Mine is a weird one: I started taking every other day off. Even as deadlines loom, I am committed to doing no work today. I can cook and read and surf the Internet and hang out on Less Wrong and chat with friends and take a nap and do art (but not art for my webcomic), but at all costs I will do no work. Tomorrow, I will do work (in my case, papers for school and art for my webcomic and editing some fiction), and unless something breaks the trend that's been working nicely for a week and a half now, I will do more work than I could have expected to do in three or four days before I started this. (I make exceptions for time-dependent things like class meetings.)
I have a few hypotheses for why this works for me:
I stopped after several months. Juggling it with a class schedule became intractable, and new techniques have a tendency to stop working for me after a while even if they start working very well. It was really useful while it lasted, though, and I still try to take time off in day-long chunks when feasible.
That does not really mean anything.
"Exponential" refers to how a quantity relates to another. For example, we would say that (until environmental limits are encountered) a population's size is exponential with respect to time, and mean, that there is an initial population size P0 at a time t0, and a doubling time T, such that the population at a given time, P(t) = P0 * 2^((t - t0)/T). In computer science, we might say that the time or memory requirement of an algorithm is exponential with respect to the size of a list, or the number of nodes or edges in a graph, which could be represented by a similar equation, assigning different meanings to the variables. (Often, we really the mean the equation to be an approximation, or an upper or lower bound on the actual quantity.)
But if you say that designing and programming an AI is exponentially hard, you have not identified a variable of the problem that is analogous to the time in population growth. "Exponential" is not a vague superlative, it has a precise meaning. If all you mean to say is that AI is much harder than conventional programming, then just say that. Yes it is vague, but that is better than having your communication be more precise than your understanding.
Targeted commenter doesn't really deserve being hit that hard, but voted up anyway.
The thing I really despise is when people use "exponential" as a superlative to describe fast-growing quantifiable processes that are not known to be exponential.
I read these tricks for avoiding procrastination and I find myself terrified at the idea of trying them at a gut level, because what if they work? What if I actually find myself playing fewer videogames and surfing the internet less? That doesn't actually sound better, now that I have to seriously consider the possibility of changing this state of affairs.
Based on this revelation, I have to say I am coming around to the point of view that a lot of what we call "akrasia" is just us not wanting to admit, to others or to ourselves, what our actual desires are, so we make up more socially acceptable desires and then when we pursue our actual desires instead we blame akrasia.
Another type of "fear of anti-akrasia techniques" that sometimes occurs, is fear/mistrust of what one's own conscious decision-making process might goof up, if that decision-making process is abruptly given increased power. (This differs from Nominull’s description, because in this scenario you don’t specifically fear surfing the internet less, or any other specific foreseen change; you fear the effects of suddenly removing a system of internal checks and balances, and handing your internal reins over to a new and untested cognitive subsystem.)
Even if your consciously claimed preferences are your “real” preferences (which is not at all obvious, given that claimed preferences may be chosen for the purpose of affecting your self-image or your external social image, rather than for the purpose of choosing between future outcomes)...
... even in this case, there’s the additional problem that your consciously claimed “beliefs” may not be your actual anticipations, and, even if they are your actual anticipations, may be a worse model of the world than is the model implicit in our cultural action-patterns. A person who “believes” her actions will determine whether she spends et...
I use Adrafinil, which is a non-controlled version of Modafinil. Taking one pill makes me want to do intellectual work and gives me better focus. Taking two pills makes me so sharp I find it a bit difficult to "chill out", so I really feel like spending my energy on working.
The downside is it's difficult to wind down in the evening when I just want to relax, but that's what cannabis is for, I guess.
In the same vein of pharmaceutical solutions...
I used to, as a college student, have a terrible time getting to bed. I had 8 AM classes, and so I really needed to go to bed at a reasonable time like midnight (and not 2 or 3 AM); and in the morning I would regret tremendously staying up late. A classic case of akrasia - I could probably have even quantified it all in terms of grades.
My solution was to realize that the problem was that at any moment I was enjoying whatever more than I needed the sleep. I needed some way to induce a 'false' sleepiness. So I looked up the options and found melatonin. 3mg of melatonin would practically club me into sleepiness after 30 minutes - so it solved the issue of not wanting to go to bed.
Of course, this caused another problem: taking the melatonin at the right time! But this turned out to be much less of an issue, perhaps because taking a pill is so much easier than winding up for the night and going to bed.
EDIT: see my full length post on melatonin: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lt/case_study_melatonin/
Just a personal observation that for me there seem to be two classes of akrasia.
1) Inertial akrasia: I should be doing task X, I could do task X well if I just got going, I just can't seem to make myself do task X.
