as ADHD only a psychologist can diagnose it. Although many times it's over diagnosed.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[dark-br]

Recommend exercise on /.? R u nutz?

I would recommend some of this. But remember, use it sparingly, dont drink it direclty from the bottle! :)

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[nomadic]

Recommend exercise on /.? R u nutz?

ya u r right, we dun like even typing in all the lettrs.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[probbka]

I wonder how much of that stuff you'd have to drink straight in order to kill yourself...

Like 1, 2 teaspoons?

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting daily exercise and having a set routine helped me very much when I had to overcome the same problem. I breezed through undergrad, doing absolutely no work, and then I started law school, which meant that I had to actually study for once in my life, and I didn't know how to do it. If I had 30 pages assigned for the next day, I'd procrastinate for a few hours, read 5 pages or so, go check email, baseball scores, maybe turn on the tv for a minute, get a snack, talk on the phone, and before I knew it, I'd wasted another hour and a half. I finally gave myself a set schedule where I'd go to school in the morning, work out after that, get dinner and run errands, then spend the next three hours studying away from my apartment. If there are too many distractions in your apt/dorm/whatever, don't study there. If the weather's good, go read in a park, or if not, find a library, bookstore, empty room, or any quiet space without distractions. Don't bring your cell phone!

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[atempleton]

I have had similar experiences and I focus on two solutions:

1) Regular exercise (even 20 minutes of brisk walking each day can help) and keep the coffee consumption fairly low (it tends to make you scatter brained)
2) Break projects down into smaller chunks. For example, if you have 100 pages to read, break it down into 10 10-page chunks and do them one at a time with breaks in between. Or if it's a complicated project, break it into steps and follow a similar pattern.

The only other thing is to JUST GET STARTED. Sometimes the first chunk/step is the hardest step. Just do it, as they say....

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[enthused i swear]

I would NOT recommend caffeine of any kind. In fact, stop drinking it all together. I used to have the same problem you did, and nothing seemed to be able to change it. There have been many threads on ./ about the effects of caffeine, and for more information I suggest looking there. Basically, when you need sleep and take caffeine, the caffeine blocks your body from feeling tired, while still having all of the effects of drowsiness. You're brain is asleep, but your body is awake and you lose cognitive functions.

I used to be very addicted to caffeine, but quit because if i missed drinking coffee or a coke, I started to get horrible headaches, and it just scared me too much. As an added bonus, my productivity shot up quite a bit. It really is all about regulating sleep for maximum concentration. I highly recommend a normal sleep schedule and stay away from caffeine. (IANAD)

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[blueskies]

Uh, I have heard quotes that the lethal dose is anywhere from 4-8 grams of caffeine.

The LD-50 is 10 grams:

The LD-50 (lethal dosage that would kill approximately 50% of the population) is 10 grams of oral administration. This is equivalent to approximately 100 cups of coffee, or 50 Vivarin pills. One exceptional case documented survival after ingesting 24 grams of caffeine. The minimum lethal dose of caffeine given intravenously was 3.2 grams.
While coffee drinkers often have caffeine blood concentration of about 1-10 mg/L, a concentration of 80 mg/L is considered lethal.

And like the poster before me said, that would be 100oz.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[mijok]

Going to the gym can be both good and bad. Personally I go three times a week with at least one friend. The bad thing is that we usually go around 6 PM since it's hard to find a time suitable for everyone. Going at 6 PM is bad because when you get home it's 8 PM or 9 PM so you don't go to bed immediately but you're too exhausted to work or study efficiently - so the time before going to bed is simply wasted. Ideally I'd either go so early in the morning that you're still "waking up" afterwards and feel good working the rest of the day. Another alternative would be to go so late that you can go to sleep almost immediately afterwards (which would be good for your muscles too). The good thing about going to the gym is that you feel and look better. And if you go with some friends you get another advantage - competition! Not die hard competition of course but mutually beneficial for all of you. In my experience, even though I'm the one lifting the least on the bench, I'm motivated if I can make proportionally more progress than the others and in addition to that if I feel lazy I still go because I know that if I don't the others will make more progress than me. And in addition to the small competitive element, going with a few friends makes it part of your weekly/daily routine.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[MCZapf]

I have to agree with your "JUST GET STARTED" advice. That's the first thing I thought when I read this article. For me, I was often overwhelmed by the large scope of some projects, and I didn't know where to start. Or worse, I just didn't have the motivation to start.

But, if I just started doing some work, even if it was the most half-assed prototyping, my mind soon got into gear and I got going. It also helps me to start working when I think I don't have time for it, such as an hour before I had to go to class. The artificial deadline made me want to finish up whatever little task I had started before I went to class.

I've tried setting aside whole days for projects, and it never works. I always goof off because I feel I have so much time on my hands.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[oscarcar]

Heavily agree with above posts.

In addition, to get your circadian cycle in sync (which gives you more energy) you can do these things:

1. It's more important to wake up at the same time. You can't always force yourself to sleep, but your body will entrain if you force yourself to get up at the same time each morning. That means NO sleeping in on weekends.

2. Expose yourself to light first thing in the morning. Preferably, I would suggest going outside but you can also get specific lights that simulate sunlight.

3. When you excerise, the best time to do that is several hours before going to bed.

Programmers tend to have delayed-phase sleep syndrome (which means we like to stay up late).
People who are delayed-phase, tend to migrate toward those jobs they can do at late hours and don't have to wake up at a specific time to do them.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[fafaforza]

I don't think the problem here is lack of energy, but rather procrastination. People procrastinate for various reasons. Whether you absolutely hate what you have to do, or whether you are sure that whatever you come up with will not be acceptable in quality, at which point you blow it off til 1AM the night before, and blame subpar results on not giving it much effort in the first place.

A better approach would be trying to analyze why exactly the author of this Ask Slashdot is pushing work off til the last possible moment.

This book might help him get a firmer grip on understanding the exact reason. It has a chapter on procrastination and seems to address exactly what he described.

Good luck.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[owenb]

Yeah, dotslash is a pretty good site.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[Lemmy Caution]

There's a split here between those who look for moral explanations, and those who look for explanations in substrata.

I'd try changing diet and habits like caffiene first. Attentive mechanisms in the brain are neurochemical, like everything else in the brain. I know it's a horrifying idea for some, but the fact is that we are physical, material beings, and our minds and personalities are products of that physicality. If those basic changes don't help, then it's appropriate to look at self-help or personality-based issues. But all the self-help in the world won't do a bit of good if you're going against hardware.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[einhverfr]

IANAD either, but I find that caffine helps me in moderation. Moderation being what most /.'ers probably call insanely low levels ;-)

I drink 1-2 cups of green tea a day. This gives me a small level of caffine on a daily basis. If I miss a day or two, no problem, but if I miss a month or two, I start to see how my schedule slips.... I also try to get 8 hrs of sleep a night, etc.

Bear in mind, I do have ADD (official diagnosis), so your milage may vary.

I think too many people use Caffine as a way of staying awake when they should be sleeping. This is a big problem. Excersize also helps, but the caffine helps me too.

My general advice is:

1: Try to live a healthy lifestyle-- eat well, sleep well, excersize.

2: Small ammounts of caffine within this framework are not a problem but don't use it to abuse your body.

3: Experiment with avoiding things like tobacco, alcohol, caffine etc. and see how your body responds.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

A more substantial risk of ingestion of caffeine is the development of a bleeding ulcer that can, if severe, lead to death.... More likely if the caffeine is taken in concentrated, pill form...

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[Eagle7]

I agree... I was going through a tin of penguins a week, along wiht coffee, dew, etc. Then I was diagnosed with Acid Reflux Disease, and one of the prohibitted foods to keep it in check was caffine. I've completely given up caffine aside from the (very) occasional after-dinner Espresso or the emergency Pepsi while driving, pulling an un-planned for all-nighter at work, etc. Probably no more than 30 caffine containing drinks in a year.

While it took a while (couple weeks) to get used to, and a lot of self control, it has made me much more energetic, I think largely because now things like enforcing a normal sleep pattern, exercise, etc. are much more important.

Also, my stomach is a heck of a lot happier (although the Nexium (wonder drug!) has a lot to do with that).

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[commodoresloat]

Mind and body are really one and the same; the split between them is artificial. So changing diet, exercise, etc., will not just improve the physical aspects of attentiveness but also the mental/emotional. I think as you exercise more, quit caffeine, or eat better, you might find that your motivation increases and you may find yourself facing the emotional challenges in your personality in a healthier way.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[Skeezix]

I identify completely. For me the biggest hurdle to overcome is getting started because when I have some task that seems enormous, I get overwhelmed. I look at all the things I have to do rather than focusing on taking the first step. When I actually do get to it, I realize it's often not so bad, and after getting that first step done, I have a sense of accomplishment which pushes me to take the second step, the third, and so on...

I struggle with this in almost every area of my life: my professional career, work at home, spare-time hacking, even romance. The only way I can really get stuff done is to take it in chunks. The thought of cleaning the entire house may be daunting, but certainly the thought of loading the dishwasher isn't so bad. And after I'm done with that, mopping the kitchen floor isn't that big of a task, and so on....

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[Lemmy Caution]

I agree with this 95% - but I think a hardware/software metaphor isn't too stretched here. There are some "levels of analysis" that are more effective at the software/mind/thought/personality level, and some that are more effective at the endocrinology/neurology/physical health level.

But one place, among many, that the metaphor breaks down in that there's a less graceful degradation in computer technology. A broken computer just doesn't work; there's only a limited range in which hardware problems will appear as system behaviour problems. A body which is having "problems" will still apparently continue to operate the same for quite some time, especially for very subtle things like concentration, attention, mental energy, etc. Because the brain and body degrade more gracefully, it's harder to distinguish between high-level and low-level causes for issues.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[UberGeeb]

I don't think the problem here is lack of energy, but rather procrastination.

Yep, that's my problem. Of course, every time I try to unlearn my procrastination, it just gets reinforced. The many times I've put off homework only to have the instructor cancel, change, or work through it just before it is due are some examples. The time I totaled my car 3 months after paying it off, but never got around to reducing the insurance from full coverage to liability is a major one.

The trick is to find a happy medium between the procrastination and getting things done quickly.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[mkldev]

To make matters worse, at least in a traditional UFS-like environment (EXT*, FFS, etc.), "/." = "/", so slashdot starts off with a Score -1: Redundant.... :-)

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[mkldev]

How the hell do they know that?

Doctorr: So if you press this button, the life support system will dispense Morphine.

Patient: Well, what does this button do?

Doctor: Oh, don't press that. That's the caffeine button.

(Patient pushes button).

Patient: Ah yes, that's the stuff.

Doctor: Jeez! Are you crazy!?! In your condition?

(Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, beep, beep, beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....)

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[mkldev]

IANAD either, but I find that caffine helps me in moderation. Moderation being what most /.'ers probably call insanely low levels ;-)

<snip>

Bear in mind, I do have ADD (official diagnosis), so your milage may vary.

There's something to be said about that. In fact, it isn't really all that surprising.

Many drugs that are used to treat people with hyperactivity-like disorders result in a calming effect for those folks, but result in making normal people totally bounce off the walls. For some reason, some people's brains react to those sorts of chemicals in the opposite way from the way that a normal brain would react.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[H*(BZ_2)-Module]

Tea is a stimulant, just as coffee is. It generally has less caffeine than coffee, but it also has theophylline which is another stimulant. Some beverages also have theobromine, which is also in chocolate, as another stimulant. There also seems to be a growing number of fruit flavored beverages with added stimulants of a wide variety, for example guarana, which are on the market.

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[The_dev0]

I don't think the problem here is lack of energy, but rather procrastination.

Yeah, That's my problem too. I really have to do something about it. Starting tomorrow, I will procrastinate no further!

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[Neurotensor]

I would NOT recommend caffeine of any kind.

I have found that the only time I get any really creative work done (i.e. coding or writing papers) is when I'm at work in a cubicle, or it's after midnight and I'm at home. Both cases require me to be tired and full of caffeine, and to have silence or my own music overriding any outside noises.

When I am well-rested I don't get much done at all, there's about 10^12 things that I think about, none of them directly related to what I'm supposed to be doing. But when I'm only awake because of an infusion of caffeine, I no longer think about all those other things, I'm just a finely-honed coding machine. I suspect that the part of my mind that's full of enthusiasm for non-work just gets shut down when I'm needing sleep.

Sometimes I wake up and read my code from the night before and don't even understand it. The comments tell me what I've done, but I don't see how it could possibly work. I rewrite the section in question, making it bigger of course, then slowly think of all the optimisations that scream out to be done. By the time I'm finished, it's the original code all over again. But I know for a fact that when I wrote it the first time, it just came out that way in the first iteration. It's scary sometimes what I find myself writing when I'm a coding zombie.

So my advice is to try working during hours when the house is quiet (like after midnight, but *not* the night before it's due!!). Use familiar music to drown out any distractions, but if you find yourself listening to the music instead of working, it's not yet familiar enough. It should blend into the background, not stick out. In my case, my music becomes familiar as I do the work, so there's probably a psychological association between that kind of music (hardcore techno) and doing work. If you don't succeede with just doing that, try some caffeine as a means of staying awake when you need to sleep, and see if it removes the distractions. Your mileage may vary, but for me it's a basic necessity.

It can be hard on the body and social life, keeping that kind of behaviour up, but I find that if I do it for a fortnight I get more work done than the previous month. When there's a real incentive, like deadlines and exams, then it becomes a necessary part of studying. The downside is when your supervisor organises a meeting at 10am and you normally wake up at 2pm ;)

Re:I would recommend some exercise

[nano-second]

I have experienced the same problems, and over my university career (I'm just finishing my last term) I have slowly gotten better. I'm not too bad on homework because it is easier to see an end to a specific assignment, but I still have trouble studying. Don't take medication, there is nothing wrong with you. It's difficult to make yourself work on stuff and almost everyone encounters this.

I concur with the recommendations about exercise and breaking things into small goals. However, it's important not to be too focused on the breaks. If you can focus on something for longer, work on it longer. What motivates me more is if I plan something fun to do that I have to X amount done before. Even if it's just watching a movie on my computer or eating supper out somewhere cheap.

I also find making schedules and lists really helps. It gives you something to cross off, so you feel like you've accomplished something and it helps me focus if I've got what I need to do written down. Break it down into as fine detail as you need. If you need to schedule every hour, do so, for me, usually setting aside which day to work on something is sufficient.

Always follow the WORK FIRST, FUN AFTER rule. It never, ever, works in the other direction, there's no motivation to stop fun and work until the last minute.

If it helps you, write down the mark you'd like to get in the course and work backwards for how well you need to do on each assignment, leaving a little lee-way for mistakes. Although, ideally one is motivated by learning, getting decent marks is important too.

I find that working on campus, if I can avoid friends, can also be beneficial because there are fewer distractiions than at home.

I often find myself overwhelmed with stuff and not feeling like working on the thing that is highest priority. This is a dangerous situation because I used to end up working on nothing. Now, I make a deal with myself, I can ignore the highest priority thing as long as I'm doing some other schoolwork. That way, you're still making some progress. I would also suggest that while in school, never give yourself an entire day off. Make sure you do some reading or studying or a question or two for some course each day. The more this becomes habit, the less you'll have to do a crazy all-night cram because you've been ignoring stuff all week.

So in summary:
1. Exercise and small goals are good
2. make fun plans that are rewards for accomplishing tasks
3. write a list of tasks and a schedule (a big wall calendar with due dates helps)
4. work first, fun after
5. remind yourself of the marks/learning that each task represents
6. find a work environment with the minimum of distractions
7. Always work on something even if it's not the highest priority.
8. Work on something everyday

Something that has never worked for me, but does for some people is to set strict bed time and wake-up times so that you always get enough sleep and are forced to use sane hours for work.

Some friendly advice...

[eaglebtc]

You may not have ADHD (Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder), but you may have ADD, which is basically an inability to concentrate or stick to one thing for long periods of time. I have it myself, and I know how frustrating that is. I in fact have pulled many all-nighters and that's when I produce my best work; unfortunately my body does not like that too well.

At the very least you should visit a professional therapist and have them give you a psychiatric evaluation. He/she can diagnose your problem--maybe you're just a really bad procrastinator--and perhaps prescribe some medication, if necessary.

Read this for more information about A.D.D. : ADD Foundation

And go buy this book, if you're interested: Driven to Distraction

Re:Some friendly advice...

[mesach]

Agreed. I have ADD, I'm not hyperactive(i do fidgit). But the current buzzword is ADHD, and many people completely forget about ADD as an option if they aren't hyper.

Goto a doctor and try to get on stratera or some equivalent.

AND STAY OFF OF THE WEB... its the worlds greatest time saver/waster

Re:Some friendly advice...

[chrisbro]

Hell yes, stay off the web. This has to be my number one time waster. I sometimes just find myself mindlessely hitting refresh every 5 seconds or so on /. or some other news site before I realize that I'm zoned out. There's just too much information on the web out there, you can easily get lost in it. Found myself reading a factoid list of Earth info (wow, I didn't know the longest mountain chain was under the Atlantic!) for an hour the other day while I should have been doing other things. Only use the web if you really need to (or anything else that allows deviation, for that matter).

Re:Some friendly advice...

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw my school psychiatrist about the same sort of behavior, thinking I had ADD, and the guy told me I was probably just depressed.

This was a shock to me, because I had never thought that I could be "depressed", but the more I thought about what he said the more it made sense.

Imagine that we have a certain threshold of happiness, emotional comfort, whatever, that we try to maintain. Any time that we engage in some behavior that isn't rewarding, we (as simple dumb animals) quickly go back to more rewarding behavior. This is the problem. When you're borderline depressed, you're just barely
staying happy, and you do whatever you can in a very short-term-thinking kind of way to maintain that happiness.

After I started with the meds, I found it easier to get into doing things that were frustrating or boring long enough to finish them. Finishing those things became a reward.

So, Canuck may need meds that will allow him to feel comfortable experimenting with new behavioral patterns long enough to find ones that will work better for him.

Re:Some friendly advice...

[Foofoobar]

May not be ADD. May be Bipolarity. I myself am Bipolar II and get stuck in my manic phase for months on end.

The only way to overcome? Discipline. Kick yourself in the head and just do it. Once you get started, it's hard to stop.

Also, an afternoon toke sometimes helps to focus your energies and totally zone. No I'm not advocating getting wasted... I'm saying a puff can relax you and help you to totally zone on your task once you get started. Before you know it, 5 hours have passed and you got 2 weeks of work done.

Re:Some friendly advice...

[darco]

I think you misunderstand the term ADHD. The word "Hyperactive" is not in reference to a "hyper" person, it is in reference to attention. They changed the name from ADD to ADHD to recognize "hyper-focusing", which is most certainly NOT a deficit of attention.

Hyper-focusing is when a person with ADHD is completely engrossed in something to the point where doing or thinking about anything else is EXTREMELY difficult, even "painful".

Sometimes my girlfriend will walk in and want to tell me something and I will be working (and "hyper-focusing"), and she will ask me a basic question (or tell a joke) and all I can offer her is a blank stare. It is like she is speaking a different language--it just doesn't make sense. It's really weird. (And it gets me in trouble sometimes!)

As a person who has had ADHD for his entire life, I know that I was not a "hyper" kid, but I most certainly did "hyper-focus". My brain constantly switches channels, and sometimes it gets stuck on a channel and just won't move. The times where the channel doesn't change is just as significant a symptom as when the channel keeps changing at random. That is why it is called ADHD instead of ADD.

Re:Some friendly advice...

[Rhone]

I think the reason you hear "ADHD" more than "ADD" now is because, in the most recent version of the DSM-IV (the official criteria for diagnosing mental disorders), ADD is no longer an official diagnosis. Instead, there are three subcategories of ADHD:

1. Mostly hyperactive and not really inattentive.
2. Mostly inattentive and not really hyperactive.
3. Both inattentive and hyperactive.

Yes, it's silly. #2, of course, is what most people still think of as "ADD".

Re:Some friendly advice...

[NineNine]

Before you know it, 5 hours have passed and you got 2 weeks of work done.

