Beating Procrastination with Self-Imposed Deadlines

castironwok writes "Procrastination attracts us because of hyperbolic time discounting: the immediate (guilty) rewards are disproportionally more compelling than the greater delayed cost. Procrastination is the reward itself. An MIT professor found that when he allowed his students to give themselves their own homework deadlines, they would artificially restrict themselves to counter procrastination. However, they did not set deadlines for optimal effectiveness. I am personally a huge procrastinator and it's always a pull between rational logic (giving yourself the most time by choosing end dates as the deadline), and your past experience saying you will put it off so force yourself to start early."

Comments

Hey!

[SeanMon]

I was gonna post this yesterday, but...

Nevermind.

Re:Hey!

[adamdep]

damn i have never been first post before and i procrastinated to much! Manufactured irony alert!!! Adam

Re:Hey!

[rubycodez]

and I was going to have brillant and insightful comments on this subject yesterday too. maybe tomorrow I'll post them.

Re:Hey!

[Kuvter]

I was going to write this an hour ago, but how could you have posted that yesterday when the story came out today?

Re:Hey!

[complete loony]

Never leave till tomorrow, that which you can put off indefinitely.

I'll procrastinate tomorrow.

Re:Hey!

[O_at_H2-O2]

It's really ironic that this gets posted on /.

I mean, who reading this now has done all their dishes, their work for the day, called their grand-parents to thank them for their Christmas gift, paid all their bills, sent that inquiry to the insurance company, called in for that dentist appointment that is 3 months overdue, etc... I mean who?

Re:Hey!

[aussie_a]

I was going to mod you funny, but.. meh. I'll finish this post later.

Re:Hey!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference between procrastination and masturbation?

In the end, you're only fucking yourself.

Re:Hey!

[BlueBlade]

Whoever you are, if I catch you spying on my life like that again, I'll make you regret it!

I was going to answer this right away but ...

[waterwingz]

.. well , you know how it is.

It's inefficient to start early

[JackHoffman]

Of course it's also inefficient to start late, but one should not try to start earlier than necessary. The task will occupy your mind longer and especially if you don't like to do the work, it will stress you longer. The task does not become more difficult if you put it off until you need to do it. It just gets longer, because you will allow interruptions (there's still time, so...).

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[bigman2003]

I manage a small programming team, and one of my jobs is to set up deadlines. The nature of where we work means that we don't really HAVE deadlines at all (gubment) but we need to make progress.

So, I impose deadlines on my team. Usually they are fairly aggressive, but we always meet them. Two days before the last deadline, my team was all working frantically trying to get things done. One of the guys asked, "Why the hell did you make the deadline so early? Why not just push it out two more months?"

My answer was the same as always: "If I had pushed this deadline out two months, we'd be going through this same exact crunch time, just two months later."

It's just a fact, if we have six months to do a job, we'll finish in exactly six months. If we're given 12 months to do the same job, we'll finish in exactly 12 months.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[TapeCutter]

"It's just a fact, if we have six months to do a job, we'll finish in exactly six months. If we're given 12 months to do the same job, we'll finish in exactly 12 months."

This is why programmers should not be confused with engineers!

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[Kjella]

My answer was the same as always: "If I had pushed this deadline out two months, we'd be going through this same exact crunch time, just two months later.

Which is really the crux of software engineering. In the pcoress. you're pretty damn sure going to make decisions which aren't ideally correct, but that get the job done. Ot you bite the bullet and say "Look, if you want it it'll be a millon dollars and it still won't give what you think it will."

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[Heir Of The Mess]

Yeah, give an Engineer 12 months to do a 3 month job and they will deliver something completely brilliant, but unrelated to the task that you gave them. Engineers procrastinate the same, except that they do engineering stuff while whittling away the time.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a fact, if we have six months to do a job, we'll finish in exactly six months. If we're given 12 months to do the same job, we'll finish in exactly 12 months.

But does the quality remain constant? Just because you can rush something to finish it a few months earlier, it doesn't mean you are making the most effective use of your time. You could be simply making more work for yourself further down the line.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[syousef]

Man am I glad you're not my manager. If you don't want your team to burn out you should be minimising those crunch times not resigning yourself to them being inevitable. How do you do that? Lots of intermediate deadlines. Then your team can't wait for the end and just crunch to get it in on time.

The way you're going you'll end up with a burnt out team that thinks you're a tyrant. ...and it gets modded up as insightful here on /. *shakes head*

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[wrook]

It's just a fact, if we have six months to do a job, we'll finish in exactly six months. If we're given 12 months to do the same job, we'll finish in exactly 12 months.

Perhaps this is the case with your team, but I have to say that I have not observed this on the programming teams I work in. In fact, I have *often* heard managers say this. But actually, it seems not to be the case.

I have observed two things. If the imposed deadline is shorter than the time actually needed to do the job, then the job will appear to be finished (i.e., people will say they are done), but there will be many things missing. Later, people will say "Oh, we were all under a tight deadline, so I guess we must have forgotten to do that".

More interestingly, if the deadline is longer than the time actually needed to do the job, I have observed that the job is done early. But (and this is an important but), all of the functionality is actually there.

To perform this experiment for yourself, I suggest that you take several small problems (small bugs are good for this). Try to find problems that will take from 1/2 a day to a day. Assign deadlines ranging from 2 hours to 3 days. Record the amount of time it actually takes to do the work. Then do code reviews of all the work.

I think you will find the experiment very instructive.

I have found that when there is always work in the queue, there is no point to setting deadlines. Instead it is better merely to estimate the work (so that you can make predictions). It is also counter productive to measure the amount of time each task takes (otherwise people will cut corners in order to meet some kind of unreasonable expectation, sometimes self imposed). Instead, just keep a rolling average of how close your estimates are to reality (i.e., we've gone 10 days and we've finished 11 days of estimated work, therefore we are going at 1.1x our estimated rate). This gives you predictability without the negative side effects of measuring too closely. IMPORTANT: Don't complain or cheer if the work rate is different than the estimated rate. This is to be expected. The information is only to allow you to communicate progress with management.

In every case that I have implemented this (and obviously this isn't my idea -- it's standard practice in many shops), productivity, quality and predictability have all improved. It's worth a try (But don't take my word for it -- do the test...)

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[zerocool^]

I have observed two things. If the imposed deadline is shorter than the time actually needed to do the job, then the job will appear to be finished (i.e., people will say they are done), but there will be many things missing. Later, people will say "Oh, we were all under a tight deadline, so I guess we must have forgotten to do that".

More interestingly, if the deadline is longer than the time actually needed to do the job, I have observed that the job is done early. But (and this is an important but), all of the functionality is actually there.

Good points, except that you miss the key part of his post: Government employees. It probably works that way in the private sector, but not so much for uncle sam.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[TapeCutter]

I did not mean to imply Engineers don't procrastinate, I was talking about the imposition of project end dates from above.

Engineers do not recieve end dates, they produce them. A lead engineer is required to "sign off" and is legally responsible for the work, incompetence can land them in jail on a manslaughter charge.

I have ~20yrs in commercial software development, some places include the programmers in the estimation processes, others don't. If my boss fails to ask me for an estimate, I will fail to join him in the "crunch time" panic.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[virgil_disgr4ce]

I have found that when there is always work in the queue, there is no point to setting deadlines.

You hit the nail on the head here. Works for me, that's for sure--it definitely solves the procrastination problem.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[x-guru]

nerd.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[aussie_a]

It's just a fact, if we have six months to do a job, we'll finish in exactly six months. Unless of course its impossible finish in 6 months.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you estimate incorrectly. But since you're not the one crunching, who gives a shit, right?

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[Weirsbaski]

One more reason to not start too early is that requirements often change after their first delivery. Happens with college classes, then happens s'more in the corporate environment. Throwing away obsoleted work is inevitable sometimes, but why exasperate it?

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[misanthrope101]

It's just a fact, if we have six months to do a job, we'll finish in exactly six months. If we're given 12 months to do the same job, we'll finish in exactly 12 months.

Then why not set up a deadline of 24 hours and be done with it? I was going to suggest 30 seconds, but the email server may be slow, and you have to plan for that. Work actually does take real-world time, and putting everyone in perpetual panic mode isn't going to help you. Here's another maxim for government service--the work will expand to fill the time you have. If you finish the project early, more work will just surface to fill up the time. You'll just carry more weight for the same money, and you'll get no more thanks for it. Doing the job well while providing a little padding to ingratiate the little people to you will help you more than running them into the ground in permanent emergency mode.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[MoogMan]

It's said that there are two types of people (and many people inbetween the two extremes): Starters and Finishers. Starts are good at planning, but find it hard to continue a task. Finishers are good at maintaining, but are crap at planning or actually starting stuff. "Intermediate Deadlines" will only help one type of person (The starters - they can be good at starting these smaller projects, and not burn out). For "Finishers", intermediate deadlines may in fact make the problem worse!

It looks, to me, that the grandparent has a "Finisher" perspective, while you have a "Starter" perspective, thus explaining your difference in opinion. Both are right. Neither are wrong. Just be aware that what works for you, is not necessarily what works for others :-)

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[vtcodger]

***It's just a fact, if we have six months to do a job, we'll finish in exactly six months. If we're given 12 months to do the same job, we'll finish in exactly 12 months.***

Maybe for (some) individuals.

For many organizations, it's more like if we have six months to do a job, we'll take nine. If we're given 12 months to do the same job, it'll take 24. If we are given 24 months for the same job, it'll most likely never be finished.

Observation: scheduling a 10 hour task as one hour on 10 different days may get the job done early -- not because spreading the work out is more effcient. It isn't. But because the obvious way to do the task often is not the optimal way. Stretching the job out may allow time for the realization to filter through to the forebrain that there is a REALLY simple way to do this job. This works better for individuals than organizations.

Something that is fairly obvious, but not much discussed is that there is a good reason that complex tasks are frequently late or butchered to fit the scheduled time. It has to do with the non-linearity of scheduling. Suppose we have two tasks that we estimate will take one day each. But neither is all that easy to estimate. So we finish task A in half the scheduled time (hurray!). But task B is misestimated by the same RELATIVE amount in the other direction (Boo!). It takes two days. Total time is not 2 days, it is 2.5 days. In a really complex job, the scheduling uncertainties are likely to be huge. The liklihood is that the project will be late. Because of the non-linearity, scheduling using best guesses will almost certainly produce an overoptimistic schedule.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[radtea]

How do you do that? Lots of intermediate deadlines. Then your team can't wait for the end and just crunch to get it in on time.

How do you know he isn't talking about an intermediate deadine? In the teams I've managed, ANY deadline, no matter how small, is likely to lead to at least a small amount of crunch at the end. This is not about procrastination, but about tidying up loose ends and dealing with last-minute surprises. Deadlines that are spaced too close together can produce continual crunch, which is a sure burnout generator. Deadlines that are spaced too far apart produce larger errors in estimation that can lead to slippage. As with most things, the optimum can be found in a moderate middle path.