2) Exhaustive akrasia: I want to do task X but I've exhausted my willpower reserve. It's hard to start task X and even when I start I generally drift off-task as I've expunged my willpower reserves.
Type 1) akrasia consists of things like getting out of bed and procrastinating, type 2) is more zoning out midday or being unproductive after getting home from work.
They have similar symptoms and a fair amount of overlap but different treatments. Type 1 seems to generally be tricks to get you started, ie counting to 10, setting deadlines, etc. For type 2 treatments are more removing distractions (don't challenge your depleted willpower reserves) and taking a real break to replenish (ie watch a movie or work every other day).
Personally I think a lot of my troubles come when I try treating type 2 as type 1 or vice versa.
For instance often in the morning I'll often take a while to get working despite the fact my willpower reserves should be near full. Instead of taking a break I s...
My results:
Elimination of two my primary addictions -- PC gaming, mostly TF2 and WoW AH moneymaking (100% elimination for both so far), and aimless internet surfing (now reduced to about 10% of its former glory.)
Significant reduction of procrastination time in general (ironically, I'm procrastinating right now -- I'm posting at LessWrong :)
Being able to actually act according to my current better judgement, with verifiable results in the real world. This is an addiction in itself.
My tricks:
(Obligatory note of caution -- these are tricks, they are not supported by experimental results, I've been using them for just about 3 months, they aren't tested under serious stress / pressure, I have no deep theories to explain why they work, and the evidence I offer is purely anecdotal.)
Determine what is your current better judgment. This is critical -- I noticed that I hesitate to trick myself into doing anything I don't consider to be relevant to my goal.
Regularly asking yourself: "is what I'm doing at the moment advancing me toward the desired state of reality"? If the answer is "no", you're procrastinating. The danger here is the possibility of rationalizin
This is probably a standard tactic, but maybe I phrase it in helpful words.
My akrasia problems have gotten significantly better since I stopped thinking so much in terms of discipline and more in terms of not-being-stupid. One imagines that a race of expected utility maximizers would use the same word for I should and I want. If I think that I ought to to X, then I can just---do X, because I've decided that X is the right thing to do. It's not a matter of forcing myself to do things that I don't want to do (that would just be stupid; the entire point of instrumental rationality is to get us more of what we want); it's a matter of wanting to do good things. Don't raise the pressure; lower the resistance! Cf. "Inner Goodness."
Of course I'm a human and it doesn't really work that way, but I am doing ever so much better than I was this time last year. Because of this community, I've just been continually obsessing about rationality for the last year and a half, and I think I've finally just passed the threshold where it starts to yield practical benefits. However, I'm an unusual person along several dimensions and I've faced very strange personal circumstances in the past year and a half, so I don't expect my experiences to generalize too much, in this domain or others.
Really really simple procrastination trick that works wonders for me: don't just minimise the browser when trying to work, close it. If I need to use it for something work-related, one tab only and close it again immediately afterwards. The trick here, I think, is that flipping to the browser window is an automatic reaction when I get stuck on my work. If my mouse goes to the taskbar and it isn't there, the extra moment required to think: "Oh, I'll have to relaunch it" is just about enough to override the automatic reaction with: "No, I'm working".
I imagine this is a pretty well-known trick, I think I took it from an essay by Paul Halmos, but might be mistaken. It was originally suggested in the context of writing a mathematics paper, but would probably apply a lot more generally as well.
The trick is: always stop writing for the day in the middle of a sentence; preferably an important one.
For many people, the hardest part of writing is starting to write - if you've stopped in the middle of a sentence, you have an obvious starting point, and you can find it relatively easy to get into the rhythm.
Well, from reading the comments it seems the most popular type of akrasia that hinders this group is procrastination. I'm sure other weaknesses of will are common, but procrastination seems to be an overwhelmingly common nuisance. This paper http://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/SozWiss/fg-psy/gollwitzer/PUBLICATIONS/McCreaetal.PsychSci09.pdf might hint at why this is so. The gist is that the more abstract the tasks/projects/goals are, the more you will procrastinate. As the tasks become more concrete, the procrastination is eliminated. An example is the abs...
I'm not sure if this strategy is too straightforward to bother mentioning here, but it has made a signficant difference to my productivity in the time since I decided to employ it.
I'm attempting to write up some awkward-to-write-up technical stuff to go in my PhD thesis, and have been putting off getting to the hard part for weeks. About a week ago, I decided on the insanely straightforward hack 'start writing at 10.00 every day, and write until 12.00, during that time, do nothing else'. This has had massive effects. I've written more than I had managed in...
Tried at least once when I had something important to do:
Go to the bathroom, stare at the wall and don't let anythig distract you until you muster the willpower to start the task you are procrastinating on. Then go and do it.