Are you sure you're not describing coke? Weed is more like "Before you know it, 1 minute has passed, and you forgot what you were doing a minute ago. Repeat for several hours. At the end you'll find that you A. Relaxed B. Ate too much and C. Got ZERO accomplished.

Re:Some friendly advice...

[Durandal64]

I thought that I had ADD for a while, but then I realized that I only had trouble concentrating when I had to do something I wasn't really interested in. If I was interested in something, I threw my full concentration and conviction at it. Last semester, my computer programming instructor threw us a program that he said would be the "most challenging in the course."

The minute I got back from work that day, I started working on it. I got it half-done and went to sleep. Got back to my dorm the next day and started working on it again, and got it done, debugged and working. Then I submitted it, three weeks before it was due, 2 days after it had been assigned. No one with Attention Deficit Disorder could do that without the aid of medication. I've also spent many late nights at work in the past few weeks getting my university's Internet Tools CD installer done. I was doing marathon AppleScript debugging and beta testing sessions. My only medication was Dr. Pepper and cigarettes. Again, no one with an attention disorder could do this without prescription medication. I don't have attention span problems; I have motivational problems. I have trouble motivating myself to do something that doesn't involve me being in charge or was issued as a direct challenge to me, and I suspect the case with many people who claim to have ADD or ADHD is similar.

my spew

[mandalayx]

canuck-

I'm a university student as well and as you can see (I'm sitting on slashdot) I have some of the same issues. However there have been some shining examples of good behavior on my part, and here are what I think are some of the apparent factors/causes:

a. social proof, i.e. studying with a bunch of people
b. meaning, a meaningful purpose
c. distractions, lack thereof, i.e. lack of other things to think about

Examples with causes:
-studying in the basement of the library (a, c)
-studying for imminent test or other grade-altering material (b, and possibly a)
-studying for something that will be applicable to some upcoming event i.e. work (b, and possibly a)
-studying for something that is less dreadful than what I should *really* be studying (b, c)
-studying at a coffeehouse, with ambient-type music like classical or trance (a, c)

*****
Other notes:

Speaking of coffee, I highly recommend coffee for the few hours that I seem to get out of it, really studying.

Something else I've found useful to keep my mind focused is to bring a notepad which I designate as a "worry pad." When I think of something, like, gee, I should do laundry or pay bills, I just write it on the pad so that I can focus on studying.

I find it helpful to like what I am studying. If I currently don't like it, I try to find a way to like it. If I can't find a way to like it, I begin to consider studying something else....

Or maybe this problem of not being able to study is not a problem as a gift. Perhaps studying as much as some others at your school is not your idea of fun and you can try pursuing something that seems more fun to you (without studying).

Re:my spew

[harvardian]

I'd like to emphasize the importance of meaningfulness to help combat procrastination.

When I started college, I was a psychology major. Whenever I sat down to do work, I could never bring myself to do it before midnight, just like you. In fact, I'd often procrastinate by doing work on the school newspaper's website.

After a year and a half of procrastination hell every night I suddenly realized that if I procrastinate by writing code (alright, it was ASP, and VBScript doesn't really count), maybe I should make CS what I do ALL the time. I became a CS major and have been happier ever since.

As a side note, even though I'm much happier I still don't start work early (usually around 10 PM). Do yourself a favor and don't put unreasonable expectations on yourself -- don't sit down at 3 PM and say "okay, let's get cracking!" if you know you won't. Relax until after dinner, and then start up work. It'll save you a lot of frustration and you'll probably get started on your work sooner.

And PLEASE don't take ritalin or something else like that. 60% of the students I know procrastinate their asses off. It's not because all of us have ADD, it's because sometimes studying sucks. To underscore this point, whenever I've worked a real job (two internships doing CS stuff) I've never procrastinated simply because I find significantly more motivation to do the work. So it's not like my rampant procrastination was a mental defect.

Re:my spew

[JanneM]

A workable strategy is acceptance.

Accept that you are a procrastinator, and that you will not get anything done until the last minute. Then plan accordingly.

Say you have a paper due in a month. Great. Talk to the professor and set up a meeting a week from now where you will show your outline, thesis and detailed plan on how to defend it.

In another week, set up a new meeting with the same or different authority figure to go over your list of references and help clear whether you are quoting the right stuff or not, and whether those people in the references really can be interpreted the way you do it.

And the next week, have another prearranged meeting to go over your language and style.

Suddenly you have hard deadlines for every aspect of that paper, which means you will actually be quite comfortably done when the real deadline appears. True, you will still be stressed and feeling behind, but on the positive side you do see that the work is actually progressing nicely. And with this predisposition, you will never _not_ feel stressed in any case, so just make it work for you.

the trick is to make these deadlines _real_ - arranging for a friend to take a look at the paper won't do it; such a "meeting" is too easy to blow off, and a friend will be forgiving if you haven't done the work. It needs to be with people that will cause real, negative, consequences if you mess it up.

Re:my spew

[GrimSean]

I couldn't agree with this more. I started University in September of 1999, and it took me until the beginning of last year to realize that the degree I was in (Molecular Biology & Genetics) simply wasn't for me. Like the questioner, I would simply procrastinate until I simply had to do the work or face failure, leading to all-nighters that left me physically and mentally destroyed for the next week.

A friend of mine, after having listened to me complain about my marks (I was a straight A high school student, as I was never pushed there, and I couldn't understand how my marks were so bad in University) suggested to me that perhaps I wasn't in the right program. I took a week where I looked at what I was doing with the majority of my time - it was reading, just not for class - so I changed my major to English, and I begin doing that full time in September. For the past year, since I decided that I was going to change to English, my marks have risen 15 percentage points and I feel much happier. I also tend to start my work earlier (except for right now, I have a project due on Wednesday worth 25% in my last science course ever, and I haven't started yet) and my work ethic has risen from doing about one hour of studying to four hours straight.

English isn't for everyone; you need good reading and comprehension skills, plus the ability to bullshit (read: compose) essays. I would suggest to the questioner that for one week he should write down what he is doing instead of working - be it talking to people, surfing the web, or whatever - and try to find a degree or program that will allow him to do that for a living. It may turn out that University or College isn't the place for him. I would also suggest he consider Trade Schools, as most people in the business are retiring in the next 10 years, so there is about to be a high demand for Plumbers, Electricians and Millwrights. Hopefully, he'll be able to find something that suits him.

EZ...

[Black Parrot]

Quit reading Slashdot.

Just route Slashdot to 127.0.0.1

[AJWM]

It'll save you all kinds of time...

Do you like what you do?

[allism]

If you REALLY like what you do, you will be more interested in doing it than surfing, you won't procrastinate, etc. If you're not excited about what you're doing (and I mean so excited that you can't WAIT to jump on your latest project) you might wanna consider choosing another field.

Re:Do you like what you do?

[nomadic]

Unfortunately for many people there is no commercial, paying field which they'd enjoy.

If he's really worried about procrastination on the job, however, something a little more structured like systems administration might be a better choice. When you have people screaming at you because they just lost all connectivity, the urge to procrastinate for the most part vanishes.

Re:Do you like what you do?

[spazoid12]

I don't agree with that assumption. I really like what I do. A lot. But, I often have a similar problem with procrastination. In my case it's often because I enjoy thinking about the problem and solving it in my mind. Implementation is a long boring part that I sometimes even dread. Documentation is even worse.

I noticed this kind of problem started with me in about 1995. I was a Mac dev at the time and was suddenly finding myself exhausted by Apple's continuous cycle of producing massive huge API's for devs to learn...all just to abandon them shortly thereafter. PowerTalk was one such example. If you want to build a world-class product it's going to need to have all 1 million checklist items finished as features in it. Which means you have to follow all the trends and respond accordingly. Trouble is, each one trend is a huge job.

It used to be that a single person could produce a great work in the computer field as a hobbiest. Commercial software wasn't a whole lot more impressive than shareware. Now days it's tough to go alone. You can do it if your application targets a niche. But, imagine writing a shareware word processor alone today? Who would bother? Why? OSS gives us a way to deal with this by removing the "alone" factor, replacing it with ad-hoc teams, or virtual teams, or even real teams. But, OSS is starting to really piss me off. Maybe people that still support OSS haven't been out of a job for enough months.

So, today, there is just so much to know and learn and follow. It's too easy to start feeling that it's all just a bunch of crap trivia and lose interest entirely. I have long-time (18+ years) dev friends that now sell cars and hope to never touch a computer again. At my last job I'd look out the window at a construction crew and wish I could be shovelling dirt, too. Of course, they looked up at the building and wished they could be out of the rain.

How do you keep up your C++ skills, and your Perl skills, and your Java skills...while learning UML, trying out Struts, contributing to Mozilla, developing on opinion on Rebol, D, or Erlang... offering "tech support" to all your family and friends, ... the list goes on.... How do you do this and not begin to be exhausted by it?

Another poster suggested exercise. He might be right. I used to run a *lot* and play inline skate hockey. But, all that ended about 1995. So, for me at least...it's either lack of exercise, or the fact that CS is more complicated chock full of trivia than ever before, or the combination of both.

Re:Do you like what you do?

[aussersterne]

I think the crux of the issue here (and what you are getting at) is that work and study are much easier to accomplish if you are passionate about them; if you have a personal point of view, something unique to contribute, an unfailing interest in the subject matter, or some other conscious driving force behind it.

Unfortunately, in the modern world, this is very difficult.

• Very few types of work leave room for individuality or craftsmanship any longer. Nearly any type of work you do is likely to relegate you in some way, metaphorical or otherwise, to a position of "cog in a wheel in the giant machine."
  
  
• Nearly all of modern industry also requires a dedicated, detailed skill set that tends to take years to master, often descends into minutiae at the expense of the "bigger picture" and that tends to compartmentalize one within the field (i.e. you have studied to be this kind of cog in the wheel, and after you put in your decades to master it, you will be stuck as that cog forever, because it will take far too long to train to become another kind of cog).
  
  
• Because of the nature of the modern marketplace, there is very little room for individuality, passion, or points of view. Whether in academics or business, if your work and even your general demeanor are not well-suited to maximize profit, you will quickly find yourself out of work. Thus, in the interest of staying active (i.e. employed, in school, funded by grants, etc.) in a field, people generally try to sublimate themselves to the greatest extent possible, becoming the most colorless, generic cog they can be.
  
  
• As a kind of corollary, work or study in any field these days also generally involves a large percentage of time coping with business-oriented and political issues, rather than the issues at hand. A successful photographer is first and foremost a successful businessman. A successful systems analyst is first and foremost a successful businessman. A successful lawyer is first and foremost a successful businessman. A successful doctor is first and foremost a successful businessman. Ad infinitum.
  

None of this breeds any kind of productivity ethic. Even if you are very interested in a field, and approach its study with enthusiasm, you are likely to run out of steam before you reach the end of your study, gradually disillusioned by the degree to which you must endlessly specialize, sublimate your own identity, avoid creativity, sacrifice future freedoms and learn the ins and outs of petty business, all in order to simply build a career doing something you thought you liked.

I personally feel that most men (and women) given a chance would prefer to be craftsmen (and women) of some kind, in whatever their chosen field, bringing a quality and uniquely personal product to the people of their own community. Instead, because of the nature of the modern marketplace, many essentially become clerks and civil servants in one field or another order to be able to draw a wage.

As a result, and lacking enthusiasm, we end up sitting around browsing the Web and dreaming of something better... but those who develop the fortitude to switch inevitably find that their new field is, on balance, not all that different from their last one... still all business, anonymity and colorless, impersonal nonsense.

Re:Do you like what you do?

[betelgeuse68]

No offense Paradox but I'm reading lots of platitudes - "Quick learner", "less training", "practice learning." Not sure this translates into anything solid given my 20 years of coding in various ways.

I had a recent experience that I found amusing (kind of). I kept reading how employers were looking at "soft skills" now a lot more than the past and how "pure tech" wasn't going to cut it. Recently I wound up hooking up with some head hunter whose client insisted that any potential candidate take exams on Brainbench.com. Fine. I went along. I took an exam they set me up with. I scored 79% on the C++ exam. Not bad since it had been YEARS since I had actively coded in C++ (real stuff like class design, not simple subclasses to handle GUI events).

In my day I would keep up with the ANSI committee and enjoy reading what Scott Meyers et al had to say. (Aside: I just dumped my entire collection of "C++ Report" into the recycle bin)

That was then, this is now.

Turns out, the head hunter's client (who I might work for) had REALLY wanted me to take the Visual C++ Brainbench exam. I thought to myself, "Wow, so much for soft skills if all they are interested in is a number on some exam." Despite having Microsoft on my resume and having a capacity of "Lead Architect" in my last employer it seemed they were looking for some "magic number". I told the head hunter "No thanks" (much to his chagrin) and sent a polite letter to the HR person who sent me the URL for taking the test stating that I didn't think it was a "fit."

Truth is, today I WOULD in fact like to leverage my soft skills more than in the past. These people were looking for a grunt coder. Plain and simple. Been there, done that.

Fed up with the idiotic HR people and the dearth of anything interesting, today I'm selling cars by choice. Hondas specifically.

Let me make things clear, my biggest frustration in tech is the idiotic HR people in various organizations that are the gate keepers. Next come the moronic head hunters. But it's just the nature of the business and a necessary evil, particulary with the limited opportunities nowadays.

When I look at all I've done and what I know... then to have to deal with people who haven't the slightest clue and are simply matching buzzwords, well, it's all quite frustrating, really. Never mind that I transitioned from my last employer in a major way from Windows to the LINUX platform, never mind that I worked at Microsoft and have shrink wrapped software to my credit, never mind that I worked on a source level debugger at one point in time for Motorola... HR people don't understand any of the latter. Nothing.

To all tech people let me just say this, something I am passing along from a high level manager I once heard - "I know you love all that technical minutiae but don't forget about the soft skills." More importantly, since we're in a down time, if you go try something utterly non-tech it may spark surprising changes in how you view the world and yourself.

To give you some food for thought, how many CEOs do you know that were prime time developers? Yeah, Bill Gates might have coded in his day but I can assure you he hasn't done shyt for the last 15+ years. He was a businessman first and that's what succeeds in our society (the social element of the equation). Always has, always will.

Something I've had to learn the hard way...

-M

PS: Oh yeah, I'm the one selling cars that SPAZOID12 up above eludes to.

I use a reward system

[Beowulf_Boy]

I use rewards for my self, as stupid as it sounds.

Like today, I have to write some thankyou cards, and fill out some rebate forms. So, I promised my self that after I do that, I'm gonna go to walmart and spend 20$ on something fun and/or stupid!

I had the same problem.

[ender-iii]

It turns out I was depressed. I used to just aimlessly drag boxes across my desktop, lost in my imagination. Maybe not getting work done is just a symptom of a bigger problem. Just a though.

Re:I had the same problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the same problem, I was also depressed. According to a psychiatrist, depression can really impair your ability to concentrate and even to think clearly. Part of my procrastination was an overall lack of motivation. Depression is a much more common problem than people think and it has physical components that can be treated by medicine because it is a disease.

what i used to do...

[the idoru]

when i had to study for an exam, or do some work that didn't require the computer, i would use it as an opportunity to defrag my HDDs. keeps you away from the computer/web/games and might just force you to get osmething done.

Re:Stop Reading Slashdot!

[Homology]

My record is 55 hours of straight coding.

I'm sure that the code produced are of real high quality.

What I do...

[Jack William Bell]

Well, first I check /. and see if there is anything interesting. Then I surf around and check the various blogs and newsites I read. After that I check /. again and maybe post a comment to an interesting article.

If, while I am surfing around, I find something cool I post a link to it to me /. journal (which everyone should read, cuz it is full of wierd bullshit). Then I surf some more. That is how I get my w........

Never mind.

What worked for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm ACing this just so it isn't linked to my name. Apologies.

Exercise, like the first poster suggested, didn't do squat for me. Of course, each person is different, but you sound a lot like the way I used to be. A *lot* alike.

What worked for me? Wellbutrin and/or Effexor. I wasn't depressed, and I really wasn't an ADD type. Although I kind of thought I might have been ADD.

All of the sudden, I went from someone who was capable of doing things to someone who actually WAS doing things. I was balancing my freakin' checkbook, which I hadn't done in ages because it was too much trouble. I was getting stuff done, getting things knocked out of the way. It was incredible.

I personally think it was overstimulation. Computer games, television, the Internet, college, everything was so exciting. To sit down and do something that I was capable of but just had little interest in was really next to impossible for some reason. I just couldn't lock my brain in on it.

Re:What worked for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

From someone who's ingested far too many chemicals...

The research connecting a 'dopamine rush' and info-addiction probably hit it on the head. Look at the research on l-dopa in the treatment of memory disorders; *once you've been operating under a high level,* your brain attunes to it (potentiation, depotentiation, whatever), and the ability to form and recall memories can suffer.

Now, I've accellerated this process in myself through the abuse of certain substances I won't name (no, this isn't their *only* effect, and no, I wasn't eating pure l-dopa), but it seems like the same thing occurs among run-of-the-mill "info addicts," our current 24/7 breed of gamers, and the Barney generation now filling their scrips for Ritalin and similar.

In the natural case, the "rush" seems triggered by "novelty" or "newness," rather than the *importance* of the material you're viewing. Expose yourself to a *constant* feed of novelty - Slashdot, blinkenlights, games, DVDs, etc - and you might have a hard time getting your brain to focus on Calculus or the Sendmail docs, even if you're academically interested. (Test case: Compare learning a few lines of Smalltalk or LISP, to a few lines of the next language du-jour to appear on Slashdot. While 'Hello world!' is 'Hello world!,' the language you hadn't known existed probably holds your attention better - even if you're equally familiar with either.)

There's probably some sort of evolutionary basis for this - back whenever, the monkey more likely to try what other monkeys weren't had a better chance of making a 'breakthrough' that'd lead to breeding. Then, there were limited opportunities for stimulation that *weren't* survival-related; today's "troop dynamics" are different, and it's easy to stuff your brain full of *NEW!* without any purpose in mind.

So anyhow, how do you reclaim focus? First, deprivation helps. If you have deadlines to meet, hold yourself back from Slashdot a day *before* you go to work; restrict your downtime activity (the stuff you do for 'relaxation' or 'meditation,' to get yourself in gear to tackle a problem) to things that *are* familiar to you - games you've already played - "twitch" games are good for this; Galaga or Panzer Dragoon can still be fun even if you know all the swarm patterns - reruns of the Simpsons, which you've probably already watched, etc. If you get bored out of your skull, get some real-life social stimulation (healthy, may provide insight on what you've got to do tomorrow), or watch something "low-fi" that would've kept your attention in the pre-interweb era - like a nature documentary; at least then you're getting the doses of info-fix on the director's terms, not each time you click. (Consider it a withdrawal treatment.)

The next day, you might find it easier to focus, because you've "built-down" some of your dopamine dependence. Or you'll just go stir-crazy, and fire up Slashdot for another "hit." (But remember, you can read yesterday's articles *after* your project is done.) If you've been swimming in it for far too long, you might 'need' something like Wellbutrin to just raise your baseline just to the point where your brain can still function... but that seems like a temporary stopgap, perhaps making everything seem *equally* novel until you get acclimated to *that* raised chemical balance.

A better solution is to find a new perspective on the problem. If you have to write papers, stop picking topics to optimize your free time and get easy As. Find something that riffs on your interests, allows for actual insight - and if you get to conference with your prof, let him know you're having a hell of a time getting things done, but would rather write an 'okay' paper on a subject that stretches your interests (letting you 'wrap' more of the subject matter around your own ideas of of what's novel, increasing your focus on the course in general) than a 'good' paper that just repeats your lecture notes, bores you to death, and leaves you pounding it out at 6AM the day before cl

Re:Stop Reading Slashdot!

[nomadic]

My record is 55 hours of straight coding.