One way of managing this problem is to actively revise deadlines on a regular (say weekly) basis. This is not always an option in pointy-haired-boss-land, or even in smaller companies where the project lead is a gross incompetent whose faith-based time estimates are the result of what he personally needs or wants to be true rather than what is actually possible. But in that rare organization managed by people who aren't insane, it is generally possible to rebalance the time-features-resources triangle regularly, and thereby keep your team focused and well-paced, but not at risk of burnout.

From a project lead's perspective, this is also a way of communicating with your manager, as weekly project meetings are an opportunity to present the updated schedule. This will shock some managers, when you present a schedule as a living document that can be used to chart actual progress toward a progressively-better-defined goal, rather than as a fictional abstraction that has no meaning or relevance. And that can only be a good thing.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[meburke]

Once, back in 1972, I did a whole semester's worth of English papers in a month using PERT/CPM. I had my task list, and always did what was on my list for that day, but no more than that. I also started early and didn't use up my "slack" by doing things that weren't on my list during the times I allocated for English. I thought I'd found the Ultimate Answer. I've used PERT/CPM for hundreds of products since then, but I didn't find the same efficiency until I applied the principles I discovered in "Critical Chain" by Eliahu Goldratt.

I am convinced that people who are very detail-oriented and picky can succeed using a method like Allen's "Getting Things Done", but most of us others can use the CC method as necessary without giving up the joys of screwing off occasionally.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[syousef]

What a load of psychobabble. Starting is no good if you're not prepared to follow through. I'm not a starter that doesn't finish and any finisher requires a start. It's not about a specific task. It's about sustainability and getting the job done. That requires planning. It requires a good start, middle and finish and requires that the job is broken down correctly to do so. It also requires that you end up with a team at the end of the task who's still positive about it, unless you just want to burn through that task and end up with an unsustainable wreck of a work environment where everyone's there because they have to be and despises every minute of their life.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[syousef]

If your team is so bad it needs to be micromanaged daily because otherwise they lay about and do nothing till the last minute then you need weekly, perhaps even twice weekly deadlines. Let them know that once they learn how to work sustainably instead of doing nothing then doing the big crunch, that's what they get. Watch all the artificial crunch times fall away. There are legitimate crunches that are set by circumstances beyond the control of the team - legislative changes are a good example, tasks that fit into a larger plan are another. However in most work places it shouldn't be the norm that people work really hard for short periods and do nothing the rest of the time.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[GarrettZilla]

Then why not just make the deadline for two months and get it done early?

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[NateTech]

So what measurements do you use to tell if the short-time-frame product meets the same quality standards as the longer-term one?

Oh wait, I forgot, this is 2006 -- bloat-ware with massive bugs is expected. You'll be releasing version 27 tomorrow.

This is one of the reasons a lot of us support folks are looking to get out of this industry permanently... supporting this crud released simply because a particular calendar date passed is getting me nowhere.

(Good luck - hope you enjoy supporting the crap.)

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[bigman2003]

Our primary measurement for quality is customer satisfaction. That's really how we decide whether or not something is good- does it do what the customer wants it to do?

As usual, when I posted something here on Slashdot, I got a lot of negative knee-jerk reaction from people who think I am a 'tryant' who is going 'burn out' my team. That's fine with me, because usually when I get this response it is from someone who has never managed a team, or a project and their point of view is very narrow- always focused solely on the programmer, as though he/she operates in a bubble.

I do care about the programmers that work for me, and that is one reason I push the deadlines and we get things done. Most people do NOT want to sit around a drag a job out longer than it should take, but sadly, given the chance, most of us would do exactly that.

Studies have shown that these are the things that most employees want most from their employer:

1. Interesting work
2. Being appreciated
3. Being involved in things
4. Job security
5. High wages
6. Promotion and growth
7. Working conditions
8. Loyalty of supervisor
9. Help with personal problems
10. Tactful discipline

(List stolen from a Utah State University study, although the same type of study can be found in many places)

By pushing my team a little bit, and keeping them busy, I believe I am giving them all of those things.

My team gets to do a lot of interesting work. They are APPRECIATED because our productivity is so high. We/they get involved in so many things because we are a team that can DELIVER. High wages, job security and growth come from being recognized for what we do.

As a manager I make sure that they have good working conditions. I am LOYAL to my team because I NEED them. I do not have room in my schedule for people who are un-productive so I make sure they have what they need.

I don't have discipline problems, because my team is motivated.

So when I see all of the negative responses to my earlier post, I know those people are not motivated in their jobs, and it is probably their supervisor's fault for not making the job interesting.

As far as being a tyrant and burning my team out- well, that's just a matter of perspective. I think I am a good leader who is motivating a winning team. We know that today's success will be a springboard to our next opportunity.

Re:It's inefficient to start early

[NateTech]

Those studies are worthless. Those are not the reasons I work, and probably not the reasons most of your staff works for you either. Especially not in that order. (Plus who'd trust any research from Utah anyway? Ever been there?)

Try asking your staff sometime during one-on-one sessions, instead of reading management studies. That'd be a start.

Do you really know why your staff comes to work?

And yes, I have managed people in a company setting.

I continue to volunteer my time in management roles outside of the business realm, and run a non-profit with all work done by volunteers.

Try that sometime -- all volunteer labor -- and we'll see what kind of leader you are. Set deadlines without any reason other than "productivity" in an all-volunteer group and watch them laugh their asses off at you and walk away.

You sound like you're "All manager and no leader" in your posts. I hope not. The world certainly doesn't need more tyrant managers -- it needs leaders.

power of positive procrastination

[Anonymous Coward]

"The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to get caught up"

I live one calendar week ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

Forces me into finishing up early. I can't watch TV or listen to the radio and sometimes it is a little odd like when I showed up for last week's Christmas celebrations, but I'm making the deadlines.

P.S. Happy New Year!

Re:I live one calendar week ahead

[avonhungen]

No go. Whatever granularity of "aheadness" you set, the crucial asset needed to complete the project will come after that. Maybe not every project, but at least it's frequent wrt the projects I work on.

Real deadlines...

[S. Traaken]

I find that deadlines I set for myself don't help - unless it's a real deadline with definite consequences beyond my own limitations, I tend to ignore it. And even if it is a 'real' deadline, at the last moment I'll weigh the consequences of not having the job done against Yet Another All-Nighter... and sleep generally wins - or another game. Or movie. Or anything else...

Re:Real deadlines...

[Anonymous Coward]

This will quickly change when you're out of school and "not having the job done" means "not having the job, period."

Re:Real deadlines...

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to find better employers.

Re:Real deadlines...

[xTantrum]

I find that deadlines I set for myself don't help - unless it's a real deadline with definite consequences beyond my own limitations

I couldn't agree more. I currenly own a business that allows me some free time. I've been planning a VOIP application for about a year now and only just now have even started to work on the audio capture module. For the amount of time i have in the day and what i could be doing i just don't find i'm productive enough, i keep putting coding off for something else. Why? because although i'd like to be in the game, i'm not going hungry. There is no fire under me.

Re:Real deadlines...

[NeMon'ess]

You're forgetting about /.ers who got kicked out of college because of procrastination.

Re:Real deadlines...

[elgatozorbas]

An evolution I also went trough: initially your self-imposed deadlines are enough. After this they need to be external. After this nothing really helps anymore. Also, this procrastinating doens't make me feel happy. In general I am much happier having stuff behind me, so in the end this self-created 'vacation' was no gain at all.

This even extends to my sleep; I have serious problems making myself go to bed, even when incredible tired and having to go to work te next day. Even though all indications say 'go to sleep now', I'd rather wach repetitions of the weather forecast. Anything but going to bed...

Re:Real deadlines...

[S. Traaken]

You missed the bit "unless it's a real deadline with definite consequences" - if it's a matter of keeping my job, I'll get it done. Probably not before the last minute though.

Re:Real deadlines...

[Neoncow]

I'm trying out a new system now. After 23:00, my router blocks slashdot. Interestingly, the router rule is called goToSleep. It seems to be working okay for me so far. :)

Re:Real deadlines...

[phrasebook]

I do this with Squid proxy ACLs. Sad as it may be, I also find it has worked pretty well. I've also limited instant messaging to my laptop so that I'm not constantly on IM at my desktop throughout the day. I'm starting to not like 'always-on' internet. Never had these issues with dial-up!

Re:/. is once again a full day behind reddit and d

[AuMatar]

You assume /. readers go to reddit or digg. I've never heard of the first site, and I despise digg.

Re:/. is once again a full day behind reddit and d

[Kyro]

agreed. then i'd buy a subscription.

But if I don't procrastinate...

[Alicat1194]

... what else am I going to do at work all day?

Re:But if I don't procrastinate...

[p3w-451]

Read slashdot.

Re:But if I don't procrastinate...

[Faylone]

It's slightly frightening that this has been moderated insightful.

Re:But if I don't procrastinate...

[Grant_Watson]

There's a difference?

Re:But if I don't procrastinate...

[packeteer]

Read Slashdot maybe?

Anxiety

[Cr4wford]

I've had a lot of issues with procrastination and anxiety, and recently I realized that procrastination is actually due to anxiety-you feel anxious about a task, so you choose to ignore it for the time being. Thus, doing things that help with anxiety often help with procrastination. I think exercise is the best answer for this, but I imagine things like meditation, yoga, etc. help as well.

Re:Anxiety

[G Morgan]

I've got a gym plan but keep putting it off. I need to end my procrastination to enable me to end my procrastination. Same goes for meditation.

Re:Anxiety

[Colin Smith]

I suppose it's worth noting that doing the things that cause you anxiety repeatedly, lowers that anxiety over time.

Alternatively reward yourself every time you complete a task. Write down the reward beside the task. Pavlovian response, eventually you'll start enjoying stuff. It works even if you know you're conditioning yourself.

Re:Anxiety

[astrashe]

In the book "Getting Things Done", David Allen talks about this, and he claims his system addresses it. His system is fairly elaborate, and starting to use it is a big committment that I haven't made, so I can't verify that it works. What he says sounds plausible, though.

Allen's theory is that stress comes from "open loops" -- things you have to keep in your head, and worry about. As you get further and further in the hole, the open loops accumulate, and your stress level goes up.

Allen's answer is to put everything into a system, and get it ouf of your head. You don't have to remember anything, because it's all written down and recorded.

The idea is that you don't have to worry about it because you can trust the system. Once you record it, you can be confident that it will get taken care of, because the system is robust, and you know that it works. So at any given time, you just think about what's on your plate at that moment, and tune other stuff out.

Re:Anxiety

[Anonymous Coward]

It's my belief that procrastination comes from a fear of failure (perhaps your anxiety is from that fear).

