An odd technique, which I'll rate at +5: whilst already locked into some mundane but necessary task (e.g. grocery shopping, dishes, wading through work e-mails), consciously forcing my brain to complete the "Man, I wish I could be doing [blank] instead" template with some other mundane task that I would normally procrastinate - then immediately switching to that other task when the first task is done.

For example: "These dishes are taking so long - I really wish I could be... [hijack the train of thought by picking something else on my to-do list]... doing research for that article." I'll then make my brain, while still doing dishes, concretely imagine working on the article - what I'll search for online, in what order I'll attack the sections, even how I'll format it, etc. - in the ordinary way I would normally fantasize about playing a game, watching a TV show, or some other fun task naturally preferable to doing dishes.

By the time the dishes are done, I literally can't wait to jump into the article. After all, these dishes have been keeping me from it for so long!

I have had a shocking amount of personal success with this.

Beeminder +7: Beeminder is my main tool. I've been using it successfully on a variety of tasks for a year. My beeminder goals are a mixture of quantifiable goals (e.g. work X amount of hours per day) and binary goals (e.g. open Anki and look at at least one card) depending on the importance of the goal and judgment. For things which are "nice to have" I generally will start with a binary goal, while things that I consider very important will have a quantifiable goal. I've also used Beeminder to curtail things like excessive soda consumption by setting a daily limit. I believe it works for me because I am averse to lying in business transactions, I have enough money that losing a goal doesn't cause me any real harm even if it's large, and yet I'm probably more stingy than logic would dictate is necessary. The downside of Beeminder is like others have said some tasks tend to bunch up until right before bed. Also, it's very hard to convince others to use it even though it's really awesome, because it's so unusual.

TagTime: -4. I tried using "TagTime" from Beeminder people in accordance with a goal to work a number of hours and it was awful. I give it a -4 (with a -10 is that it almost killed you, which seems like a relatively extreme benchmark) since the randomness of it caused me intense stress and annoyance. The randomness didn't add an element of "oh this is a fun game" it added an element of "I'm your capricious boss and you are going to have to work an extra three hours today with no credit." I now use org-mode to track my time the old fashioned way, by clocking in and out of tasks, and it is much better.

Pomodoro: +4. I have used pomodoro in the past but I no longer use it because its value has been subsumed by Beeminder and my social contract techniques. It was moderately effective for me, I think because of the timeboxing effect. It's easy to work on something when you know you are only going to have to work on it for 25 minutes.

Social precommitment: +3. I mean precommitment in the sense of telling people that by a certain date you will have achieved a certain goal. This has been somewhat effective for me, but I actually use an enhanced version which is more like +6. I send an e-mail every day to three of my friends with a complete log of my work tasks and a link to my Beeminder page. I've already told them what my goal is in terms of hours worked. This is highly effective for me, and I think this owes to the fact that I have historically been very successful at things, and so completing tasks that are within my control is part of my identity. For people whose friends already think of them as consummate failures I don't think this would work that well. I think in terms of raw effectiveness, the daily task e-mail is more like +6, but it has high overhead, relative inflexibility, and inability to scale. I'm also worried that it might wear off, although I have been using this mechanism for a few months and have worked more hours per day than in the prior year. The daily commitment e-mail makes "far" social commitments into "near" social commitments, similar to Beeminder does with general tasks.

Stacking commitment mechanisms: +3? So far as I know this doesn't have a formal name, but I was introduced to the concept by Nick Winter's "The Motivation Hacker" and I consider it the key novel (to me) insight in that book. I give it a +3 on it's own because it doesn't do any real work. Its power depends on what you are stacking. The general idea is to use multiple commitment mechanisms on each of your goals. I use both Beeminder and the social precommitment e-mails on my hours worked each day and I think the combined effect is more like +9, but only for that narrow task. The Less Wrong study hall uses pomodoros and social pressure I think to achieve similar effect.

GTD: +0. Was ineffective for me. Meta-akrasia or something made it difficult to keep up with the system and it just generally fell into disuse. I think if I were using Beeminder on my GTD tasks it perhaps could be effective, but I didn't know about beeminder last time I tried to use GTD.

Internet blocking (a la LeechBlock): +3. Blocking Internet time sucks is handy. I actually don't use this all the time, but I use it pretty regularly. I use a script which blocks the Internet for a configurable period only after a configurable delay. If I realize I've been browsing too much and need to start working, I'll give myself 20 more minutes of Internet followed by a three hour block. Once I've gotten into the groove of working I find I don't need it for the rest of the day though. Stacks nicely with other mechanisms.

Daily schedule: +0. For a while I was trying to follow a daily schedule where I had set aside exact blocks of time for each of my tasks. It eventually fell into disuse though, due to lack of flexibility. Also, I couldn't think of a way to Beemind deviations from my schedule that wasn't ridiculous.

Self conditioning (a la CFAR): +0. Doesn't seem to work for me. I always realize after like three days that I've been completely forgetting to reward myself. This could be an implementation issue though, like, if I Beeminded self-reward or something, maybe.

Meditation: +1. I've been meditating 20 minutes a day for a year or so. I read an article on mindfulness being used to be more productive by using mindful awareness when you aren't working, and I realized that I can also do this. This has been occasionally effective for me although I didn't discover it until after I had dialed in Beeminder/precommitments. It loses points due to it's relative lack of flexibility and the extreme time investment involved as compared with this particular payout. If you are already a meditator I give this +3 for the effect.

I'm sure there are more things that I've tried that I'll probably think of later.

1. Complice +8. Complice is an app, which, together with StayFocusd's nuclear option, and Windows' Parental control basically solved productivity for me. It eliminates both the problem Kaj Sotala described here, i.e. feeling bad about trying to do something productive because there're so many other things to do, which results in a situation where browsing reddit is preferable to work and the problem of infinite to-do lists, where it's impossible to feel satisfied in principle. (you really should try Complice out, at least by checking out integrated into it LW study hall, without signing up or anything)

2. StayFocusd +7. Nuclear option is invaluable. It automatically blocks all but productive websites every day (including chrome extensions page and StayFocusd's settings page ^^), so instead of googling something interesting during the day and experiencing a terrible tab explosion, I now write stuff I wanna check out to google keep/notepad and return to it in the evening.

3. Windows Parental control +4. Every now and then I feel a terrible urge to install Hearthstone. Well, I gave my dad the password to admin's account so now I physically can't. Instead I feel a bit distressed for a few moments and return to doing productive stuff.

4. Beeminder -1. As I discovered, negative feedback works terribly for me (so it's not only about Beeminder). It just makes me resentful and angers me instead of being motivating.

I have literally never been productive for more than a week in my life; more than 2 months with this combo already. I had 3 videogames relapses during that time, from which I recovered very quickly, and they all happened basically because I thought "I'm so productive, I bet I can start slacking on Complice a bit, return myself Windows' admin privileges, and I totally don't need nuclear option anymore!". Welp.

Beeminder : +6 : Using it for nearly 2 years with good success in most areas I select to 'Beemind'. Yet to have to pay out on any goals (though I have derailed on no-pledge goals on 2 occasions).

RememberTheMilk : +2 : using it for several years. Best use is to keep track of tasks I have and have not done, but not great on committing me to action. Best suited to keeping track of minor tasks, especially recurring ones.

Trello : +2 : Used for perhaps a year. Similar experience to RememberTheMilk, but better suited to more complex tasks and projects.

My main anti-akrasia tool nowadays is Beeminder. I have two Beeminder goals at the moment, one for RTM items and one for Pomodoros. Most of my RTM items are repeating items along the lines of "deal with Gmail inbox" and "exercise," and lumping them together into one goal helps me keep up routines while giving me a choice about which routines I want to keep up on a given day. The Pomodoro goal helps me chunk up the time I spend working on various projects, which combats ugh fields that otherwise tend to form.

Other Pomodoro users on the CFAR alumni mailing list have reported having some trouble with goals that they're frequently close to derailing on, since derailing happens at midnight and preventing a derail can get in the way of other things you might want to do before midnight, e.g. spending time with a partner. One fix is to change your time zone in Beeminder so derailing happens at some other time: right now I have it set so that derails happen at 11pm instead.

Overall, +8. I can't claim not to have akrasia problems, but I have a system and it generally works.