Followed, no doubt, by six weeks of debugging.

programming

[nunofgs]

I seem to have a bit of the same problem as you when it comes to programming... I sit down, start to code, and at the first problem I encounter, I just load up mozilla and lose myself for hours... I have found a solution tho, I un-plug my cable modem! seriously! Then I resume coding... sometimes I find myself opening mozilla only to find there's no internet connection so I continue coding

Exercise

[fredrikj]

I am very familiar with your problem, and the thing I'd recommend is getting a decent amount of physical exercise. I always find it easier to concentrate on schoolwork (or any other work) after 30-45 minutes of running and a shower.

The biggest problem is motivation. Often when I don't feel like working, I definitely don't feel like exercising either :)

Re:Stop Reading Slashdot!

[cliffiecee]

> I'm sure that the code produced are of real high quality.

I'm sure the sentence produced are are of real high quality.

My personal experience...

[JohnGrahamCumming]

I'd start with not setting aside an entire day for work, that's just overwhelming
for anyone. When you start by telling yourself "I'm going to work all day" you
are probably going to fail because just the sheer length of the day and magnitude
of what you have to get done can become overwhelming.

The key to fixing your problem is probably to make the tasks in front of you not
seem so overwhelming through a number of techniques. I sympathize with your plight
because as a student myself I had a hard time initially, but it's worth knowing
that over time your ability to work hard for longer will improve... like so many
other things it's a question of practice.

Music may or may not help you, that seems to be a very personal thing. I can't
stand to have music while I work (because I want to listen to it and not work)
but have a colleague who has music on (low volume) all the time. Personally I
have found that the quiet droning voices on NPR help keep my mind on the job and
if something I really do care about comes on it's a little welcome break from
what I am doing.

You might also find that some other non-work activities actually bring more focus
when you are working. If you go to a gym, run or do some other physical exercise
I've found that it has a great effect on concentrating the mind. If you are
drinking a lot of caffeine laden drinks while working you might find that cutting
back enables you to concentrate more because you are not overstimulated by caffeine.

But specifically...

1. Prioritize the work

Sit down and make a list of all the tasks that you have to get done. I use a
real paper notebook for that sort of thing because it's satisfying to cross them
off as you go.

Once you've made the list order them (1, 2, 3, ...) in terms of how much of the
job you'll get done, or how hard they are to do. If you knock off a few hard
tasks at the start when you are more focused you'll start to feel better and the
smaller tasks coming later will seem less overwhelming. (I think in the Seven
Habits book this is "Put first things first"---but really it's commonsense, if
you get out of the way the stuff you are dreading doing you'll feel better and
get more done).

For example, right now I am working on the test suite for my open source project
and it's *boring*, *long* and *hard*. But I've got a list and slowly by slowly
I'm seeing progress.

One reason that lists can be problematic is if you write down all the tasks and
realize that you haven't got enough time... hence the next topic...

2. Set yourself some goals

It's important to take your list and set some goals. "I'm going to finish
task X by lunch". Then try to stick to them. If you find yourself unable to
stick to the goals and timings then go back and replan. You'll have a better
idea of how long the task is going to take and that will motivate you more...
Thinks "If I finish Y tonight, then tomorrow I'll just need to do A, B and C"

3. Reward yourself

I've found that stopping my main tasks and doing a little other task that I
find interesting is a good way to keep the motivation up. For example, I'll
have a goal "finish X" and when I've done it I'll stop and do something unrelated
which I enjoy.

For example on my open source project I have this long boring test suite to write,
each time I complete a task I work on a fun task associated with the performance
of the project. You can do something similar which means you actually praise
yourself through a reward for going something done.

4. Eat well

Nothing like being hungry to screw things up. Eat good food, stop for meals and
eat them.

Good luck,
John.

Two-pronged approach

[delfstrom]

You can try two things at the same time: Diet and self-hypnosis.

With diet, eliminate sugar & caffeine. Add lots of vegetables. Supplement with fish oils which are like a brain boost. Once I changed my diet around I started thinking clearer and my concentration improved.

With self-hypnosis (either by yourself or with a trained professional) you can train yourself to increase concentration and, more importantly, block out distractions, including distractions from your own mind.

In the end, the most likely cause of your procrastination is because you don't want to be doing what you must do. If you can find a way to better enjoy the work you've been assigned, then you'll find that you can sit down and work on it with ease.

If all else fails (and it shouldn't, as you're the one in control) unplug your network connection, and get someone to check up on you every hour to make sure you're not just sitting there sharpening your pencils or something.

Disconnect from the internet.

[sQuEeDeN]

Honestly, you'd be amazed what two little things can do:

1. ifconfig eth0 down

   you'd be amazed at what getting rid of a global distraction can do :)

2. Ritalin. It's amazing. People give ritalin shit for being overprescribed, but it's remarkable. Just do what everyone in the ivies do (and Exeter): snort it. You'll be more focused than ever before.

Okay, snorting ritalin isn't for everyone, but it helps. I also reccomend exercise as a way to focus your mind. It's effects are hard to explain, but ever since I started biking i've found a tuned body helps the mind. (Sounds like new age shit but, hey, it works.)

Also try downtempo music, much like what you can find on SomaFM

set intermediate goals

[AdamBa]

You may be overwhelmed by the size of the task ahead of you. One way to help is to set a series of intermediate goals. So you say, "within the next hour I will have the data structures defined" or "by 9 pm I will have coded up the main input routine."

Then you can promise yourself that once that is done, you will give yourself X amount of time to goof off, surf the web, ask questions on slashdot, etc. Then it's back to the next goal. Or you can say that if you finish the goal early, then you will allow yourself to play for the unused time...if you fool around too much in the middle, you won't get the free time allowance.

This gives you a sense of accomplishment as you realize you have done *something* and you don't spend mental time stressing over your lack of results so far. Don't worry too much about trying to balance each goal to be the same amount of time, etc. just make it something that shows good forward progress.

Now of course setting goals takes time, so it will cost you some time to do this...but the overall result should be more productivity given the work habits you describe. The shorter the time period for the each goal (i.e. is it half a day's work or 15 minutes' work) then the lower your "work to planning" ratio is, but for some things you may really need to do some microplanning to get going.

You also should try to identify what part of the work you find the hardest to get done. For example when I am writing code I find actually typing in the code the first time to be the hardest part...I can design the algorithm/etc OK, and then once I have the first version typed in I can get it compiling no problem, then debugging is a cool mental challenge. But the part where I just type in all the variable declarations and for loops and whatnot is the hardest to avoid procrastinating during.

So if you can figure that out, then you can focus on getting over that hump (set goals of the shortest duration during that time).

- adam

Re:one word..

[miketang16]

spelling..

I had the same problem

[spineboy]

I'm a doctor and i REALLY needed to study ALOT- both during med school and in residency. After working a 100-120 hours in a week, it's hard to get motivated. What I found out, and so did many other people, was that the best way was to read BEFORE you went home for the day. Make it part of work at least for an hour or two a day. Once you go home, there are too many distractions and you won't get stuff done (I've been there).

The other thing to do is make lists of small segments, if you procrastinate. This will force you to work more steadily. Yes I'm a procrastinator too, and this works.

The last thing to do is get out of the house and go somewhere where there are NO distractions. Not Borders or Barnes and Nobles, but the local law school library, where nothing interests you and everybody else is working hard.
My 2 cents worth.

Get started

[Vireo]

As many out there, I have the same problem (major case of procrastination). However, I sometimes get the job done. Generally, the problem does not lie when working: the problem is getting started. Once I'm studying or working on a project (be it code, report, etc.), I generally enter "the zone" and I am able to work for 3-4 hours straight at an amazing pace. So what you want to do is get over the preparation phase and get started the earlier possible. Find something interesting fast in what you have to do.

Another tip: when studying, do not just read a book. Take notes.

Try prayer

[SLi]

No, really. It helps.

It also helps to "remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy", Exodus 20:8. Whether it be Saturday, Sunday or some other day, I believe the important thing is to have the day once a week and to actually share time with God on that day, and to refrain from working on that day. Very important for the peace of mind and concentration. (I have found this very different from just "remember to rest".)

Remember, the Law is for our own good, not because God just happened to decide it should be so.

overcoming this problem

[Poletown]

I used to suffer from this problem REAL BAD. Like you, I could not get anything done, even if I locked myself in my office for the whole day. The Internet, MP3's, TV, whatever was available served as a distraction. I purchased countless books on procrastination, all of the "PUMP YOURSELF UP" motivator books, asked other people for advice, etc. Nothing worked. Then one day, I don't even remember how, I came up with a system that worked. Each time I had a project to work on, I would sit down the night before and develop a plan. 1) I break down each of the major tasks needed to be completed. 2) Under each task, I break down all of the subsections that needed to be completed 3) Under each subsection, I fill in the details that needed to be done (sometimes in paragraph form). 4) After everything is listed, I go back through and assign time guidlines. When I follow this, it works out great. I think the whole problem is that sometimes a big project like writing a term paper is just overwhelming. Rather than trying to figure out where to begin and what to do, it's easier just to click onto your browser of choice and say "I'll do it later". When everything is listed and broken down into little sections, the project isn't as overwhelming. Just a bunch of 'little projects' that need to be done. I'm not if this will work for you, but it makes things MUCH easier for me. Good Luck

Re:overcoming this problem

[switcha]

I find the best part of doing the 'mini-goals' is that as I see more and more things physically checked/crossed off, my pace picks up. When you see so many things scratched off and fewer things left, it's like seeing the finish line.

For a project or even just my 'to-do' list for each workday, I sit down and write down all the stuff, and then tape it up on the side of my monitor. After lunch, when I see 50% or more of the things crossed off, I start to really work fast, as I know if I finish early, I can just leave work or goof off for the rest of the day and have a PBR.

Re:overcoming this problem

[n3k5]

one thing you have to keep in mind when you do this is that it's impossible to make a perfect plan beforehand -- it can change every time. if your plan says that task 2 will be done after task 1, and task one turns out to be delayed postponed due to previously unknown circumstances, you must absolutely avoid ignoring task 2 as long as number 1 is unfinished. this happened to me in the past, because i prioritized my to-do-list so the most important task would be done first, and i often made the mistake of thinking it wouldn't make much sense to do anythign else as long as the most important issue was still waiting to be dealt with. i have since learned that choosing what to do is actually quite difficult. always picking the top priority activity is wrong, because it could take hours or even days until you find the motication to actually finish it -- time in which you could accomplish other things. but it's also wrong to think any activity is okay, as long as it makes your to-do-list shorter, because a tidy, cleaned apartment and alphabetically ordered CD collection won't help you with the paper that's due tomorrow.

what works for me is talking to a person to which i'm important and who cares about me, and telling him/her of my most important issues in a way that i know they will ask me about them a few days later. this gives me motivation to get things done, so i can be proud when i tell him/her about them, and i'm also reminded to tackle tasks i haven't been motivated enough for yet.

Solution: DO NOT WAIT TO GET STARTED!

[Knife_Edge]

The instant you think of something that you need to do, immediately begin doing it. If you are at college, you should have a constant barrage of things. Do not bother trying to organize your time beyond the classes you must attend and meals you must eat. If you follow my advice correctly, you should be busy constantly.

The problem you are having is that you have many things to do. Sitting around worrying which to work on first is just a waste of time. Which did you think of first? Work on that one until you make significant progress, then switch to whatever you thought of next. Constant calculations about how to make yourself more efficient by prioritizing tasks drain your energy and increase your stress, while using my 'work whenever you think about work' method will get things done.

If you get distracted between the time you think of something you need to do and the time it takes to start doing it, you have the attention span of a hamster. I would warn you that you can make up all sorts of excuses for this, like attention deficit disorder, all the while insisting that you are intelligent (which may be true). But being intelligent is only the potential to do things - nobody will care that you are intelligent if you are too unfocused to use your mind. Lack of accomplishment equals lack of capability in most people's minds.

Concentrate. Stay busy. Start now.

Don't work from home

[Zerbey]

That is probably your biggest problem. When in school, I never got work done at home, too many distractions! The best thing to do if you want to get some serious studying done, go to the library or form a study group (yeah, nerdy as hell but think of the nice big salary you're working towards in a few years).

Think of school as a job, a shitty paying job but a job nonetheless, and make set hours every day that you'll dedicate to work. Sneak in lunchtimes and breaks as well or you'll burn out in a couple of hours. It'll get you into a routine that'll ultimately end up in that nice piece of paper that's your ticket to big bucks (hopefully!).

It doesn't get any better in the real world either, I have a hard time getting motivated even though I know I'm getting paid for it!

Re: OT

[E_elven]

'Code' can be a plural. Therefore, the sentence was correct.

Perhaps this will help

[jaaron]

Read less slashdot. :)

Okay, I'm sure that will get posted a hundred times, but here are some other ideas:

• Start Small: If it's a serious issue, trying to change your entire lifestyle at once can be difficult. Not impossible, but a better approach might be to start with something small and work your way up. Perhaps starting with exercise (as someone mentioned) or managing your sleep schedule, or just some random chore. Do that regularly and you'll start to have more and more control.
• Eliminate Distractions: If it's homework, then leave the apartment and go to the library. Find somewhere where you simply don't have any other distractions -- no computers, radios, TV's, people to bug you, etc. Changing your environment will help.
• Accountability: Explain to a close friend your problem. Have them check up on you and encourage you. Knowing you'll have to face up to someone who cares (and not your professor or boss) can give you some motivation.
• Rewards: Have the integrity not to give yourself rewards until after you've accomplished something. But a reward system can help. Promise to go watch a movie or buy something special or go on a vacation once you've accomplished a particular goal. Again, having someone make sure you don't cheat helps.
• Journal: By far what's helped me is keeping a regular journal. This may not help everyone, but it helps me be honest with myself. I can better gauge change that occurs over months and years by keeping a written record. I can work out goals, anxieties and plans. It works for me.

At least those are some of my ideas. Also, finding some way or time to calm down and reflect on life helps to. This can be when you exercise, or do your journal, or go to church (if you're into that sort of thing). Point it, every now and then you'll need to stop and remember why it is you want to be productive.

While you will probably get a lot of trolls responding to this, a good work ethic is important and not easily gained. It's something a lot of us could use improvement on.

The web is a concentration vacuum

[Trolling4Dollars]

After I got a subscription to an ISP back in 1997, I noticed that my productivity went down with regards to music composition and production. It was quite a shock to me since I'd always been able to come up with new things almost every day. Then, at one point, I was reading the online diary of one of my favorite musicians (Ryuichi Sakamoto) and he noted that ever since he started using the web, he'd become less productive. He suggested that it was a combination of the distraction it provides, the wealth of information that exists as it relates to your own personal interests and the "six degrees" nature of most web content that leads you from one of your interests to another. His personal approach was to schedule time that he was allowed to use the web. After reading this, I applied this approach to my own life by completely removing the ability of my audio production system to do anything on the Internet. It can only share files and mount other shares on my LAN, but that's it. This could be done in a number of ways. So, if you have more than one machine, I'd suggest that you dedicate one to being your development machine and leave off any ability to access the web. It's worked for me, although I will say, that if you catch yourself spending less time at the "development" machine, you might want to check your web usage vs. your productivity.

Answer: Don't read this.

[Spudley]

Yes, seriously. My answer is "don't read this". You're asking how to stop wasting time on the internet, but you ask the question on the one site that probably wastes more geek time than anything else.
This answer is probably five or six pages down the list of replies, so if you're reading this answer, you've already wasted way too much time here.

pyDance or Stepmania

[tempmpi]

I would recommend pyDance or Stepmania for exercise in a fun, hasslefree and open source flavor.
You just need a dance mat and a PSX2PC adapter to start. You can do it at home, you can start on a slow and easy level and get better while seeing the success in your scores and a half hour can easily get your shirt soaked with sweat.

Re:pyDance or Stepmania

[Justin Ames]

Actually, last year I went to RedOctane.com and bought to of their ignition 2.0 pads and a copy of DDR (Dance Dance Revolution), after playing DDR once in the arcade. It has made me much more fit and I have noticed a sharp increase in my energy levels and metabolism. It is not monotanous like exercise, and it is a quick 30 min, full-body cardiovascular workout (you must use your entire body to keep yourself balanced). I'd seriously recommend this to anyone, don't worry about looking foolish, once you get good at it you will be quite impressive. If you don't even want to initially invest the money in the pads, go to ddrfreak.com and try to find an arcade near you that has it, and spend one or two dollars to test it out. So far this year, I have gotten about 7 friends addicted to this game. My Computer Science buddies and I at Clemson play it during coding sessions to clear our mind, not to mention it's a good way to reward yourself for hard-work. -Justin Ames

Re:pyDance or Stepmania

[Zachary Kessin]

Or try finding a local Internationa Folk dance (or square or contra or whatever) In My case it was rendance via the SCA. It will will get you out of the house and get your mind off of work, which is nice. In addition to getting your heart moving you may meet people. Hey I know more than one couple that are now married who met at a Dance practice or the like. And a very good friend of mine is dating a guy she met via Israeli folk dance.

No its not "Hi-Tech" but not everything has to be.

No caffeine after 6 PM.

[AntiOrganic]

This might sound ludicrous to those who live off of caffeine, but I've found caffeine absolutely has a completely detrimental effect on my ability to get work done. I become panicky, nervous and confused, and I can't keep a clear train of thought.

This certainly does not apply to everyone, but may to you.

Work disconnected for several hours a day

[heironymouscoward]

That's all.

Unplug your network cable, move to a place with no IP connectivity, put on some music, and get concentrating.

We call this discipline

[rblancarte]

All this takes is discipline. There is no real secret to this. We are not talking just deciding to do things better, we are talking about actually making a shift in how you focus on your goals. I hate to say it, but it will mostly come with maturity. All you need to do is decide, "It is time to get serious about this all. I will do my work now and not put it off for later, I will not procrastinate, I will not surf the net or play doom or anything, I will get my computer work done." It just takes some dedication and dicipline.

Sorry, I know you are looking for that magic pill that is the solution for this, but there isn't one. This just takes a shift in the fundamental way that you see your priorities.

RonB

Re:We call this discipline

[idlethought]

All this takes is discipline. There is no real secret to this.

This is of course circular reasoning.. You need the discipline to develop the discipline etc..

It's true of course, like most circular reasoning, without being helpful.. Already there have been some very sensible and practical suggestions for getting that initial focus. If once you start you can keep going then it's finding that initial focus that counts. Excercise is one good suggestion- excess energy can express it self in lack of concentration. The other very good suggestion was the visualising the initial steps in the task. Very often with a big bit of work of any sort knowing where to start is the tricky part.

I often find when writing a document for work I can't make a start on it until I have the initial structure and more importantly most of the first paragraph planned. The first paragraph is usually utter crap and needs to be dumped, but it creates the crack in the wall to start on.
Another idea might be to just start- if you're about to write a report for college but can't get started try writing anything to get yourself into the right frame of mind- a stream of invective about the tutor, a complaint about how the RIAA's tendency to sue everyone for listening to music makes you too angry to concentrate. A stream-of-conciousness about nothing at all.

If it's a coding project I find writing the comments at the head of the file, even if they contain nothing but in-jokes and bad puns to be removed later, get me into the right frame of mind to get started.

Or just reconfigure your machine so it can't see the network anymore to remove that (and email) as a temptation.

Re:We call this discipline

[orasio]

Sadly, no one, but we are eager to start again. No luck yet. Maybe John Carmack has ADD?? Some ritalin for JC might be good for gamers??

Re:We call this discipline

[tedrlord]

There's a big difference between ADD (or ADHD or whatever) and a general lack of discipline. I've been having problems for my whole life with it, and have just recently been diagnosed. For a long time I figured I just wasn't trying hard enough, or approaching things from the right direction, but after thinking a lot and talking to people, I realized that my problems were rather unusual compared to others.

When talking about a lack of discipline, the problem is getting work done when you're not interested in it. You have to write a program or do a term paper, then you think of going onto the web or playing a game, and you wander off and do that instead. A lot of my friends described having problems with this in college when I would talk about my difficulties.