I always procrastinate the things that I know will be hard or will have negative outcomes. The easy stuff, or the immediate rewards, I never procrastinate them.

Re:Anxiety

[MyIS]

Meh. I don't think that that addresses all types of procrastination.

I have a huge hierarchical TODO list (that serves as a note-book at the same time due to the tree-like nature). I think that the above reasoning is very spot-on in the sense that because I record every little thought and proceeding about any one of the tasks and sub-tasks I feel very organized and able to focus on tasks better.

But at the same time the procrastination remains. It is still the anxiety of taking on a specific task - the anxiety of having to deal with a frustrating and arduous task, even filtered out from others. That's why some TODO items still sit there for days and weeks, even though they are pretty well documented.

Re:Anxiety

[TaoPhoenix]

This leads to a major system I use:

Anxiety coupled with knowing you don't understand important parts of something lead me into big trouble. When I plan for something emotionally jittery, I plan to tone down the resulting stress by reading something pleasant. I'm disciplined enough I can allow myself the first anti-anxiety reading session FIRST, to build up a buffer.

Using the chunking approach, I knock out a bite out of the nasty whole problem. Here's where the key part kicks in - because the problem is now *smaller* I can more accurately guage how long I have left for a second stress reduction session. Then the second chunk of the nasty problem. Unless I hit a major league surprise, I usually finish right on the dot 5% ahead of schedule. The 5% can be used to fix a last minute blunder, ... or just relax.

Re:Anxiety

[pyite]

But at the same time the procrastination remains. It is still the anxiety of taking on a specific task - the anxiety of having to deal with a frustrating and arduous task, even filtered out from others. That's why some TODO items still sit there for days and weeks, even though they are pretty well documented.

David Allen also discourages the use of traditional todo lists (hierarchical or otherwise) because they can be demoralizing when you don't accomplish some of your daily todos. What he does suggest is the use of a project list. A project is something that has a definite outcome like "Take Vacation in Hawaii." Every project has "next actions" associated with it, where a "next action" is the next physical thing you can do to move the project forward. Every next action has a context associated with it. So, your next action for "Take Vacation in Hawaii" might be "Talk to wife." The context for that might be @home or @wife, depending on the granularity of your contexts. Contexts enable something that traditional todo lists do not. The project list by itself gives you a vertical view... the enumerated actions you must take for completion. Contexts give you a horizontal view. E.g. if I'm at my phone, I can do all next actions associated with @phone, whether it be the next action to book the vacation or the next action to call the caterer about the party you're having next week.

This methodology is useful because projects are no longer monolithic blobs of time and effort sitting on an arbitrary list. Projects become a sequence of discrete executable actions which lead to a goal. The idea is that you think about things only as much as necessary. You won't need to rethink the project everytime you do something associated with it.

Re:Anxiety

[Anonymous Coward]

Allen knows his system doesn't address all procrastination. The projects that are the most important to you (deep down) are the ones that are easiest to put off. His system just helps with the typical big project procrastination by turning the todo list into a list actionable steps (sentences--complete with verbs). This helps when all the small steps are written out so that, instead of thinking of them each time you want to finish that project, you look and do the next few small steps without much thought. The bugger is that it's quite easy to procrastinate writing out these small steps.

Re:Anxiety

[anagama]

It's my belief that procrastination comes from a fear of failure (perhaps your anxiety is from that fear).

I don't agree. I have no fear of failure about my ability to move a stack of dirty dishes from the sink (or more accurately, from the computer desk) to the dishwasher, turn the machine on, and distribute the clean dishes to their correct spots once completed. Only rarely do I break something and even then, it isn't like it's fine China -- just shrug it off and toss it out. What causes me to procrastinate is boredom.

Re:Anxiety

[ZorbaTHut]

David Allen also discourages the use of traditional todo lists (hierarchical or otherwise) because they can be demoralizing when you don't accomplish some of your daily todos. What he does suggest is the use of a project list. A project is something that has a definite outcome like "Take Vacation in Hawaii." Every project has "next actions" associated with it, where a "next action" is the next physical thing you can do to move the project forward.

. . .

This methodology is useful because projects are no longer monolithic blobs of time and effort sitting on an arbitrary list. Projects become a sequence of discrete executable actions which lead to a goal. The idea is that you think about things only as much as necessary. You won't need to rethink the project everytime you do something associated with it.

So, what he's suggesting is . . . you take your larger goals, and then you break them up into a sequence of smaller subgoals?

Sort of like a hierarchy?

This is how I've been organizing my own stuff for quite a while, and it works great. Of course, I end up with huge lists sometimes - the todo file for a single one of my projects is 85 lines long right now - but that's OK, because the top 20 or 30 lines are all pretty simple things. I can easily go through half a dozen or more in a day. :)

Re:Anxiety

[Scarblac]

GTD is great, but Allen sometimes says things like "assume for a moment we are not putting off this task out of procrastination...", which is often not the case. Also, you don't use GTD for doing a thesis that requires a thousand hours of concentrated work. GTD is very biased towards a work style of little things to do next.

I use his book together with "The Now Habit" by Neil Fiore, it is concerned with procrastination related problems. Basically, he encourages to focus on _starting_ on something, not on finishing, since the finish will always seem intimidatingly far away; but starting is easy. Be really fanatic about planning your week - that is, with recreation, fun, meetings, anything that _isn't_ productive work; the fun is most important, you need to be able to reward yourself after work.

Then, do the work in focussed 30 minute chunks. They don't seem daunting, you can actually get something pretty good done in 30 minutes, you can reward yourself afterwards, and they're so short that your brain isn't going to demand perfection from one chunk of 30 minutes.

I use GTD to keep track of all the open loops and little things that need doing in the current context, but the Now Habit's "Unschedule" for planning fun, and for those huge projects that are a few hundred hours of concentrated work.

Re:Anxiety

[Scarblac]

And one important tip from Fiore that helps me a lot - say you have work to do that fits into blocks of, say, ten hours work. Perhaps writing articles of some sort. Then the urge is really great when you finish one block, to stop then and reward yourself. Don't! Get into a habit of spending at least five or ten minutes starting on the next project.

After all, you're focused right now, and you'll feel much better about the next project knowing you've already made a start on it. If you don't, you may get anxious about starting it.

Re:Anxiety

[BokLM]

This is interesting. I bought the book a few months ago, but never had time to read it. It's on my TODO list.

Re:Anxiety

[telepilot]

So, what he's suggesting is . . . you take your larger goals, and then you break them up into a sequence of smaller subgoals?

Sort of like a hierarchy?

Well... kinda. As pyite wrote above, the main idea behind Allens framework is that you should not have to think about a project or thing you want accomplished more than necessary. By making sure that your subgoals are actual physical actions that you need to do to move the project further along you dont have to "rethink" this step every time you read your todo-list, instead you just "do".

Say for instance that you have a ToDo-list with an item such as "plan new-years party", with the first subgoal being "find location". This is not a physical action, and everytime you see the list you now need to rethink how you are going to decide on one. Instead, Allen wants you to write something like "Call Bob to get ideas for party locations". Now when you look at your list (sorted under @phone so that you can do all phone-related stuff at the same time) you know exactly what to do next. Think hard once is the general idea.

Re:Anxiety

[tomjen]

I agree - execpt it is often fear of boredom as opposed to boredom itself. This is evident in that I dont feel bore when I do "idiot" task - my mind just concentrate on other things.

Re:Anxiety

[argStyopa]

I've never read "Getting things done" but I can confirm that this system is truly anxiety reducing.

I found out as soon as I started using a palm pilot consistently (and it has to become a habit) that my stress levels decreased tremendously. I think this is the 'addiction' of some of these sorts of devices (including non-devices, like the Franklin Planner system) - to know that you've put it in there, dated it, and WILL get to it is a huge relief.

Of course, then one must be a bit of a slave to oneself: when the item comes up, it has to be dealt with immediately.

Re:Anxiety

[Xernon]

I have implemented the organizational system described in "Getting Things Done", and can say that it is a big help. I strongly encourage everyone to give it a try. For more details, check out my article on my experience with the system.

Re:Anxiety

[Anonymous Coward]

When I'm doing this, I often tend to continue started work far more than 10 minutes often missing dinner :)

Re:Anxiety

[jafac]

and recently I realized that procrastination is actually due to anxiety-you feel anxious about a task, so you choose to ignore it for the time being.

I think that in more cases than most people will admit, this anxiety-driven choice to ignore tasks, is really a passive-aggressive response to having a deadline imposed on one, by a person one does not respect. There are plenty of examples of workers who do not respect a boss, either out of feelings of superiority, or genuine incompetence of the boss who set the deadline.

This lack of respect feeds a passive-aggressive response to ignore the task, to procrastinate.

The response by an incompetent boss is usually a carrot-and-stick approach. Beatings if the deadline is missed, extra chocolate rations if it's met or exceeded. This does not solve the problem. The problem is; respect must be honestly earned.
A parent can earn the respect of his children. A teacher can earn the respect of a student. A manager can earn the respect of the workers. A coach can earn the respect of a team. But none of that is accomplished without a certain degree of competence, and leadership. People will fight lack of competence in a leader, even if they don't know that they're fighting it consciously. People have an inherent sense of justice. And this drives a lot of human behavior.

Re:Anxiety

[Screaming Lunatic]

In the book "Getting Things Done", David Allen talks about this, and he claims his system addresses it. His system is fairly elaborate, and starting to use it is a big committment that I haven't made, so I can't verify that it works. What he says sounds plausible, though.

Elaborate? Big committement? Really?

I've been using Allen's system for a while now. I've modified it to fit my needs. There is no large committment required. I have a milk crate sitting next to my desk. It's my InBox. Everything physical that needs processing goes into it. I have four packing boxes from Staples and a big pack of hanging files.

I try to clear out my InBox everyday but at least every other day. Everything is filed, junked, or tracked.

Tasks are tracked in a spreadsheet. I use Google Spreadsheets and the Joel Spolsky method.

It took me about 10 minutes to walk across the street to Staples. It took me about 5 minutes to dump everything in the milk crate and setup the spreadsheet.

Ever consider that you may be procrastinating?

Re:Anxiety

[Kesh]

That's the problem entirely: changing your method of dealing with projects involves learning the new method. And there's always excuses why you don't have the time right now.

I'm stuck in the same situation. Been meaning to buy a copy of GTD and apply it, but I have "other things to do" first...

Re:Anxiety

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt boredom is really it. Do you live alone? If you had friends or a girl coming over, I bet you'd clean up those dishes. In other words if the motivation is there, things can be done in a flash and you don't even think about them, they just happen. It sounds pathetic but if we don't have anyone to impress we tend to do jack.

Re:Anxiety

[sasdrtx]

I wonder if anyone with a mod point to spare will get it.

Re:/. is once again a full day behind reddit and d

[thrillseeker]

Please perform a reddit and digg search before posting content

Who gives a shit what's on digg?

