procrastination

Why You Are Better Than Robotic Willpower

There are many tools around that make sure you’re only doing what you’re meant to be doing. Let’s say you’re supposed to be writing. To help you stay writing, there’s software that cripples your Internet connection, that removes your social network access, and that generally takes control of what you can and can’t do.

photo by jakedobkin

photo by jakedobkin

Instead of willpower, you can set tools to force you away from temptation.

But this is damaging.

Doug Belshaw asked via Twitter:

http://twitter.com/dajbelshaw/statuses/60691447883632641

I responded:

While software like Quiet Hours will automatically switch off email and social apps for you to get on with more important tasks, it’s not all roses and butterflies:

  1. You stop working naturally – The forced nature of your work can scupper creative thinking. There’s nowhere else to go, but you’re made very aware of the fact. Choice is more open than force, so aim for that as often as possible.
  2. It feels like a punishment – Where’s the fun in removing all distractions so clinically? There’s a fine line between giving yourself a bit of peace and pissing yourself off.
  3. A ‘no ifs, no buts’ approach is restrictive – Need to quickly look something up for a reference? Well you can’t. I tried a ‘no ifs, no buts’ practice in the past, but quickly stopped. When you’re busy working and find your restrictions stop you working, it’s a bigger distraction than everything else put together. I didn’t end up screaming, but it was a close thing…
  4. Tools can’t eliminate the problem of forgetting what you were meant to be doing – I’ve walked away from writing something in order to find a quotation in a book. Half an hour later, I’m still looking through books and I suddenly remember what my initial purpose was. A five minute job took much longer than necessary. An automated shut-down tool will remove a couple of these problem points. However, it won’t stop the problem itself.
  5. You may end up believing that you cannot rectify these problems manually (i.e. yourself) – The more you rely on tools to kick you into shape, the less you’ll be in touch with your own talent and power to push on.

There’s nothing wrong with using software to help eliminate distractions. But reliance on software is dangerous. You have the power to do it yourself:

  1. Keep a to-do/task list – An easy way to train yourself to concentrate on what you’ve set yourself.
  2. Leave plenty of time for important tasks – Left until the last minute results in panic. You may be totally focused on the task, but the deadline hovering over you like a guillotine blade will be more than enough distraction.
  3. Do things in small chunks – Rather than commit to an hour on an essay, try to work for just ten minutes. Then take a minute or two off to check social networks and other distractions. Multitasking doesn’t work, so try ‘minitasking’ as an alternative.
  4. Keep ‘valid disruptions’ in check – I’ve said before, “disruptions aren’t always unwelcome, even if they are disruptive”. Be aware of this and you can work more effectively. Give yourself time to spend on the good stuff and mix it up with your other work. There’s nothing like a bit of variation!

What do you think? Would you rather automate the process of removing distractions? Do you feel better when you have control yourself? What tips do you have to stay focused?

Risk or Responsibility?

Do you take risks when faced with important decisions?  Do you push things to one side and let random excitement take hold and stress you out?

Perhaps you think you only take an occasional gamble. But you may be more of a risk taker than you think.

photo by anarchosyn

photo by anarchosyn

It doesn’t sound like much, but think how tempting it is to leave an essay until the last minute.  Rather than prepare in advance, there’s a want to bash everything out in the last minute.  You may not really *want* to do everything in the last minute, but the beast of procrastination rears its ugly head and that’s what happens anyway.

What of study plans?  Before the work starts, a plan can seem so structured and restricting.  Surely you’ll get the work done eventually.  You’ve done it before that way.  Much better to work when you feel like it, eh?

Keep those fingers crossed that you’ll get that feeling every time.

Of course, you will feel like it, because you’ll have no choice. Time will have run out. Panic is often a big driver of decisions.

Shame those decisions aren’t likely to be the best ones.

Many choices may not feel risky, but there’s a real chance they will make a negative impact.

Making plans straight away does involve taking responsibility.  But this is a low risk, positive action.  Responsibility sounds like a hassle, because you know you have to start.  And the end is so, so far away.  At least, it’s so far away until there’s not enough time.  Then the game changes and it’s out of your control…

The sooner you start, the sooner you can finish in your own sweet time.  No rushing, no major panic, no second rate attempt that you know could have been better.

