Ask HN: Struggling with Productivity and Procrastination

> I want to study more, read more, and finish my coding projects.

Be honest with yourself: do you really want to do those things? Or do you want them to be done? I suspect it’s the latter, and you don’t actually want to do what you say you want to do. A lot of people in my experience conflate “wanting something done” with “wanting to do something”. Understanding that may help you understand why you’re having a hard time completing the tasks you want to.

Either way, before you can complete a task you need to have a reason to complete it; what makes you want to do it? Maybe you want to read more to improve your knowledge about a field, or maybe you want to study more to better understand the material you’re learning. That motivation will be your guiding light when you don’t presently want to do something, but your higher goal is to do it. And that time will come. Everyone has days where they lack motivation, and having a good reason for doing something will enable you to have the discipline to do it anyway.

Next, set yourself up for small wins. If your goal is “I want to focus on my studying for eight hours”, then you’ve set yourself up for failure. Start smaller, with something that you know it is impossible for you to fail at. Start by studying for fifteen minutes, or ten, or five; whatever you know you can do successfully. Accomplishing that goal, no matter how tiny, will be a success that you can build upon. Next time, try to study for longer - push your comfort zone a bit. If studying for fifteen minutes was hard to focus, maybe try sixteen. Progress at a rate that you believe you can progress at. And that’s key - if you start challenging yourself with tasks that you don’t believe you can do, you won’t be able to do them. Build up your confidence in yourself, and your habits.

The other tip I have is to set yourself up for success. Reflect on why you typically lose focus. Is it your phone? Maybe leave your phone somewhere else when you study. Is it a loud or distracting environment? Find a separate environment that’s better suited to the task. Do you lose focus because you get hungry? Bring snacks. Whatever the obstacles in your way are, identify them, and then come up with specific ways to target those problems.

Procrastination is an emotional problem not an organizational one. No amount of calendars, to do lists, apps or systems can fix an emotional problem.

When you come to a task such as studying a new difficult topic you feel discomfort. "Maybe I won't understand it", "maybe I want supposed to be a programmer at all" etc. So you replace the activity that causes discomfort with one that doesn't. Maybe that's flicking through videos on YouTube. Maybe that's tidying your room. Either one feels more comfortable than studying. Even though cleaning your room is 'work' you know you can do it and you get a feeling of accomplishment after you do it.

So, to address procrastination you need emotional tools, not organizational ones. CBT. Positive self talk. Reassurances that the discomfort of a task will pass. Breaking down a task into pieces that are small enough to not cause discomfort.

If you suspect you have ADHD I recommend talking to a professional. Medication is one of the most effective treatments around and you need a diagnosis to start down that path.

The key to long term personal growth is just showing up every day.

Start with one project you actually want to do. Today, not tomorrow, work on it for an hour. If you spend that hour actually doing it and not just staring at Reddit, then you’ve won for today. Do it again tomorrow. It doesn’t matter if the project takes your three years at that rate. Keep it up and you will eventually get somewhere you are proud of.

Add another project if you successfully make a habit of working on this one every day.

Another key: do not beat yourself up if you miss a day. Just start again the next day. “Streaks” are for apps. Just go back to work.

> I suspect I may have ADHD or some kind of dopamine addiction but I'm not sure. I do well in school even by studying at the last minute, and I attend a rather challenging school. In my free time though, I end up doing very little or nothing, not knowing where my time went.

It's fascinating to me how many people think having ADHD means you can't be a top performer at a top school. Getting things done at the last minute all the time because of procrastination is a trap people who do not know how to manage their ADHD fall into. I can't say for sure if you have it or not, but your school performance is not a good metric to discount the possibility.

I’ve struggled with focus and consistency over the years and always made up for it by simply working more. But eventually that doesn’t scale, I’d get burned out, or both.

I wish that great fits of productivity was just a byproduct of waking up every day. I envy people that seem to be able to do that. But for me, that simply wasn’t the case.

It’s become cliche, but I’ve greatly benefited from the tactics espoused by Cal Newport in his book “Deep Work” and in his podcast. I now plan my days (regardless of whether it goes according to plan), have startup and shutdown rituals, keep a list of values and goals…all that.

