Life without procrastination

[ph0bYx]

Could you imagine living a life fully focused and devoted to a single thing (and by that I don't mean for example a single program to code but, in this example, to improve yourself in coding, to produce tons of great and productive software etc.)?
I've been thinking about this quite often lately.

Back in the day I used to just flicker through a tutorial or science article (something "productive"), then I would usually waste a couple of hours on nonsense (like reading stupid articles on stupid webpages, "How to attract women in three moves of your toe"-kind of webpages ) I would do homework or study a little bit afterwards and then hit the games for a few hours. In that lifestyle I could barely learn something fully or finish a project, and even when I did it took me a great amount of days to do that.

I've lived that lifestyle for quite a while but then it hit me, I could try to fully focus on something and do that like the whole day, completely cut out gaming and other procrastination habits. And it was amazing, I started to learn Python. I went through this book(website): http://www.openbookproject.net/thinkcs/ ... english2e/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; in two days (or something like that). It was a fascinating experience. I thought that with this pace I could learn virtually everything by the end of the year. So I continued with this lifestyle, went through my college subjects, online tutorials, pdf's, you name it. I was on my road to omniscience. But slowly that energy and devotion that kept me going started to fade. Slowly I started to procrastinate more and more and get back to my old lifestyle.

At the moment that devotion that once were is completely gone. I'm now back to my 'old self', in fact I could be doing even worse then I was (tomorrow I have an exam, I haven't studied a bit for it, and I'm not going to. The very thought of studying, or doing anything productive, became painful). Now I'm desperately trying to go back to my 'devoted self' and keep it up as long as possible, but right now, that just seems waaay out of my league.

I've been reading and researching a lot the effects, causes and cures for procrastination (and other human behaviors) but I haven't yet come to a solution for myself. I'm hoping I will someday. There are a lot of techniques out there for just that, but at the end it's up to the individual to find out which one is working for them. Non of the ones I found worked for me. The one who finds a unifying cure for procrastination is going to get a Nobel prize for sure!

It's amazing how that disease progressed so fast and unnoticed. I don't know about you, but in my area I'm getting a lot more of 'I don't feel like it', 'I'd love to help out but I have this game that I want to finish playing' etc. Especially in my college, students fail classes because they 'don't feel like studying'. Well, much like I'm doing now. Things weren't like that before the Information age, or was I just a little kid who didn't notice it?

(I have a lot more to say about this but I'll leave it here and see where the discussion will lead to)

[Broken Angel]

Why not trying and moving your energies to something new? Getting stuck with the same thing for a long time can also be a cause for it, me being a Gemini always face this and I have to make sure I don't stick to anything too long that it can be a pain later on.

This happens even with the friends I have, same goes for the books and the things that I do. The point is that I switch my target points in such a way that nothing getz too boring for me and yeah taking small steps also helps, you learn and then experiment more with that small thing and then also find time to engage yourself with something other.


Not studying is one thing that I can agree upon cause I feel the same I mean I don't pick up books that are not into my interest no matter how important the exam be

amt I am working on PHP and it has got me more interested that anything there can be read books, listen to fun songs switch from genres ofcourse, play more games, get out with frnds and yes also change the things that your addicted to. Addiction to anything is real bad but if you smoke try some diff brand evey now and then, tyr going out to some new place and see the effect, I came back from a vacation and I misse my work a lots see Vacations helps me work more :D



Looking foreward to talk about it more. and yeah DNR sire's views

[lilrofl]

Sounds almost monastic, I think there are periods of life that mimic this, but it's hard to engulf yourself in that style of 'now' living. Life gets in the way. On the other hand I think that it is possible to streamline your life, and integrate more focused living, trimming the fat away so-to-speak, and achieving a happy medium between living in a focused present, and a procrastinated future.

[Lundis]

I know what you're talking about ph0, I've been there many times. The only real solution to not wasting your time that I've found is to severely limit it, spend more time away from your computer, that way you'll automatically use the little time you have efficiently. Get a job, a new hobby or whatever you can imagine yourself doing besides sitting in front of your computer wishing you had the motivation to do what you want to do. In the beginning it'll feel annoying but after a while you get used to it and it'll feel like time's passing by slower than it used to do on days when you do have much time (like last year when I worked ~10h a day 6 days a week for a month, sundays were heaven xD).

For focusing on one thing (after you've actually decided to do it ... ) I suggest checking out Einstein's distraction index.

[ph0bYx]

Thanks guys for the advices, but it isn't all computer related. Whatever I do (no matter if it's on the computer or elsewhere) I always find something else to be interesting to do.
For example, I need to study something. I sit down, open the book and start looking around. All of the sudden I find myself vacuuming the house
And it's not always a problem, I do get shit done eventually but it requires just way more energy and willpower than it should.

About the concrete stuff I'm doing against it, I've seen this video yesterday:
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It's a quite nice idea actually. So for myself I started to be more organized. Well actually, the organization part was never really the problem, I could always make great organization of my time but the "sticking with the plan" is always the hard part.
So this month I'm making an effort to stick to my plans. I don't have my whole days planned, not like from the minute I wake up and ever other minute of the day is planned out. For now I have just 2-3 things for each day, like studying OO Programing for 2 hours and such. If I'd start with bigger plans I know this whole thing will fail, so, baby steps

For you who struggle with procrastination I've found a tactic that helps me a lot - sprints!
The idea is simple, if you want to, let's say do your homework, you clean your desk from anything that could distract you, put down all that you'll be needing and rush through it for 30-45-60 minutes or how much it will take for you to finish and how much you'll be able to do the sprint. So the basic idea is to rush through you obligation (whatever it might be) so fast that you simply won't have the time for any distractions in short periods of time, possibly multiple times per day.
It always helped me to get a lot of shit done quickly, I hope it helps you out too.

I could go on, but I have studying scheduled, and I can't miss out on it
Cheers and keep on fighting the procrastination!

OFF TOPIC: Also I highly HIGHLY recommend this blog and this guy:
http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[JohnB]

I know that feeling.

Sounds like you may have case of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senioritus" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's like when you start to learn a new programming language after the initial enthusiasm/novelty wears off, you just don't feel it. At least this is true for me.

[Broken Angel]

very truely speaking I lost the interest in this topic and I don't know the reason for it and take it as I am suffering from the same too

[ph0bYx]

I know that feeling.

Sounds like you may have case of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senioritus" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's like when you start to learn a new programming language after the initial enthusiasm/novelty wears off, you just don't feel it. At least this is true for me.

You nailed it