You don’t have to jump on tasks the moment you get them, but neither should they be left to linger.

Advice like this isn’t unusual.  That doesn’t make it any easier to action.  Not until you give it a context.  As I see it, that context is risk.  The longer you leave it, the bigger the chance you’re taking.  Risks don’t have to sound risky before they become dangerous.

Are you willing to gamble with grades?

Too much advice and not enough productivity?

Simple advice can usually be taken the opposite way.

  • Want to achieve your goals?  Make them public!  No, keep them private!
  • Want to focus better on revision?  Listen to music while you work!  No, sit in silence!
  • Want to save money on your shopping bill?  Make a list!  No, shop less strictly to bag the bargains!

You may have heard me say that one person’s poison is another person’s potion.  When it comes to uncomplicated suggestions from a friend, or a blog post with some quick tips, the advice won’t necessarily work for you.

 

photo by RobeRt Vega

photo by RobeRt Vega

If there was a single answer, we’d all take that route and we’d all love the success it brought.  Nobody would have to worry.  But, naturally, life isn’t like that.

The same goes for if a selection of answers all produced the same, successful, result.  Suggestions are great, but you have to make them your own before they’ll work.  Even then they may not yield the fruit you were expecting.

Yes, it’s frustrating, but life isn’t simple.  That’s why so many people are hooked on finding a quick fix or an astounding life hack.

Whenever you stumble upon something great, let’s call it ‘lucky’.  Without seeking any advice, you won’t be as lucky as one who does the searching.  You do have to ‘create your own luck‘ to an extent.  However, there is a saturation point where even the one who searches is wasting their time.

After all, there are so many blogs devoted to study tips and life hacks that it’s easy to spend too much time reading them.  Do you really want to save time, or do you want to procrastinate? At some point, you need to act on the advice you already have.

Darren Rowse of ProBlogger made some great points over Twitter about all the supposedly time-saving advice out there:

“Problem with productivity techniques: so many focus upon how we can stuff more into life – which just sets us up for heart attacks later.  Not sure what the answer is but it strikes me that a better approach to productivity would be becoming focused and doing less things better.  Or maybe thinking about all this productivity stuff is just a distraction from being productive.”

Darren was inspired to make those comments because of this video:

We do face distractions.  They won’t go away.  Neither should we be forced to rid ourselves of all disruption.

However, the idea of ‘doing less things better’ is important.  Doing more isn’t automatically more impressive.  A limited number of key pursuits can be more convincing.  You may find that, in the transition, you focus on more demanding work within the deliberately limited scope.  The good news is that hard work under these conditions is often more satisfying.

I’m not trying to suggest that general productivity hacks and tips are useless.  Far from it.  Much of the advice I give on this blog is general.

I see the difficulties of taking advice working in two ways:

  1. Specific advice is easy to action because there is little need to interpret.  Just follow step by step.  However, it is less likely to yield as much success as the person who achieved it and advised in the first place;
  2. General advice is harder to action, because you have to take responsibility for making it your own.  You may develop the approach wonderfully, you may reach a dead end and seek out different advice, or you may find it too hard to take on that responsibility at all.

Advice, no matter how specific, should be examined and considered, but at no point should you expect an automatic win.  Even if you’re persuaded it’s a no-brainer.

It’s great to take a punt and win.  It’s hell to expect the best and lose.

The advice I give is based on my own experience and those of others.  I sometimes advise stuff that doesn’t (or hasn’t yet) worked for me.  Why?  Because I know many others who have been successful using those methods.

We may not be the same, but we share many similar features and goals and thought processes.  It would be insane if nobody listened to others for advice.  It would be equally insane if you took everything they said as the truth. The only person who can find your truth is you.  And it’s not an easy road.

That doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.  Have a nice trip.  And don’t make *too* many stops on the way for advice.  You can’t refuel if you’ve not started using your own resource tank yet.

Want to hear more? Just before I went to publish this, Darren Rowse put up his own video on whether productivity systems really work.  I’ll leave you with that:

Five mistakes to beat…before they beat you

Nobody’s perfect.  We all make mistakes.

