rickcecil.com

Personal Suck #1: Procrastination

Hello, my name is Rick and I procrastinate.

That’s my number one personal suck. I put off to tomorrow what I should do today. I’d even rather read about procrastination than actually do what needs to get done. And these articles are full of great advice. If only I’d actually get off my ass and do something.

Most of these articles tell you to do delay gratification–that is, do the work you need to do and then reward yourself with the work you want to do. Yeah, right.

I thought using something like
Getting Things Done would help with my procrastination, and it does. Just not in the way I had hoped: While I’m more productive, I’m doing what I want to do instead of what I need to do.

If I were a hacker, I’d think this quote from Paul Graham would apply to me:

The key to being a good hacker may be to work on what you like. When I think about the great hackers I know, one thing they have in common is the extreme difficulty of making them work on anything they don’t want to.

But I’m not a hacker, which probably just means that I’m good at being lazy. So, I’ve got some new things I want to try to get the things done that need doing:

* Schedule time to do what I want. Maybe if the stuff I want to do is scheduled, I’ll actually work on the things that need doing. Doubtful, but worth a try.
* Build momentum. Just start doing the things that I need to do. And how do I do that?
* Generate excitement. Maybe if I imagine what it would be like to have the needed things done, I’ll get excited about the work (at least, the idea of having it done, anyway), and it’ll be easier to start working.

All worth trying, anyway.

Back in January of 2005, Merlin Mann wrote about patching your personal suck.