A goal that I've gotten better and better at achieving over the years: distraction-free work and guilt-free play. It's not so much that I want myself to spend a lot of time working and relatively little time playing; it's easy to try to make yourself work and just spin your wheels and use a lot of mental energy not getting anything done. So I try to monitor my state mentally, and if I'm feeling tired/depressed, I often focus on rejuvenating myself prior to getting things done (funny videos and chatting with friends can be good ways to rejuvenate oneself). I also think in terms of mental contexts, and try to associate certain contexts with different degrees of activation (e.g. I sit in a particular part of my room when I want to focus, and I get up with my laptop and go sit on the stairwell outside before doing something relatively low-focus like checking my email; unrelated tip: try to do high-focus things like study at the beginning of the day (ideally right after turning on your computer in the morning) and leave low-focus things 'till the end of the day; as a general rule, if you've got lots of focus/mental energy don't let it go to waste). Another thing I've had success with in the past: if I don't like my current mental context, I'll set my computer up for whatever work I'd like to be doing, then I'll get up, take a short walk, and get to work as soon as I sit back down at my computer.

The guilt-free part is: when you're taking a break, try to maximize its rejuvenation value and don't feel guilty about the fact that you aren't working.

+6

Beeminder: +4. The reminders are invaluable, the cash inventive maybe less so. The flexibility of being able to build up credit on some days for when a busy day, or a day of little motivation occurs is fantastic. My biggest problem is figuring out the best way to formulate goals.

Evernote to-do lists: +6. Haven't finished reading GTD, so I'm unsure how much overlap there is here. Essentially I have several sets of notes in evernote. Shopping, To-do, Long term projects / goals. As I think of things to do they get recorded in to do. I also review on my desktop the shopping and to-do lists each night before bed. I've trained myself into the habit of checking the to-do list each morning, lunch time and evening, and the shopping list at lunch time, and before leaving to go home from work.

The difference from how I tried to track things to do just a few months ago is night and day. I'm currently in the process of integrating a weekly (Sunday evening) review of my goals to see what new things should be slotted in to the next week's tasks.

I'm still trying to figure out how to handle things I need to do on future days (eg, follow up with the real estate agent on thursday). I'm currently recording these in the day's to-do with a note for the day to do it on, but not being able to tick off everything on the list reduces some of the visceral satisfaction of clearing the whole list out.

Beeminder: +3. Defining goals in a way that works well is difficult.

GTD + 0 It doesn't seem to be very useful when you don't have any appointments and things you want to do are more along the lines of "do all the problems in this textbook"

Getting on a somewhat decent sleep schedule + 2. Making my computer automatically turn off at 11 pm combined with putting shades made out of pillow cases on my bedroom lights has helped me go to sleep between 12 and 2 usually, which is much better. This gives me about 4 hours of extra time that otherwise would have been spent on the internet in a wasteful way. Flux (a program that dims/reddens the screen at night) is nowhere near powerful enough.

Journaling about what my goals are +8. It's difficult to be motivated when I don't know why I'm doing anything.

Changing how I visualize something so that I'm not thinking about an outcome that produces anxiety +5. I have found thinking about procrastination as anxiety to be much more helpful than thinking about the Equation. While it could be though of anxiety resulting from expectations, I usually frame it in the sense of "what am I afraid of?" Then I can imagine something bad happening. Addressing the actual likelihood of a Bad Scary Thing doesn't appear to work. Instead what helps is if I change the framework and purposefully just start thinking about some other aspect that is more desirable.

An example is that I don't want to "call some people" and tell them they need to redo a repair job because it sucks. Once I thought about "I want X fixed!" then calling them and the social barrier seemed less of an issue.

pomodoros +1. I find that I often have difficulty coming back to work after a 5 minute break, and I end up doing 25-15. I had more luck with periods of 50-10. When I don't feel very excited about the idea of doing something, then they are more useful.

Social commitments -3. These make me feel yucky and I just want to avoid the activity all together.

I feel that there are lots of synergies between these things. A few years ago, I had well defined goals, but no organizational skills and poor habits. I became very unhappy with my inability to accomplish my goals. Once I started getting practice with beeminder, and a number of other things (one being Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but I'm not sure how to fit that into akrasia tactics) then I was able to examine my goals again and things fit together much nicer.

GTD The Clean Desk: +3

There are many parts of David Allen's Getting Things Done. Some I find more useful than others.