Hard work often pays off after time....

[Namlak]

...but laziness always pays off now. http://www.despair.com/proc24x30pri.html

Re:Hard work often pays off after time....

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer:

Hard work SOMETIMES pays off after time....

Makes me feel even better about being lazy now.

Big problem for me

[astrashe]

It's a big problem for me, and one that I've only had limited success in dealing with. So I don't want to claim to have found the answer or anything.

But I think the key is to formalize the process of deciding what to do *now*. Another way of saying that is that procrastination is a problem with deciding what to do in the moment -- that if you procrastinate, you have to recognize that your ability to do that is broken.

The easiest way to manage this is with a to-do list -- you just go through the things on your list, and try not to think about what else you could be doing, or what you should be doing. Just work the list.

The more robust way is to try to embrace the "Getting Things Done" system (it's described in a book of the same name). The book describes a system that's good enough to keep track of pretty much everything you have going on, and an algorithm that will let you pop off tasks and do them effectively. If you do the system, presumably (it's a big jump, and I haven't made it), you won't drop the ball on tasks, and you'll always know what to do right now.

Re:Big problem for me

[i_should_be_working]

Another good thing about the to-do list is that you get a sense of satisfaction after every small task is completed. So even though the big project isn't done you still get some mental reward, which encourages you to do more.

We really are simple creatures, aren't we?

Re:Big problem for me

[TubeSteak]

Another good thing about the to-do list is that you get a sense of satisfaction after every small task is completed. So even though the big project isn't done you still get some mental reward, which encourages you to do more.

A lot of people find this hard to believe, but not everybody gains a sense of satisfaction from accomplishing tasks.

This is especially true in people with behavioral/neurological disorders.
It stems from a somewhat broken reward system.
Usually. it can be helped through behavior modification therapy.

Re:Big problem for me

[bnf]

A todo-ish strategy that I've found effective, particularly when I just can't get started on something I'm just not all that psyched about plowing into, is to write down WITH GREAT SPECIFICITY the steps to get started with the task at hand.

It could be something like..

open eclipse
load class file
lookup the javadocs for the library I'm using
open the spec documents
find the specific spot in the project's spec that I need
figure out the db access info
decide on the logic for comparing db info to submitted data ....

No item is to benign to detail the task and it helps visualize the doing the work. Yes perhaps this sounds ridiculous to you but after jotting these small steps down I can usually start right in on the project. For me it's getting over the small hump of the work seeming like a huge thing, when in reality it is merely a large number of small details to be attended to. The quick jotting helps me to re-frame the daunting nature of the task and get back to working at the proper scale, in the guts instead of at the precipice.

well enough of this, I need to get some stuff done. ;)

Re:Big problem for me

[swillden]

Another good thing about the to-do list is that you get a sense of satisfaction after every small task is completed. So even though the big project isn't done you still get some mental reward, which encourages you to do more.

For me, this is often counterproductive. When I check a task off of the list it makes me feel that I deserve to reward myself for having finished a task, so it makes me want to slack off for a bit. That usually leads to doing something like taking a quick glance at slashdot, where an interesting discussion will catch my attention and I'll spend two hours reading and posting, or playing a quick little game... which I find I don't want to stop playing, or putting a few minutes into a personal project... which turns into a couple of hours, or... you get the idea.

Honestly, I've decided that only two things work well for me: intense interest or intense pressure. If I'm really interested in a task, because it involves learning or doing something cool, I have a built-in motivation to do it and there's no problem. If the task isn't intrinsically interesting, though, the only thing that motivates me is pressure. If I'm not being pressured externally (which is what really works the best, even though it's unpleasant), I have to try to create my own pressure, via arbitrary deadlines, which I then have to convince myself are real.

I explain this to whoever I'm working for on a given project, and ask them to apply the pressure I need, or, alternatively, give me tasks I think are cool enough that I want to do them. It usually works out pretty well for everyone.

Re:Big problem for me

[NeMon'ess]

I had a todo list, and I stopped using it because for every five things I added I only completed four. It's demoralizing and discouraging to always see the list getting longer even when acomplishing items on it. I have several dozen goals and projects partially completed or never started that come to mind from time to time since I don't write them down anymore.

Re:Big problem for me

[AncientPC]

So it's like doing all those menial quests in WoW? I can do that!

Re:Big problem for me

[complete loony]

Man, there are so many people like me in here. But we're such a small percentage of the population. Of course where I work, they try not to apply pressure, leaving me too much time to find something interesting to do. Yet somehow I always find a way to meet the imposed deadlines for the boring jobs. But when I'm given a really interesting task (difficult, but not tedious) I usually manage to finish it in what seems to others as an impossibly short time.

I should be programming right now....

[Pikoro]

But instead, i'm reading an article on slashdot about procrastination.

Talk about the right story for the right job!

Reasons for procrastination

[Tzorcelan]

Top ten reasons for procrastination: 1.

Re:reasons for procrastination

[ady1]

Another reason is to make the work feel more risky thus exciting.

Re:reasons for procrastination

[Salus Victus]

It seems to me that the "perfectionism" you describe is a source of anxiety, not a separate reason. It's a good insight; it just needs to be kept in perspective, and labelled as an example of the anxiety/avoidance structure.

The other response mentioned that it makes the task more exciting when you put it off. That sounds valid (and is a separate line of reasoning), but it's hard to judge, because that's never my reason for procrastinating.

Procrastination

[Anonymous Coward]

I read a book that really helped me called "Overcoming Procrastination" by Fiore. Turns out perfectionism can play a huge part (always a struggle for me), as can the fear of success (being afraid that if you do a good/outstanding job, you will have to one-up yourself each time - a thought that can be overwhelming). The book isn't particularly well-written and the last chapter(s) is totally lame, but it does have some very good information otherwise - so if you suffer from procrastination it's worth a read. Fiore also has a newer book out called "The Now Habit" (which also relates to procrastination and builds on ideas in the first book) but I haven't picked that one up yet.

Re:Procrastination

[painQuin]

but I haven't picked that one up yet.

I can't tell if that was a joke or not...

Re:Procrastination

[quantaman]

Last post! I was going to make that joke but you beat me to it.

One way to fix it

[MikeRT]

Work for a company that rewards effort with recognition, money and benefits. People have this habit of not caring unless either they get recognition/are engaged or have a fire under their ass like a spouse and child to support. When I was in college, I was one of the worst procrastinators in my CS classes half the time, but in classes where I could work on my own projects for class credit and recognition, I would put in as one person at least as many hours as an entire three to four person team. Reward people who work, punish those who don't, and show off cool stuff. That tends to motivate people.

Easier way....

[Junta]

Live one calendar millennium ahead. Since you'll be dead then, you won't have any obligations!

Re:Easier way....

[StikyPad]

Live one calendar millennium ahead...you'll be dead then

Speak for yourself.. I already made reservations for 31 December, 2999, and I plan on partying even harder than I did in 1999.

Re:Easier way....

[LunaticTippy]

That's easy for you to say. I'm falling behind so fast, by the time I'm dead I won't even be born yet!

Put best...

[paintswithcolour]

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they go by."

--Douglas Adams

Re:/. is once again a full day behind reddit and d

[FishWithAHammer]

You assume that everyone drools over Digg and Reddit. I've never visited Reddit and I hate Digg.

frist post

[alx5000]

frist post!

Re:frist post

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 I Don't Think Anyone Got It

Try a 10+2 dash to beat procrastination

[software_trainer]

Or any of the other techniques from 43folders.com http://www.43folders.com/2005/10/15/recap-procrast ination-hacks-email-overload-kinkless-gtd-and-a-vi sit-from-the-word-spy/ .

Sounds like an interesting technique...

[Waffle Iron]

...I'll bookmark the article so I can read up on it later.

Re:Sounds like an interesting technique...

[Anonymous Coward]

There should be a new mod option: "Useless piece of shit information"

Re:Sounds like an interesting technique...

[BokLM]

I bookmark a lot of things too. However, I never look back at my bookmarks, it's write-only.

Re:Sounds like an interesting technique...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, they can add that option along with "Didn't get the joke".

personal rewards help

[i_should_be_working]

The only thing that I've found that works so far is by determining a reward which I'll give myself after a task is completed. Be it more PS3 or beer or just wasting time on the net (sad, I know), the looking forward to the reward helps me get it done faster. Of course, I still have to have the discipline to not just take the 'reward' before the task is done.

Procrastination makes me more efficient

[jridley]

I find that when properly applied, procrastination results in increased efficiency.
By delaying my work significantly (but not to the point where I'll have to reduce my delivered quality) I find that I do not wind up coding stuff against docs and specs that will be changed.

I learned this in college. We'd bust our butts trying to code something early, and the next class the prof would alter the spec because the problem contained unexpected (by him) challenges that he had not intended. If you waited a bit, the prof would code up his solution as an answer key to diff ours against, and he'd hit the challenges and recast the problem.

So by putting off stuff to some extent, I wind up not coding stuff that I'll just wind up throwing out anyway.

Re:Procrastination makes me more efficient

[Anonymous Coward]

You throw away your college exercises anyway. The point is to learn by doing something challenging. If you just wait for the prof to make it easier, it seems to me that you have wasted more time doing something simple than you would if you tackled the hard problem and learned some of the difficulties.

Re:Procrastination makes me more efficient

[Breakfast Pants]

It works for other things; I once put off a 15 page paper in an english class until the day before, the teacher had watched a documentary on MLK Jr. the night prior to this, and offered members of the class the opportunity to turn in a poem about MLK Jr. in place of the paper if they wanted. I turned in a haiku and got an A. This was at Yale.

Re:Procrastination makes me more efficient

[jridley]

When I say "challenging" I mean "impossible". I thought that was understood. At least at our school it was.

If not "impossible" then "not reasonably do-able in the time allowed, given that you have to eat and sleep and go to other classes."

Re:Procrastination makes me more efficient

[orangepeel]

And now, having long since left Yale, you spend your days reading and posting to Slashdot ... under the name "Breakfast Pants".

Oh yes, I can see clearly that procrastination hasn't hurt you at all.

;-)

Re:Procrastination makes me more efficient

[mattwarden]

You laugh, but Breakfast Pants is the first person on Slashdot ever to use a semicolon correctly. If that's why people attend Yale, and I submit that it is, then Yale did its job.

Procrastination

[I don't want to spen]

Last post!

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll read this later *bookmarks*

reasons for procrastination

[falconwolf]

I've had a lot of issues with procrastination and anxiety, and recently I realized that procrastination is actually due to anxiety-you feel anxious about a task, so you choose to ignore it for the time being. Thus, doing things that help with anxiety often help with procrastination. I think exercise is the best answer for this, but I imagine things like meditation, yoga, etc. help as well.

