Chronic Procrastination

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#1

Hi, I’m @RuizuKun_Dev

I’m pretty much controversial & infamous among the community regarding my behavior and procrastination however today, I’m going to redeem myself.

As a Chronic Procrastinator myself, my life has been affected horribly by it;

  • I’ve lost friendships
  • I’ve lost money
  • I’ve lost happiness

and I’ve gained pretty nasty side effects;

  • Stress
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Guilt
  • Fear

Honestly, I’ve been playing Overwatch A LOT lately, and I find myself feeling guilty afterward because I’ve been Procrastinating but I’m supposed to be working on my Game!

And this has led me to the decision to research “Procrastination” and defeat it for good.

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Here’s what I’ve found:

Procrastination is a "Habit"

This is a simplified version of what a Habit is:

  1. Trigger (hungry)
  2. Action (eat)
  3. Reward (happy)

"We humans are all creatures of Habit"

–

So what is causing me to procrastinate so much:

  1. I feel guilty, stressed, anxious, fearful and depressed
  2. I play video games
  3. I feel better

And then …

  1. I stop playing
  2. I realized that I’ve been procrastinating
  3. Repeat

It’s vicious cycle

So how do we stop ourselves from Procrastinating?

I’ve been doing a lot of research on Motivation, Self-Discipline, Gamification, Endocrine System, Addiction, Habits, & Psychology, to name a few.

Here’s what I’ve found:

  • Biologically, most of us value short-term more than long-term rewards

  • There might be a failure in our executive function

    • A skillset of; Planning, Prioritizing & Carry out tasks

  • There might be a failure in our mood regulation

    • Giving in to feeling good and avoiding bad feelings

Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all formula, however there are certain principles that we can follow:

–

We can manipulate these factors to increase our Motivation

Motivation is equal to (Expectancy x Value) / (Impulsiveness x Delay)

  • Expectancy is the certainty of you achieving your goal
  • Value is the reward and result of your actions
  • Impulsiveness is how likely you are going to procrastinate
  • Delay is how much time it will take until you achieve your goal or gain a reward

–

You can also follow these six steps:

  1. Forgive yourself
  2. Redefine your Goals
  3. Eliminate Distractions
  4. Breakdown your Project
  5. Re-frame tasks as input-based
  6. Start by setting up

–

You can use these techniques:

–

TL: DR;

Do not let the panorama of your life oppress you, do not dwell on all the various troubles which may have occurred in the past or may occur in the future. Just ask yourself in each instance of the present: ‘What is there in this work which I cannot endure or support?’ You will be ashamed to make any such confession. Then remind yourself that it is neither the future nor the past which weighs on you, but always the present and the present burden reduces if only you can isolate it and accuse your mind of weakness if it cannot hold against something this stripped bare.

Hopefully this provides value to the community as I’ve seen many threads recently concerning “Productivity”, “Work-Ethics” and “Procrastination”

If you know someone who is having trouble please share this with them, let us suffer less from procrastination!

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#2

I have to say this helped. Many know I have skill as a developer but I’m well known for finishing projects halfway and dumping them. I’ve recently been forcing myself to continue working even if I may not entirely enjoy it to counteract this and so far it’s been working (ish). I haven’t done much research into procrastination but thank you for the help!

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#3

Thank you!

This post is really helpful. I have been struggling with procrastination for a while and I was never able to concentrate.

There were many instances where I was unable to build and I quit many major development projects because I couldn’t concentrate or work well enough because of myself. I was also usually discouraged considering how others got along very well, and how it was hard for me to make progress, but this post really did make me think and perhaps made me overcome some parts of it.

This truly is helpful, thank you.

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#4

I’ve found procrastination to be a nuisance, and I can tell you that it’s all about just getting started working on something. Like, why don’t we want to work on something? Don’t ask me, but I get that feeling. “I can do it later,” is true, I can do it later, but that means I will have near 0 margin for when it’s supposed to be done, in case anything happens.

For my part, the solution to procrastination has been to just get started. It sounds easy enough, and I bet you think “that’s too easy to be true”, and then you don’t try it out. But, do you know what that results in? Procrastination.