That’s good.  Without mistakes, we wouldn’t have successes.

But it’s not easy to spot mistakes when they’re based on larger concepts.  The situation may be different each time, but your actions may be the same.  You need to be on your guard.  So, by way of example, here are five issues that aren’t always easy to spot, but which can get in the way of you and a big bag of win:

photo by mao_lini

photo by mao_lini

1. You have too many things going on at once

I’m sure none of us like to miss out on life.  It’s rubbish if you say ‘no’ to everything.

But you don’t have to be available to everyone, for everything, all the time.  Choose to be choosy.  Pick to be picky.  Be selective in which events you wish to attend and limit the number of hobbies you pursue.  That way, you’ll miss out on less, not more.

2. You’re too dependent

Uni is meant to bring out your independence and give you masses of life experience.  But if you’re used to other people clearing up messes and dealing with your problems, it’s hard to change.  Why bother when you know someone else will sort it all out for you?

There will come a point in your life when you will have to do things for yourself.  You may get away with it now, but people will begin to know your game.  You either have to reinvent yourself (which is difficult, even at uni) or find a whole new set of people to annoy (and why would you act that way on purpose?).  The longer you leave it, the worse the fall.

3. You silently sort out other people’s messes

Independence requires an assertive attitude too, otherwise you risk a different type of dependence.  You may think it’s less bother to clear stuff up yourself, but you end up giving yourself more work and getting no further with it.

I knew a group who lived together with a messy housemate who didn’t tidy up and left a trail of rubbish and washing everywhere.  The others ended up doing the cleaning for him (quite literally silently sorting out another person’s mess).  After weeks of this, they eventually plucked up the courage to do something about it.  They politely asked the housemate to deal with the mess, explaining that it wasn’t a group of magic elves cleaning after him…

Good news is, the housemate listened and dealt with the mess.  Over the rest of the year, they fared a lot better with the cleaning (it wasn’t perfect, but hey!).

This kind of confrontation takes guts, even as a team, but it’s more productive in the long run.  It’s better to deal with the source of the problem, rather than the problem itself.

photo by braineater

photo by braineater

4. You do anything else just to ignore the important stuff

Faced with tasks you’d rather not do, your thoughts tend to stray on everything else you need want to do.

We all procrastinate at times.  But for some, the problem spirals out of control.  It can get to the point where you make a conscious, active effort to find other things to do specifically in order to stop thinking about important work.

TheUniversityBlog has a big post about procrastination in the archives.  Stamp down on it before the issue grows.

Heavy procrastination could be masking a deeper rooted problem, such as a dislike of the subject or a tutor.  Be aware of outside issues that may be causing the procrastination, because it’s better to deal with the issues under those circumstances.

5. You put yourself down

“How did I even get to university in the first place?”

Everyone else seems so much better compared to you.  You don’t understand the lectures, you don’t feel skilled enough to join one of the clubs, and you’re a rubbish dancer so don’t go clubbing with your friends.

It’s amazing how many people are down on themselves.  Truly amazing.  Why should anyone think it reasonable to make themselves look worse than they really are?

Even if you believe all this negativity, there’s no point in moping around and feeling even worse! Seek to improve your lot.  Get some study advice and ask your tutor how to get ahead, join a club and learn from others as you go, take a night out with your mates and watch how practically none of us can dance!

—

Find a motto

As I said at the start of this post, it’s not easy to spot mistakes when they’re not isolated one-offs.  Once a pattern emerges and you discover an area you’d like to improve upon, sometimes all it takes is a motto.

For instance, my ‘motto of the moment’ is:

“Know when to stop.”

I’m surprised how much it helps to remember those four words.  It’s the anchor I use to improve.  I say it in my head and allow it to refocus my thoughts.  Over time, I’ve had to remind myself less because knowing when to stop becomes a natural part of what I consider.

This isn’t a quick fix, but it is a quick snap to jolt you in the right direction.  What would you give as your ‘motto of the moment’?

photo by Kyle Kesselring

photo by Kyle Kesselring