In all my research on how to overcome procrastination, the biggest suggestion is this: Do the work, get a reward. And it hasn’t worked for me. Just hasn’t. Why should I delay gratification? I’m an adult. I can go out and get whatever “reward” I want whether I’ve completed the work or not.

Slowly, though, something over the past couple of weeks changed. I don’t remember exactly when the switch flipped, but here’s what happened: I stopped thinking of the reward as a “reward”. It’s not the rigid: “Do the work, get the reward.” Rather, it has become: Complete step 1, proceed to step 2, and you just can’t proceed to step 2 until step 1 is complete.

Looking at it this way, “work” before “reward” becomes the natural order of things and that the reward is not a reward without the work—and the work is not complete without the reward.

Yeah, sounds a bit hokey to me, too. It works for me, though. And I just have to go with what works…

One of the few things I remember from my early childhood is constantly hiding from folks behind my mom’s legs. I did grow out of hiding behind her legs, but I never outgrew being painfully shy. I’ve tried to overcome this irrational shyness over the years, and feel like, lately, I have made some decent strides. My approach has been to

1. read books on the subject
2. get comfortable useing the principles and skills in familiar situations
3. venture out into world to use these principles and skills on strangers

When I set out to create this patch, I didn’t actually plan this approach. It’s just naturally evolved: By reading about how to handle different social situations and how to handle people, I discovered some skills I wanted to try; I tested these skills in situations and on people in which I had an established comfort level. Seeing positive results in these situations, I wanted to—wanted to—venture out into unfamiliar situations and try my growing skillset on strangers.

In a matter of months, I’ve changed from someone terrified of social situations to someone who is actually seeking out social situations in which to network.

Yeah, I know I sound like an infomercial, but my suck is getting patched.

Constant readers will readily recognize the two books that have helped me the most:

• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• People Skills

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

Find the bad code in your system and eliminate the bugs. Find the fastest, easiest, most elegant solution that could possibly work.

So, that’s what I’m trying to do. Patch my suck.

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.

Find the bad code in your system and eliminate the bugs. Find the fastest, easiest, most elegant solution that could possibly work.

So, that’s what I’m trying to do. Patch my suck.