Anyway, in addition to this topic, I recommend you to watch this Ted talk, as it pretty much explains procrastination in a very interesting and fun way. Try watching it without smiling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU

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#5

Thank you for sharing!

I’ve watched that video already. It explains Procrastination but doesn’t tell you how to deal with it.

That works for you but not for me, might work for someone else but not everyone.

I find myself in front of my computer with my game open then I feel an awful lot of resistance to work on my game.

For me I feel a lot of stress and guilt from what happened in the past while also anxious and fearful of the future, and depressed in the present.

It’s not that feeling of “I can do it later” it’s “I don’t want to do it but I know I have to, AHHHHHHHHHH”

I know that I need to let it go, to not worry about the Future nor feel guilty of the Past but I’ve been doing it without knowing for a long time and it has become a habit, I’m going to need time to deal with these demons inside and kick them out, this is what I did my research for to heal!

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#6

I cannot thank you enough for this, I have been procrastinating and leaving some projects and end up missing out on alot of portfolio work and money. Thanks for making this.

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#7

This is so helpful! Thank you! I think I suffer from this too. I put off so much stuff, even massive school projects! This will help me a lot!

#8

Thank you for this, this helped me a lot too. I just realized how many projects I have stopped working on for something like talking on discord. I will make sure to share this to my friends.

#9

Thank you! Your post is really helpful - I struggle with distraction a lot more than a lot of people, and I haven’t really found good mechanisms for controlling that. One step at a time, though!

A good video people might want to watch is this one, by LiveOverflow. He’s an awesome YouTuber who puts a massive amount of time and energy into his videos (definitely subscribe!) but he put out a great video about this topic from his experience, through the lens of “learning to hack”

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#10

Thanks for putting this out there, it’s nice to know I’m not the only developer who has a few problems when it comes to being lazy and semi-controversial :wink:

I’m gonna try and take some of this advice and put out some more updates, considering I have way more free time due to current global issues and school cancellation, I may as well use it right.

#11

I’m a 15-year-old hobbyist game developer of a game of my own and I experience procrastination way too much. Now I just want to get this out there, I understand what I go through as a teenager not having to worry about if I’ll have enough money to pay taxes and get food on a table isn’t as much as say my parents or an adult over 21 has to worry about.

The only reason why I want to be a successful developer and put my game on the front page is that I want something impressive to put on my college application or in the future a job application. It’s also to buy the little things that I could use to improve my hobby of gaming and game development or even make enough money to pay for college and get a head start. It’s also good for me to learn good working habbits and work-ethics for the future when I do go to college and get a job. It’s good for anyone to learn that, in my opinion.

But, I tend to frequently get distracted from achieving my ultimate goal: finishing my game. I face distractions all the time and I used to tell myself self “OK: I’m gonna work on my game for at least 30 minutes every day.” That turned into 30 minutes every week or two. That’s not good at all.

I’m seeking a way where I can turn away from the distractions of “Oh, I wonder what’s good on YouTube today”, “I feel like playing a game”, or “I wonder if my friends are on discord.” The list goes on. And as stated near the middle of the post:

So what is causing me to procrastinate so much:

  1. I feel guilty, stressful, anxious, fearful and depressed
  2. I play video games
  3. I feel better

and then …

  1. I stop playing
  2. I realized that I’ve been procrastinating
  3. Repeat

It’s vicious cycle

I feel that guilt that I could’ve been doing something productive to get the littlest bit closer to achieving my goal.

I just wanted to get this out of my head for once, and I doubt anyone’s going to read this but I hope everyone who struggles with this Chronic Procrastination gets better and learns how to get over it with me. Thank you! :slight_smile:

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#12

I don’t want to be rude, but it sounded like he said: “learn more about hecking!” :laughing:

#13

Recently started using the pomodoro technique mentioned here and it’s working great. I found toggl to be a very good app for pomodoro because it’s free and has a pomodoro option built in.

#14

bro i feel u

for me im either getting 3 hours of sleep scripting or im doing nothing the entire day

i wish for the best towards anyone who experiences this or something simillar to the OP or me dawg :pray: