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shminux comments on Breaking the chain of akrasia - Less Wrong
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Comments (44)
I know exactly what works for me: having someone else depend on me doing my work on time. If I'm the only interested party, very little ever gets done, unless the consequences of doing nothing are pretty grave.
This is so true and so tragic. Why is it that we feel totally ok about flaking out completely on ourselves when we wouldn't dare to flake out on someone else? Fixing this would be huge for raising the 'value' factor in the procrastination equation.
I have the same, and find it particularly mysterious given my ideological affinity for egoistic/individualistic philosophy. An egoist who can only motivate himself to do things for others? What the hell is that about?
If nobody else cares about me accomplishing a goal, then that goal clearly isn't very important to my tribe's survival and success.
What a piece of shit motivational architecture we have to deal with.
It's the circumstances, not the architecture. You wouldn't blame a Ferrari for its inability to climb trees.
it still sucks for climbing trees. You're right tho; this is a problem to be worked around, not bitched about.
Seen through an evo psych lens, this makes a certain kind of sense. I wonder how much far-mode individual achievement was actually going on in our evolutionary history. Probably very little, if any. It seems like we freeze up in the face of some types of procrastination-inspiring tasks in the same way that we might've previously been averse to banishment -- in both cases the threat is a marked dropoff in being "held" by the group.
I'm in very much the same situation. Lesswrong has given me a huge arsenal of anti-procrastination techniques, which I find myself using only when the stakes are high.
Ditto for me. The most incredible motivational tool I've used is a two-man creative project with relatively strict rules and penalties for lateness.
Nothing else works reliably because I don't listen to myself.
When I work on my own projects, I fake this sort of setup by pretending one of my friends is my boss, and I have to account to them for everything I am planning to do each day, and then everything I've accomplished that day.
Not only do I feel responsibility to them, it's a lot easier to answer the question "what do I do now?" when you've already written the answer down.
I'm weaker still, I think. I need the person who's depending on me to be close by.
Even being in the same room as someone else seems to help.
The people I know are too lazy for that. I end up using them to procrastinate instead of doing work, and if they are in the room, they try to distract me.