What I've been experiencing is a little different than this, though. I just couldn't focus on things in general. I'd avoid watching movies because of the effort it would take to keep track of a story for an hour and a half. I'd try to read an article and trail off halfway into it, realizing a few minutes later that I've been sitting there with a magazine, going through the motions of reading, but not absorbing any of it. Lord knows reading an actual book was incredibly difficult. It wasn't that I found other things to do. It was more like I'd sit there trying to focus and blanking out until I either forgot what I was doing completely or got so frustrated I gave myself a migraine. And when I could do focus on something, if someone were to distract me at all, I'd get so startled I'm jump into the air, and get very angry. Sometimes I'd be able to sit down and write a really good term paper, but get an F for it because I wasn't able to read the one page of text that gave the instructions on how it was to be written.

There were other, less specific problems, too. I couldn't clean my room, practically ever, not because I was lazy, but because when I'd try I couldn't pay attention to any specific item apart from the general mess well enough to figure out how to clean it. I'd literally sit there for five or ten minutes looking around trying to figure out what it was that made my room so messy. I couldn't separate the clothes from the soda bottles or the computer equipment in my mind.

Also, as a kid I was really socially awkward. I just couldn't deal with people at all. I had a couple of friends that I would hang out with pretty comfortably, but when I got into a group I would get completely overwhelmed. Looking back on it, I realized that I couldn't process all the sound of different people talking at once. After a certain point, I'd hear them but not really understand anything they were saying. That would definitely make it hard to make friends at parties.

When I got on Wellbutrin (initially for depression) and, more recently, Adderall (I hate the stuff, but it helps), I started noticing large changes. With the Wellbutrin I still had trouble focusing on specific things, but I noticed my confusion went way down. I could deal easily with people, and could pay attention to what was going on around me. That helps a lot when driving. When I started taking the Adderall, I suddenly found it very easy to pay attention to one thing separate from others. I could remember to get my mail or take out the trash. I could separate my clothes and actually do my laundry. I could organize the tasks involved in getting my dishes washed, rather than not eating because I couldn't find a clean plate. I found myself starting to draw more (which I've always loved but never really practiced) because I could actually visualize in my head what I wanted to draw, rather than scribble around until I either had something or I didn't. I actually even sat down and started reading a few of the many books that I've gathered through the years, meaning to read. It's not particularly easy to sit down and write out an organised essay, design a program, or reorganize all the crap in my room, but I can actually sit and think of how I would go about doing it, and even remember

Well, there's always poverty

[Oswald]

Seriously, have you considered blowing off college and bumming it for a while? Wait tables or whatever for food money, and waste as much time as you like on the internet or lost inside your own head. It seems like there's only a few possible outcomes--either you'll get bored with it and develop some real motivation to go to school (then you won't need motivational tricks), or you'll love it forever (in which case you avoided wasting your life doing stuff you hated), or maybe you'll even find something you really love to do and become a fabulous success at it (may require school, may not--either way, the motivation is there).

Of course, there are pitfalls here, too. For instance, you may love bumming around for twenty years, get sick of it finally, only to find yourself too dysfunctional to go to school even though you really want to. That would suck. Also, you'll find that the bum's life isn't usually awash in women (or whatever turns you on). Most people (though not all) are looking for less starry-eyed partners.

If you're going to school to please other people (parents?), you might want to sit down and really think about what YOU want out of your life. You only get one, you know. You're not doing anybody any favors spending all that money on something you're only giving a half-assed effort.

I have the same problem

[JanneM]

I have exactly the same problem you describe. I can sit at the desk, stuff right in front of me, and still end up doing no work for hours. I may surf the net, read mail, pick up a suddenly interesting (but unrelated) book, make coffee, doodle, making suddenly important phonecalls, decide my chair needs reupholstering or whatever.

Only when I am cornered like a frightened rat, with the third extended deadline breathing down my neck, voices screaming at me to get going (no, not in the head; they belong to people hat need my results) and my stress level is high enough to induce cardiac arrest am I able to focus and actually do it.

A partially successful strategy is to put yourself in a situation where you have another, even more important, task to do; this will transform your duties into avoidance activities and will suddenly get done quickly and easily - just witness how clean and well-organized your apartment is after an important deadline. Of course, that does mean the new, hugely important task will be lingering instead.

On the downside, I have never found any way to really solve this. I just put up with failing myself over and over again, putting off stuff I should have done long ago. On the upside, even with such faulty strategies, I have managed to get a Ph.D. - and high blood pressure, jeadaches stomach pains and stress-related mood swings, but hey, you can't have it all.

Is this for real?

[198348726583297634]

It's called 'discipline'. Your parents/teachers/self obviously never instilled it in you. Try this:

* next time you want to 'click that browser' to escape into imagination, don't.

but how will you know not to? You can write that very simple directive down on a postit and stick it to your monitor. A gentle reminder not to do things that are 'not work' - in any form you can create it - is all it takes until you no longer want to skirt the responsibilities.

(yes, it is hard at first, but like anything, with practice, it gets easier.)

Gumption traps

[RobotWisdom]

Some of the best advice I've seen in print is in Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". But the details are hazy, so I'll give you my persoanl take:

- if you're struggling within yourself, you're lost. Learn to recognise this mental state (of internal struggle) and drop it immediately.

- instead, look with detachment at the 'lazy' half of the struggle. The more clearly you see it, the less power it will have.

- once the laziness is clearly seen, visualise yourself beginning the task, in detail. You can do this lying in bed or anywhere, but the important thing is to get over the initial hump, and sort out a clear picture of the first steps you need to take.

It's this startup-barrier that's the real problem, but reducing it to a manageable size is just a question of thinking it out clearly (not sweating, exercising, or promising rewards or threats).

Re:Gumption traps

[Max Webster]

Excellent advice. I find that it's easy to leave important things on the to-do list if they're big and nebulous ("Do project X", "Solve problem Y"). But identifying the first small task can break the logjam. How many household chores are held up because the first step is "buy drain cleaner" or "find 3/4-inch screws"?

In the case of a student, maybe it's "look for book X in the library" or "re-read chapter Y", or "write some header comments in each file", or "write a function to parse these strings". After that, the other steps become clearer.

Re:Gumption traps

[saden1]

I'm sorry to say but, my inner greed trumps my inner lazy. Often times greed bitch slaps lazy because lazy doesn't seem to understand we have bills to pay.

Re:Gumption traps

[FlowerPotAdmin]

I've seen that kind of effect before, but on a smaller scale. If you don't feel comfortable making major changes to your code, try going through it and just fixing bad style or tweaking computations. Then you might notice some code duplication that could be pulled out into a function or two, and pretty soon you're improving the program's functionality. Small steps are easier to take, so get started on something minor and ramp up the effort as you get more comfortable again.

Re:Gumption traps

[Lucidus]

The ideas from "Zen..." are superb advice; the problem is that it's very hard to state them clearly and succinctly.

For me, guilt was always a reliable indicator--if I was feeling bad about something (whether it was something I was supposed to be doing, or something I had already done), then I knew I couldn't function effectively. As long as you are beating yourself up, there is no way you can do your best work.

I think this may be happening to you, because you state that you have stopped playing games and watching TV, which suggests that you are punishing yourself in an attempt to improve your behavior. This simply won't work, as you have observed.

Instead, when you find yourself struggling with these feelings, just stop it. Recognize that it is counter-productive to think bad things about yourself. Once you can dissociate your thinking from your emotional baggage, you really can see things much more clearly.

At that point, you can calmly decide to start whatever task is before you. Once you are over the initial hump, the momentum of what you are doing should carry you forward.

And do give yourself a break once in awhile. If you are not enjoying life, then what's the point of getting on with it? Good luck.

ADHD

[Lando]

Actually, you may want to get yourself tested for ADHD, the symptems you are describing are pretty much the diagnoses for ADD/ADHD.

I can relate to sitting down to work, and at the end of a 12-16 hour day only having 1/2 of work done. It's gotten to the point that I am now spending most of my time working on getting a diagnoses and the problem fixed.

The way ADHD works is a bit insidious. Without an understanding of how it works it's easy to label yourself as not working hard enought, etc. My first realization that I might have a problem was when I took Wellbutrin for the first time, it became easier to make decisions, ie betweeen making a decision to do something and actually getting started took about 2 hours with the Wellbutrin it was instant, ie decide to go to the store, grab keys and jump in the car.

Anyway, I suggest getting yourself tested for ADHD by an expert. Testing should take approx 6-8 hours for complete testing.

In the same boat.

[Resident Geek]

I've been wondering for years why I can't get anything done--I just goof off. I can do things when I let my idle fantasies quiet down for a while, but more often then not I'm distracted by reminding myself of all the other things I have to do. I used to think it was a problem of "forgetfulness", especially when I was younger:

Mom: why didn't you do your chores?
Me: I forgot...:-\

Things started to change when I started sitting.

Meditation has been dismissed by lots of posters, especially in that last story about meditation in the workplace, but your story rang out a clarion call that sounded eerily familiar. I stumbled into it from a completely different angle, but have found that sitting has allowed me the mental clarity to pay more attention to the things around me. This, in turn, lets me do the right things at the right time. When it's work time, I work. When it's goof off time, I goof off. When it's time to go to the bathroom, I go to the bathroom. :)

I came to the realization that when it comes down to it, I'm the only one who can live my life. There's no easy way to do it. However, if you practice mindfulness, you've got a walking stick to help you on the path.

Despite the fact that we're two different people and no two folks are the same, I'd recommend that you take the time, once a week, to sit. Just count your breath. Exhale, inhale. That's one. Exhale, inhale. That's two. If you lose count, don't sweat it, just start over. Set a timer for twenty minutes. Or just keep an eye on a clock that's in sight. Here's a guide to practice that you may find helpful. Some of it may not apply--you don't need to jump into a monastery and shave your head :)

I hope you find the peace you're seeking.

CANCEL YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION

[takochan]

The web is a massive time waster. I didn't
need it (didnt have it!) when I was in college.

Cancel it, or pick up a 2400 baud modem. You can use that to check your mail, but it will keep you off the web because it will be just to slow..

Now you can get your work done instead of reading Slashdot, and all sorts of other silly webpages..

my own experience

[kongjie]

You will have to experiment with the suggestions posted as well as your own ideas.

I want to share my own, pathetic example with you, though. Most of my life has been plagued by severe procrastination, since around middle school, I think. High school was horrible--I can remember spending two days creating a chemistry lab notebook that I was supposed to have spent a whole semester on, just to give one instance.

In college, I eventually got worse and worse until I stopped attending classes (because I was so far behind) and failed an entire semester.

I worked in a restaurant full time for a year, and got re-admitted to school. I talked to a counselor and kind of worked things out, so I thought. Still, I had to continue working to support myself while going to classes part-time, so it took about 8 years to graduate.

I worked for a couple of years, which was no problem, then went back to school for my master's. Still okay.

Then I entered a Ph.D. program at Yale and it started again. Really bad. I never finished my dissertation because of the time wasted. There were other factors involved beyond my control, and to be honest I don't think I would have stayed in my field if I had completed the dissertation, but still the responsibility lies with me.

So now I'm unemployed (by choice, followed my girl to another state, leaving a good job where I was becoming miserable because I procrastinated at the parts of the job I didn't enjoy) and I'm trying to use the down time to do some writing, something I've always wanted to do but didn't have the courage.

I've got great starts on two projects that are wonderful ideas...essentially I'm halfway through them, and I'm stuck. Like a wall.

What's the lesson? I've bought every decent anti-procrastination book on the market, read them and tried to implement the suggestions. But I even procrastinate about that! I've done therapy, both group and individual. It was useful in many ways, but here I am, still stuck.

I think it may be chemical/biological. It is very, very difficult for me to concentrate on one thing for more than, say, fifteen minutes. Even reading has become harder, and I love to read more than anything else. Once I get a job I'm considering Prozac or something to see if it can take the edge off my tendency to be distracted.

I'm not lazy. I'm a hard worker and wherever I work I'm quickly valued for my contributions and innovations. In school I was regularly in the top 10% of the brightest students, except when it came time to follow through and produce. And still, I know that I've wasted years of my life. They're gone and nothing can bring them back.

So, I urge you to find out what the problem is and fix it, or try to fix it. Because the clock is ticking.

Underwear and the Command Line

[Snafoo]

I've been diagnosed with ADD and I have two suggestions for dealing with procrastination and focusing problems. Note that I don't to either of these much anymore, as I'm medicated, but they worked well enough at the time.

Suggestion #1:

I have a little theory to the effect that, for a certain percentage of the population, GUIs have made focusing a lot more difficult: Sure, your taskbar, icons, buttons and menus make it easier to switch rapidly between many different tasks and contexts, but they also _make_it_easier_to_switch_between_many_different_t asks_and_contexts_. One minute you're studying faithfully --- at your mental office, so to speak --- and the next, you're in your mental rec room, playing FreeCiv; or in your mental coffee shop, chatting on /. And, Oh God, the futzing that one can do with a GUI! Desktop icon arrangement. Wallpaper. Themepacks, for heaven's sake. It's a temple of distraction in here.

So here's what I recommend: Ditch it. Ditch the GUI. Install Linux, if you haven't already, and configure /etc/inittab to boot to initlevel 4. Learn to love vi or nano or emacs: They work great for comp sci projects, and if you have an essay or a paper to write, do it in vi first, import it to word_processor_of_your_choice (for formatting) only when you're about to print it.

If you can't ditch the GUI for whatever reason (i.e. you need a proprietary Windoze app, or you can't bear to install Linux) then I recommend setting up a new account (linux) or user profile ('doze) that will only allow you to run only those applications which you need to get the job done. If that doesn't work, you should seriously consider getting yourself a (second-hand?) laptop upon which you will place only work-related programs --- preferably, one without WiFi or some other way of exposing it to the Lethean floodwaters of the 'net.

Suggestion #2. This next one is a little weird, but it works well for me. Note that it might work less well if you don't have any roomates, as it depends greatly on your desire to avoid embarrassment. It also requires that you have an extra room in your house.

Make yourself a home office in a well-heated room, and keep only work-related things in it. When you go to study, take in all the food, caffeine, and books that you'll need for a stint of about five hours. Set an alarm clock to go off in five hours. Now, close the door, and take off your pants. Yes, you heard me, take off your pants. If necessary, take off your shirt as well. Put them in a plastic bag, and tie the bag shut. Put the bag away (the further away the better.). This way, you can't leave the room suddenly without raising eyebrows: If, say, you have a sudden impulse to jump up and watch TV, or phone a friend, it'll take you a good five minutes to dress, which should be plenty to reconsider and sit back down.

After a couple of months of this, you get in the habit of staying in the room until the alarm sounds, you don't have to take off your pants anymore.

Re: OT

[AJWM]

'Code' can be a plural.

Sure it can. Just ask Darl (All Your Code Are Belong To Us) McBride of SCO...

A Case of Bad Discipline and Avoidance?

[reallocate]

So, what are you doing when you aren't working? Are you sure that you aren't just futzing around in order to avoid getting down to business?

When I was in college, a friend and I used to pull all-nighters to study for exams. A third friend, Dave, usually joined us, but insisted on staying in his own room. Invariably, Dave would wander over around 5:00 a.m. and we'd give him some money to go uptown to a bakery that opened at dawn to buy breakfast. After our coffee and croissants, all three of us would walk to campus and take our exams. My friend and I usually did well, and Dave usually did poorly. He'd whine, "But I stayed up all night, too!"

Well, turns out that Dave spent all night wastng his time. He'd spend so much time "getting ready to study" that he never studied. In other words, a classic case of lack of discipline and avoidance.

Research your own neurosis

[Voivod]

I've always had the same problem. You have to really think hard about what it is that prevents you from working, and attack those things relentlessly. This may take years. What breaks your concentration? When you notice you've gotten a lot done, think hard about what led up to you reaching that state!

It's totally different for everyone, but here are some things that work for me :-)

• Really strict use of source control like Perforce or CVS so I can review what I did last time or just rollback my changes if I get off track.
• A Makefile that lets me build my entire environment from scratch without having to remember exactly how I'd configured mySQL, Apache, etc. When I move to a new machine or upgrade something I just type one command and go to work.
• My physical work environment has to be totally clean. I'm not at all an organized person normally but a cluttered work environment always distracts me. It took me years to figure this out.
• Booming loud music in headphones. What's that ringing sound I'm always hearing?
• My work environment needs to be cold and have fresh air. The colder the better. I'm always fighting co-workers for control of the AC.
• It needs to be early in the morning or late at night.
• If it's late at night, a single shot of tequilla does wonders, but no more. :-)
• Drink water non stop. As much as I can stand.
• I tell myself I'm only going to get a little bit done, like get something to compile, write a function. Usually I'll just keep going once that's done.

Other people find techniques like making schedules, having a really strong routine, making lists, etc very helpfull but not I. Also, caffeine is an evil drug that makes you THINK you're really productive, when in fact you're not getting shit done... at least in my case. Avoid it unless it's measurably helping.

Balance

[bitty]

Obsessing over it and not blowing off any steam is going to turn you into a rifle-wielding maniac with a love of rooftops. Have your study time, but don't leave out the play. You'd be surprised at the problems you can solve when you're distracted.

Set aside time to work, but remember to take breaks for food, or your brain won't work very efficiently. Start each session with planning out your goals and write them down. Break the tasks down to small chunks that'll only take a little while to complete. It feels really good to check off each item as you get it done, and helps get you motivated to move on to the next. If you get stuck for too long on anything, take a quick break for a walk or cartoons or whatever distracts you, and you'll come back to it fresh and with a new way of looking at it more often than not.

Smoke a joint.

[smcavoy]

Just a little one, but large enough to calm the nerves and drown out background thoughts and noise.

If your in the USA, be careful I think they still chop off hands for posession. ;)

Morning

[GrEp]

I have the exact same problem. I can't concentrate on homework unless I am under pressure or I am to tired to be distracted. The solution I found was to get up and hour early and do homework in the morning. Sounds evil, but it works. Get in the habit of it and you find yourself with too much free time ;)

Not-To-Do-Lists

[Deal-a-Neil]

I read in some book (I think "Good to Great" by Collins) something that I find very useful. It's called the "Not To Do List". Instead of a To-Do list, which sometimes gets crowded with obvious large tasks or minutia -- make a real TO-DO list along with a NOT-TO-DO list.

On really busy days, my NOT-TO-DO list includes Slashdot, believe it or not. It also includes checking the weather, stock quotes, instant messaging, snacking, staring out the office windows for cute gals, etc.

If you actually tracked how much time you spend goofing off, distracting yourself, you'd see how valuable the NOT-TO-DO list is to boost your productivity.

Concentration is a skill which needs practice.

[doonesbury]

If you're worried about not getting work done, I'm betting that you're also thinking to yourself about not only this work, but asking yourself what if you don't finish this piece, and thinking about what else needs to get done as well.

I know, because I do it myself.

Concentration is a skill. It's not something that comes instantly to everyone, it's something that needs to be practiced. And it's not hard to practice it, either, but it does take some disipline.

First, learn to clear your thoughts of extraneous stuff. I do this by mostly telling myself that, first, if I worry about all the rest of the crap I have to do, I'm not only not going to get *this* done, I'm not going to get *any* of it done, and I'm no better off than when I started -- so, Part-of-me-that-worries, shut up and let me get some work done, so you can worry about something else. It's kind of a zen, clear-your-mind of all thoughts moment.

Second, try the following exercises::

Practice Sitting Quietly: Sit down for an half-an-hour a day, at your desk. No distractions, no extra stuff to work on, and just one project to finish. Take a quick, zen-cleansing breath, and don't think about everything else you have to do. (Don't panic, if what you have to get done takes more than that time, I'm just saying you have to *sit* for that time.)

Complete Something Every Day: do something that you can complete in one day, and do one of every day. If it's a book, slice it up into chapters or 10 pages or whatever. If it's one calculus set, use that. Do that every day, at the same time, once a day. It give some sense of accomplishment, gets you practiced at doing something on a regular basis.

(Note, I got these from Daniel Pinkwater's book Fishwhistle, but they seem to help.)

Finally, also do these:

Exercise: I know it's been said, but exercise exhausts the muscles, gets the blood flowing, can heighten concentration, and is generally good for you. It may seem like a waste of time, but it gives back in concentration what it takes in time; so if it's 4 hours of worrying over something, or 1 hour of exercise and 3 hours of working, which is more productive?