I occasionally get my desk down to zero, spray it with some chemical solution, and wipe it off with a paper towel. However I've never been able to maintain this. Inadequate space is one part of this. This really doesn't work unless you have a really good filing system set up.

GTD File cabinets: +3

There are many parts of David Allen's Getting Things Done. Some I find more useful than others.

When I initially picked up GTD, I found file cabinets to be very useful; though I did have to adjust it by keeping certain reoccurring yearly paper that I need for taxes in an expanding folder, one per calendar year, instead. (E.g. bank statements, receipts, etc.) I limited the file cabinet to non-recurring paper like contracts, personal letters, warranties, instructions, etc.

This has become less useful over the last five years. The specific problem is not in the system itself so much as that I stopped working for myself and started working for a company that provides insufficient workspace and inadequate office furniture to its employees. Thus I no longer have the room or budget to maintain a personal filing cabinet at work. If that changed this might become a more useful technique again.

Easy, cached success spirals/gamification/HabitRPG: +4 (3 months). I think a significant amount of the benefit I derive is from having a small string of dailies that get done first (ish) thing in the morning, hence the success spiral. Having mental checkpoints for when each daily is "late" helps me keep track of when it's time to move on to the next thing. Colorful clicky boxes and lighthearted 8-bit-esque graphics also help. The site is down with some regularity, but since I only need to refer to it a few times per day, I have actually found this to be barely any impediment to its overall utilty.

Recursive taskification, which I do with Workflowy +3 (2 months). When I'm not accomplishing much because I have multiple tasks with too many components to keep track of and I feel overwhelmed, Workflowy's endlessly nestable and rearrangeable items encourage me to just record any relevant task without getting hung up on the "but what if I put something in the wrong category" mental block. (I think this tactic and Workflowy would be worth more points if I had more complicated tasks on a regular basis.)

Making a Schedule +5 (6? months). Sometimes thoughtfully organized to break up active and sedentary tasks, but even when not thoughtfully organized at all, offers a small amount of pressure to be doing something in particular while at the same time making answering "so what am I supposed to be doing?" easy.

GTD Tickler File: +1

There are many parts of David Allen's Getting Things Done. Some I find more useful than others. The famous tickler files I never found to be especially useful, and have mostly stopped using them. It occurs to me I should review what's in my tickler file from the last time I worked with it.

GTD Lists: +8

There are many parts of Getting Things Done. Some I find more useful than others. The one I have found most useful is making TODO lists and reviewing them periodically. This also supports Allen's goal to get things out of your head and onto paper or into a computer document.

I don't follow a lot of his principles on exactly how to organize or when to review the lists, but simply making them and reviewing them has been a real life changer for me over the last 10 years or so.

GTD Calendar: +5

There are many parts of Getting Things Done. Some I find more useful than others. One I have adopted is Allen's calendar management. Specifically:

1. Put everything with a specific time (i.e. has to be done at 3:30 on Tuesday) in the calendar.
2. Put nothing that doesn't have to be done at a specific time in the calendar.
3. Review your calendar for the day first thing in the morning.

This is a huge organizational help, and avoids missing a lot of timed events I would otherwise miss.

Pomodoro: +5

I have written here previously about the Pomodoro technique. Rather than reposting, just follow the link. Looking back from a few months later, I continue to use Pomodoros and find them useful on aversive tasks such as cleaning my office or starting a big project on which I don't know where to begin. I don't have big akrasia problems these days, so I don't use it every day; but when a task is aversive, Pomodoros are a big help.

Thanks for doing this, though I suggest moving it to the Discussion section in the hope of getting more responses there.

Amphetamine (adderall, vyvanse): +1

I've been using this for motivation and to combat akrasia for about 1 yr. Were it not for tolerance/dependance, i would give this drug at least a +6, the effects from a single dose can be quite profound. Basically, I was unable to achieve consistent boosts in motivation without increasing the dose, which would continually increase side effects until I had to abstain for a while, rinse/repeat. My guess is that this drug is much more useful for people who are naturally motivated; the other cognitive benefits (increased focus, mental clarity) do not seem subject to the tolerance issue. As for dependence, I just mean learning behavior X with amphetamine may mean dependence on amphetamine for behavior X