I also just finished reading “Atomic Habits” which wasn’t particularly insightful but provided great reinforcement of what I already knew.

At no point has a magic switch flipped and it’s been a slog at times, but I’m getting better. Like weight loss, improvement didn’t happen overnight. It’s not steady or consistent. Some weeks and months I might even regress and require a refocus or reset. But, over time, my focus, productivity, motivation, and actualization have definitely improved.

Coupled with a few behavior changes around health and fitness (exercise, better diet, daily sunlight, going to bed early and getting up early, and a focus on getting quality sleep), I’m as productive professionally as I’ve ever been. And I think I still have a lot of improvement left to make.

I lament that I didn’t realize all this back when I was in college. In every facet of my life I was capable of so much more than I did.

Get a notebook that you enjoy the feel and look of; likewise a pen.

At the end of the notebook layout a template for several types of day: working, weekend, social, resting/recovering, etc.

The template should be in ~30min units. Reserve a maximum of 3.5hours for deep work; reserve .5hr every morning for creating a daily plan; reserve .5hr in the afternoon for personal admin.

Then, every morning, fill each page with a plan for that day.

This is all you need to do. And to ensure you don't procrastinate doing this, realise: the plan is not an obligation. You are never required to do anything you write down.

The only reason you do this is so you arent blind to what you do and do not want to do. It's security, so you can enjoy you day knowing you've chosen it.

Here's a list of resources that may help you:

* Virtual focus/co-working rooms: https://www.focusmate.com, https://www.flow.club/, https://guzey.com/co-working/

* ADHD: https://add.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/adhd-questionnair..., Book: Taking Charge of Adult ADHD, https://cerebral.com/ and https://www.donefirst.com/

* Book: Refuse to Choose!: Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies

Since it hasn’t been mentioned yet. Maybe you should meet with a medical professional and get evaluated. If you do have ADHD or some other such condition you may benefit from an appropriate treatment program.

It seems like you are well intentioned and there are great tips in this thread and around the web. But it’s perfectly reasonable that if you suffer from a condition or disorder that you may need extents support to execute some of these plans. I know several children and adults who have been diagnosed with ADHD or various sensory deficit disorders who struggle with focus based tasks.

On a more technical note since this is HN. I have a friend with ADHD who says she is “time blind” and often loses track of time, even with a watch. I’m building her a smart wristband that vibrates the time every hour. She believes it will help to train her to keep better track of time. We shall see.

I can recommend Dr. K's videos on his youtube channel, HealthyGamerGG [0]. He's a psychiatrist with lots of videos educating about how the mind works and why it tends to do the things that it does. He also gives good practical advice.

I recommend going through his videos about procrastination and ADHD.

Also, goes without saying, but definitely seek professional help too.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClHVl2N3jPEbkNJVx-ItQIQ

Psychopharmacology, Modafinil is a slow acting long lasting weak dopamine reuptake inhibitor, so it’s non addictive and you can try it and see how it affects you as a diagnostic and if it works you take it as a treatment. There are other meds like Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) which are also quite safe and can help a lot with dopamine dysregulation.

Another potential avenue is diet, quit all sugar including fruit. A small percentage of the population reacts particularly badly to non lactose sugars and you may be one of them.

I think a common cause of ADHD is undiagnosed hEDS, especially if you’re in tech. The usual tests for hEDS has a extremely high false negative rate so it’s way more prevalent than commonly believed, I think a mild form occurs at a rate of around 2% within European populations. As medical research has improved the accepted prevalence has gone from 1/50K to 1/15K to 1/500 and I think there is still an additional order of magnitude to go when able to test for the mild forms. These 2% are prone to dopamine dysregulation / burnout / ME/CFS and Long Covid. You don’t have to be particularly hypermobile to have hEDS, and in men especially the mild forms can be barely perceptible and symptoms usually show up in other ways.