Sleep: Do it. Regularly. It helps with concentration, sleepy people can't concentrate.

Give it a shot. See if it works for you. If not, try the following things which have worked for friends of mine:

Earmuffs: Seriously. My brother cannot concentrate unless there's no noise about. You can find these for about $5-$10 at any hardware store; some even fold up for carrying. They block out sound like earplugs (not a bad idea either) and allow you to not hear any sounds around you.

Tai Chi and other Martial Arts: These heavily emphasize concentration, so it may be that they do you more good by both getting you exercise and by helping you practice concentration.

Good luck!

Re:One word: Discipline

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree,but if you're having trouble with this, and you're covered, SEE A SHRINK.

People on slashdot always say "IANAL", because they aren't experts on the law. More people should say "IANA Therapist", because we aren't experts on human behavior, but therapists are.

Carrot & Stick

[debrain]

In the best and worst of times, I encourage myself by stipulating rewards for valuable work. Ie. if I finish such-and-such by a certain time, I'll play Diablo II for an hour. The trick, of course, with Diablo II is to stop playing ;)

I have found this trick to be a valuable exercise in motivation. Perhaps someone else may, too.

Cheers

Avoiding Distractions

[Alan Cox]

You can put all your "distracting" applications into a group that your "work" login doesn't allow access to. You can remove the network cable except in specific pre-planned periods.

Nowdays I have to get a lot done, and there are a few things I've found very helpful (and believe me I used to do my homework in the lesson it was being handed in for 8))

- If I think of something else that needs doing I write it down, I don't start doing it disrupting the current task
- If I think of stuff late in the evening I write it down so I dont spent the night trying not to forget it
- Split big tasks quickly into a list of little subtasks, cross them off as you finish them
- Don't sit on irc , its the ultimate productivity killer and distraction bar none (some people seem to swear by putting all their non "work" stuff on a seperate desktop so its not in their vision except when they take a break)
- Remember you can read your email just once or twice a day. Ditto web news sites/slashdot
- Don't look at a pile of things and think I really ought to be doing something. Do *something* even if its pick the easiest looking task to knock off the list.
- When you build up a pile of tasks that can't be done in the required time (wait for final year university 8)) prioritize them and cross of stuff you have to discard, don't sit around doing nothing because you can't do them all.
- Get into a routine (I'm dire at this but when it works it helps). Get up read email, go do work the same pattern every day.

Ultimately though its about willpower., someone suggested exercise, one good exercise way to learn about relaxation and willpower is martial arts. Not all of them are about beating the crap out of people (although if you like that sort of competitive thing there are plenty to choose from), others like Aikido are much more about self control and at the extreme soft end they verge into deeply internal things like T'ai Chi .

Re:Avoiding Distractions

[j_dot_bomb]

Before I read this story I was segmenting my logins like you suggest. I am adding "force" to that by encrypting the full access login with a key that can be bruteforced in a known period of time (Ill try just a few hours at first, maybe 8 or 24)

Re:Avoiding Distractions

[ralphclark]

Alan! What the blazes are you doing surfing slashdot? Get back to work!

Adapt

[scoove]

Can anyone please give advice on how to overcome this problem, be it a little trick, medication, or anything else?

Having been a similar kind of student in college, but have gone to a successful career, I don't think you're going to find medication or tricks or anything to 'overcome' your nature. The key to success is recognizing that the world's got people like you for a reason.

"ADHD" classifications, IMHO, are usually a label placed on the hunters by the gathers (to horribly oversimplify things). Do some research on hunter/gatherer models of learning and motivation and you'll get some good insight here.

Approaching this all from a "learning system culture" sort of macro operating system for humans, Gatherers are well suited to working together in cooperative teams, they learn via second-hand sources well, and fundamentally seek and accept extrinsic direction. They are motivated by these outside sources which they trust implicitely. They make good committee people, good followers, etc. Society needs people like this to follow rules in conducting their work. Understand that post-secondary education is the pinnacle of their system, and you'll see why you may be having problems.

I'd strongly suspect from your description that you're of the hunter ethic. Are you self-taught? Motivated by doing things you want to do (instead of what society/teachers/parents/friends tell you to do)? This model is also needed by society in conquering new things and treading outside the predictable, safe areas where gatherers like to reside. Understand that society needs both of these. If you're in the latter category, quit dwelling on the fact that you may fail miserably in the gatherer's universe (they didn't intend it for you anyways) and focus on doing what hunters do better.

Find out what topics self-motivate you. Design your own education program (and understand that you need to present third-party credentials to the gatherers you deal with - absent college degrees, get yourself certified in the various areas, e.g. CCIE, CISSP, Security+, A+, and various other certifications for your area). Make it a golden rule that you never burn bridges - your reputation is the only thing you have to offer.

And don't forget that the early years are the hardest for the hunters because we don't have a formal educational system that's designed for our success (the existing one is actually designed to classify us as a disorder and medicate us!).

Nearly every CEO and business leader I work with is of this hunter ethic (in fact, a savvy investor may wish to avoid gatherer-run companies, like Lucent, that lack any tolerance for risk and vision). Just hang in there, make yourself an expert at something, make certain that you protect your integrity in everything you do as this is critical, and success will find you.

*scoove*

my solution

[tongue]

I actually have the same problem, and i've found my biggest distraction to be the computer itself--instant messages, emails that need responding to, web pages that need to be checked every few minutes for updates (thanks slashdot and fark!), and just general screwing around all conspire to keep me from my appointed task.

My breakthrough came when i went to a coffeeshop to work with a laptop on an empty battery and no free outlets to be found. I started working on a notepad, and before i knew it i had the entire design for what i wanted to do laid out, and most of the code hand-written. It was amazing, and surprising. Obviously there's some things you HAVE to have a computer for, such as debugging, but i've found the more i limit my computer usage to only the most necessary tasks the more likely i am to accomplish more than 15 minutes of work a day. Incidentally, in that one eight-hour stint at the coffee shop i got more work done than in the three weeks previous, which is more a testament to how badly i was blocked working at home than how productive pen and paper made me.

also this guy has some good articles on personal productivity you may find useful.

Re:Coffee

[IICV]

I think the reason is that when you drink coffee while studying, your mind makes a connection between the taste of coffee and material studied, kind of like a hypnotic trigger (i.e, "when I snap my fingers, you'll quack like a duck." The snap is the trigger, and the quacking you make is the action.). When you drink coffee before your test, it triggers a memory of the material. This can actually work with most aromatic or tasty things, I believe.

I do know that a certain brand of soap always makes me think of Morrowind, because its fragrance is really strong and was always on my hands during the weeks I was playing that game.

Re:Simple Solution

[JamesP]

I have a very simple solution that hits the problem like a baseball bat. Listen to music using headphones. Two reasons: 1 - It will boost my concentration like 400% 2 - It will avoid getting distracted by avoiding you turning your head (since it's plugged in the computer and the wire is short.

Re:my spew *** Visualize yourself finishing.***

[barfomar]

When you go to bed at night, review what you have to do tomorrow. Then visualize yourself finishing all of the tasks AND feeling good about it. Repeat the same visualization before you get up in the morning. If done well (takes practice) getting up in the morning is like Christmas morning every day of the year. You'll find yourself hitting the ground running, getting the jobs done. The procrastinating takes care of itself. Experiencing feeling good about finishing is absolutlely essential. Reuse the same feelings you've had from previous projects. Then, in your mind, transfer the same sense of accomplishment to the next task. It works.

Re:Stop Reading Slashdot!

[Billly Gates]

I recommend the opposite. Work hard and put slashdot as a goal when you are done at the end of the day.

Block port 80 on your computer if you have ADHD or ADD like myself and use the lap computers at school and a nice soda as a reward when you are done. If you do really well go buy some ice cream or nacho's or something to chill while you read slashdot.

If you fuck up then make a habit not to do this. This will actually rewire your brain to work in order to recieve a reward. Nature designed your brains this way to reward us for hunting food.

This is classic Pavlov pyhyscology at its finest.

Re:One word: Discipline

[JimBobJoe]

**Worst advice ever**

Him: "Can slashdot tell me what I need to get myself boostrapped and productive?"

You: "You know what you need punk? To bootstrap yourself and get to work!"

He knows what his problem is, that's why he's asking the /. community. He's seeking out different ways at becoming productive. Your response was delightfully unhelpful.

Some people are blessed with the talent to just be effortlessly productive. Others need to put effort into it, some will not become productive until a crisis hits them, and a few will never be productive at all (which costs everyone time and money.) If you're in the first group, then congratulations, if you're in the second group, then congratulations that you found your system, if you're in the third group then I'm sorry for whatever may have happened (that also seem to have added a new crutch to you that you're not entirely aware of.)

This may sound trite or cheesy but...

[Flat5]

I once complained to my father when I was young about not wanting to do my homework. He said something that has rung in my ears ever since:

"Bob... part of being a man means doing things even when you don't want to."

Those words have kept me going through "aw, crap, I really don't feel like doing this" moments throughout my entire life.

Flat5

Disconnect from the net

[Glonoinha]

Actually he is right, moreso if he tweaks it just a bit by making it difficult but not impossible to access.

Want to get serious work done? Walk across the room and disconnect the network cable from the wall. Really need access (like to submit your homework, as you suggested) walk over and plug it in, submit your work, and then unplug it again.

For someone that is easily distracted, removing the ease of distraction (ie, a direct connect to the net) is better than Ritalin.

Re:Disconnect from the net

[dekashizl]

Want to get serious work done? Walk across the room and disconnect the network cable from the wall. Really need access (like to submit your homework, as you suggested) walk over and plug it in, submit your work, and then unplug it again.

This is exactly what I do. A small improvement on this is to get an X-10 computer interface, and connect the network cable to a 12V X-10 controlled motor (Lutron, Makita, etc.), so that instead of having to get up to plug/unplug it, you just press a key on your keyboard and it remotely and physically does it for you. Taking it further, you can set it up so that when your cursor hovers over Mozilla, it automatically plugs in the cable for you. It works really well, and as soon as I finish writing this, I'll get right back to that paper I'm supposed to turn in tomorrow morning!

Loose the Internet

[OS24Ever]

For some reason, i get hte most amount of work done when I have the least amount of internet connection.

my wife says

[Anonymous Coward]

that I often get distracted too but I disagree. I think it's more a case of

Damn good question..

[radish]

I think this is a very common problem - I know I suffer from it at work quite frequently. I can't promise to give you a perfect response, but here are some random thoughts related to the topic...

1) If you just can't get around to doing something, it maybe simply because it's an insanely boring task. We all have to do them for sure, but it can be difficult. First idea (and this isn't a joke) - can you get someone else to do it? If you're at work - delegate, swap tasks, do a deal, whatever. What's boring to you might be just what someone else would like to spend an afternoon doing. If you really have to do it yourself, I simply make a deal with myself - no ps2/tv/web/pron/insert fave poison here until it's done. I have some self control so that usually does it :)

2) Sleep. I tend not to sleep enough mainly due to having too many more fun things to do. I find my concentration wanders a lot more when I'm tired. A few good nights sleep can help my concentration at work (even with things I hate doing) a hell of a lot.

3) Give your mind a break. Rather than do something else on the sly and feel guilty - allocate some time and go and do something else on purpose. If you've got a long piece of work break it up in advance and allocate fun time during the day. I find my focus is better when I sit back down at something after maybe 30 mins off.

4) Music. Classical might work for you - certainly not for me. Where I work speakers are banned but headphones are fine. I've loaded my PC up with a big selection of tunes for different moods - the key for me is choosing the right tune. For full-on 110% rush coding nothing beats full-on (extremely loud) dance music. I'm a DJ so I've done a bunch of mixes which fit the bill. I find that when my head starts nodding and my feet start tapping, my fingers can't help but keep up :)

I dunno - maybe some of that will help someone :)

If you have flexible scheduling, use it

[pvera]

If flexible scheduling is an option, use it for what it's worth. If getting the job done means working in the middle of the night and your output is optimal by doing this, then do it. The best programmer I have ever employed was like that: his muse usually got active around 11 PM and he would usually code until 6 AM or so. Because of this we kept him on flex time and tried not to call him at home before noon. He would do emails and follow-ups in the afternoon and then start programming again around midnight.

When *I* was on flex, I was a bit different. I would wake up around 7 AM, do email until 9 AM or so, then drove to the office for 4 hours, which helped me skip the morning traffic jams. Back at home before 3 PM meant no afternoon traffic jams either. Goof around til early evening and then code from 7:30 PM or so until 1-2 AM.

If flex and telecommuting are not an option, the best thing is to get buy-in from your manager to block out your schedule from non-project intrusions. I now work for a 15-person firm, and I am the only programmer here, plus I have to provide IT support. Whenever I am forced to switch to full-programmer mode the ops manager pretty much builds a wall around me. Anyone that needs me for non-programming tasks needs to go thru her first. This cuts distractions by 75% and I can work 45-hour weeks instead of 60+.

A warning on late-night coding binges: watch out for your health. I don't have a sleeping cycle anymore thanks to 8 years of graveyard shift plus 3 years of flex-time. I have been on a 9-5 schedule for a year and I still have no hope of a regular sleep schedule. Your circadian rhythm will get shot to hell if you are not careful. Also, be careful with the caffeine binges and snacking!

Another three words: break it down

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I agree that a lot of this is in your mind. It's like your outlook on life: if you want to be happy, decide that you will see the good things in people and that your glass will be half full, instead of criticising everyone and being pessimistic about every situation. No-one else can make that decision for you.

Lots and lots of people experience this sort of thing while at university. Yes, I did too. I was well known for the unusual hours I kept, and my lack of attendance at lectures where I wasn't convinced about the material and/or the presentation, something else I'm sure many here can relate to. But while I don't want to knock those with a genuine problem, most of the time it's just laziness if we're honest about it. Trying to pin something like laziness on a condition like ADD is a typical cop-out of someone lazy; several such conditions are themselves of dubious scientific validity and believed by many in the business simply to be people making excuses.

Of course, if the laziness is caused by a lack of motivation or a negative outlook, sometimes deciding you want to overcome it is a good start, but doesn't help much with actually overcoming it. Then I find breaking the task down to be helpful. If something seems overwhelming, it's probably because you're trying to jump in at the deep end.

For example, maybe you need to write a complicated piece of code that might wind up hundreds of lines long, and you know what you want it to do but aren't really clear in your mind about how you're going to do it. In that case, try just writing the pseudocode algorithm in comments in your function. If it's going to take several functions, that's OK, write pseudocode for the main one first and then the others as it becomes convenient. Don't worry about details at first, or following any rigorous structure, just figure out the main idea. You can always add more details later if they're helpful. Once you're basically happy with the pseudocode version, start hacking.

Similarly, if you're anything like me, you wind up building up household chores horribly. You know that putting that load of washing through will only take five minutes to put stuff in the machine and another five minutes to take it out again, but somehow it's all too much effort. When this sort of thing happens, I make a list of all the little things I need to do: clothes washing, washing up, hoovering, cleaning in the kitchen, cutting the grass, food shopping, filing bank statements, etc. Then I just pick the items off, one by one. I'll put the washing in, so I've got something started, then wash up or do the garden while it's going, and so on, making best use of the time. When you actually get down to it, you can do a lot of stuff in just a couple of hours, and most individual things only take a few minutes. As with the coding problem, it's just getting over the mental barrier that says it's too much hard work to get started, and (for me, at least) the way to do it is to break a big, unsurmountable problem down into little, manageable ones.

Somehow, finding the motivation to break the big problem down is never as hard as finding the motivation to just attack it without really knowing how. Then solving the little problems is much easier, and once I've started, I've got a plan and know what I need to do next, so I can keep going without losing concentration. I can write hundreds of lines of good code a day like this, or do every piece of housework there is in a single afternoon. Try it, maybe it'll work for you too. :-)

visualization

[Kenshiro]

What works for me is a slight variation on what athletes are always told to do: visualization.

The surest way for me to have a productive day, is to spend the first 5 minutes of the day thinking about what I want to do, and how to go about it. Sometimes this leads to taking some notes, but it always leads to me sitting down excited about what I will be doing.

Kitchen Timer

[dpm]

I used to be a university professor -- you might (or might not) be surprised to hear that I had the same problem as my students. If you think it's discouraging looking at a blank screen when you have to write a 10-page paper, imagine staring at a pile of several hundred ungraded exams or essays.

I recommend that you buy a cheap, digital kitchen timer, then set very simple goals. If you don't feel like working, set the timer for just ten minutes and then work (no Web or anything else) straight until it stops. Goof around for a while, then do another ten-minute stretch. When ten minutes gets too easy, bump it up to fifteen, thirty, or whatever, but *never* make it so long that you cannot get through without being distracted. It's OK to keep working after the timer runs out, but it's never OK to do anything else while it's running.

The other advice on this list is also excellent -- exercise always helps me work -- but the kitchen timer gives you a fallback when all else fails. Best of luck.

Wake up very early to do work.

[jellomizer]

When I was in college I found I did my best work if I woke up at 4 am and did my work until around 9 am. There are very little distractions at that time usually all your friends are a sleep or finishing their last minute work. There is nothing good on TV. And the environment is usually is very quit. At first getting up at that time is tough but after a while it gets easier.

Anti procrastination worksheet

[drivers]

Break down a large task into small steps. Next to each task, in the first column, predict how difficult that task will be on a scale from 0-100%. Leave a column blank, which will be the percentage of the actual difficulty after you do that step. Next column is predicting how satisfying it will be, 0-100%, and then one more blank column used to record the actual satisfaction after the step. (It's a cognitive therapy technique.) IANAD. I'd be curious if anyone actually tries this, how it works out for them.

Re:Pure Fear

[whatch durrin]

But what really motivates me are what-if scenarios about if I lose my job, my house, my wife, my family. I can't relax and forget how horrible it would be to lose what I have worked so hard to get.

I'm glad this works for you. But for a college student, the poster probably doesn't have this motivation.

In fact, I think more college students should actually take the time to figure out what is a rewarding career before venturing down the marriage/kids path.

Part of the problem may be that he doesn't like his major (whether he knows it yet or not). It would be a travesty to force himself to graduate with the degree, get a job, get married, and have kids, only to discover he should have been a fireman.

Scented Candle

[Dogun]

I know someone who has a candle with an uncommon scent that he lights whenever he does serious work. It's actually a pretty good strategy - the scent is a reminder to work, and since smell is the sense that has the most effect on us, it's probably one of the best reminders to work work work that you can have.

Granted, it's not a big help until you start associating the smell with work, but I'd give it a try.

The other option is red bull, but after drinking those regularly, you start to feel like crap.

Start it!

[augustz]

Seriously, this is what worked for me. Being a perfectionist (but a procrastinator) what would do wonders is to just sit down, and get started. If it's a paper, I'd start by putting down my name and the date, and then put down one - three sentences, and after that I would be off.

Coding, write the first class (that actually does something so you can see it take effect) and same thing.

Sometimes about halfway through hit a dead spot and get distracted by slashdot etc. The trick there was to have started things at least a day earlier so I could just hit the sack when I found producivity going down.

Unless you start, it won't get finished, so the trick for me was to just start :)

Re:YOU call this discipline

[capedgirardeau]

I guess schizophrenia is just a matter of self discipline as well? or altzheimers?

I agree sometimes ADD is self discipline related, but not in all cases.

Your attitude of blaming them for being weak or whatever is typical.

Several drugs, in double blind studies, have dramatically increased how well and the duration people can perform concentration type tasks.

How do you explain that?

Everything in our brians is checmicals: emotions, perceptions, feelings etc. To think that concentration, ann obviously physical activity chemically speaking, cannot be affected by the rate at which chemicals are produced by our bodies is just willfully ignorant.

Good for you if you dont have it, I am glad you don't, but for once stop making simplistic judements about other people when you obviously have no idea what you are talking about.

I dont have it either, and like I said, sometimes it is probably just a matter of self (or parental) discipline but I am at least open to the idea that some folks probably have a chemical variance that affects it.

I believe the same thing about weigh gain, some folks just process suger differently and some people over eat for emotional reasons, but it doesnt mean _all_ overweight people are that way for any single reason.