Another reason people procrastinate is perfectionism. Some put off doing or finishing something because they want it to be perfect but knowing whatever it is won't be perfect they delay doing it. I was kind of disappointed the article didn't mention this at all. If you know why you procrastinate you may be able to work on it easier than if you don't know why.

Falcon

Add more to your agenda...

[dweebzilla]

If you are procrastinating - you don't have enough to do. Add more to your to-do list (or have kids). Once your docket is overwhelmingly full - you'll have no time for procrastination.

Re:Add more to your agenda...

[nacturation]

If you are procrastinating - you don't have enough to do. Add more to your to-do list (or have kids). Once your docket is overwhelmingly full - you'll have no time for procrastination. There's an expression about this: "If you want something done, give it to a busy person."

Re:Add more to your agenda...

[WCLPeter]

If you are procrastinating - you don't have enough to do.

I've always hated this argument. It's based on the notion that obscene overwork will somehow make you forget why you're procrastinating in the first place. Most people procrastinate because the task is so mind nubmingly boring that they'd rather take time off work to clean their house (which they'll procrastinate doing once they're home).

Assign me tasks that are actually interesting. A task I'm interested and excited to be working on I almost never have trouble completing on or even before time.

Taking on extra tasks doesn't work. Sure you're busy and working like a dog just to keep up, but you're still going to be bored. Only now you won't have the wiggle room to procrastinate and prioritize tasks, making you a bundle of nervous energy on it's way to burning out quickly.

Re:Add more to your agenda...

[dweebzilla]

Assign me tasks that are actually interesting.

If you're a student: it is your job to find a solution to the task - even if that solution includes finding a way to motivate your interest in that project.

If you're in the workforce: 95% of all you do will qualify as mind-numbingly boring since the final goals or direction are usually dictated by others then handed down multiple times before you see it. Indecently the only way that 95% number actually changes is when you're the manager of the guys actually doing the work, then your job is 100% mind-numbingly boring, and you have a pack of whiny employees to deal with to boot.

A full docket forces you to manage your time better, and more importantly the tasks you loath tend to become less nauseating since there is little time to think about how crappy they might be.

Also, there's a Caltech joke in here somewhere...

Divide and conquer

[DrCode]

That's what works for me. Need to implement a large piece of code and don't know where to start? Pick the easiest part of the project, and implement that. Repeat. Before you know it, you're all done. This works particularly well with an object-oriented language like C++, since there are usually lots of little methods you can work on.

Another thing I find that helps: At the end of the day, try to leave something trivial for the start of the next day. That way, if you're not a morning person, you have something to warm up with until the coffee kicks in.

The above also works for writing. Tell yourself that you're going to write a 200-page novel, and you'll probably never get started. Instead, think of how a story might begin, and just write a couple pages. The next day, you'll think about what might happen next, and you add another page or two.

Re:Divide and conquer

[ameline]

You like living dangerously.

Leaving the hard stuff until the end is one of the major signs of a project that is going to implode spectacularly. (I've seen this particular pattern a few times now)

(I also can't believe that I actually got around to posting this :-)

Re:Divide and conquer

[all_the_names_are_ta]

The trick is to break the hard stuff up into lots of little tasks that collectively take care of the hard stuff.

Re:Divide and conquer

[mattwarden]

That's what works for me. Need to implement a large piece of code and don't know where to start? Pick the easiest part of the project, and implement that. Repeat. Before you know it, you're all done.

Um, I know where you're coming from, but this is exactly the opposite of what you should do. If you have a large project, you want to pick the most difficult, most risky portion and dig into that first. Why? Because if you need to scrap an idea, you need to know ASAP.

This is one of the toughest things to learn as a manager. And just because you aren't a "manager" doesn't mean it doesn't apply to you (self-management). If your approach is risky and will end up not working out, you need to know that ASAP so you don't waste your time and get weird looks from PHB asking why you just scrapped 3 weeks of work to try another approach.

Re:Divide and conquer

[swillden]

That's what works for me. Need to implement a large piece of code and don't know where to start? Pick the easiest part of the project, and implement that. Repeat. Before you know it, you're all done.

That wouldn't work for me at all. The easiest stuff is also the least interesting stuff, which I have little desire to do. What works for me is to pick the hardest/trickiest parts and implement those first, because they're also the coolest. A little self-discipline is required to keep from going beyond what's actually required, but I can usually manage that.

Then, after implementing all the hardest parts, all that's left is the easy code to glue them all together, and that's usually rewarding not because it's hard but because it offers a chance to see all of the cool bits working the way they're supposed to.

Bottom line: Know thyself. If you know your strengths and weaknesses, and structure your work to play to your strengths and minimize your weaknesses, you'll do the best job you can do. With a little luck, it'll be good enough to satisfy those around you. If it's not, find an environment where it is.

Re:Divide and conquer

[ameline]

Thank you Captian Obvious.

What if one of the things you decompose that hard task into becomes "prove P==NP"? (yes, I have seen effectively that in a real project, where the hard things were not tackled up front) Not all hard tasks decompose easily -- sometimes the decomposition is itself a hard task.

The way I look at it is that every "research" problem (one that has never been solved before) you face is like a bullet in a relvolver you're going to play russian roulette with. Whatever you do, don't even bother starting a project where all six chambers have a rounds in them. And if you're going to be playing this game, do everyone a favour, and blow your foolish brains onto the wall (metaphorically speaking, of course :-) before you waste too much of everyones time and money. This is to say, solve the hard problems first, before things get expensive. Sometimes you'll find you're not going to be able to pull it off. If you do solve all of them, you're going to have a much more predictable and lower risk project on your hands to complete. People who control funding for such projects really appreciate that.

Re:Divide and conquer

[slaida1]

What if one of the th...

If his advice doesn't work for you, then you should try something else instead of arguing about it.

Re:Divide and conquer

[GTMoogle]

He doesn't have anything to worry about, he's firing blanks.

Re:Divide and conquer

[tsjaikdus]

That's what works for me. Need to implement a large piece of code and don't know where to start? Pick the easiest part of the project, and implement that. Repeat. Before you know it, you're all done. This works particularly well with an object-oriented language like C++, since there are usually lots of little methods you can work on.

I used to do that making exams. That worked very well. When I'm designing however, I start with the most difficult part. Also, as I'm such a compulsive perfectionist, I just start designing drafts or test version. Keeping them far from any real project. Just to see how it looks. Though, by the end of the day it is good enough to copy it into the design I'm really working on.

Another thing I find that helps: At the end of the day, try to leave something trivial for the start of the next day. That way, if you're not a morning person, you have something to warm up with until the coffee kicks in.

This doesn't work for me. Some things just look trivial, but once I'm delaying the work, I get lost. Sometimes I have to do the work again just because it really wasn't that simple at all and I just have no idea anymore how I got there in the first place. What helps in this case is telling myself that it has to be done anyway, however simple it may seem. So why not spend a few minutes extra to finish it directly.

Re:Divide and conquer

[hopethisnickisnottak]

Pick the easiest part of the project, and implement that. Repeat.

It's called Easiest Job First and is widely used for scheduling in a Job Shop!

Re:Divide and conquer

[bored]

Um, I know where you're coming from, but this is exactly the opposite of what you should do. If you have a large project, you want to pick the most difficult, most risky portion and dig into that first. Why? Because if you need to scrap an idea, you need to know ASAP.

Exactly, this isn't writing a term paper. I would add, once you get it working spend 1/3 as much time as it took you to get it working thinking about how to improve it. Usually this results in a lightbulb going off and the whole thing being rewritten in significatly fewer lines of code, with much better maintainablilty. If that doesn't happen usually the extra time will help work out edge case bugs and other improvments. By definition this is the most critical part of the system, you will want it to be as good as it can be.

Hypnosis

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer hypnosis, though it's not for everyone (took me over three years to finally be able to enter trance). Still, the file "TrigStopProcrastinating" from WarpMyMind (far from work safe, google it) and Hypno-Files (work safe, but I'd wait until getting home) works well.

Me too

[ElephanTS]

I have a real problem with this. I'm going to write some more about this tomorrow when I'll be more in the mood to do it. Take it from me though, it's going to be a great post and well worth waiting for. It's either that or I stay up all night getting it just right but I'm soooo tired right now. I'll RTFA tomorrow aswell.

perfection and Procrastination

[falconwolf]

Turns out perfectionism can play a huge part (always a struggle for me)

Yea, perfectionism hinders me too, which is why I was disappointed the article didn't bring up perfectionism. However I found out while in therapy after an accidnet that there is a region of the brain that deals with procrastination as well, and if damaged or malfunctioning can lead a person to procrastinate.

Falcon

Re:/. is once again a full day behind reddit and d

[Cap'nPedro]

> Yeah! Just like that cheerleader whore we all fucked in junior year.

I'm sorry, you must be confused; he said that this was Slashdot, not Digg.

I have ADD

[SetupWeasel]

I find that procrastination helps me work more efficiently. Stay with me. If I start early, I can never concentrate, but if I allow myself to procrastinate, the fear of the deadline gives me adrenaline. That helps me focus.

The end result is that I am able to get things done faster and more effectively as the deadline approaches.

Re:I have ADD

[SuluSulu]

Water in a toilet does the same thing; it gets fastest just before it goes down the drain.

I should know I do the same thing.

Department of redundancy department.

[ThousandStars]

I am personally a huge procrastinator...

You read /., and therefore we already know this.

Re:Department of redundancy department.

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

Hey! I read /. and I'm not a procrastinator. I already finished the sitting-in-a-corner-and-feeling-lonely and the crying-in-the-bed-because-nobody-loves-me. And since it's only 8 in the morning I'm well ahead of sheduele.

The method works!

[ROMRIX]

I just tried it and normally I can't a post until after 20 or 30 others have beat me to it.

oh wait...

procrastinating ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have found if I have been procrastinating on one task for ages and another comes up, the task that I was first procrastinating on will suddenly seem increadably interesting and I will do that. This is so that I can procrastinate on the other task.

Um

[snarkth]

Beating Procrastination with Self-Imposed Deadlines

    Duh?

Good comment

[NineNine]

I have a really great comment to make on this article.... but, I'll get around to posting it tomorrow at latest.

Yeah, but

[snarkth]

You wouldn't *believe* how shitty the job market for 1985 grads is in 3006.

Re:/. is once again a full day behind reddit and d

[gregmac]

When digg first came out, it was great .. news was always posted days ahead of /. (and probably still is), and it had lots of stuff I probably wouldn't otherwise have looked at (eg, tech stuff not on /.). However, as time went on, I found two problems .. constantly, stories that just weren't interesting would get pushed to the top (eg, any stories about digg itself always got a huge number of diggs), lots of viral content (even if it was a year or two old .. but apparently 'new' to the digg crowd) would get pushed to the top, etc. (There is a bunch of other stories that would always seem to get up there too, I can't remember now).

The other problem was it was just news overload .. so much stuff to read every day, between digg and /., you could honestly spend several hours EVERY DAY just reading news. So I basically gave up on digg, and just go to /. - despite its problems - for my news fix. I've heard of reddit but never visited, just because it came out after the point I decided to stick to one source for my tech news headlines.

So like other people are saying, don't assume everyone reads all three of those sites, it's fine to post interesting content. Just ignore it if you saw it somewhere else before, or stick to just one.

Field notes from the field in question

[iabervon]

I went to MIT, so I can explain a bit about the culture in which this research was done.

First of all, there's always something you're supposed to be doing. If you have three assignments for a class due at the end of term, you'll definitely have more important things to get done all term, and then you won't have enough time at the end of term to do the assignments. Even if you didn't do anything fun all term, you'll have procrastinated by getting more of each of the assignments for other classes done than you would have had you worked on the end-of-term assignment earlier. It's really hard to give up on an assignment that's due tomorrow because you haven't started on the one due in two months. It's not just that you have a more immediate reward if you procrastinate the stuff that's not due tomorrow; the reward is calculated and reported to you in advance in percentage points, and you definitely lose those points if you don't go after them immediately.

Also, assignments are designed for maximizing the standard deviation, which gives the most detail for grading. This is achieved by having the average be 50. This, in turn, means that, if you're doing fine, you could do twice as much work and still not get everything done. And you could check over your answers if you really wanted to, and take even more effort. So it's not like you're ever done with all your upcoming assignments and have time to work on the long-range ones.

Also, the main risk isn't doing badly in classes or failing them, it's going insane. If you pass any of your classes (or even if you don't, really), you're better of than if you have to take a term off. So doing something fun and relaxing can actually be quite important. I heard claims that sleeping at night sometimes helps, too, but I didn't try that. Relaxing when you need to is always on a shorter deadline than the end of the term, so it takes precedence.

And, of course, every class has something or other due at the end of the term (or a final just after classes end). You're in trouble if you've got three things due for this class at the same time as every other class has some project or exam.

So the optimal strategy is probably to choose deadlines around when your other classes have big assignments and exams, and stick to those deadlines, but tell the professor you'll have everything in at the end of term (but then forget that you didn't specify your deadlines).

The thing I'd find most interesting is how many students chose to have the deadlines at the end of term, but then turned in the first assignment in the first half of the term.

Re:Field notes from the field in question

[Anonymous Coward]

You weren't an English major, were you? This fact is obvious on more than one level... ;)

Despair Inc says it correctly

[Danathar]

http://despair.com/proc24x30pri.html

Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now.

Wow.

[Almahtar]

When I was reading this I just started cracking up. This is exactly what I do! I just graduated with a CS degree this fall. The last year and a half I got the best grades even though I was in far tougher courses than the earlier years, and it's because I started doing just what the article said. I tell myself it has to be done 4 days before it really does, and I always get it done at least 2 days before it's due. This kind of thinking really changed things around for me.

Procrastinating deadlines

[SuluSulu]

I just had a professor who essentially let us choose when to get assignments done. Poor guy ended up working the day before and after Christmas to get his grades in because of all the assignments handed in at the last last minute. If I could self-impose deadlines I wouldn't be a procrastinator.

kinda like...

[fragreaper]

Procrastination is just like masturbation... in the end you're just screwing yourself...

How I beat procrastination

[wikinerd]

When I want to beat procrastination I cut down the task in smaller sub-tasks with their own deadline.

For example, if it is 1 January and I have to write a paper until 31 December, then I will try to estimate how long the paper should be and of what parts it should be composed. If I find that I need to write about 10000 words and that the paper should be divided in 6 parts, then I will try to estimate how long each part ought to be. Suppose I find out that 1000 words should go in part 1, 3000 in part 2, 1000 in part 3, 2000 in part 4, 2500 in part 5, and 500 words in part 6.

Then I will attempt to guess the requirements that should be met before writing each part, for example part 2 may require some extensive research before I sit down typing, and part 4 may need to wait until the results of a computer simulation are available. The research may require some reading on my part, so I will have to know how many books I must read and how long or difficult these books are.

If I can calculate the prerequisites for writing the different parts, then I assign deadlines to the completion of each part. I continue breaking the subtasks into smaller and smaller tasks, until I can create weekly or daily schedules. Then I use my PDA, timesheet software, or a personal wiki for tracking my progress.

Another important technique for cutting down procrastination is to minimise startup time/costs. If I need to power up my laptop before typing my essay, then I just leave the laptop open at all times.

Finally, for people who have to spend their days in multiple locations within each day, it is imperative to maximise your mobility. For example, I want to learn some Python, but I have little formal time for investing in it. What I did was to load PythonCE on my HTC Universal PDA (which, by the way, has a QWERTY keyboard and broadband Internet access), so while I commute to work and university I spend the time reading Python tutorials over the Internet and typing programs into the Python interpreter. The fact that this runs on an always-on PDA (with an extended 8h battery and nearly always-on Internet connectivity, too) means that it is very easy to start from where I left even between days (there is no frequent shutdown-bootup cycle in PDAs).

Another example I can give for increased mobility is with e-mail: I was using a POP email server which made life difficult when I couldn't access my mail which was stored on my home's hard disk because I was away from home. What I did was to switch to using my own IMAP server. Combined with RoundCube Webmail software, this really created an environment where I can access my email, including my drafts, from anywhere in the world and with any IMAP client I have in hand.

Other tips for mobility that I know from experience is using laptops with cellular Internet access such as Flybook, and using Web-based tools on your own Web server instead of desktop applications (sometimes I had to write my own Web tools in PHP) so that you are not tied to one particular machine. Use of SSH/VNC with an always-on broadband connection at home is also useful if you need to access your home PC when you travel (assuming you do leave your PC open 24/7 as in my case).

Of course, in actual practice, procrastination still occurs and the planning isn't always reflective of reality, and sometimes you just need to accept this fact and stop worrying too much (especially if you are a Type A personality).

Re:How I beat procrastination

[Cervantes]

You didn't beat procrastination, you just replaced it with overly excessive planning that takes so long, and makes you miss your deadlines so much, that it might as well be procrastination.

That is, however, a bang-up relabling job you've done.

FP

[soloport]

I was going to have first post, but...

deadlines

[baomike]

one nice thing about deadlines, if you put them off long enough
you don't have to worry about them any more.

Factoring Genes.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know there's one factor left out that could apply to some people who procrastinate. Medical reasons.

Write your goals down on paper

[triclipse]

As someone who has mostly overcome my natural procrastination, the best way I have found to counter procrastination is by writing my goals down in a pen-and-paper journal. YMMV, but I have found that the act of writing them down (and the visceral act of crossing them off when complete) brings them to the fore of my consciousness in a way that my computer "tasks" reminders don't...

You Know how the Saying Goes

[Slipgrid]

As Writ on the bathroom stalls in Miami Universities CS Dept:

Procrastination is like masturbation: it feels good until you realize you are fucking yourself.

Re:/. is once again a full day behind reddit and d

[Mard]

Who gives a shit what's on digg? Precisely. Digg. Reddit. Slashdot is all about intense commentary (nay, we have discussion, even!) on topics which interest a wide geek user base, NOT about who got the news out first (although Slashdot is still quick enough to get the big news out in a meaningful time frame). If you care about is hearing things first, stick to Digg with their 1-3 line comment of "I agree with the article." and 40 responses of "Me too." Honestly, what purpose does it serve to find articles one day earlier, if there are no comments as insightful as those here on Slashdot to bring meaning and a wider perspective to it? Same article, sure. They both had it yesterday, sure. Slashdot has 50x as many comments in 1/20th the time. I'll be sticking here, thanks.

Define "early"

[msobkow]

Way back in University, I was sitting around and chatting with T.D., my lab partner for the University of Saskatchewan compiler course taught by J. P. Tremblay. Our project was written in C, and compiled an input language to a LISP output. One of us commented that in theory, one could compile anything to anything.

Over the years, my lab partner ended up becoming a full professor himself. He was part of a team that developed some impressive reverse engineering and refactoring software that ran on a cluster of Macs, taking a couple weeks to do about 85% of the conversion (or so he says.) I didn't even try to understand any details, and he was merciful enough not to try to explain. The resulting company ended up being tied up in legal hassles due to a greedy investor out for short term profits instead of long term vision or R&D.

Over the years, I kept banging away at that same tough nut of an anything to anything compiler, but I focused on a subset of the problem and used completely different approaches based on my own practical work experience as well as the solid foundation I'd received in University 300 and 400 level courses.

What is the "schedule" for such work, or for taking it to a near-production state? Even my corporation (created to allow tax writeoffs as a consultant, though I tried to come up with a more grandiose reason in some prototype websites) has no stake in a "project" that has taken twenty years and an uncounted number of failed attempts before I finally cracked the problem.

Re:Define "early"

[tootlemonde]

What is the "schedule" for such work, or for taking it to a near-production state?

Could there be a class of problems that benefits from procrastination?

These would include problems that require knowing something fundamental that one does not already know. In the course of pursuing lower priority objectives, which is one hallmark of procrastination, one may encounter the critical piece of knowledge that allows tackling the main project much more efficiently. One often has a feeling when confronting this type of problem that one should tackle some other problem first, one that may appear irrelevant but includes learning something basic to the solution of the first problem.

These problems make it is hard for an observer to know when someone is procrastinating and when he is attacking a problem indirectly. It may even be hard to tell yourself whether you are goofing off by avoiding a hard problem or following a sound instinct that a direct assault will be a failure.

If we make a distinction here between procrastinating and being lazy, that is, lethargic or inactive, then for people doing research and tackling hard problems, procrastination may be a necessary phase, even a tool. What one has to look for is periods of intense activity following a period of creative procrastination although such periods of activity may be relatively brief.

One example is Richard Feynman's explanation for why he taught freshman physics. He said that brilliant insights were relatively rare and teaching a freshman course kept him focused on the fundamentals of physics between them. On the surface, a Nobel Prize winner teaching freshman looks like he is doing something easy instead of something hard.

Procrastination, as distinct from laziness, may not even be a problem to solve but something to be cultivated and refined. There could be a right way to procrastinate and a wrong way. Many of us have simply been procrastinating the wrong way all our lives and thinking the problem was procrastination itself.

Re:Define "early"

[msobkow]

I think Feynman is on to something. Working with "fresh blood" means you hear a lot of out-of-the-box questions and ideas, any one of which could become the seed of future technology. Students who just study in isolation and miss out on the socialization of a campus don't get that cross-pollination of ideas.

Then there is the old adage by one of the American inventors about 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. In an academic environment, researchers only take technology far enough to prove it can be done. In the real world, you have to exercise the boundary conditions to ensure that a solution actually works. That can take many more years than the initial research or concept did to develop.

While I knew that I could theoretically produce any non-column-delineated ASCII text as output, I wasn't satisfied with that. I did prototypes of C/C++, various RDBMS schema creation script bundles, Java 1.0-1.5, IDL skeletons, XSD skeletons, JDBC, J2EE5/EJB3, GNU makefiles, and ant scripts. Each experimented with slightly different architectural ideas so that I could also determine which approaches would be the most flexible for eventually defining a common CORBA/IDL data backbone with multiple client language accessors.

I'm still focusing on Java5/JDBC for the consolidation of the best-of-breed ideas from all those prototypes. Once that is done and working under an alpha project or two with Tomcat, then I can resume the J2EE5/EJB3 layer that allows n-tier distributed clusters. Anything more than that will have to be fleshed out by other people, as I'm just not egotistical enough to think I'm an expert in everything I've worked with. :)

Long term, I see the Java consortium as a good model for deployment, so that no one company can dominate the market and destroy competing economies.

Re: Variable Deadlines

[TaoPhoenix]

Deadlines can also EXTEND the allotted time. Many managers like to "sound good" when they say "I want this out the door today!" (It's 3:37PM, and the work could clearly take 4-5 hours.)

If someone has built a reputatation of accurately tagging timelines and you say something is 5 hours out... the seniors begin to believe you. They can choose to take the shortcut, but that takes an act of will on their part.

not so sure about the conclusions for Study 1...

[bnf]

If you look at the "Procedure" section of page 220 of the pdf of the actual paper (because I know all of you of course have now read the paper) it talks about the apparent incentives for the subjects involved in the study by stating "In fact, the external incentives for the students in the free-choice section encouraged submission of all three papers on the last possible day."

In the paragraph prior the writer states "second, students had to announce the [self-chosen] deadlines for submission prior to the second lecture;"

and then on the next page "in fact, only 12 student (27%) chose to submit all three papers on the last day of class."

The study was conducted at MIT. The paper never acknowledges the role peer pressure and the desire to be perceived as a non-procrastinator by the rest of the class might play in an individual's choice of paper submission date, particularly if that "announcement" was public, and instead focuses on how the submission deadlines would best be gamed; Yet peer pressure and performance pressure at MIT is an acknowledged problem very much part of the culture of MIT.

First post!

[Entropy]

Oh, dang it all ..

I'll get around to it

[Urtica dioica]

I'll be sure to rtfa. Some day.

I was going to post that later.

[attemptedgoalie]

Some procrastinator you are! :-)

Hey I do it every day

[SpecialAgentXXX]

I mean, come on, don't you all mast... um, ohhh, procrastinate. Er, nevermind.

Slack

[ColaMan]

(skims through comments)

What, no-one's mentioned slacktitude yet?

Basically, slacking off now on long computer/tech projects means you can take advantage of newer, faster, tech down the track to finish the job quicker, thus winding up finishing at the same time as you would have in the first place.

We are human, lest we forget!

[JohnnyOpcode]

Procrastination is a modern invention. Deadlines are mere abstractions to turn humans into automations that meet cycle times which produce products (output). If we were to structure our lives with more fluidity, we would be more happier, healthier, and I guarantee wealthier. Procrastination is a natural human form of rebellion. School, work et al inpose these 'deadlines' for some bullshit metric that demeans the human being. The whole system to me is very anti-human, it is designed to control you and turn you into nothing but a fucking battery (coppertop).

'Free your mind' like the great Morpheus said..

Re:We are human, lest we forget!

[Eli Gottlieb]

Your ideas intrigue me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. How can I obtain a bachelor's and Ph. D in Computer Science, however, without deadlines and consistent production of required work?

Re:Real deadlines... use a doomsday device!

[dreeves]

If you're having trouble getting yourself to take self-imposed deadlines seriously, try this:
Write down an easy deadline on a twenty dollar bill and commit to tearing it up (!) unless you meet it.
Keep the $20 in front of you as motivation till you finish and then put it back in your wallet.

Pick things that nothing but procrastination could prevent you from completing on time, and have an exemption for unforeseen emergencies.

Good and Bad Procrastination

[krishn_bhakt]

Guys have you read http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html by Paul Graham?

Re:Good and Bad Procrastination

[BokLM]

Yes, that sounds interesting and I bookmarked this some time ago. But never had time to read it yet.

Re:/. is once again a full day behind reddit and d

[oblivionboy]

Holy Moley! What does digg have anything to do with slashdot?? .o.

Alcohol

[meese]

I have a major problem starting projects, but I've found a trick that gets the job done: alcohol.

Now you may be thinking that that's exactly what you shouldn't have if you want to get anything done, but it works, applied correctly. The key is having between 1-2 drinks and combining that with some coffee. The alcohol gets you to stop fretting over what needs to be done and gets you to dive right into work, and the coffee gets you to stay awake and somewhat focused.

I used to keep a bottle of Bailey's or Kahlua on my desk at work just to add to my coffee.

Re:Alcohol

[MollyB]

I used to keep a bottle of Bailey's or Kahlua on my desk at work just to add to my coffee. Hmm. I'm curious... Was your boss okay with this? Were You the boss? Didn't you notice the level of beverage shrinking after every time you left your desk? (Along with the increased level of merriment amongst one's co-workers?)
Anyway, congratulations on your ability to mix lubricity and efficiency.

Re:Alcohol

[meese]

Oh...I'm in grad school, and while I don't think the professors really like it, they don't mind in the end as long as work gets done. I think the same is probably true in other more progressive tech workplaces. If not...you could always put the Bailey's in a Hazelnut-flavored non-dairy creamer bottle or something.

Maybe the professor...

[blahplusplus]

... needs to ask himself whether forcing kids and young adults alike to concentrate in a forced manner is a healthy thing. Everyone wants a good education but this obsession with 'raising the bar' or trying to force the human mind (which has limits) to get things done within an arbitrarily forced certain period of time is at a root of a lot of problems that are emerging now, depression, suicide, etc.

We only have to look at modern money markets and their products to see that this idea of rushign to market or trying to make a buck produced inferior buggy products... the fact is school systems have for a while been doing similar things to their students, administrations and teachers barely know what they are doing. Being a good educator and teacher is not simply having been through university and teachers college.

No one stopped to ask, are we over stressing the kids? Is the way we teach hurting people psychologically? The biggest factor is that evolutionary biology is ignored, so is maslow's hierarchy of needs. What if a student isn't getting laid at all or has some other biological trait (anxiety, etc) that is effecting his ability to perform school work because his more basic needs are not met?

No one has stopped to ask... is the insane scholastic and hence market competition toxic to the social fabric and harmony of society?

Re:Maybe the professor...

[Eli Gottlieb]

No one has stopped to ask... is the insane scholastic and hence market competition toxic to the social fabric and harmony of society? Plenty of people ask it. For example, those of us who get branded ADHD and then wonder if it's really *us* who have something wrong after all ask it a lot. But nobody listens because we're in the minority. So without changing the majority's mind about the Bar-Raising Required Work on Deadline that they seem at least competent at, how can we change the standards for ourselves? You can't just set up an alternative world for people who feel like living in a different way. The hippies tried it and failed pathetically.

If insane competition hurts us, how do we get rid of it and still make our way in the Real World?

We only have to look at modern money markets and their products to see that this idea of rushing to market or trying to make a buck produced inferior buggy products... I and many economists would counter that if people want to put short-term profits ahead of long-term profits, that's their business.

No one stopped to ask, are we over stressing the kids? Is the way we teach hurting people psychologically? The biggest factor is that evolutionary biology is ignored, so is maslow's hierarchy of needs. Doing good...

What if a student isn't getting laid at all or has some other biological trait (anxiety, etc) that is effecting his ability to perform school work because his more basic needs are not met? Ouch, and just when you were making a point. Kids who don't get laid (I count myself among them.) often seem to pour the psychic energy generated by sexual frustration into hobby or work efforts. Hence why nerds (often, but not nearly as often as people think) have good grades.

Just drop that point, because sex is unhealed scab tissue on our culture's skin. Nobody wants to actually tackle the question of why certain people get laid and others don't. It reveals too much ugliness.

On the other hand, this particular factor is breeding us into Idiocracy.

Re:Maybe the professor...

[Elad Alon]

Just drop that point, because sex is unhealed scab tissue on our culture's skin. Nobody wants to actually tackle the question of why certain people get laid and others don't. It reveals too much ugliness.

I'm intrigued. Please elaborate.

Delay is good!

[Opportunist]

When you're working for a large corporation that's notoriously prone to have many people in charge who have quite different ideas how the outcome should be, delay is what keeps your productive. Sounds odd, but what doesn't in corporate world?

When you start to work with the first spec you get, you will invariably end up with a lot of messy code because the specs will change. There's no room for "what if not". It's like asking what if the hammer starts to float. It will never happen. And that's where you actually lose time by starting early. Because, as every programmer will tell you, changing a program to fit a changing spec is more work than developing a program from scratch, especially when it comes to its maintainance.

So it might be fine if your specs are set in stone and your managers actually know what a target specification is about and why it should not change. But when working with people whose word is as binding as that of a used cars salesman, and a company policy that puts a manager's word above the written and signed spec you have in your hands, you start seeing procrastinating with completely different eyes. It becomes a dear friend that actually saves you a lot of work and headaches.

See - He isn't the only one...

[Hanners1979]

Now you're just talking out of your semi-colon...

Biased Sampling

[DynaSoar]

> An MIT professor

Hint #1

> found that when he allowed his students

His MIT students. Hint #2.

> to give themselves their > own homework deadlines, they would
> artificially restrict themselves to counter procrastination.

Leaving aside the begged question as to what is normal/natural restriction
as opposed to "artificial" restriction, the observation is from a situation
that is not representative of the general college student population, and so
no generalization can or should be drawn from it.

I've taught at two different state level colleges which aren't much above
community college level as far as academic rigor among the students. I didn't
require attendance and rarely set a deadline other than the required planned
exams. I rarely got anything until near the end of the semester, and even after.
I finally had to start giving graded quizzes before the lecture to (a) force
attendance and (b) force them to read the material before the lecture (a
requirement of mine because I don't read the book to them, I add to it), or
(c) accumulate evidence in the form of missed quizzes/homework/classes to drop them.
Nothing motivates students to show up and to do their work in a timely manner
like seeing one of their (ex-)classmates being told he doesn't need to be there
ever again because he was dropped because he missed too much.

And it's a damn shame I had to do that. Both places had a large proportion of
"non-traditional", that is, not right out of high school, usually older, have
families, jobs and all the problems that come with these and other normal adult
life. I'd set things up so those students could take the course, and never come
to class at all, if they could learn enough on their own from the book to make the
grades they needed on the exams. And I didn't want to make those changes -- I was
ordered to because too many of my students were failing. Yeah, like I made them
not do their work.

Online courses were the worst. Most (not some, not just the majority, but most)
students would do absolutely nothing* until the day before the exam, and then
spend 1 to 3 hours reading through the material. One third dropped out after
the second of 4 exams because they couldn't possibly pass. One third were urged
to do the same for the same reason, but neglected to even do that, and so failed.
Of the one third that remained, 90% got A's because they had the necessary sense
of responsibility and motivation to do the necessary work on their own.

Re:/. is once again a full day behind reddit and d

[THESuperShawn]

Agreed.

Digg had potential, but has become a haven for "teh sony sux0rz" fanboi's and the like. Just write a pro-Wii or anti-Sony/Blu-ray/Bush blog post and you are guaranteed to make the first page. Digg is no more news than PerezHilton.Com or TMZ.Com are. it's gossip and opinion.

Bottom line: If it weren't for the last minute...

[The_REAL_DZA]

...nothing would EVER get done.

Inappropriate study group?

[walterbyrd]

MIT is just about the toughest university on earth. I doubt that those who are accepted to MIT are average people. I would think that those accepted to MIT are much smarter, and much more disciplined, that the average joe six-pack.

That may, or may not, skew the resultes of this test. But, MIT students are clearly not an average cross-section.

Re:not so sure about the conclusions for Study 1..

[tsjaikdus]

Then again, those 27% might be exellent papers, while the others delivered some hasty garbage. Was that surveyed, too?

Re:/. is once again a full day behind reddit and d

[bhamlin]

Me too. :D

Don't TRY!!

[silentounce]

Remember, don't try because that means that "tomorrow's really yesterday". All the poor decisions you made yesterday, you'll continue to make tomorrow.

Worked for Me

[deneb829]

This actually worked for me. I put off taking one of my MS exams for ... er, years. I finally scheduled the test for 6 weeks out and forced myself to study (and pass). Looks like I am going to have to do this again.

Agreed!

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Letting stuff mature in your head on the backburner saves upfront effort. I tend to think of a problem for a while before I start prototyping or implementing. That way, I'll get a clearer picture of potential unintended consequences and implementation cost.

Some procrastination is good, too much procrastination is bad. Finding that sweet spot is kinda difficult, though.

Somewhere,

[way2trivial]

there will be an AS/400 machine in desperate need of attention.

Fortune cookie wisdom

[chud67]

From a fortune cookie: "A schedule defends from chaos and whim."

I am pretty sure this is related to ADD

[Vesuvias]

At one point in time I had read an article describing ADD as if the effected individual was constantly in a warzone with huge amount of important and distracting things going on all around them. I related to that in such that I am practically unable to focus unless it feels exactly like this. Something has to be dire and extrememly important for me to get to this state, but once I am there I am super efficent.

So for me procrastination is almost a requirement. Its the only way I could shut everything else out for a time and hyperfocus. The catch however became that I could only ever be really successful when I found this hyperfocus and could not get there without the pressure of a super tight deadline.

Some people work better by doing a little bit at a time, I don't. I have a huge startup time cost associated with tasks (very bad at context switchs). For me procrastinating is almost essential to doing the task well, it unfortnatly might mean a missed deadline if the task is very complex though. I also avoid any anxiety by not even thinking about the task ahead of time so by the time I get to the point of thinking about what happens when I fail, I am already in a state of hyperfocus (on the task I procrastinated on) so I couldn't be concerned even if I wanted to be.

Ves

Why not procrastinate?

[nauvillain]

Why should we not procrastinate?
It is not obvious to me that a deadline is good for us, not just as workers, but as actual people. If I start procrastinating, it can be due to stress, or to the fact that I feel like stretching, or because I know that the work I have to do does not make me happy.
I never procrastinate for things I really enjoy.

I wanted to start procrastinating...

[jjthegreat]

But I keep putting it off. JJ

Re:Divide and conquer one of these days

[sammyo]

The trick is *GETTING AROUND* to breaking the hard stuff up into lots of little tasks that collectively take care of the hard stuff.

Mylar

[figa]

I've found that Mylar makes me extremely productive. I've tried task lists and post-it notes before, both real and virtual. With Mylar embedded in Eclipse, I have my tasks in the same application as my code, so they don't get lost or require a context switch to view. I'm using it in conjunction with Jira (it works with Bugzilla and Trac just as well or better), and I keep my bigger tasks organized by future release in Jira. I can see them in Mylar if I want to, but they're usually folded up and out of the way, except for the release I'm currently working on.

When I start to work on a large Jira feature, I create a bunch of small local tasks in Mylar that will only take an hour or two to complete, and I schedule them. It only takes a couple of seconds. If I get into the middle of a task or refactoring, and I find something else that needs to be done, I just create another local task if it's small or Jira task if it's big.

This has nearly eliminated all my procrastinating. A lot of why I procrastinated is because my releases are large, and I could never create enough post-it notes or tasks in any other system to make the releases manageable. Breaking the tasks down also makes them more fun because they turn into small annoyances that I want to get rid of. I come back from lunch thinking that I can get two or three done before I go home instead of wondering where I left off on a three month release.

There are a couple great side effects of this system. It's really easy to create release notes from the Jira tasks, and it's easy to create status reports from the local tasks in Mylar. I never forget anything. I also find it easier to go home at the end of the day, since I can create a task that will let me know right where I'm leaving off, and I make sure to activate the task, clear out all the other editors, and leave the task open. I write down everything I'm thinking at the end of the day, and I'm less likely to lie awake at night thinking about what I still have to do.

Used to never procrastinate

[tompaulco]

When I was young, I would do all of my homework first so I could spend the rest of the day doing whatever I wanted. I used to eat the veggies first even though I didn't like them because I didn't want to be miserable sitting at a plate of veggies long after everyone had left the table.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work in the work environment. If you do all of your day's worth of work in the first 6 hours so you can spend the next two browsing the web, then someone is bound to notice that you need more work to do. However, the person who casually browses the web 15 minutes out of each hour gets overlooked. (Even though task switching is less efficient). I discovered that my inate desire to accomplish work first so I could play just resulted in a never-ending stream of work. Therefore it became necessary to inject islands of procrastination in my stream of work in order to avoid doing absolutely nothing with my life but work.

No motivation = Procrastination

[OrbNobz]

My biggest problem is lack of motivation. There's nothing that seems to work to infuse myself with the urge to do what needs to be done at the time.
Another problem is once an ongoing task piles up, it's even harder to get started. (ex. dishes, laundry, entering receipts, etc.)
1.)I really need to balance my checkbook.
2.)I have over 9 months worth of statements to balance.
3.)Another hour of BSG or Half-life sounds so much more fun.
Guess which gets done?
I think you are motivated by either a) the satisfaction of finishing a task, or b) observing progress in performing a task.
I definitely fall in that second category, hence, most of my major projects reach 90-95% completion, then I lose all motivation to finish it.
Well, this is slashdot, so naturally I'm looking for suggestions. :)

  - OrbNobz
I honestly envy you OCD neat-freaks.

Doesn't work

[RealGrouchy]

I have often tried setting artificial deadlines to get out of procrastination, but I found that I'm too smart to fall for my little mind-tricks.

- RG>

No Silver Bullet

[RonBurk]

Procrastination has no single, simple cause. Or rather, it might have a single, simple cause for you (especially when only considering a specific context, such as homework assignments), but different people in different contexts may suffer from procrastination for quite different reasons.

If you've been a procrastinator for years in multiple areas of your life, it's worth spending some time trying to understand root causes, instead of searching for the "do it now!" quick fix (which often produces only fleeting improvements). A good place to start is with the psychological research presented in the venerable Burka and Yuen's Procrastination: Why You Do It, What to Do About It, also available at amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

If you're a pessimist who often frets and fusses at the very beginning of projects when others are working away, worry-free, you might also find useful a read of "The Positive Power of Negative Thinking" bn.com, amazon.com, buy.com. The author makes the case that those of us with a pessimistic explanatory style may be using it to good effect when it comes to getting things done (e.g., worrying can be a form of motivation, and focusing on possible negative outcomes can be an aid to reducing risk of failure).

Here's one reliable trick

[RexDevious]

I've made quite the science out of beating the ill-effects of procrastination. It's actually the whole reason I learned programming to begin with. I spent my first seven years as a programmer designing a voice-activated sort of "personal efficiency coach". The program itself was tabled after attaining the goal of knowing me better than I knew myself, and still being ineffective due to social dominance reasons. But the one trick it learned that proved consistently effective was this (you can do this with nothing more than a piece of paper and a clock):

1. Take a piece of paper and create a blank list with 6 items on it.
2. Pick something you're having a hell of time getting to (or three things), and enter them in items 2,4, and 6.
3. Then pick a different type of task (something mental if 2,4, & 6 are physical tasks, something physical if they're mental tasks) and enter them after items 1,3, and 5.
4. Then look at the clock, and pick the next even 10 minute interval(ie. 10:20, 10:30, 10:40) to start. Don't do a damn thing until then, just sit and stare at the clock.
5. Once you begin, spend exactly 10 minutes on each task - for a total of one hour. Do NOT keep going or stop early.

Although a comprehensive anti-procrastination strategy has to address the real reasons behind the procrastination, this approach works well because no matter what the reason, you can do anything for 10 minutes. In 10 minutes, you don't have to worry about running out of energy, or getting hopelessly confused, or bored, or failing, or even succeeding - because that's just not going to take place in 10 minutes. You alternate between mental and physical tasks because the idea doing your taxes is a lot more appealing when you're currently scrubbing your bathtub, and the idea of scrubbing your bathtub is a lot more appealing when yo'r currently doing your taxes. But neither one is has any appeal at all while you're happily reading Slashdot. And don't worry if you try to begin and find you're not prepared (you have to go to the store for cleaner, or email some company to request a W2); just spend the 10 minutes doing that.

This approach works great for everything except studying, if you're the type who's adept at cramming. I used it one semester and it was the first time in my life when I never felt guilty about all the school work I hadn't done, and that my apartment was actually clean. But I totally zonked 2 tests that I had cumulatively studied more for than I'd probably ever studied for any test in my life. Why? Because I was so used to cramming a semester's worth of information into my head for short periods of time, that I'd never developed the skill to actually retain knowledge for longer than about 15 hours. And by the time the test came around, I couldn't remember the stuff I'd learned weeks or months in the past nearly as well as if I'd just learned it the previous evening. Yeah, I "reviewed" the material - but not nearly as vigorously as I would have if I'd never seen it before. Other than that though, the method works great. It's called doing a "round" by the way.

Re:/. is once again a full day behind reddit and d

[dwayrynen]

And... The only reason I come here is for the discussion... The articles are secondary... Many times written by some beat reporter that in no way can produce all the information the comments here produce...

That being said, I do usually read the article in question, just so I don't write something that gets a 'RTFA' response... :-)

See my tagline

[thc69]

I was going to post this a few days ago. Anyway, see my tagline...