The key is not to let yourself become distracted with anything, that's why I went to the bathroom and stared at the wall(yes, my face was literally one inch away from it), any tactic with the same effect should work also.
For my personal programming projects, I keep a small text file of "Next Action" - small, concrete tasks that can be done in little time. That means I don't spend much time agonizing over what to do next, and can start get back to work relatively quickly after a pause. I regularly purge the list of stuff I don't really want to do, or of stuff that's too complex.
I also avoid IM, and turn off email notifications.
The best motivator for me is meeting other people's expectations, or trying to impress them.
Anecdote 1: A few summers ago, my friend paid me $100 to make a website for his babysitting business. I started working on it at his house and he saw me and realized it was going to take significantly more than the 8 hours I predicted. So every day he would come over to my house to watch me work on the site. It went at a steady pace and I finished after 25 hours of work. Meanwhile I had another, more important programming project that I was being unproductive at.
Ane...
Having someone watch me. Works four out of five times. From talking to other people it has a much higher success rate, but I'm still trying to figure out what's akrasia and what's an executive functioning deficit resulting from minor frontal lobe damage.
I have a friend who hires people to sit across from her at work. Pays for itself with the extra work she can get done.
Stepping back and watching the meat-I-am start to do stuff helps too, but not nearly as often, and I only learned that trick a few weeks ago -- from this site.
{This is actually a reply to this comment, but for some reason it doesn't have a Reply button.}
I first started to pay attention to the relationship of social factors and akrasia after PJ Eby mentioned it in our earlier discussion. His term (psychosomatic marker, if I remember correctly) didn't stick with me, but I noticed that when I procrastinate, I almost always find that a social pressure is involved.
The term is "somatic marker" as in the "somatic marker hypothesis". The somatic marker hypothesis in neurobiology basically says t...
Surprised no one's mentioned it before. Structured Procrastination is a great productivity trick.
Basically, you can get lots of useful but secondary tasks done as a way of avoiding an undesirable primary task.
just some quick thoughts on some general principles...
Build habits. Habits have momentum, and they can suck you into a task without you trying.
Associating a place with a task (if you can). That's one good way to build a habit. I go to a local coffeeshop to do PhD writing. That's all I do there, and I don't go there otherwise. I find it quite useful. If it's a place you don't do any other tasks at, it's less likely to trigger habits associated with them.
Make the habits generic, so you can always invoke them. If you make the initial task "sta...
Here is something that I want to try:
Whenever I want to work on something, I'm just burdened by the fact that all my efforts will be useless, that the stuff won't be done and that I'll toil and toil and toil without accomplishing anything. Now, this sort of thing is pretty common for me -- worries about my confidence and intelligence not withstanding.
Sometimes this pressure is really discouraging and overburdening that I want to avoid work just to avoid that horrible feeling of having made no progress.
So I want to have "work" days in which I'll s...
I'm quite a good morning-worker, but I tend to have a major slump after I've accomplished my first one or two tasks of the day. I need to take a break at this point, but sometimes this break turns into never actually managing to get started again that day at all.
So on days when I can, I trick myself into getting two morning-fresh-starts by doing my first task or two before my usual morning routine (shower, get dressed, etc. Breakfast is exempt from this because I don't work well at all when I'm hungry). When I run out of steam, I go and have the shower etc...
Very few tricks have worked for me for the long term. Exercise helps, as does eating well. Most tricks I've tried, including scheduling tasks, taking days off, changes of location and taskcard systems, have only given me the benefit of any change -- a few days of productivity, followed by return of akrasia.
Tricks aren't "proven" by experiment; they're supported or explained by experiment. The lack of this support and explanation makes a difference, but it's not proof we're talking about.
I try to determine if my means have failed in some unexpected way, or whether my means aren't capable of producing the desired outcome.
If neither applies, I conclude that I didn't really want the outcome in the first place and that my desires are rejecting the imposition that my consciousness is trying to force on them. I update my understanding of what I want and move on.
I don't know if I'm facing the same problem as most people. I'm usually working, but I spread my effort out among so many tasks that most go unfinished. I read so many books that I forget 99% of what I read before I ever get a chance to use it. It's ludicrous; when I have an hour to read, I find it difficult to take less than 4 books with me even though I know I can read only 1 of them. I keep buying more books even though I have literally hundreds of books in my stack of books-waiting-to-be-read.
I think my problem is too much curiousity, and too much ...
The firefox addon LeechBlock works pretty well for me and I often turn it on when I have a lot of work to do. It lets you set time limits for certain websites (or sets of websites). I usually like having access to the internet when I work (I often need the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, dictionary/thesaurus and a citation generator) but LeechBlock does a good job limiting the time I spend on procrastination sites. Now you can always deactivate it by restarting firefox but usually I can catch myself before I do that. The key is just setting up little barriers that keep me from clicking without thinking.