My advice to this gentleman is to see about trying non medicial solutions and practices that might help first. Meditation, mental self programming are both good to try and learn about, even if you end up also needing medication.

There are groups and books about good things that ADD folks can do to help, I am sure many of those techniques probably would help many non ADD folks as well.

Same story here + a few years... Don't panic

[panZ]

I don't have any correctional advice but I'd say don't panic, if it is important enough for you to change your habbits, they will change. Your story sounds exactly the same as mine. I graduated with a computer engineering degree 1.5 years ago. I was thrilled that in my last year, i could take graduate level, evening classes because I could go to bed later, and later. I found that it was only on a deadline between midnight and 6AM that I could work at home. None of my friends were up, nothing good on TV and /. and all had been read for the day. Yeah, I was pissed that I couldn't discipline myself to work normal hours but I never had motivation to change because that was acceptable in college.

Fastforward 18 months, I was able to pull off this graduation thing and find an awesome embedded software job where I'm required to be in the office by 10:00AM. I thought it would be hard but I value the job and what it affords me so much that I don't want to screw it up by not hitting deadlines or sleeping in. My body is on a new sleep schedule (though I force myself to go to bed by 2AM sometimes); and I'm totally satisfied. Of course, I still make trips to /. and kuroshin and personal email during the day but I make it quick and make sure I get my work done. There is room to improve but what it takes is finding enough motivation to keep you focused. Find a significant other that keeps normal hours, get a job you really like, accept projects with firm deadlines... stuff like that.

Depression/Stress/whatever

[oneiros27]

I've had those days after you've been working non-stop 12-16hr days, and you get to the point where you're less productive than before.

My dad gave me a book recently on the connections between adrenaline and stress. Basically, it talks about handling stress so you don't let it get out of hand, as stress triggers adrenaline, which affects your sleep patterns and causes you to make snap decisions without thinking things out or being creative.

I've had depressive fits where I haven't left my place for weeks at a time, but now that I reflect on it, they were all triggered by times of high stress. So now, before I get to far in, I try to relax. Unfortunately, saturday morning cartoons have really sucked in the past few years, so I don't have that 3-4 hrs of relaxation per week.

If you're not getting stuff done, set a timer, wait, relax for an hour or so, then press back in on it. Personally, I find that I do some of my best work near 6am.... no matter if I got up early to do it [working right after I get up, or until I've been up all night and start to get tired]. Tired is actually a sign of being relaxed, as if you're pumping with adrenaline, you won't fall asleep.

a MUSICAL exercise and a question about ADHD

[Chalupa]

When I was a guitar major in college and had a rigorous night job, I had heard of this practice regimen put together by a well-known jazz guitarist named Howard Roberts (Hal Leonard Publications). He called it the "Superchops" program. You practiced an hour a day, six days a week for twenty weeks. It basically went something like this:

1.) Clear your work area of all things not pertaining to the lesson.

2.) Make a ten-minute recording of what you were going to play over.

3.) Stop. Make quick mental notes of what you are about to do.

4.) Play over the recording.

5.) Break. Two minutes. Put the guitar down, stand up and stretch, etc.

6.) Repeat #4 and #5 two more times. That's about it. The POINT is that an hour every day of something is much more beneficial than cramming a bunch of hours into one day, and provided you are not SUPER tired from what you were doing that day, your current physical condition shouldn't be a problem-exercise is good, of course :)

Try setting up a daily work regimen of whatever you are doing that has REALISTIC goals for daily achievement. It worked for me.

NOW ABOUT ADD/ADHD...and NO this is NOT FLAMEBAIT!

Ritalin is a class two drug with side effects similar to cocaine. Frankly, no kid anywhere should be ingesting it, and neither should you.

My question is (and this is REALLY going to piss off some people), does ADD/ADHD REALLY EXIST? Is it an officially recognized disorder by the CDC or some other government body, or well-respected independent body? Or is this a massive bullshit campaign?

It is going to take a lot of convincing to prove to me that we are not just making excuses about why our kids can't concentrate in school, yet they can come home and concentrate on kicking my ass on Half-Life. Find me the links that show me that ADD/ADHD actually and truthfully exists. Better still, post decent links that outline BOTH sides of the debate.

Once something's been approved by the government, it's no longer immoral. - Reverend Lovejoy

Chalupa

Re:a MUSICAL exercise and a question about ADHD

[commodoresloat]

Ritalin is a class two drug with side effects similar to cocaine. Frankly, no kid anywhere should be ingesting it, and neither should you.

Definitely. Cocaine is much cheaper and easier to come by, and you don't need a Doctor's prescription.

Re:a MUSICAL exercise and a question about ADHD

[Viv]

My question is (and this is REALLY going to piss off some people), does ADD/ADHD REALLY EXIST? Is it an officially recognized disorder by the CDC or some other government body, or well-respected independent body? Or is this a massive bullshit campaign?

It's simple -- check the DSM IV. The DSM-IV is the fouth edition of the criteria professional psychologists use to diagnose mental disorders. It is essentially the bible of psychology. And according to the DSM-IV, ADHD does exist. The DSM-IV definition is apparently:

Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

* Persisting for at least 6 months to a degree that is maladaptive and immature, the patient has either inattention or hyperactivity-impulsivity (or both) as shown by:
Inattention. At least 6 of the following often apply:
-Fails to pay close attention to details or makes careless errors in schoolwork, work or other activities
-Has trouble keeping attention on tasks or play
-Doesn't appear to listen when being told something
-Neither follows through on instructions nor completes chores, schoolwork, or jobs (not due to oppositional behavior or failure to understand)
-Has trouble organizing activities and tasks
-Dislikes or avoids tasks that involve sustained mental effort (homework, schoolwork)
Loses materials needed for activities (assignments, books, pencils, tools, toys)
Easily distracted by extraneous stimuli
Forgetful
Hyperactivity-Impulsivity. At least 6 of the following often apply:
HYPERACTIVITY
-Squirms in seat or fidgets
-Inappropriately leaves seat
-Inappropriately runs or climbs (in adolescents or adults, the may be only a subjective feeling of restlessness)
-Has trouble quietly playing or engaging in leisure activity
-Appears driven or "on the go"
-Talks excessively
IMPULSIVITY
-Answers questions before they have been completely asked
-Has trouble or awaiting turn
-Interrupts or intrudes on others

* Begins before age 7.

* Symptoms must be present in at least 2 types of situations, such as school, work, home.

* The disorder impairs school, social or occupational functioning.

* The symptoms do not occur solely during a Pervasive Developmental Disorder or any psychotic disorder including Schizophrenia.

* The symptoms are not explained better by a Mood, Anxiety, Dissociative or Personality Disorder.

Code Number is based on the symptoms during the past 6 months:

314.00 Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Predominantly Inattentive Type. The patient has recently met the criteria for inattention but not for hyperactivity-impulsivity.

314.01 Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsive Type. The patient has recently met the criteria for hyperactivity-impulsivity but not for inattention.

314.01 Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Combined Type. The patient has recently met the criteria for both inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity. (Most ADHD children have symptoms of the Combined Type.)

Specify "In Partial Remission" for patients (especially adults or adolescents) whose current symptoms do not fulfill the criteria.

Re:a MUSICAL exercise and a question about ADHD

[Sixty4Bit]

I felt the same way as you regarding ADD. It doesn't really exist. As a matter of fact, I had the exact same argument: How can you not be able to accomplish something at school or work, yet play games into the middle of the night with unbreakable concentration?

Games are short term goals. The longest games last an hour or two at most. And even then, there are even shorter term goals within a single game. One could argue that FPS games have the shortest term goals of any game out there. Every second that you haven't been killed, you have reached a goal. If you happen to kill a person AND not get killed, you get two goals in one second! But I digress.

Work, on the other hand, often requires longer term goals. You have to spend many hours dedicated to one task to achieve a goal. One trick is to break that long term goal into several short term goals. Another trick is to take goals off of your task list. This is the one that I needed to do. I was getting so upset with myself for not working, when I thought I should be that it caused many internal problems. You have to know when to play and when to work. You must make it OK to enjoy life a little. I would always feel guilty about playing until I decided that it was OK to play online for a couple of hours.

The problem is not just one little thing that can be fixed with a pill. It takes training and self discipline... and a pill. For over 20 years I tried to convince myself that I did not have ADD, that I was just lazy. I joined the U.S. Navy to prove it to myself. Guess what? I have ADD. I need a pill to help my brain concentrate on one thing at a time. I sought help from a counselor, who then sent me to see a psychiatrist for one reason, and one reason only; to get a prescription for my ADD. You see, I am a smart guy, I have drive and determination, I am good at video games, but no matter how much I wanted it, or how much I tried, I could not stay focused on a single task for any length of time. I walked into the psychiatrist's office and we started chatting. Within 10 minutes she tells me that she knows what my problem is and has only one question to ask. She asked me, "So, how much coffee do you drink a day?" "Well, I don't drink coffee, I drink Dr. Pepper. And I drink about 3 liters a day."

Come to find out, caffeine has the same effect on the brain as Ritalin. There are actually about 7 different types of ADD, each with a different symptoms and treatments. The severe cases require Ritalin. Mild cases require exercise and counseling. I fall somewhere in the middle and take a different kind of medication. I am down to 1 liter of Dr. Pepper and two pills a day :) I will be on the two pills for the rest of my life. Which really stinks, but I am up for promotion, so I guess it doesn't stink to bad.

My advice, don't waste your life fighting a losing battle. Go see a counselor and find out how to fight your particular problem. I didn't want to admit to myself that I had ADD and it cost me some of the best years of my life.

Re:a MUSICAL exercise and a question about ADHD

[Omestes]

I am a psych major, but I have to agree that ADHD is for the most part a scapegoat, I was diagnosed with it as a kid, but could sit on a computer, or infront of a book for 8 hours, oblivious to the rest of the world. So I'm guessing that I had the old cliche "not challenged enough" disorder instead. Yes, I'd say ADHD is something to label hard to handle kids, a nice diagnosis that allows them to be drugged into passivity for the benefit of over taxed teachers.

But, in my experience in clinics, and with some "problem children" ADHD is also a very real illness. Some children DO have it, and you can tell easily which ones have the label for convenience, and which one actually suffer. So you can't completely dismiss the disorder just because it has been misdiagnosed a signifigant number of times. Also in kids with severe ADHD you can see abnormality in MRIs and brain scans, so their is an undeniable physiological component, and a measurable chemical component to the real disorder.

I'd say that under 50% of the current crop of ADHD kids actually have a disorder, and the rest of them are just normal (or brighter than normal) kids who are bored or overly inquisitive.

With that out of the way, I'd say that under 50% of the current kids with REAL ADHD actually need drugs to control it, teaching self-discipline using coginitive conditioning works very well, and benefits them throughout their life, even when they "out-grow" ADHD. Sometimes drugs might be needed to stabalize them to the point where therapy is possible, but should not be continued past active therapy. Ridalin is not a panacea.

This really isn't the psychologist fault (some of it is), but the school systems. My parents were threatened with my expulsion if I wasn't doped up. The amount of pressure put forth by the schools is ultimately to blaim for this epidemic of ADHD cases. That and it enter the pop-psych movement, and the national psyche, making it a convenient scape-goat for the lack of self-discipline.

I can't find a link to an online DSM (the American Psychiatric Associations Diagnostic Criteria Manual) but it is a recognized psychiatric disorder. I have a physical copy, but no online copy, sorry. Do a search in google for "DSM online ADHD" and you can see that it IS officially recognized.

Set smaller goals

[Gudlyf]

"... reducing it to a manageable size..."

My wife has worked with ADHD kids and tells me this is the best thing she's seen to focus and motivate them to produce (other than intrisic motivation, which is of course the best motivator, but this technique does lead to intrisic motivation).

Think about what you should be able to accomplish in 15 minutes. Set an egg-timer for 15 minutes, and do that task you visualized. You can eventually work up to larger increments. You'll probably find yourself beating the timer in some cases.

I know it sounds simplistic, but knowing that pressure seems to be a large motivator for you, the motivation of knowing that bell is going to go off sounds like it might do the trick. This stuff works on adults as well as children. In my wife's experience, it's never failed her (with her students).

Re:Set smaller goals

[customizedmischief]

I have severe ADD and a job that requires me to work independantly and get stuff done. I have been using an egg-timer that I have modified (busted) so that it is too quiet for my coworkers to hear outside of my cube. This keeps the lynch mobs at bay.

I keep a list right next to the timer and when something comes up that needs doing but isn't what is at the top of my list (a distraction), I write it down on the list. Since the egg timer interrupts me every few minutes, I don't find myself pissing away as much time when I do get distrsacted.

Another reason my mind wanders is boredom. I always make sure I switch tasks when the timer rings if I can switch and come back later without losing my place in what I was doing. That way, I am always doing something new and I don't just give up and go read slashdot.

This also helps with procrastination. I find it easier to start on even the most odious tasks if I know that in 10 minutes, I can put it down for a bit and catch up on my email.

Re:Set smaller goals

[some damn guy]

Since I've ADD, I think I've gotten to be an expert on motivation without really trying. I'd obsess over it. But so often I'd feel bad because it was so easy to forget all my plans and just do whatever.

The right motivation definitely made all the difference for me. It was about my values when it worked . I just had to decide the value of the kinds of things i found myself doing. When I started realizing all the missed oportunities I was creating by bouncing from thing to thing it straightened me out a bit. It was too easy to spend all afternoon playing quake (I didnt have the attention span for command and conquer :) )or whatever instead of doing homework... but when I realized what those activities were costing me in terms of missed opportunity it stuck with me more, not just with school but also with 'fun' stuff. It was much more rewarding for me to have a hobby than a tv or computer game habit.

That being said, medication helps. You might be hesitant to use amphetamines but I feel far more focused than if i had a cup of coffee. In fact, the coffee sometimes hurts more than it helps. There's two parts to it, which im sure healthy people feel to a lesser degree too- part one is getting excited enough to do anything other than space out(caffine helps) but part two is actually getting something done efficiently- i.e. reading a book and not having my eye bounce from paragraph to paragraph or skip around like crazy (caffine doesn't help much at all.) When i read for fun I'd almost never be able to read a book from begining to end. I'd hop around until the whole thing got read. Needless to say, I didnt read much fiction.

To the guy asking the question, theres only one guaranteed way to focus on college that I know of, and I've tried a lot of different things. Quit right now and get a job (probably a lousy one, but not for a lack of trying). Pay all of your own bills. Work 40 a week and try to be independant. Don't take any help from your parents. Just try it. Work retail or landscaping or something entry level. Try to picture your future. It will suck. If you were having problems deciding what you wanted to go into, you'll have less. You'll get the old-man-now-what-the-hell-did-i-do-with-my-life-sy ndrome at 19. It's priceless. You'll want out of such a crappy life and you'll learn whats important- you'll think a lot less of playing quake instead of studying.

It will light a fire under you. Look around in class and look whos always there, sitting in the front, arriving early and taking immaculate notes. You'll see a lot of thirty somethings and first-generation students, at least if you go to the right kind of school. You might have lived a comfortable middle-class existence up till now and you want to keep living it. Nothing wrong with that, but you can't forever, and some people never get a chance at all. The only risk is you'll never go back to school if you quit. Just make sure you have a plan for going back...loans whatever, savings. When you pay for it yourself you'll do better too.

Basically, life doesn't suck enough, or you haven't found a passion. It makes all the difference in the world. No mind tricks, just a nice reality check. You don't get a second chance at life so you better start deciding how to live it.

It's the only real thing that ever worked for me (my life sucking).

I'll go with "A", for "Accountability"

[LiberalApplication]

I was a terrible procrastinator in college as well. I could ace exams if I studied, but it was just absolutely awful trying to manage my time.

a. social proof, i.e. studying with a bunch of people

I personally found this to be very helpful. I used to study by myself, but I never managed very high productivity levels, and half the time, I'd wind up quitting half-way to go home and watch TV. What I wound up doing was just introducing myself to random people in my classes who seemed like I'd get along with them, and who seemed like they would be willing to work hard.

We arranged tri-weekly study sessions, where we'd go over the class notes to get a better grip on what the lunatic Russian algorithmatician was talking about, and then tackle the homework.

Now the reason this helps, is that it creates accountability. Letting yourself down is much easier than letting someone else down. If you're studying alone and you ditch to go play Warcraft, you don't feel so bad. On the other hand, if you know two other people are sitting there, expecting you to participate, it's much, much, much harder to just take off for frivolous reasons (and in college, there are millions of frivolous reasons to give up in the middle of a problem set). Similarly, the time spent is more productive (usually), because you're not as likely to sit there and pick your belly button if someone is sitting across from you, working with you, periodically looking at you, and asking questions.

Questions. Those are important too. Discussion and dialogue are great hooks for keeping your mind on the task at hand. There were plenty of times when noone in the group had any idea what the correct interpretations of our professor's babblings were. We were dumbfounded at some of the things he said, and joked about it, but that's the point. Had I been by myself, I would have dropped that subject, and moved on to the next line in my class-notes. To this end, I think it's a good idea to try and find people who are approximately about as smart as you are. People who are significantly smarter are not likely to want to spend as much time as you would want in study sessions (a generalization, but I did notice that on the occasions when someone much brighter joined the group, they'd take off early). Similarly, keep stupid folks out of the group, because they will hold you back, lingering at length on concepts you don't feel like you need to spend time on. Unless they're hot, in which case, you make sure you grab that back room in the library and stay there all damn night until she can speak in binary.

...and after all that, years and years after graduating from college, I was finally diagnosed with adult ADD. Hah!

THE IRONY

[Rylfaeth]

I LOVE the fact that I'm sitting here procrastinating by reading an article about overcoming procrastination by way of anecdotal evidence. Seriously, at what point in human evolution did life become this easy?
-Rylfaeth

Re-evaluate your career path?

[auferstehung]

You might re-evaluate whether the area you are working/studying is really something that you enjoy doing. It sounds like you may not be.

Granted, there will always be days where what you are doing seems like drudgery. But, if it is chronic, you might just be struggling down the wrong career path. Better to adjust your course now while you are still in college than suddenly realise while sitting in your cubicle 15 years from now that you really wished you had become a vetrinarian (or lawyer, or MBA, or plumber or whatever).

My experience has been that if I'm doing something I enjoy, productivity flows effortlessly.

What you are doing is not necessarily bad...

[Grieveq]

As an electrical engineering student, this happens to me -- everyday. Despite what everyone is saying here, there is just no way to avoid it if you are in a demanding major. The web and tv are "escapism" proxies. You just have to weave them into your lifestyle to benefit you instead of having them hurt you.

My advice to manage:
1) Set your life full of as many deadlines as you can handle. As an undergrad I am a teaching assistant, take grad classes, work in the robotics research lab on a group project, and explore new things I'm interested in (Linux, Computer Vision, and Robotics). Needless to say, I don't get home until Dinner. With constant deadlines, you will always be on your toes -- and that is a good thing. Nothing brings out the creative juices like a deadline.
2) Leave the TV ON during your favorite shows and do school projects that require the use of your computer. Yes...leaving the TV on is usually a bad thing, but if you can manage these two things at once you'll be happier then sitting in front of a comp wishing you could watch your favorite show.
3) When not watching TV and just plain studying, take a break every half hour to read a website article or chat for a few mins with a friend.

So what are the downsides of this plan? You are constantly stressed with all the work that needs to be done and some of your real life relationships outside of school suffer. Is this a bad thing? Depends on what kind of person you are and what is most important to you. It's allowed me to keep a 4.0 and to compete for a spot in a top grad school. (Hopefully)

Pay attention to your procrastination

[Grabble]

Essentially, you're saying, "I don't like my behavior." But, oddly enough, it is your behavior. Maybe there's a damn good reason you keep doing what you don't consciously like. (Doesn't all behavior have some sort of purpose after all?)

Maybe your so-called unconcious mind is actually doing you a favor, outside of your awareness. Isn't that what it's supposed to do?

Try this. Fill in the blanks...