I've struggled with very similar issues for about 25 years. I finally started to break through it just recently, and I give credit to two basic things: Listening to the Huberman Lab podcast (which echoes a lot of good advice in this comment section, and focuses on physiology), and using the system from "Building a Second Brain" to get myself organized. I've always had a problem with having too many ideas and not enough time and energy to pursue them all. Having to choose between them leads fear of missing out on the others, and I never actually managed to finish (or even start, usually) any of them as a result.

The thing that the second brain stuff has done for me is to provide a place to keep those ideas in suspended animation so that I can revisit and touch them up over a longer time period. I can see them all laid out, with clear "do this next" breadcrumbs for myself. Nothing is getting lost, and I'm not missing out on anything. Since setting this up, I've made a ton of progress on a wide variety of things because it's easy to get started again, and I don't get sidetracked by other ideas. I just capture them, make a note to develop them further at a later time, and then get back to work.

Studying and going to school is your work. It is a full-time job, I wouldn't be overly worried if you can't use your free time very productively. You might not see it that way yet, but once you get out of school and go to work the same thing probably happens with your free-time. In my opinion procrastination becomes issue if it affects your studies or your work.

It turns out that after full days of work average brain isn't suited to do highly productive work.

I have a trick. If you think you can finish a task in 2 - 5 min, just do it. Don’t put it into the list. Oftentimes it just kick starts the momentum and you can complete something in that day.

I've recently gotten out of a funk by role-playing. I don't know why, but it makes me happy to pretend I'm a ranger while running, a hacker while coding, a botanist while gardening, etc. Etc.

It just helps me focus and life becomes more like a game with actual rewards.

We all want to feel like we're in control of our own lives but none of us ever are. The trade off is when you focus on one thing inevitably other things will suffer as people can't do two things at once. Best bet is to realize there are lots of tasks that need done (and no you can't plan a perfect calendar to do it all) and all you can do is find a system that takes all the incoming tasks that need to be done, prioritize them, set a due date and forget about them and only do the things that are required of you that day. I found Todoist years ago and have found great levels of success using it. Good luck!

> I want to study more, read more, and finish my coding projects.

Revise your goals. It seems you don't actually want to do those things, you just want to want to do them. It's a big distinction.

What are you procrastinating? One of the issues I personally have with this is the idea that there is enough time for everything, but this isn't true. The way it actually works is that, the more you do right now is the less you will have to do later. And when you do it in reverse, the amount of work you have to do is compounded a hundredfold - which in itself can also cause issues with motivation and willpower.

I've made the mistake of thinking that "I can do it later" many times before. It's worse when you have to play catch up with yourself. It's equally as important to have the right motivation, "Why do I need/have to do this?". If you're financially stable but not goal-oriented, that can cause issues too.

It's also good to have goals/projects that yield results, because it creates a feedback loop where you aren't just throwing mud at a wall and seeing what sticks.

I've found that writing/development are two distinct areas where it is very easy to procrastinate. And there really isn't a secret recipe to fix it other than switching off that voice in your mind and doing what needs to be done. Anecdotally, you might find yourself having too much free time on your hands when you start doing stuff rather than thinking about it.

I did find myself feeling like I had more that I wanted to get done (or had to get done) by a deadline that it was impossible to focus on getting any of it done, leaving me feeling unproductive, only feeding the downward cycle. I finally decided to "Eat the frog."[0] It was kinda brutal at first, sitting unable to get into the mindset to make progress (for a large part of an entire day), but I powered through and made progress on the single most important thing. After that things started flowing better.

If you're already not getting anything done on a given day, try picking one thing for the day. Do not waste any time or energy thinking about anything else. Also don't spend any on trying to increase productivity or optimizations, or feeling bad about how much there is, no how little is getting done.

Only work on the thing itself, no meta-things. If you still get nothing done, don't context switch, don't give yourself the option of not doing what you chose. It's only make progress on that or nothing. Only when you have made sufficient progress to feel that you were productive on that task and want to tackle another, allow yourself to choose one new task.

Eating the frog is line a single-item version of Warren Buffett's Two Lists[1] productivity tip.

[0] https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/eat-the-frog

[1] https://modelthinkers.com/mental-model/buffetts-two-lists

I have a few recommendations that don't involve adding another piece of software.

