Getting Past Procrastination
75 comments
·June 7, 2025rented_mule
> Action leads to motivation, not the other way around.
I've found this to be very true. A trick I found that made this easier for me is to leave a trivial task to start tomorrow with, often with notes to remind myself what to do. Ideally the trivial task is on the way to something bigger, not finishing something. That gets me into my editor, gets me running the code / tests / etc., and gives me a trivially easy way to get moving. Then the motivation kicks in and I can start moving for real.
The same approach helps me with tasks outside of software development, and even outside of work.
tmoertel
That's Hemingway’s trick: “You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.”
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4825/the-art-of-fi...
jraph
Yep.
When there are no clear tasks, I sometime leave a syntax error at the place work should continue tomorrow. This is quite effective. It can make the answer to the "Where was I?" question immediate instead of taking a few seconds and this is one fewer barrier.
euroderf
Yes. It's funny how this kind of trick can instantly snap the entire working context back into your mind. Essentially leaving you free to forget about the context during your free time and overnight. Truly a useful "hack".
It's also useful to jot down a quick list of (say) three items that are at the top of your mind when you leave work for the day, and they too will help with a context restore.
bravesoul2
Also just chuck Todo comments in the code
The magic of Git means you can immediately find them in the working index and get back on to it. Just remember to remove them before the commit.
dogman1050
I've always used "$$". It's probably a subliminal thing.
apwell23
I always leave work( for lunch, for home) at failing test . Try to anyways.
parpfish
I’ve heard this called “park facing downhill”
veunes
It's way easier to ride the momentum of "just one quick thing" than to start cold and stare into the void of a blank screen or a big to-do list
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imjonse
"Across a decade working at hypergrowth tech companies like Meta and Pinterest, I constantly struggled with procrastination [...] I was not making progress on the things that mattered."
Maybe unless one can really convince themselves that their daily work matters (really matters and not just for their team/company metrics) one is bound to procrastinate as a symptom of some subconscious sense of pointlessness.
veunes
Yep, it's hard to summon genuine motivation when, deep down, something feels meaningless. You can build all the productivity systems in the world, but if the work itself feels hollow...
ndr42
I observe the opposite: the more important something is the more afraid I am to approach it. I procrastinate because it is important.
layer8
I suspect it's because of fear of failure, as failure is more consequential the more important the task is.
annie_muss
When I see stories like this I always wonder "How did you get and keep jobs at meta and Pinterest if you have a procrastination problem?"
I procrastinated so badly I could never apply for jobs. And the jobs I did get I lost quickly due to the same procrastination.
xorcist
Relentlessly trying to lock up as much of the world's information as possible behind your login wall, I'd be struggling with procrastination as well.
Maybe the answer isn't so much finding new tricks to play on your mind, but finding something to do that doesn't involve codifying more power in the strong leader, to increase his masculinity in the worklace or whatever the political issue du jour is.
ednite
Some great comments in this thread and I agree, a lot of it comes down to understanding yourself.
In my case, not always, but often, procrastination shows up when fear is involved. Fear of failure, of not doing something perfectly, of the task being too big. What’s helped me is turning the task into a challenge, because I know that personally, I thrive on challenges. It re-frames the fear into something exciting, and once I get started, I follow all of the other advice such like breaking it down into small steps. Thanks for sharing.
wseqyrku
There was one quote that helped me get past this, "self-discipline is a form of self-respect" and there's no way around that if you don't have any.
predkambrij
I like to have phone with 30min countdown, this helps me keep sense of time. Sort of like pomodoro, but for a different purpose.
cardanome
It is normal to struggle with procrastination from time to time but if is a regular occurrence you need to check the actual causes.
You might have ADHD.
And is is very important to know whether you have it or not because all that advice for neurotypical people will not work for you then. In fact it will harm you. It will make you feel as a failure.
You need to figure out how your brain works and only then you will finally manage to make lasting changes.
parpfish
What’s an example of the kind of advice that doesn’t work?
jasode
>What’s an example of the kind of advice that doesn’t work?
For some people struggling chronic lifelong procrastination, the oft-repeated advice from the author such as "Action leads to motivation, not the other way around." ... and similar variants such as, "Screw motivation, what you need is discipline!" ... and other related big picture ideas such as Dilbert's Scott Adams' "Systems instead of Goals" -- all do not work.
And adding extra rhetorical embellishments to the advice such as using the phrase "it's simple [...]", and using the word "[...] just [...]" as in:
- "Stopping procrastination isn't that hard to solve. It's simple. Just chop up the task into much smaller subtasks and just start on that tiny subtask. That will give you momentum to finish it."
... also doesn't work. Some procrastinators just procrastinate the initiation of starting that tiny subtask! For the few that actually do try to start with that first step, they'll quickly lose steam because of boredom/distraction/whatever and the overall task remains unfinished.
A lot of books and blogs about time management repeat the same advice that many procrastinators have all heard before and it doesn't work. The procrastinators understand the logic of the advice but it doesn't matter because there are psychological roadblocks that prevent them from following it.
em-bee
so what does work then?
isn't the problem here that the answer is very individual. for me for example some of the above things do work, and some don't. some of the time. it's like it depends and there is no clear answer even just for myself. knowing whether i had ADHD would not make any difference. i'd still not know what works.
for example i have seen tasks lists recommended as one way to deal with ADHD. because the lists help focus. isn't breaking things down into small steps the same thing?
you are right, there is more than just getting started. boredom and distractions are a problem too. but they are also a problem for "normal" people.
seems to me that the only thing we can do is to list a number of possible approaches, and let everyone pick what works best for them.
so back to the original question: what does work for people with ADHD?
hliyan
To me, procrastination is the brain overestimating (or perhaps just estimating) the unpleasantness of a task in the future. The unpleasantness could come from general lack of pleasure in performing the task, anticipation of frustration or irritation due to a gap in the skills or resources required, anxiety about not being able to successfully complete the task, or the output of the task not meeting one's personal expectations.
One example for me is getting out of the house: I loathe the idea of getting dressed, getting into the car and driving, whenever I contemplate it, but once I'm behind the wheel, the thought always is "this isn't so bad". If I think about the getting dressed bit, that too, thought of in isolation, isn't so bad. It seems it is the anticipation of a seemingly complex sequence of tasks that tend to put the brain off.
melodyogonna
I've found that sometimes the first action doesn't even have to involve directly working on the problem, just trying to write down a series of actions you need to take in a todo list can unblock you mentally.
parpfish
Sometimes I can trick myself into getting started that way.
The trick is to come up with a tiny goal and give yourself permission to quit once you reach it so it’s not like your overwhelmed by the full task.
The smallness of the task is important, but it’s even more important that you genuinely give yourself permission to stop when it’s done. If you don’t do that, it’s not “one small task”, it’s “step one in a big task” and you’ll keep procrastinating
For coding it’s a sequence of: “Ill just get all the software and documentation open and organized”
“I’ll create a few empty files on a new branch”
“I’ll just stub out a few things I KNOW I’ll need”
…
For other non-code writing, I’ve occasionally been able to hack it in a similar way by writing progressively more detailed outlines.
For physical projects, sometimes it’s just about gathering supplies and organizing tools.
nilirl
The warrant for this claim: The smaller the action you ask from yourself, the easier it is to choose it over inaction.
But sometimes it's not inaction we're choosing against; it's discomfort.
In that case, this becomes simplistic.
veunes
Breaking things down can still help, but it doesn't magically erase the discomfort. It's more like easing into cold water
veunes
The "action precedes motivation" idea is underrated. I've definitely found that once I take that first tiny step (open the file, write the first test, whatever), things start to flow. It's weirdly easy to forget that when you're stuck in that doom-scroll-procrastinate spiral.
JustinCS
Related to taking tiny steps, I've set up a daily habit checklist with the lowest bar possible, even lower than the author's suggested log statement. When it comes to software dev, it's just "open my IDE and look at my notes for what to do next". This usually just takes 10 seconds, but it's the first step in starting and usually leads to me doing at least a bit more, so it's helpful when I'm at my lowest in terms of energy. And even if I do nothing else, I get some satisfaction that I at least completed my to-do and did a tiny bit more than nothing for the day.
unkulunkulu
++ for the “lowest bar” and constantly negotiate with oneself on if every line is still valuable and brings profit and not despair.
Like “brush teeth”, “do nothing at all for half an hour after work” “remove trash photos for the day in the phone”, “finish working” (here I have a detailed sublist ending with “close computer lid”) “move todos I did not have time for today to tomorrow”
another cool habit is “I did list”: add items that you did that were not planned, because we sometimes forget why we did not do something “planned”, because we actually did something else important that we are just blind to when “planning”. for example, “meal”, “took some rest that I actually need”, “took out trash”, “told someone irritating to fuck off” etc etc
> Across a decade working at hypergrowth tech companies like Meta and Pinterest, I constantly struggled with procrastination
I used to procrastinate a lot when I was a PhD student and later in academia. Sometimes, it was literally weeks of doing nothing and stressing out.
I eventually migrated to big tech and I now rarely procrastinate. We have pretty tangible goals, good results are rewarded and lack of results would raise concerns pretty quickly.
In my case, working in the right environment helped a lot with procrastination.