"It's a good thing I procrastinate because if I didn't ____________________________ (insert bad thing here)"

"I had no idea that behavior (doing certain tasks and not others) was actually really smart (in an overly limited scope). If I hadn't procrastinated, I wouldn't have ________________________ (insert good thing here)"

Or try this...

1. Pretend that the behavior you don't like is actually a good thing

2. Via courageous introspection, enumerate the hidden benefits of the behavior

3. Refactor the benefit: Find new, better, faster ways to acquire those same benefits, but don't interfere with other needs in your life (a job, self-expression, blah, blah)


Give yourself some credit. "Self-sabotage" is prima facie evidence of internal conflict. And this gay little process I've described is a great conflict-discovery tool.

Disconnect the Internet and Start Immediately

[facts]

I find that I worry about the work that I have to do, the thoughts bounce around in my head as soon as I get home, and I think about how I am going to do the work. Of course the work never gets done.
What works for me is being away from the computer, sitting in a room and just starting the job.

Start no matter what, don't plan it just start. You then find that it isn't as bad as you thought it was. (unless you procrastinated and its 12am with the paper due at 9am) The main thing is to stop analyzing and get to work, don't think you have a problem, few of us really have problems, the rest are just created by people who believe they have them.

Thats a time management issue

[HanzoSan]

I dont think its about time management, its about how you spend your time. You dont have to be organized, when I solve a problem I solve the complicated part first and then work on the easy part.

In school I read chapter after chapter just going right through the books staying a couple chapters ahead of the class, I then re-read or scan the chapter the test is based on and I pass the test.

Repeat that again, going chapter by chapter and then go backwards and rescan chapters when its test time but just read as much as you can at a time. Dont be precise, dont be like (I'm going to read exactly 2 chapters), instead be like (I'm going to read at LEAST 2 chapters)

Then just read until your eyes get tired, if you read 4 chapters, good, take a break; make a few posts on slashdot, play quake or some game, then open up the book again. Repeat this process for the entire day just switching from task to task, going back and forth when a task becomes so boring you cannot stand to do it anymore.

I can read for a good couple hours, maybe 3 tops, then I cant stand to turn another page and I come online. Sometimes talking to friends helps to get your mind off of it, so call a friend.

Other than that, just try to always be doing some kinda work, even when I post on slashdot I have about 5-6 webpages open where I'm doing research, I never just do a single task, when slashdot gets boring I go back to the research picking up exactly where I left off.

Re:Thats a time management issue

[CaptainAvatar]

I dont think its about time management, its about how you spend your time.

Um, yeah ... right. That makes sense.

Fullscreen!

[Aetrix]

I had problems in my humanities and anthro classes when I had to write stupid papers about stupid subjects. I think my speed and quality of writing drops 80 - 90% when I have to discuss the interrelation of "red" color symbols in some dumb book.

So here's what I would do. I would first STRETCH! I would make sure my body was awake and not tense. Then i would open the office-suite-du-jour and create two new documents. Then I would fullscreen said document editor. Now: I would start writing any old thing in document 1, hopefully getting around to discussing the paper I was goiing to write. Once I had an idea ANY IDEA I would shift+tab to document window 2 and start writing it down. When I came to a lengthy pause, I would flip back to doc 1 and write what I was thinking.

Then after a few hours, i would have one document with essetially, a dialogue of me talking to myself in plain english. In the second window, I would have more formal writing in a horrid mishmash order. I wouldn't even look at these documents. I'd save them, close them and come back after a good break (usually overnight). Then I would combine my thinking-struggles with my writing-struggles into a paper that I was assured to convey both my mental process and thoughts, as well as a structured discussion of those points.

The important lessons here:
1. KEEP TYPING. Even if you stop thinking - keep your hands moving. It keeps the momentum going.
2. FULLSCREEN - this removes all other distractions, making the only distraction to type on the junk document.

Less Is More

[Brown Line]

Oh, my - I know exactly where the inquirer is coming from. I have a full-time job, a family (five children), and I write Linux books I laughingly call my "spare time". I'm also a classic procrastinator: it's very difficult for me to get started. After years of struggling with this situation, I've found the following strategies are useful:

• Less Is More: set aside less time to get the work done. I realize this sounds counterintuitive, but I've found that if I have budgeted only one hour to work, I sit right down and work straight through and get a lot done. If I budget four hours, inevitably I'll blow three of them web surfing or some other such nonsensen.
• Organize Well: Break your work down into chunks each of which you can manage in a single session. This will require you to spend more time outlining and organizing than you may like, but in the long run that will actually save you time.
• Budget Off Days: Purposely budget days off into your schedule. This will let you relax without feeling guilty; and you'll return to your work refreshed and ready to go.
• Just Write One Sentence: If I'm feeling especially glum about the work, I'll make a deal with myself - just write one sentence. That small amount gets me going; and of course, when the sentence is written, I'm off and running.

This is a problem you'll be facing all your life; but good planning will help you to be highly productive. Good luck!

A small but useful technique

[SnappingTurtle]

My greatest challenge is simply knowing what to do right now. Incredible as it may seem, I can spend hours going through the cycle of forgetting what I'm doing, working to remember, then forgetting again.

Here's a technique that helps me immensely: I keep a small slip of paper and a pen in front of me. I write down the one thing I am supposed to be working on and keep it in front of me. It can be even a very small task like "open project file" which only takes a few seconds. If I keep writing down the next step, then doing it, after a few minutes I "get into the groove" and proceed on automatic pilot without the help of the paper aid.

caffene is bad

[HelloKitty]

I agree with the parent post about caffene is bad. I had the same prob as you and kept trying to be more alert/motiviated with caffene, it turned out to make me feel vacant and not as sharp, and then get headaches which totally killed my thinking.

caffene is bad, just stop it now. :)

Other things to try is the ADHD drugs. cylert was super effective for me, but I only tried for a year when classes were hard and non-interesting. I used to be easily distracted, but while taking that medication, I could sit down, do the work, and finish. One task after another. It was nice. I have mild ADHD though, even ADHD varies between people so your milage may vary.

It's like a blog...

[CGP314]

The only way I have found to be really, truly effective, is to keep a daily log of my activities. And be brutally honest. If you sit down to write a paper, but don't, you write 4:30 - 6:15 Slashdot. Not paper. For me, having to write down that I was goofing off motivates me to Get Work Done.

I was in the exact same situation

[x102output]

Hey Cliff, I was in the EXACT same situation you were in....EXACT. and if anyone tells you to have more discipline....hearing that over and over is just going to make you feel even worse about yourself, because if you were like me, locking yourself inself in a room with no distrasctions whatsoever led you to daydreaming over your homework. last year, my freshmen year of college, my one friend from down the hall in my dorm gave me a pill of Adderall (he's prescribed it for ADD, so....no he's not a crazy amphetamine drug dealer). now, keep in mind, this drug is WIDELY abused among my age group, and people take it to stay up for days, and to get total energy highs off of it. you see, for people who don't have ADD, it pretty much acts like speed.....it is a stimulent. but for people with ADD, stimulents have a somewhat reverse response on the body....they slow it down. (this is why caffiene never kept me up or did anything for me). When I took this pill.....it totally opened my eyes to the fact that I may have had ADD. I wasn't hyper or crazy or anything as most kids got on it. I totally chilled out at my desk, was able to focus on ANYTHING. I wrote like 4 huge papers thats night, and totally forgot to look at the clock-in-the-corner of my screen while I was so in tune with what I was doing. Every minute went by I got so much work done, and wrote my best paper that whole school year. this night prompted me to go see a psychologist and see if I had ADD. well sure enough, I was diagnosed with ADD (with like a 80% above the median line or something like that). I was on a couple of drugs that didn't work till they found that adderall worked best for me. Now my grades have improved dramatically and I get so much work done. and when I'm done with my school work, the adderall makes me EVEN more into computers and coding. Not that I'm all about drugs here....in fact I've been against this for quite some time. But...it's really working out and my lifestyle has improved because of it. cheers matt

Lots of stuff.

[seebs]

1. Quit caffeine.
2. Organize. Get a feel for what the components of a job are.
3. Every time you notice that you have become distracted, stop and go back to what you were doing.

Every.

Time.

It takes a while to get the hang of working straight-through, but it can be done. It's experience, training, and maturity that make the most difference.

Could medication help? Maybe. However, for years, people were telling me I needed treatment for ADD, and I've gotten better. I'm still twitchy, I'm still easily-distracted, but I'm doing just fine now, because I've learned to adapt.

when all else fails, switch tactics

[gronkulator]

i know the feeling. it's sort of frustrating to be able to do something, have the knowlege of your capacity, yet still when the time comes, there's always that next website to check up on or that last level to conquer. I can only offer a few general tactics:

1. set aside time for work. this can be on the order of hours per day, or days per week, depending on your comfort level. do not be overly ambbitious with setting aside too much time, you may procrastinate to fill the time available.
2. separate work areas from relaxation/play areas. this is critical for creating a setting conducive to working. if at all possible, make it somewhere you do not sleep/eat/watch tv(porn)/game/etc.
3. if possible, use separate computers for work/play. an old 120mhz beater is enough to run office 95 and netscape 3.0 or something equivalent.
4. disconnect everything (tv, cell, internet, etc) while working whenever possible.
5. If you find yourself avoiding work because it is giving you anxiety/you feel overwhelmed/can't concentrate because you are constantly worrying about stuff, and it doesn't let up, seek the help of a physician or psychiatrist. that could be depression or an anxiety disorder.
   
6. following from above, if the depression or anxiety is significantly impacting your ability to function, you may want to consider meds or psychotherapy. it may seem like an extreme solution, but that's just not true. it's a highly effective solution that may allow you to shelve your concentration/focus problems and actually get work done without creating other problems in the form of extended deadlines/late nite cram sessions/etc. it also allows you do do a little introspection in to the underlying issues that create these situations. it may even enable an ah-ha moment.
7. following from above - i know this might be flame bait, but stay away from paxil. withdrawal is a bitch.
   

hth

An easier solution

[commodoresloat]

Stop posting to slashdot asking why you aren't getting work done.

Re:An easier solution

[BrokenHalo]

I know that's funny, but it's also true. I find I can waste an awful lot of time reading and posting on Slashdot when I could and should be doing something more productive.

I think it's called procrastination, and I guess the original poster might want to ask himself *why* he's putting off work. If he is procrastinating, maybe he should take a look at his motivation.

For instance, did he choose his course of study, or was that done for him? Or maybe he might want to consider deferring university study for a year or two, go and do something else (not sit at home reading Slashdot) then go back to Uni when he's more committed.

Re:An easier solution

[mike77]

on the procrastination side. I had the same problem. Well instead of fighting it, I went with it. I knew I would procrastinate, I expected it, and I planned for it.

I wouldn't sit down to do the work, until I started getting worried about finnishing it. Yeah, I had many late nights, but instead of wasting my time the other nights I would do what I wanted to do (go out, watch tv, sleep, etc)

Now this may seem a bad attitude on it, but it worked for me. Instead of trying to work around my "preferred" system of getting work done, I just worked with it. Realize you're gonna be a slacker/procrasitinate, and plan accordingly.

and use some of that extra time you gain to catch up on the sleep ya lost!

I doubt if anyone will ever see this comment...

[gadders]

But I found the articles here http://www.dexterity.com/articles/ of great use, and they are written by a fello techy.

Re:People are the cause of all loss of concentrati

[backdoorstudent]

Damn! You're on your way to either a Nobel prize, or violent mental breakdown. In either case don't you think your solution is a bit too sociopathic?

best way to stop addictive web browsing...

[PickaBooga]

...build a negative mental association with web browsing...
... make SCO's web page your home page.

You will begin to associate web browsing with feelings of agonizing fury and dull throbbing pain between the temples.

For an instant shock therapy, make your desktop background a plot of SCO's inexplicably skyrocketing stock price...

Sit at your desk for a set period each day...

[Simon Brooke]

... and do nothing else but work.

Which isn't to say you have to work. Just, if you don't work, just sit there. Do not read slashdot. Do not read Usenet. Do not browse the web. Do not pick your nose. Do not look out of your window. Just sit.

You'll soon get so bored you'd rather work.

This may sound crazy, but it works for me and has got me out of some very blocked spots.

Vitamins...

[peachykonan]

A lot of people have already commented on the benefits of exercise and better ways to approach what seems to be an impossible task. I'll try move on and discuss a short bit on proper eating, how it impacts exercise, and vitamins. 1) Stay away from eating junk food and easy snacks. Treat your body right. In 1st and 2nd year, I was so depressed I was kicked out of University after my first year of engineering because I couldn't get myself to study. There were too many distractions, and every time I tried to focus, I just wanted to do something, anything else. In addition to this mental desire, I had this physical feeling; an autonomic nervous system 'fight or flight' response that made me just uncomfortable trying to sit still. I dealt with this using exercise and proper nutrition. Knowing how to control and deal with my body helped me eliminate this issue. If you've never ever experienced the after-workout effect of endorphins, let me tell you, studying during this period is incredibly easy. Today, I'm healthy, fit, have a CS degree, and getting a salary. 2) Don't take vitamins for granted. Although I've been reading that new studies (can't remember the reference, sorry - do a google search) indicate that regular multi-vitamins may actually be slightly BAD for your health, what I'm about to suggest is a simple B vitamin complex. For people with depression or anxiety issues, this is a god-send. Read articles/books on this vitamins, this stuff *matters*. If you don't want to do any work, just grab a stress-relief vitamin. They're pretty costly, but they're primarily just a composite of b-complex and E + misc. I sincerely hope that the above two are helpful in some way. University is meant to be challenging, so thoughts about having ADD is not unusual... Most of my friends thought they had it too.

Fixed intervals

[djmitche]

My girlfriend learned this at a thesis-writing seminar, and it's worked wonders for me. I work on each task for a specific, short length of time (30 minutes for most, but you may be more comfortable with another length). This applies for everything from open-source programming to household cleaning.

This system has several advantages. First, I'm never faced with an insurmountable task. When I began, my house was very cluttered, and it was hard to get excited about cleaning it. But it's not so hard to think "I'll just clean the living room for 30 minutes and I'll be done and on to something else". Second, for thinking tasks (like coding), the fixed time means I don't stop "between thoughts" on a project. When the time is up for a task, I stop right where I am, even in mid-sentence or mid-expression. The anticipation this creates keeps each task fresh in my mind, so I can pick up at full speed the next time I begin that task.

some concrete mechanisms for that

[ChrisCampbell47]

Quoting the esteemed Mr. Cox:

If I think of something else that needs doing I write it down, I don't start doing it disrupting the current task

Get a tiny voice recorder. Not the 60+ minute digital dictation things, just a little one that captures 30-90 seconds of voice. I bought my first one of this VoiceIt model for $40 7 years ago and it changed my life. I never EVER forget anything now (which has it's own problems :) because I can just dictate it into the voice thingy and transcribe it into the PDA/whatever later. If you rely on scribbling it down, you'll often fail right from the start because A) you'll forget before you get a slip of paper and pen, or B) writing isn't an option -- like when you're in traffic, mowing the lawn, etc.

It's critical that it be small enough (credit card sized) that you just carry it in your pocket everywhere, not just when you think you might have some bright ideas ...

Cell phones these days often come with a voice memo function, but that solution is often lacking due to A) size of cell phone and B) they won't store more than 5 discrete memos. I frequently have 10 piled up in my VoiceIt before I have a chance to sit down and transcribe into my PDA.

Remember you can read your email just once or twice a day. Ditto web news sites/slashdot

One way to effect this is to turn OFF automatic retreival of your email from your mail server. When you're ready to spend 15 minutes on reading and replying to emails, hit the "fetch" button. Auto-retrieval just breaks your concentration every five minutes.

And, finally, cable TV is evil. Cancel it.

Notes from a work-at-home dad and bad student

[benwaggoner]

Amen, brother.

Back when I was a single guy with my parents paying for everything, it was about all I could do to turn in enough work to keep going reasonably well in school. Friends, Harpoon 1, Tetris, doing layout on the school paper, email, obsessing on girls, and straight up writers block often left me rather paralyzed. For stuff I was excited about, I could do good work. Otherwise, it was mostly late and lousy.

Fortunately, I went to a school (Hampshire College) which was very project based, with written evaluations and no tests. So for those four years, I really had to shape up. No coasting through on multiple choice skills, I had to WRITE. And the written evaluations were profoundly more effective than a grade. I remember Eqbal Amahd's "Waggoner shows insight, occasional brilliance, and a certain sloth" better than I ever would have a "C+"

Skip forward a decade or so, and now I'm a father of a 16 month old and a 3.5 year old, and work out of the home doing freelance writing and consulting. In many ways, this should be a nightmare of distractions, but I'm actually more productive than ever before. In the last two years, I've done a lot of consulting for companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Sorenson Media, Getty Images, The Associated Press, The Criterion Collection.

Some tips:

Don't be paralyzed during the first draft. If you're writing, it doesn't have to be perfect the first draft. Just WRITE for a while, and let it take the shape it's going to have. It's much better to write a first draft that you have to throw out entirely than to sit there without writing anything.

Don't sign on to projects you're not excited about. One reason I do well on the consulting and services side is that I only sign on for projects I'm really enthused about. I get pretty enthusiastic, as anyone who has seen any of my presentations knows. But stuff that bores me, bores me, and won't get my best attention. I never offer to do boring stuff for money (one of the better parts of being freelance).

Quit when you're too tired to work well. This was a hard-earned lesson when my daughter was born before my book was done. I spent hours trying to get stuff done, but too tired to work well, when I should have been asleep so I could work well the next day. All nighters rapidly become self defeating.

Cash the advance check. If it's important you get something done, don't leave a way to back out of it. Make completing it your only option. The specter of hideous failure is a great stimulant.

Do what floats your boat at the moment. Turn having multiple commitments into a strength instead of a weakness. When you get bored on your current task or project, switch to something else you aren't stuck on. It's all about finding SOMETHING you can make forward progress on at any given time.

Use, don't abuse deadlines. I pride myself on hitting all my deadlines. But I rarely have stuff done much before the deadlines. The key is having a good idea how long things take, appropriately padded for worst cases. Always leave enough time to do the job well.

Turn off the email. I get a lot of my best work done on the first class cabin on Alaska Airlines 737's. Why? No email, no wife, no kids. Just me, the headphones, and a PowerBook. The email is probably the biggest part. It's really hard for me to not check it when I get that beep, and it definitely throws off my thinking. So I quit Entourage when I'm working well. This goes for Slashdot too.

Need to do it. In school, it's hard to escape the fact that what you do doesn't really matter all that much. It's not like the teacher's job depends on you figuring out some new insights. So, find a question you feel you need to answer. This is easier in the real world. Mortgages and bills have a profound way of focusing your attention!

Perfectionism

[Froggy]

When I was first at Uni, I used to have a lot of trouble starting anything. If I actually got started, I'd usually do pretty well, but I had so much trouble starting that I usually wound up pulling all-nighters, beginning so late I couldn't finish or proof what I'd done, or just pretending the homework didn't exist. Finally, after a pretty disastrous second year, I dropped out and got a job. This was in 1987.

In 1994 I came back to Uni as a part-time student, after seven years as a junior public servant. Much to my surprise, I handed pretty much everything in on time. In first year I got almost straight High Distinctions without really raising a sweat! I did well enough in my degree course that I'm now planning to begin a PhD in 2004.

So what happened in the meantime? I guess the main difference is that, after spending seven years in a job I couldn't give a stuff about, I lost the mental habit of tying my self-esteem so closely to the quality of my work. At Uni I had been so afraid of not excelling that I couldn't bear to start, especially because, for the first time, I was now finding the work difficult. I suspect that many Slashdotters will have had similar experiences, being almost completely unchallenged by their lowest-common-denominator secondary education and then hitting a brick wall in their tertiary study.

I was a fat, plain chick with buck teeth and glasses the first time round, but I'd always done well at school. I felt I had nothing else to hang my self-esteem on. The second time around I still looked about the same, but I'd gotten over the high-school programming that told me that I was primarily to be valued by my appearance (and, furthermore, that it was sensible to judge my own appearance on the basis of what some know-nothing moccie-wearing outer-suburban yobboes said about it!)

I guess the take-home lesson is that sometimes your psychological need for success is so strong that it stops you succeeding. If this happens to you, it can help to find something other than academic perfection to tie your self-esteem to -- perhaps sport or fitness, or a good relationship. (Seven years in the Public Service is also an option, but not one I recommend.)

Office Spaces says it all

[hayden]

"It's not that I'm lazy. It's that I just don't care." -- Peter Gibbons

i had the same problem

[laemas]

i had the same problem at uni , i figured it out during my last year.
wrt assignments , i found the sooner i started them the better the result , so on the same day as i got the assignment , i would start , knowing that i am only going to do 1/2 - 1 hour work on it. Then do 1/2 - 1 hour the next day , and so on. 1/2 - 1 hour isnt a long time so you dopnt procrastinate , and it gets you into the assignments groove (for lack of a better word). Befor i was doing all nighters , and procrastiniting till 11 pm!!! when the assignment was due the next day :) Just do little bits at a time , i garrantee you produce better results....

(garrantee will not be honored)

Read Mel Levine

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd recommend getting a copy of Mel Levine's "The Myth of Laziness" and/or "A Mind at a Time" and reading them for suggestions.

"The Myth of Laziness" is specifically about "output failure", the situation where someone learns much better than they produce. It analyzes 8 different contributors to output failure: language dysfunction, impoverished ideation, ineffective motor output, insufficient memory, weak production control, insatiability and/or social distractibility, low mental energy, and disorganization. Everyone has a different profile in these areas. It's important to identify the bottlenecks for a given individual and work out coping strategies that deal with the specific problem.

"A Mind at a Time" is more oriented towards K-12 education (although a lot of it applies to the adults I work with ;). It looks at neurodevelopmental profiles in terms of attention control, memory, language, spatial and sequential ordering, motor systems, higher thinking systems, and social thinking systems. Each of these systems has several subsystems. For example, memory has short term memory (how many numbers can I remember), active working memory (how deep is my task stack), and long term memory (how much C++ or Perl syntax can I remember). Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses in all these areas. It's not unusual to find a person performing well overall who has a few specific stumbling blocks. The important thing is to identify which areas are weak and work on those areas instead of saying things like "if only he'd apply himself".

My wife introduced me to these books. She works in special ed at a junior high school. When she was reading them, the cases from the books kept bringing back specific kids and situations from the previous school year. I work at an engineering company, and the descriptions of attention and social disorders ring a lot of bells. We're all dealt a mixed hand. The key is to recognize and exploit our strengths and to find ways to cope with our weaknesses.

Good luck

Get yourself a kitchen timer...

[jonadab]

Get yourself a little timer. Set it for fifteen minutes and
discipline yourself to work the entire fifteen minutes. You
can take a short break then, but after a few moments you have
to make yourself set the timer and work again. If your short
breaks get to be too long, time them too.

Trying to work hour after hour on something that doesn't really
capture your mind is very hard work. It can be done, but it
requires a great deal of mental discipline. Most people won't
do it. But if you can get five fifteen-minute sessions every
two hours, that will add up to something. Most people can make
themselves work for fifteen minutes at a time on something if
they have a motivation to accomplish it, even if it isn't fun.

Clear your mind and find the joy in your work

[puiwah]

Canuck, I've been in a similar situation to you.
I think the causes are two-fold. Firstly your mind probably isn't functioning as well as it could be. Try reading, meditation, yoga - something to refresh your mind and perhaps bring some inspiration or motivation back into your work. Second, think about your work and what originally motivated you to start it in the first place. Presumably you came up with the idea or design for the game in the first place, so there must have been something personally driving you there. Recapture that mindset and, like some other posters have said, make some initial small steps toward improving the project.

It's easy.

[mcp33p4n75]

cat >> /etc/hosts.deny slashdot.org ^D

location, location, location

[Gunark]

Keep your place of work and your place of rest seperate. The whole "home office" thing is a horrible, horrible idea. Same goes for studying at home.

There was a time when I was able to get a lot done at home... but before long my brain learned to associate my living room-slash-office with relaxation and fun. It works the other way too -- the stress of doing stuff you'd rather not be doing gets associated with your home. As a result, I never feel quite relaxed here... there's always a sense of guilt in the back of my mind when I sit at home and do nothing.

Best advice I can give you --- find a nice spot in the library and always study there. Never bring your work and study back home.

One Word...

[GamezCore.com]

BEER.

OK, well I can speak from experience that I do my finest work under pressure. I've tried this non-procrastination route you speak of, and it hasn't gotten me anywhere. Some people work better when the heat is turned up.

Seriously I think it is just hard-wired into our psyche. As computer geeks, our minds are working on many levels all the time... multi-tasking if you will. This constant flow of information, and the pursuit of more, leads to this hyper ADHD type personality. It's always been that way, and I don't think it is going to change any time soon. Just face the music, you've become one of us.

Man, What great responses!

[RandyF]

There are times that I have been truly disappointed with the /. crowd. This is not one of those times. You go geeks! :-)

I have had the same problem as you. sometimes worse than others. Typically, the worst times comes when I get some serious burnout. During those times, I can't even read a paragraph and comprehend what I'm reading, but that was an extremely serious burnout.

Often, it's simply a case of 1) really believing in what you are working on, and 2) embracing the task before you to the exclusion of all others.

Many ADD/ADHD and related sufferers have a related "skill" that, unless recognized, is often unutilized. I call it hyper-focus. It is the ability to get so drawn into a situation as to be totally absorbed. Easy examples are TV, games, and the internet. These are passive hyper-focus subjects. Reading is another, less passive one. I have found, through careful practice that this same "skill" can actually be trained as an active skill. Instead of absorbing material, absorb a concept or task with and equal zeal, to the absolute exclusion of all other conscious thought.

It takes practice, but is somewhat like learning how to break over into your second wind as a jogger. If you're not familiar with that, it's the point where you are sooooo wiped that your body tells you you can't go another step but you push until your body just say, "ok, whatever" and it feels like you could run all day. It's a very cool thing. What was pain only moments ago now feels exhilerating and refreshing.

Breaking over into active hyper-focus has a similar mental exhileration. Once you find your zone it will be hard to break out of it. You will find yourself accomplishing incredible things.

When you do this, though, make sure you do it in a disciplined way or you will face some serious burnout. Don't do serious mental work more than five or six day a week. Force yourself to rest an entire day from any mental excercise. Also don't regularly work your brain that hard for more than 10 hours a day. It becomes addictive and like any other addiction, it will eat you for lunch.

I know. I burned myself out so bad once that I couldn't do any serious mental work for over a year. I had to maintain only, and that, not effectively. I nearly lost my job, etc., etc...

• Diligence
• Discipline
• Priorities
• Rest
• Intentional, but limited recreation. (don't let the modern work/play ethic pull you into the "recreation is life" mentality.)

Intentionally play, just do it with moderation so that you can focus on the joys of accomplishment and fullfilment in your work as well. Work is a part of life. It can be quite fulfilling if it is balanced with rest, contemplation, play, and relationship. Balance your life. If one part starts to take over, make youself adjust it.

Hope this helps....

Feel free to contact me if you need some practical day-to-day help on this. It's a process, not a quick fix. Life always is...

...and of course decaf coffee is carcinogenic...

[leonbrooks]

...on account of the processors not being able to get all of the hexane [3rd par] back out again [2nd par].

Wife,

[Vaughn Anderson]

Get married, you won't have trouble getting work done the rest of your life.

This may sound like a joke at first, but I am serious, having a wife around will eventually lead to kids and a person that will always expect more out of you than you feel like giving, eventually you just end of up changing out of your wife's sheer will.

Again, this may sound like a joke, but having mouths to feed makes you the best worker in the world. I was making minimum wage when I had my first child, and it got me to see college as something serious.

Then, while in college, I was the only one in 40 people in my group that took everything seriously, I had an internship my second semester, I took summer classes, I worked all night at learning to code and design, I got hired half way through school, my last year of school I started freelancing, now (aside from time spent on slashdot and reading news) am quite productive on a daily basis and have a growing business.

The real secret is being able to take the future seriously. First you take the first month seriously, as that is when rent is due, then you take a year seriously as you deal with taxes and find out how much you've made (or didn't make). Then you realize, "I am going to be 80 years old some day"

When you finally see that you will be 80, then you take your health seriously. Visit some old folks that are in constant pain, I have, they all wish they had taken better care of themselves. ( for a geek, it means stretching, good posture, no caffine and exercise).

When you really, really truly believe that your every day actions have a long term effect, then a light blinks on you and you see that the few extra hours you spent coding instead of surfing (there is a thing called information addiction...) actually do move you forward in life. And that the few hours you wasted, move you backwards.

Debt makes you realize this as well. I have business debt, my first year was not profitable at all, I spend $50 a month in interest on it, it will be paid off in 2 years, but now I see that $50 a month is $600 a year, and if I had saved that starting 20 years ago (at the age of 8) I would have $12,000 + interest in the bank, and that would have gotten me through the lean times in my business.

A real important lesson to learn is by accepting wise advice as much as you would experience. Experience is a bad way to learn. For example, an old man that has chronic back pain told me to take care of my back because "you don't want to have pain like I have" Well, if I didn't change my life around every day, without having the experince of pain pushing me to make those small decisions easier, then I will end up where he was, and feel like a total fool for it when it happens.

Just take a current or past experience of how you wasted your time and didn't apply your self, and extend it into the future. Then you will see where your failure to work will lead you.

I hope the best for you, I work hard, but it is always a struggle to continue working with games and news a click away. Also, 10 minutes of work is more than no work at all... do small bites at a time, don't expect the world right away, you may find that after a few small bites, you want to finish your meal.....

-v

ADD and Stupidity

[zo219]

I'm always astonished in discussions of ADD how little people know, and how much they have to say about it.

If you have a genetic or environmental cause for low reuptake of dopamine, your Exectutive Function - the name of area of the brain that, yes, instigates, organizes and executes - will be crippled. To a larger or lesser extent, but crippled nonetheless. Evidence that this is an inheritied condition was discovered at Brookhaven, only a few years ago, a glitch on one of the dopamine aelles.

It is perfectly possible to be unable to execute a single shred of all the good advice on this thread. I am hopeful of the day when psycholgy is no longer confused with functional brain conditions.

One of the most common misunderstandings about ADD comes from people who say, Hell, I'm not ADD, I can focus for hours and hours! Attention Deficit does not mean you cannot pay attention, it means that your ability to direct your own attention is not entirely volitional; your brain cannot organize itself. One is thus vulnerable to any strong pull in the environment, pleasant or un-. ADDers can hyperfocus like nobody's business - on something that interests them. And of life of endless interests minus the ability to shape and direct them is most definitely a circle of hell.

With just enough dopamine to keep distrability in check, the ability to hyperfocus can make for an Einstein, a Tolstoy; that enviable state of being in the Flow. But the Flow is yet another hell, when you can't do anything else. When your life is a combination of endless periods of Flow - and endless periods when you cannot *do* a single thing at all.

Small doses of amphetamines have the seemingly paradoxical effect of organizing the thoughts, of focusing the lens of the mind. No one can judge what it means to someone with ADD to be being able to focus at will, yet just about everybody does.

It means being able to set goals, to begin work, to end work. To accomplish what others take for granted. Which has, in other words, nothing to do with moral fibre at all.

As to those who brag about getting by on caffeine instead of those nasty drugs - sheer ignorance. Bragging about the ability to make emotional judgements when simple science stares you in the face. Coffee, for example, is a poor way to self-medicate, having detrimental affects on blood sugar and mood, to name only two. Whereas 10mg of Adderall XR provides mixed amphetatines salts. Clean dopamine.

These are not the opinions of one woman, and that is part of the point. It is simply a case of looking at things as they are.

When you peel away everything else, intelligent choices become clear.

Read Steve Pavlina

[vilbara]

Steve Pavlina has some great articles about this issue.

E.g. You have to train. Sit down and work for 30 minutes keeping in mind that you will have a reward afterwards. Reward can be anything you like - watching a movie, having a dinner, playing a game.

I tried it myself. The result is that after some time you don't have to force yourself to sit down and start working. Your mind doesn't feel big pain to work because it knows that something pleasant is waiting afterwards.

BUT, NEVER DO IT OTHER DIRECTION. If you say "now I play a game and afterwards I will start to work really hard" - you are dead. Your mind will feel the pain if you finish a game and it will resist.

Try an attitude change

[Skim123]

Fortunately I do not suffer from the same complex that you shared, so my words may be quite hallow and without use to you. I find that I am able to get my shit done; I have done well for myself, and others have noted that I am quite productive, hard-working, and studious.

The "secret" is, IMHO, to be a gratification-delayer. Psychologists some time ago did studies on young children, asking them if they'd rather have a marshmellow now, or two after some time interval. Those who could delay gratification and wait for the two marshmellows, proved to be more productive and successful adults. In fact, these researchers found, IIRC, that this ability to delay gratification had the greatest affect on a person's adult success, more so than race, religion, socio-economic background, and so on.

From your comments, it appears as if you are not one who can delay gratification. I would encourage you to change this post haste. How does one do this? That, clearly, is the 64 thousand dollar question. While I don't know what will work for you, here are some suggestions you might want to give a try:

1. Practice delaying gratification on other things. For example, imagine it's 3:00 pm and you are hungry and want a snack. Make yourself wait until dinner. Say you know that you want to watch the Simpsons tonight. Don't allow yourself to do so. Move the TV to a neighbors if you have to, but make sure you deprive yourself of this pleasure. This may sound a bit masochistic, but I think it would be a step in the right direction.
2. Setup a system of rewards for delaying your gratification. By skipping that snack, treat yourself to a nicer dinner. In foregoing the Simpsons, allow yourself an hour of playing Doom, or whatever ultraviolent computer games kids these days play. One suggestion: don't always reward yourself for your discipline. Sometimes, give no reward; other times, reward yourself. Random reinforcement does wonders better than constant reinforcement. Ask any parent or psychologist.

Do not underestimate the importance of learning how to delay gratification. It can mean the difference between a successful, happy life and one where you are constantly burdened with deadlines, financially strapped, and constantly stressed.

In any event, best of luck, and I hope you find a solution to your problem.

Henry Ford on Task Management

[talkingcat]

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs. Henry Ford

Accomplishing work...

[_Potter_PLNU_]

I've found that you have to be in the "zone" to get work done. Sometimes sitting down to do work I can get stuff done, but rarely. I find that, and I read something about it (from Slashdot I believe) that you need to get your mind working on the task without distractions to get the creative juices flowing. And as long as the train of thought is unbroken you can get a lot done. I find that caffeine, classical or techno/trance music played through headphones works good for me. Sometimes other forms of music help as long as it's not to complex because you don't want it distracting you from thinking about the task at hand.

it's really simple

[pensivemusic]

your present 'work' or 'studies' are not of interest to you. what i suggest is that you change your major or field to coincide with whatever you dream about or really enjoy. by the way, if you continue with the present focus, your imagination will be submerged even more in the years ahead. branch out and focus on what you find most attractive.... then you find happiness and will not have to force your interest.

distraction

[rkoot]

To get your attention solely at the work to be done, a few things spring into mind.
first: get rid of distraction. you said the internet was just a click away; so GET RID OF YOUR CONNECTIVITY when you need to get things done. If you use the internet for your work because you need email, restrict your connectivity to port 25.
start your day with some healthy exercising. a sound brain comes with a sound body.
Don't listen to music when at work; it'll only distract you.
Maybe you're suffering a mental disorder (lots of people do, whether they know it or not). Visit your doctor to be sure
less likely solution: Maybe some self-medication could help you too ! a collegue of me had a similar problem and solved it with amphetamin preparates (which is BAD for your health; I wouldn't recommend it to you !). But less hazardous drugs exist too ! just consult your doctor.

Troll ? Troll ? Where ? This isn't Tolkien !?!
r.

Attitude

[Duck2Man]

Exercise is good, (I run 5 miles a day). Good food is better. But the most important thing is attitude. If you are not grateful for your privilage to study then you should take a year off and work. I found I did a lot better in grad school because I was really grateful for the opportunity after working in a job I didn't like. If you don't believe me just really talk to any of the foreign students in your enviroment that had to work really hard to get to the position you are in.

Study / Talk with Someone Who Knows How

[mattr]

Okay, first off I can tell you I flunked a Chem exam ten years ago which was easy, but I decided to try programming a hypersphere into my Mac instead of studying for it. So that's not what you do.

The obvious answers of course are exercise and turning off your fucking computer or at least getting off the Net and not coming to Slashdot. Rewarding yourself etc is great. BUT in college unless you are a CS major (are you?) you don't need a computer that much.

It is much more important to get the information into your brain and integrated than to get it into your computer. And, there are very few (any?) computer-based tools which will make your life easier now. Seriously. I can say this because I powered down 25 kanji a day for 9 weeks in my off time at Middlebury college one summer and it was just pencil, paper, and a 1 cm window I tore with my fingernail. People's brains just don't need computers except to manipulate big information complexes. You don't have that problem now. Also I remember (maybe I'm just wierd) that I could usually remember what part of a page an illustration or quote was on (a biology textbook), and in that summer of learning Japanese my head got so meshed with one book (Nelson's kanji dictionary, awesome) that I would be able to somehow turn to exactly the right section I needed the first time my thumb hit the edge of the book. Try being creative. At least it will be interesting, will save your eyes, and will make sure you are only looking at things you need for your work.

I will tell you that I had a wonderful time looking for quiet places to study. I found the beautiful law school library (at Cornell), carrels (little desks) deep in library stacks, the President's library, the ABC cafe, and other quiet areas successfully.

But here is some advice that might help you even after you've gone through everything else. I once spent a few days of a summer internship with a customer who happened to be a Billionaire with a capital B. I have to tell you, it made a big impression. Just being in close proximity to someone and understanding how they think makes you sharper. In your case, find a friend who is really good at studying and ask if they can show you where to study. Or find someone in the same shoes as you are and make a deal to beat each other up to get your work done.

Anyway if anything else I recommend trying to turn off the computer and using paper and pencil/pen and other paper-based technology. Sometimes I know you just feel too energetic or too zoned out to do anything. Those times I recommend doing exercise and working up a sweat. Your body metabolism will get charged and after you cool down your brain chemistry or whatever it is will probably be more crystal clear. Or, go for a walk by yourself in the evening with your books, find somewhere you don't know, sit down and just start working. If you post more about what your work is people might have more answers for you but the best answer I think is to remove all the barriers to learning you have, including low energy/blood sugar levels, distractions, visual input, muscular aches, and so on. Oh yeah, you can also go do your laundry at a laundromat.

Some people just work that way

[fendel]

I don't think the problem here is lack of energy, but rather procrastination.

You can view procrastination as a problem, or as a difference in work style. In college, I used to write almost all my papers in the wee hours before the deadline--before that point, I couldn't get much done. But it wasn't about not enjoying the work (I did, sorta, usually) and it wasn't about fear of failure. I just couldn't get it into gear until I needed to, and then I just thrived. There was a certain euphoria in completing an A paper at 4 in the morning...

In college it's possible to just adapt to this work style. Plan on late-night work. Go out or play games if you feel like it, if you're not up against a deadline. Stop beating yourself up about it, if you can consistently do good work at the last minute.

In the "real world" it's a little tricky. You wind up doing these intense bursts of fulfilling work when there's a deadline, interspersed with long stints of trudging along on longterm stuff. I work great under pressure. I get bored when there's no deadline in sight--I can do the work, but it's harder to do it then.

For me, the biggest problem posed by procrastination--by far--is that it makes you look like a slacker until you hit T-minus-1 and go into a working frenzy. Some people don't understand that your average output is at least as good as the guy in the next cube who's plugging away slowly every minute of the day. And for me that's where the stress lies. My ideal work pattern is to work like a maniac for a while, read Slashdot for a while, go talk to my buddies, repeat, repeat. My main stress at work is worrying about getting busted for steps 2 and 3 of that process.

Re: delayed phase

[oscarcar]

The first thing to do is practice good "sleep hygeine".

Here's a starter:
http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/howto.ht ml