They're not browsing lemmy I'll tell you that for free

Having less of the perfectionist mindset and more of the "80% quality". Bad experiences from procrastinating helps you learn too.

ADHD meds and therapy. I tried a ton of different methods, but ultimately I was procrastinating for two reasons. 1) my brain finds the things I need to do under stimulating, which feels like pulling teeth, so it looks for stimulation elsewhere and draws me to a different task. ADHD meds give my brain the proper amount of stimulation/reward for doing things that need to be done. 2) for a variety of reasons, I had an underlying current of anxiety around the possibility of failure. Much easier to avoid failure if you avoid ever doing the task. Therapy helps me reason through the anxiety, and realize that I am essentially already failing by not trying, so trying involves a risk of success rather than a risk of failure.

Edit: I still procrastinate plenty, but significantly less than I used to. It no longer reaches a point of nearly ruining my life, now it is just an average level of procrastination compared to my peers. Instead of avoiding tasks for weeks, months, or years on end, I avoid them for a few hours, maybe days at most (if I have the luxury).

Lists. always lists. A hot sheet of 4 quarters, what I need to take care of soonest (top left), what can wait (top right), shit I forgot (bottom left), things that can keep in mind but have to be taken care of later/long term projects. Also, if I get to this list later in the morning and I have completed some items, I always write them down and then cross them off...it's a trick to keep your mind progressing.

I started planning procrastination as a daily activity I need to do. And I don't really wanna, so I stopped.

Starting the day with small achievable goals and building/keeping momentum. ADHD medication.

Recognized that it was part of what makes me successful and learned to control it a little. For example, when I struggled with getting things done on time, I learned to set deadlines for myself and stuck to them. I realized that I work better when I know I'm a little up against the clock, so I kind of built that in for myself. The hard part is the not moving the deadline. You can't view it as moveable or it doesn't work.

I also ask myself "how long is it going to take" and most things if the answer is less than five minutes, I just try to force myself to do it and get it out of the way.

For other recurring things I do them on a schedule. So like, every weekend there are things around the house I need to do. It doesn't matter when I do them but I have to get them done the day I say I will. That's the deal Iake myself and it helps.

Those are some of my personal hacks. They don't work for everyone but they work for me.

Things I find myself saying frequently, to spur me beyond inaction:

Don't let perfection be an enemy of what's good

The only way to find out is to do it. Or, only way to know is to try.

Done art my entire life, and have learned even when I produce failure, I learn from these mistakes, and over time improve.

I get so wrapped in my head, plan things to death, to inaction. Like 2 days ago, been wanting to make my own wound salve. I could've waited, kept researching, to death, but impulsively bought few ingredients on Amazon. Got the ball rolling way more quickly.

The only way to break out of a slump is to try something. I don't know what will happen. But intellectually I know decisions, actions breed more possibilities, expanding one's world.

Go big or go home. Play Sims, and have an idea to build a house with a huge tree in the living room? Do it, make bold choices, take risks. That's the only way we can evolve.

I still struggle with it, but one thing that I've been learning lately is that little improvements at a steady pace is way more impactful than it feels like in the moment.

I often find myself putting of large tasks because I think that they will take so long and there is no point in breaking them up into little pieces because it will take so long.

The irony is that if I had just done a little bit of work once a week on the project consitently, it would have been totally done long ago. But me putting off any work until I feel like I can get it all done at once is ultimately what causes it to never be done.

TL:DR, even if it's 5-10 minutes once a week, do at least that on a large task or project. You'll be surprised how fast that will get things done even though in the moment it feels like it's not worth it.

Adderall

Medication.

I got diagnosed with ADHD and started methylphenidate. That coupled with changing to my dream job things have improved immensely.

That said I’m still not really happy in down time but maybe I’m just never really fully happy.

When I got a job that was constant priorization of tasks I found that it carried over to my personal life. I would get home and bang out everything that needed doing then relax for the rest of the night.

I quit my job so now I have all the time in the world and I still only get 60-80% of the things done. And I really need to force myself to do it.

Lisdexamfetamine

I stopped drinking.

I've been stuck in a procrastination spiral for a while now.

I want to pursue my dream career, but a fear of failure and worrying I won't be able to learn what I need to means I keep putting it off. But then the act of putting it off makes me feel guilty.

ADHD meds

When I deleted my reddit account many years ago, my productivity skyrocketed. It has now dipped considerably since I started using Lemmy, so I’ll probably stop doing that soon.

It’s not just the extra time you get from not using the site; there’s a very real effect on my ability to focus on tasks when I don’t have Reddit/Lemmy as an escape hatch.

I thought that losing my 10yo+ account would hurt, but it turned out that I didn’t give a shit.

There is some interesting research on procrastination as an emotional problem. It's important to note the difference between procrastinating and being lazy. Procrastination is typically productive (I am cleaning the house or being active and engaged in some way instead of writing that term paper) and laziness is not (I haven't eaten or bathed because I don't want to and my ass is glued to the couch while I passively watch TV).

The main hook into procrastination is that your subconscious percieves a low emotional return for the task to be performed. Instead it finds any other task it percieves to have a higher emotional reward and sets you about doing that instead.

It helps to intentionally focus on how good it will feel to complete the task you are putting off, and so you sort of hijack your own brain.

At some point I just realized something. Stop putting more stuff of future you. He's probably already got enough going on.

I learned that many things take less than 5 minutes and the joy of having something finished felt way better than putting it off

Besides getting medicated, I started using this website called goblin.tools - it uses chat GPT to break down tasks into tiny steps. You can do each step recursively, until it's something you can finally make your brain do. That way it gets rid of the executive function planning step so that you're not exhausted by the time you start whatever you're doing.

Damn, I wanted to answer with that joke...

I'd say I still procrastinate but less. The main factor is it make me feel anxious of not finishing stuff so I wanted a solution.
The way I'm improving is to look at big tasks into smaller steps which are easier and quicker to accomplish, this way I feel better since there's something I finished even when the big task might be still a long way of being finished.

I remember something about 2 minute tasks or something like that, but also I saw this from my job, splitting projects into epics and each epic into tasks and even then you could split them into sub tasks (taken from the Jira types at my job)

My case isn't as serious as some of the comments around here, but mostly it's deciding that I don't care how I feel about the task at hand. This only works for things that don't require a lot of concentration, but for example you go "I'll do this and now" and just do it no matter how much you feel like using Lemmy or yt. It helps to think of how whatever it is you wanna do to waste your time, it feels better to do it when you're free than when you're busy.

When my wife asks me to do something suddenly I stop procrastinating on my tasks.... however the thing she asked me to do... well...

But in all seriousness my medication helps me focus a lot but doesn't solve all my problems. I find thinking of the bad outcomes if I was to procrastinate longer, helps a bit.

Having to do lists and noting things in the calendar. Having clear deadlines really helps in my case.

Employing people that required me to "function"

I don't think I have stopped struggling with it. But removing some distractions has definitely worked. Windows was a big one. So many popups and bullshit. Stopped using social media entirely for some time. Just blocked the websites and the apps. Stopped using YouTube. Always made sure to leave the house and go to a library or cafe in the morning where there are less distractions. It works well.

Eh, just procrastinate tomorrow