- Adjust your expectations. It's possible that you have less productive capacity than others. To try and be as productive as they are may actually be little else than self punishment. Consider a smaller daily goal such as "I will get at least one thing done today."

- Consider going to bed earlier, waking up earlier, and getting to work ASAP. I used to sleep later and only start working at 9am, like most people, until I noticed that I was insanely productive the days I got up early and just started work right after showering. Now I get up at 6am and crank out work for at least 4 hours. There's a few things at play here. Firstly, there's nobody around during these hours to distract me. Secondly, I believe both the elevated hormones upon first waking up really help with focus and general alertness. Am I the most productive employee in the world? Not really, but I'm still way more productive when I just get right to work. Although this suggestion may seem like a non-answer in regards to procrastination, I find that I'm far more likely to address something I need to do during that window of time.

- Try taking cold showers. They have neurological effects that are beneficial for ADHD, notably elevated dopamine.

- Get a diagnosis to figure out if you really have ADHD or if you are just overworking yourself. If you actually have ADHD, medication can help a lot. This is based on my experience. I wish I got on medication a lot sooner.

- If you do things like play music or podcasts while you work, avoid doing so for a while and see what happens. Or if you really want something on in the background, make it something like smooth jazz or piano on low volume. Oddly enough, I realized my work is just better if either I'm playing something gentle in the background or just listening to nothing at all.

Perhaps my point is a bit too philosophical, but please consider the following.

The maximum you can work in any given day is 24 hours. If you're like most people, half the day goes into all sorts of maintenance activities, such as sleep, food, hygiene, and so on.

At best, you get 12 hours a day of effective time.

No matter how hard you work, there's going to be ceilings on your individual productivity. There are going to be hard limits to what you personally can do.

Thus, focus on improving your capacity to collaborate, to learn from and work with others. It is not a neat answer, but if you can cooperate and coordinate better, you'll get more done. Learn to give/take, honour agreements, communicate, build teams, run meetings, etc. These will do more for how much you can get done than your own hard work.

Also, learning high productivity thinking skills is valuable: mathematics, philosophy, reasoning skills, learning from history, etc.

Tools are secondary. If you have lots of things to track, they can organize you but in my experience, they can't really make you more productive.

Assuming you don't have a health issue (you should get that checked), perhaps you think you want to do all those things but you don't really want to.

Focusmate. That's all you need :) Had the same story as you. Focusmate is the one that only works for me, I can stay with it productive & focused and I think you will too! Like this tool is so valuable to my life that I would pay 100 bucks or even more per month.

This is from my notebook. I don't have the original source and don't claim that I came up with this, but it's been incredibly useful for me (and pardon the succinct crib-notes).

How to fight procrastination

Behavior = Motivation + Ability + Trigger

If lacking Motivation:

- Build motivation by reminding yourself "why" in the first place

- Add personal, meaningful reasons to the task you put off.

- Remind yourself why you took it on

If lacking Ability:

- Breakdown the task

- Create a simple timeline:

1. Start at due date

2. Go backwards day-by-day (or week-by-week) and put milestones

3. Pin the timeline

4. Start on First Part

If lacking Trigger:

- Create a cue (A trigger is: "what, when, where")

- Take <15mins to decide task to start with. If you still don't know, pick one at random

- At the end of the day, put the next day's item at the top

Procrastination is a gap between intention and action.

Not all delay is procrastination.

To create intention: "In situation X, I will do Y to achieve subgoal Z"

Trust your gut more when you procrastinate - there is a reason why your brain postpones the task instead of doing it for that jolt of dopamine you get when you finish. Reasons include:

- it's not useful. If you have ADHD you are probably full of ideas, some of them pretty bad, some amazing. Don't work on the bad ones.

- you are mentally tired, probably because you are burned out from something else

- you don't have everything you need to do it: dependencies which are unmet, things you don't know that prevent you from doing it, etc

You need to get your dopamine some other way - go for a long run, and the clarity will come to you and you will figure out what's wrong and why you procrastinate.

Two things.

1. Go for walks.

2. Finishing things feels good and feeling good is rewarding on it's own. Focus on little wins and use them to build your shipping muscles.

*3. (bonus) We're all creatures of habit. Don't let yourself do time wasters (mine are YouTube and my news feed) in your workspace. It's better to take a walk (produce nothing, reenergize) than keep building a lousy habit around a time waster (produce nothing, make it more probable that you will continue to produce nothing).

I feel you. Be kind to yourself. It's unkind to knowingly allow someone to hurt themselves. Help you to find happiness and fulfillment like you'd help a friend.

There is no point in fighting procrastination before you find good answer - why do you really need to be productive.

If the answer doesn’t help, it is shitty answer, look for better one.

Or admit that you are really productive enough already for your goals and values.

Ive been a victim of this productivity scam myself for some time.

But the search must be in domain of meaning and values (or maybe psychotherapy if your builtin values mechanisms were broken).

Not in the domain of proper technique or fancy time management methodology. It’s all a snake oil.

That’s it.

And nobody will tell you this truth, because once you realize there’re nothing to buy, they can’t make money on you

Read the book, “Solving the Procrastination Puzzle”.

Procrastination is a psychological issue. You won’t solve it with a “To Do” list.

Highlights of the book that worked for me:

1. Forgive yourself for past procrastination

2. Goal setting and task breakdown - break larger tasks into smaller chunks

3. Identify the unpleasant feelings and thoughts associated with a task causing you to procrastinate

4. Realize you won’t feel more like doing it later (the procrastinator’s lie)

5. Just get started

#5 is the most powerful for me. We often have feelings that a task will be more difficult and more unpleasant than it really is. Just getting started corrects that.

Try exercising and eating healthier if you aren't doing that already.

We underestimate how much poor nutrition and lack of exercise negatively affect or minds.

> I suspect I may have ADHD or some kind of dopamine addiction but I'm not sure.

When you’re not doing things you want (to want) to do, what are you doing instead?

E.g. are you doing things that still require longer stretches of attention/focus, or several short stretches of attention/focus?

(I’m not a doctor or even remotely an expert on the subject, but I do have a son with ADHD.)

Sounds like a shitty situation, I’m sorry that it’s so hard for you.

If you suspect ADHD: get tested. If you have it you can start applying ADHD-specific strategies, one of which is medication.

I don’t have any tips for you but I do want to tell you that a lot of people struggle with this, you’re not alone. And if you’re at a challenging school I can only imagine the pressure.

If you think you may have adhd, and if you have the means, see a GP about it. I was diagnosed about 6 weeks ago and wish I had sorted it out 15 years ago when I first suspected I had it. I’ve probably got a long way to go before I can give advice on how to achieve your goals, but I think it’s an important first step.

Sometimes this is just a brain that lacks clarity. If you aren’t already doing intense workouts, I’d recommend starting a running habit; do it every day as soon as the day starts. Your body strengthens, but your mind strengthens even more.

This is entirely normal. I think the best thing you can do is begin to build a habit. Try to set a goal of working on a project for 30 minutes a day and stick to it for a month. Building the habit matters more than the results you get.

My guess is you're trying to focus on more things you can handle at this time.

I’m going to give you something different than productivity hacks because I’m sure you’ve seen it all. Those are actually helpful to some degree. I use a lot of tricks myself. But…there’s something much more foundational you need to tackle: reframing procrastination as a byproduct of your expectations, prioritization, capacity, and character. Here’s my opinionated take based on my experience:

* You only consider yourself a procrastinator because you have high/different/maybe unrealistic expectations for yourself. It’s not that you’re not productive…you’re doing well in school and doing what you need to do. Maybe other students are even jealous or your ability to pull everything together at the last second whereas they have to grind for weeks/days before to achieve similar results. Consider the benefits of your style. Anyways, you’re asking this question because you want *more*. It’s good to want to improve and yearn for more, but you need to understand you’re asking how to be exceptional and that doesn’t happen without exceptional effort and sacrifices. Are you actually willing to do what it takes to be exceptional? How’re you going to summon the willpower? How’ve you structured your lifestyle to support that? You can’t “just do it” or you would’ve. You’re missing some bigger picture.

* You have a “chaotic” working style. Embrace it. It’s served you well. Fighting this is going to just result in some cognitive dissonance and you getting in your own way. Tools aren’t going to change you. You can take adderall (basically meth lol) to rewire yourself IF you are failing to function, but it’s not worth it imo in the long term / you’re doing fine.

* Once you stop fighting your own nature, you need to stop thinking about time management and start thinking about energy management. What are you putting your energy into? You have a finite amount of it. It’s not that you can’t read more / study more…it’s that those are probably way more draining on you. You won’t be able to do them unless you clear out a whole day, half of which is mentally preparing yourself to finally take the plunge. You don’t do it because your internal prioritization system does not view this as worth it. You want to do things that are hard for you…but you don’t want to actually go through the hardship. That’s normal and self-preserving. Besides…what if it’s a gigantic waste of time? Waiting till the last minute is also really a way to derive certainty and a sense of safety that your work is going towards something that’ll matter.

* Regarding prioritization. You do things when they need to be done. So you aren’t lazy. The fact that you’re doing them last minute means that your internal prioritization formula doesn’t really value being done early. In fact, maybe you perform better with super high pressure and have realized that doing things last minute is how you’re most efficient. It’s that simple. The only way to change is not to introduce structure in the form or tools that tries to subvert how you prioritize things…instead you need to figure out how to get value out of not doing things last minute so you change your own internal prioritization framework. For me, this has been realizing that every great thing that I achieved in my life or work has happened with daily incremental effort. Instead of rushing towards a finish line, I prioritize the grind itself.

* You need to rest. That time you spend browsing for sure is in part due to maybe poor self control or being sucked into a dopamine cycle. I also think it’s likely that you’re not honest with yourself on needing recovery time. Your body and mind will just stop cooperating with you when they’re depleted, and then you blame yourself for not being good enough. Instead focus on sleep, nutrition, etc to boost your energy reserves, and focus on energy management. I actually recommend against explicitly taking “break” days for reasons I don’t feel like explaining, but just be honest with yourself.

Remember…this isn’t a set of excuses to maintain the status quo. This reframing exists to enable you to make changes that actually work vs. chasing the next hack.

I can relate. I always had suspected ADHD during highschool and college. Extreme procrastination, tons on unfinished side projects. School psychologist and psychiatrist diagnosed with depression but I was convinced it was ADHD (it is probably both). The stimulant meds did help (taking on large tasks) but procrastination was still an issue. I stopped fairly quickly after 3 months, but many years later, after Covid, I am giving medications a try again.

I tried lexapro for a year, it certainly helped anxiety but not with motivation. I switched to a strong dose (300mg) of Wellbutrin XL and it does help more with motivation, but everything seems more intense and anxiety is a bit unbearable. But I found the intensity helps. I would wake up in the morning early having the urge to do shit (body was telling me I HAD TO DO IT vs no urge to get started on my day). Now I am augmenting with Prozac to see if it will balance out. When augmenting with Lexapro, I was too tired and relaxed to do anything.

Ritalin is great. I initially had Adderall but switched to Ritalin which is legal in most countries unlike Adderall. It doesn't necessarily help motivation but it does make starting a task easier (gives you more confidence and less negative emotion)

I am hoping to try Parnate which essentially raises all three serotonin, noradrenaline and dopamine, replacing all my current meds. It has a larger side affect profile but I am hoping the benefits outweigh that. There is also Nardil which is less stimulating with less side effects and helps more with anxiety.

Check out these which I think is worth a read: https://www.psychotropical.com/thinking-life-stress-and-depr... https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/peer-review-request-de...

Honestly the only way I can be productive is turning off the WiFi (not the router). Prepare everything you need for offline then shut it off. My brain realizes, there is no internet so the only thing I can do is write code. Pair that with some unit tests or maybe TDD, which basically is a todo list that crosses itself out (running those tests really does make a nice feedback loop)

Have OpenAI or some other LLM take a shot at at writing code for you. Sometimes it just works and sometimes its crap, either way (you can fix the crap), it will get you over that obstacle you may have been avoiding. You can also describe the project to it and it can break it down into small tasks for you, or write an outline of what all needs to get done.

side thought: Sometimes I wonder if Google Search should have been ChatGPT but it never could due to the SEO crap and useless results recently

So I had a similar issue and it was rooted much deeper than I realized. I am a workaholic and overachiever, but couldn’t get myself to do things I once enjoyed and that I actually want to do. I couldn’t get myself to play music or even play video games, things that should be fun. The issue was that I was ego-driven.

What kind of self talk is going on when you try to get yourself motivated? Are you saying negative things about yourself for not getting started? Are you pushing yourself to do things so you have the glory of having accomplished it? Do you value yourself based on these accomplishments and compare yourself to others to see how valuable you are?

Get rid of all these. They won’t help you. It’s possible you procrastinate because your subconscious does not like having to deal with the “club over your head” evaluating and analyzing your every move.

Instead realize that your relationship with yourself is made up of “We” instead of “I”. Amongst many things, there is a subconscious and a conscious mind that must work together in harmony. A good metaphor is seeing the subconscious as a team of players who play the game of life and the conscious mind as a coach who doesn’t play but helps the players focus on something and gives feedback after the performance.

The issue arises when the conscious mind (ego) wants to be a player and in full control. Using sheer will power, the conscious mind tries to control everything such as the behavior, the outcome, the process, everything. This is tiring, ineffective, and not fun.

Instead, remember what it was like when you were a child and this conscious mind didn’t interfere with the doing. No criticizing or trying to control the outcome and getting frustrated when you fail. Only play and fun and discovery. The only thing to do when you fail is to keep trying and discovering and playing with no harsh feedback or expected outcome.

So first, become still so your conscious mind can be silent. Lay down on the couch and stare at the ceiling. Sit and meditate. Go for a walk. Whatever you do, just be in the present, don’t think about what you should be doing or whatever. Keep your mind as silent as possible for even a minute by listening and observing what’s going on around you. Practice keeping your digital distractions off and away if you can. The point here is to see what you feel like doing at a deeper level, and avoiding the distractions that fill your day.

Pay attention to how you feel and find out what you want to do next. It should be spontaneous, not what you “should do or else you’re no good”. Once you find natural motivation to do something, your conscious mind gets to decide whether or not it is aligned with your goals. Pay close attention here because the subconscious mind can be like a puppy. If it wants to go back to digital distractions, say that is not appropriate. If it wants to do something aligned with your goals, “allow” it to do so.

It is okay if you feel like playing and not being productive. Allow yourself to just be yourself. It is okay to only feel like doing something for a few minutes only to switch to something else. Just go with your intuition.

When you decide to do something, play! Don’t try to come up with some grand scheme and force yourself to follow it. Do what comes naturally like you’re a kid again. Make it fun. Be spontaneous. Try learning a new skill. But whatever you do, don’t force the subconscious to behave a certain way for a specific outcome. Just visualize the goal or state your intent, and then hands off. Just let the conscious mind be silent and observe. Once you perform an action, THEN the conscious mind may speak like a coach. Tell yourself what you can do better or what you did well. Avoid negativity here. Only focus on how close you are to your goal. THEN try again or do something else with the conscious mind silent and observing again.

Don’t evaluate in the middle of an action. The point here is to let the players play and for the coach to let go of attaching itself to some expected outcome. There is no “failure”, just action. Try again or go do something else, without judgement or criticism. When the coach gets mad because it didn’t win, that doesn’t help anyone or anything. It needs to be hands off and let the players play and have fun. It is ALL about the journey and NEVER a means to an end. Ideally, work will become play and you can do it forever if you had all the time in the world!

Just remember that you do need to allow yourself breaks and chances to rest and wind down after working hard. My rule is once every 1-2 hours, take a break. If you don’t want to lose track of time, set a timer or tell yourself you’ll resume once you’re done distracting yourself with a specific thing.

Hope that helps!

are you me?

[dead]

Have an ambition.