This trick, which I have been using for about 8 weeks now, was my way of borrowing from the motivational iPhone app, Epic Win, which rewards you for getting things done. Since I haven't jumped on the smart phone bandwagon just yet, I decided to take a plain old notebook and write down bullet points of the things that I have done. On days where I feel accomplished, I might only jot down the big ticket items (installed dishwasher); on the less satisfying days, I will include more mundane tasks (brushed teeth).
The point is, in contrast with the techniques t...
I write a time journal of what I am doing throughout the day, counting productive times. Whenever I start doing something not productive (reading a not-strictly-work-related website, say), I write down that I stopped working. When I reach 5 hours of work, I go home (I often go home before that, though).
I thought I could accustom myself to being productive and drop the journal after a couple of months, but I never managed to. Whenever I try, I go back to procrastination.
Long time reader, first time poster.
What I want to know is just what such important tasks and projects everyone here believes they should be working on, which causes them to probe so deeply into the concept of Akrasia.
I'm assuming that most of us have steady sources of income, respectable (if humble) careers, and no shortage of curiosity to read books and enjoy sport/entertainment in our free times. So where does the Akrasia anxiety fit in? Looking at productivity-seekers from the outside it just seems like they're fantasising about a completely different ...
Is there a program for Win XP that counts down a specified time, freezes the computer for a further specified time, then sets it to hibernate or sleep? I use a laptop, so I can sometimes use the battery as a timer, but it's not ideal.
Hi everyone. I'm reading the productivity articles and suggestions on this site with some fascination.
I can understand anti-akrasia tricks being applied to certain things like health-related goals, or maybe even just finishing university.
What I'm not sure about is using tricks like these for other purposes, especially career or art-related goals. I guess my question is, if you've got to use tricks like these, maybe its a good sign you're in the wrong field, and you need to reevaluate what to pursue? I mean maybe, just maybe, you really, really don't find any intrinsic enjoyment in your chosen field, and its time to move on to something else?
I have several procrastination techniques as well as some meta-techniques I apply to other forms of akrasia as well.
First, I use flexibility to deal with procrastination, for example I maintain multiple different to-do lists to avoid the natural tendency to over-hierarchialize the tasks I need to do. I find my procrastination tends to be focused, so being able to out-flank that particular akrasia can be very helpful.
I extend this idea to anti-akrasia techniques, as a meta-technique, keeping a variety available at any time and being willing to jump between...
I do not always agree with Kant, but his advice re (loose translation) "Act as if you were the leader of the world and everyone would copy their actions based on yours" has seemed to me to be good advice over the years.
Plus I get to pretend I run the world, instead of that cabal of unseen shadow-puppeteers secretly manipulating things from behind the scenes - I HATE them. HATE THEM HATE THEM HATE THEM . . . umm, have you read my resume yet?
Jonnan
Here's a bit I wrote for my school paper:
In my opinion, the best way to combat akrasia is to put yourself in situations where the willpower necessary is minimized. Below, I've made a list of tricks you can use that allow you to minimize the willpower necessary to start doing schoolwork you're not motivated to do.
Give yourself artificial time pressure. Make plans to do something fun with friends about an hour from the time you want to start working. This way, your deadline is brought closer in time and you'll need less willpower to get started. Worst case, ...
The best motivator for me is meeting other people's expectations, or trying to impress them.
Anecdode 1: A few summers ago, my friend paid me $100 to make a website for his babysitting business. I started working on it at his house and he saw me and realized it was going to take significantly more than the 8 hours I predicted. So every day he would come over to my house to watch me work on the site. It went at a steady pace and I finished after 25 hours of work. Meanwhile I had another, more important programming project that I was being unproductive at.
Ane...
People have been encouraging me to share my anti-akrasia tricks, but it feels inappropriate to dedicate a top-level post solely to unproven techniques that work for some person and may not work for others, so:
Go ahead and share your anti-akrasia tricks!
Let's make it an open thread where we just share what works and what doesn't, without worrying (yet) about having to explain tricks with deep theories, or designing proper experiments to verify them. However, if you happen to have a theory or a proposed experiment in mind, please share.
Bragging is fine, but please share the failures of your techniques as well – they are just as valuable, if not more.
Note to readers – before you read the comments and try the tricks, keep in mind that the techniques below are not yet proven supported or explained by proper experiments, and are not yet backed by theory. They may work for their authors, but are not guaranteed to work for you, so try them at your own risk. It would be even better to read the following posts before rushing to try the tricks: