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[Gearskull1]

Do a little bit of work then a little bit of procrastination, then go back to work. If you find that you cant go back to work, then dont use this method. Put yourself in a place where you cannot pysically reach things you procrastinate with, so your choices are sit in silence or do your work. You will do your work.

[Septemberman]

Go outside with a flashlight, a pair of pens and a notebook. Lock the door. Give your best friend the keys to your house with instructions not to let you back inside until you either have a new draft ready or you get arrested for vagrancy.

I tried this, along with the freewriting suggestion. It helps immensely, thank you!

[Heliman]

As someone with both a heavy case of ADD and a heavy workload, procrastination is my biggest problem too.

It's like, I'll get started on my homework, and fifteen minutes later I'll be back on youtube or on the forums or eating, or reading a book and I'd have no idea how I got there in the interm.

I'm gonna try that staring-at-the-wall idea, sounds like a good one.

[olemars]

John Perry just won the ig-nobel for his work on Structured Procrastination.

The award citation:

Literature: John Perry of Stanford University for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which states: "To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important."

It seemed relevant to the thread

[MarcAFK]

John Perry just won the ig-nobel for his work on Structured Procrastination.

The award citation:

Literature: John Perry of Stanford University for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which states: "To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important."

It seemed relevant to the thread

GUH? Really i tend to just do completely unimportant stuff when i procrastinate, like dwarf fortress, and even then i'll procrastinate my mega project or even getting around to eventually brewing some booze or setting up defences.....

[Neonivek]

Go outside with a flashlight, a pair of pens and a notebook. Lock the door. Give your best friend the keys to your house with instructions not to let you back inside until you either have a new draft ready or you get arrested for vagrancy.

I tried this, along with the freewriting suggestion. It helps immensely, thank you!

*Gets a special Bay12 Stamp out*

*CURED!*

Next Case!

[kaenneth]

Same situation here, I have 4 hours to fill out some online forms to get my unemployment berefits... still havn't done them all week.

I know the cause though, I've stopped taking my ADHD medications, because they were making me to stay awake until 6am, then sleep until 2pm... not really conducive to working a regular job. (I work as a contract software tester, I wasn't fired, but my contract hit it's limit, and just waiting for the non-compete to expire...)

With the meds I was the most focused and attentive person at work (software testing), when I was there. Without the meds, I can be there, but i'll get easily distracted.

I probably just need to get the right dosage, but at this point I keep putting off and forgetting to make the doctors appointments.

I'd have to say the worst part of having ADHD was all the years it went undiagnosed, all the problems I had with school, etc. as a teenager really hurt my self-esteem (99.9th percentile verbal, 99.7th math on the standard tests... but failed out of high school because I couldn't complete assignments... I had/have psiorisis/arthritis as well, but it was never a strong part of my self-image, since I most of the people I know, I mainly know online.)

[kaijyuu]

I'm not you, kaenneth, but here's what I did to avoid the problems you're having. I also have ADHD and am on medication.

- Never take them less than 6 hours before you try to go to sleep. This was the cutoff time for me where the pills stopped having a real effect, and as such they didn't keep me up at night.
- Take them when you need them, not everyday.

As a side note, over time the medication has had less and less of an effect on me. So, I only use them for big assignments and such to get the maximum effect, and I also haven't abandoned non-medication methods to get me motivated.

[LordBucket]

what can I do to help stop procrastination?

"Never put off doing something today, when you could wait and put off doing it tomorrow instead."

[Eagleon]

John Perry just won the ig-nobel for his work on Structured Procrastination.

The award citation:

Literature: John Perry of Stanford University for his Theory of Structured Procrastination, which states: "To be a high achiever, always work on something important, using it as a way to avoid doing something that's even more important."

It seemed relevant to the thread

This is what I do. The result?

Three unfinished novels, countless unfinished short-stories (including two commissions), half a dozen unfinished programming projects (including several that really aren't that challenging, and one that might make me a lot of money), a half-constructed set of wax-cured leather pauldrons, countless songs I've ended early because I wanted to work on something else, a set of parts for a 3D printer that I'll probably never build, and two guitars that are perpetually in need of tuning. It doesn't work as well as it should, to say the least, but hey, I bet da Vinci had the same problem at some point ;O

For what it's worth, I think it's gotten me farther than just playing games/watching Netflix. I mean, I'm working on something all the time - eventually I'll run out of new things to work on, and one of them will get done. And maybe at some point there will be this critical buildup of unfinished crap and I'll start producing things at the same rate that I think of them, right? Hmm.