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tetsuo55 comments on Poll results: LW probably doesn't cause akrasia - Less Wrong
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The most important thing i learned from less wrong is "Cause and Effect".
Since i filled out the poll i would like to say something.
What i think the poll did not take into account is that procrastination seems to be caused by conflicting beliefs. I can completely cure myself from procrastination on one specific subject if i manage to find and correct all the conflicting beliefs. It also helps to allign them with a goal you have, this turns a once procastination inducing task to something you get OCD about doing whenever it pops up.
But thats also a downside, you have to learn the habits of tracking down the conflicting beliefs, and you are likely to procrastinate at learning these new habits (as do I). It's also a bit depressing to realise you have so many conflicting beliefs,but that effect is outweighed by knowing you CAN fix them some day.
In my experience it can take anywhere from 1 to dozens of belief changes to fix chronic procrastination on a single task. I have noticed some bleeding out effect though, some of the other tasks i used to procrastinate on have become easier to do, but they clearly still have conflicting beliefs of their own.
My point is: Generally you need to attack each individual thing you procrastinate on one by one, so progress is VERY slow. But i would never have gotten to step one without lesswrong and particularly PJ Eby's http://thinkingthingsdone.com/
Just a guess, but if you're gettting "dozens", I would ask: were you actually successful on the ones with "dozens" or are you still working on them?
If the latter, I'd guess that you're working on the problem at too low a level.
I have a bunch that i cannot solve, maybe i have gone to low on them? in fact i've only fixed 3 or 4 so far, and they where all done in in a couple of beliefs.
I guess i never learned how to spot "going too low"
My biggest problem is doing school. I have been procrastinating on it for years and i can only bring my self to do brief bursts of work for a few days followed by weeks of doing nothing. I have tackled several conflicting beliefs but this one won't budge.
P.S. I would like to know about the progress on your new books. P.P.S It would be great if you could help/coach me somehow.
This may sound a bit flippant, but most likely the problem here is that you don't really want to do it. You want some other outcome that you think the school will get you -- not a real-world outcome but a relational outcome like your parents' approval. When the work doesn't result in you feeling like it's getting you any closer to your (covert subconscious) goal, it becomes discouraging and you give up.
Does that sound about right?
If so, it's not going to go anywhere as long as you're futzing around with beliefs that relate directly to your overt, school-related goals.
I am doing school to improve my chances on the market. I have been working since i quit school at 18(31 now). The reason i need to finish school is so i can apply for better jobs or get a raise in my current one. There is also other financial benefits involved with finishing school (i'll get a 10.000 euro bonus when i do). But all that still does not motivate me to do it. There IS a lot of fear involved, i was a straight A student before i met the teacher from hell and soon after quit school.
EDIT: forgot to mention that the contents of the classes are for 80% or more relevant to my dayjob.
There are your two conflicting beliefs, right there. ;-)
I don't see it?
"I am doing X because Y." "Y does not motivate me to do X."
That's a flat-out contradiction. It means you've either mis-stated something or one of the statements is wrong.
In this case, it's the first statement that's inaccurate. First, you're not "doing school to improve your chances on the market"... because, as stated, you're not actually doing it, except for a few days out of most weeks.
So what you probably mean is, "I intend to do school to improve my chances on the market". But this statement is still false, unless it is also true that "I intend to improve my chances on the market". Do you, in actual fact, intend to improve your chances on the market?
I expect not. Rather, I expect that your motivation is to appear to be the sort of person who you think you would be if you were ambitiously attempting to improve your chances on the market... which is not really motivating enough to actually DO the work. However, by persistently trying to do so, and presenting yourself with enough suffering at your failure to do it, you get to feel as if you are that sort of person without having to actually do the work. This is actually a pretty optimal solution to the problem, if you think about it. (Or rather, if you DON'T think about it!)
In other words, your real conflicts here quite likely have almost nothing to do with your overtly stated goals and problems.
[Edit to add: properly expanded, your real intention statement is probably something more like, "I am having (an intention to do school to improve on the market) in order to be consistent with characteristic X of my desired ideal self-image"]
I cannot find any flaw in your statement. If it where just up to me I would just forget about school and give up. But it's not up to me.
I need to find a way to find the motivation to actually do the school work, but nothing i can come up with seems to work..
Blockers that come to mind are: "I'll fail the exams and have to pay extra money to do them again" "The information is so densly packed i can't follow half of it" "I say that i can accept a 6/10 but i don't really believe that(i want at least 8/10)" The list goes on, i think they are just excuses that hide the real feeling.
EDIT: i figured something out, I need to find a pet project or work project that the class is relevant for and then follow the class as a way to get that project done/improved. That way i have a directly related goal and no reason to procrastinate.
My guess is that will only help to the extent that it doesn't get you any closer to actually succeeding in school (in the big picture), but admittedly that guess is based on very little information. However, my general observation that such tricks work on the small scale but not the larger scale is a very well-established pattern, so I will be quite surprised and curious should your trick actually work.