jack

It took me a long time to develop a normal amount of "doing necessary things". Partly I had problems getting started on things (from big projects to every day things like getting out of bed). Partly I resented learning a rote system that didn't fit what I prioritised, so I didn't learn a system of "do this amount of housework every day" routine that I might have benefited from. Partly I was very perfectionist, so it felt futile to do *some* when I still wasn't doing *all*

I've got a lot better in various ways. Partly I have built up routines for day-to-day stuff. I have through various different tricks/habits/self-therapy slowly de-mystified "getting started". But there's a lot I'd still like to improve on.

I used to survive by basically living a status quo that had terrible housework, and a lot of regular socialising, but almost none of what you might call "working toward things". So in some ways that worked well, but I didn't want to get to age 80 and discover that I still went to the pub twice a week, but had never achieved anything and still lived in a similar student-style flat to when I was in my early twenties. Although I mean, maybe I should have been happier with that trade off, but I wasn't. But because my brain is infested with counter-productive perfectionism, as soon as I started to get better at things, it felt like I needed to be getting better at things ALL THE TIME.

Ideally I'd have regular self-care time. And regular socialising with other people. And time for the creative hobbies I enjoy doing: writing, GMing roleplaying, designing board games, programming, etc. And time for self-improvement, time for self-therapy, learning to dress better, learning to be a more pleasant person to be around. And time for "we really should have done this at some point" chores. And now I'm adding to the list "activism" as the crises I'm living through have ever more impossible to ignore. And so on.

But that is... a lot. I probably *can't* do all of that. But I can't bring myself to officially decide not to bother on any of them.

I've been through several previous systems. Recently I've been trying out "no responsibilities sat" where I can do just nothing, or work on what I feel like, without feeling constrained by "what I feel like I should do" which often killed my motivation. And I added "overdue chores Sunday", not the entire day, but basically I'd try to do SOME chore/chores which had been lingering with me never finding time for it, without feeling guilt for whether it had been on the list for days or years.

I realised the reason those worked is that it didn't make so much difference if I did the self-care and chores a lot or a little, as long as there kept being SOME at a steady rate, but not so much they took over everything else, or so little that they never happened.

Partly, I made the effort to stop thinking of all the chores as "I'll catch up once and then I'll be a Functioning Adult TM" but instead, "if I do a little bit every week or so on necessary house-ownership care, or necessary body-having appointments, or buying things that we might need but were never urgent, then over time I will be mostly up to date on the important things". And new things will always arrive, but as long as the new stuff is added.

Now I'm seriously considering... should I do that for everything? Not so much have a dedicated day, as I don't know if I want to do all those things the same amount. But maybe have a shuffled list, where if I have some time, I can say, "pick one or two of these at random, work on one of those for a bit", to ensure, I keep doing SOME stuff on all of them.

What does everyone else do? Do you have a way of balancing so many demands? Or do you in practice live in a status quo of "if things keep going like this, then in 20 years I'll feel it went well", and responding to additional demands as they come up?

I can't describe myself as someone who *doesn't* procrastinate, but I think, after a very long time of small improvements, I might have moved out of the worst of "having things I'm literally unable to do". Which was something was never sure if I'd achieve, although I was never easily able to think clearly about, because I didn't want to admit how bad the problem was, so I don't feel so much exhilaration as extremely cautious numb relief. Although I think I am more relaxed and able to enjoy things.

Thousands and thousands of thanks to my parents, and Liv who have been supportive and patient and helped incredibly much while I've had problems I'm not easily able to describe what's wrong or what would help (even if many people I know fight much worse problems).

I'd always wondered if I'd write a "how not to procrastinate" guide when I fixed it. Well, it turns out that it's not easily reducible to a set of simple steps that once you know what they are, it's easy, which was not exactly a surprise. But I guess I do have *some* advice.

A lot of it feels really fake in retrospect. Like, I got over some particular hang-up, and then later on thinking back, I couldn't easily reconstruct the state of mind I was when I had the problem. I remember what I did that helped, but I found it hard to believe that had really been necessary.

Which just shows, how *different* brains can be, and how hard it can be to get what's going on in someone else's brain, even when it feels like you would know.

So some of this series will be my best recollections of what worked at the time, before they fade further, and some will be my best interpretations of what was going on with the power of hindsight.

Tip #1: Don't be depressed

I realise that's sort of unhelpful. But seriously, that CAN help, in several ways.

If you're burning out on something, often taking a break can help. You need to figure out how much to take a break to recharge, and how much not to because that will just turn into never doing the thing. Do self care things, a break from responsibility (e.g. play a phone game, etc, ideally something absorbing but not something complicated enough you get sucked in long term), low-pressure human contact if that usually helps you, eat if you're hungry, get a hot drink, and enough water/squash/etc that you're hydrated.

If this is a long-term problem, consider if a therapist, life coach, etc, is an option available. Don't focus on "do I deserve this" -- that's the depression talking, generally speaking taking advantage of that sort of service HELPS it be available to other people, not hinders. If there's a year or more waiting list, you'll find that out. Don't ask, will it help, if you're not sure, you can try it and see. (I didn't do any of this, sorry. But I probably should have done.)

(And this is way, way outside the scope of the post, but if, if you ask someone you know fairly well, "it feels like this, do I probably have depression", then you probably do, and treating it is hard, but many many people find therapy, or one medication or another, or some combination helps, so try that, even if it's not a guarantee. Do not think, "nothing will help, there's no point", it's a trap. Do not think, "I should be able to fix this with willpower", not having willpower is exactly the disease, try to get that fixed first. If possible, get a friend to talk you through the steps of finding a professional, or the best alternatives if you can't do that. And do that *first*, fixing "I find doing things hard" will be a lot easier once you've started to handle that.)

As hinted above, if you have friends you can ask for advice, outsource some of these decisions. Often saying, "yes, duh, you'd benefit from therapy" or "it's worth it, keep going, you're nearly there" or "friend, you are not making progress, you are not going to do this by the deadline nohow."

Sometimes you need to get things done despite a bad life situation :( But if you can reduce the amount you're totally dispirited, it will likely help a lot. All sorts of things, from small tasks to massive ones, suddenly feel easy when I feel more upbeat.

I don't think it was always that straightforward, I think when I was mired in some of this stuff, having a better mood helped, but there was plenty of stuff that I still found impossible, and trying to do them just made me despair again. But the steady improvement meant I reached a point where, when my mood improved, things seemed straight-forward again.

Even small things. I get into a habit of throwing socks onto the bottom step, to take upstairs to the laundry basket next time I'm going. Do I, in fact, take them upstairs next time I'm going? I mean, walking up stairs with socks is not actually harder, the only thing I need to do is actually pick them up. But no, do I heck as like. Well, some days I do, some days I don't. I know I could build the habit of doing it always, I have for things I really need to do, but when I haven't, it's like a switch. When I feel better, I do random small chores because why not. When I feel bad, I feel doing that carries the weight of committing to ALWAYS do that and keeping it tidy forever and I shy away, leaving it until I actually have to do it. I think the specifics of those behaviours are very individual, but (a) if something feels impossible, know that most of the time, what you actually need to do *isn't* impossible, and doing something is probably better than doing nothing, and not thinking about the bigger problem except occasionally is often better than dwelling on it (b) if you practice, you often can learn to do little things without thinking about any of the hangups, don't put too much weight on it (c) if you can't today, maybe you will tomorrow, don't feel too bad if you can't.

Standard caveat

I'm not sure how much the depression description applies to me. I was never "not able to enjoy things" the way I associate with descriptions of depression, and if I got away from the problems I was worried about, I perked up immediately. But I did have a lot of "everything feels impossible". And I always had friends, enjoyable activities, etc, I never felt like I was sad or suffering especially, rather than I had a normal fairly enjoyable life, except that before I worked to improve it, for quite a while I kept not getting around to things, both fun things like "write a computer game" and important things like "paying bills" and "doing my job" underneath the waterline.

This is "how not to procrastinate" not "how to fix mental health". OK, further posts to follow.

Now I have a todo list, I don't really organise my email much any more. I star anything I need to deal with at some point, and I put into my todo list anything I need to do in a specific timeframe. And I've gone back to just accumulating stuff in the inbox :)

And I clear it out occasionally when I get round to it. But I feel like that works pretty well, not like I went backwards :)

(Not everything, gmail does magically separate regular emails, social media stuff, marketing stuff, password resets, etc)

Just over a week ago, things... somehow fell into place in my head. I think a confluence of circumstance led to that, that of all the things that felt weighing on me, they'd mostly resolved themselves one way or another.

Work felt like it shifted, not from any particular change, but like a magic eye picture from "probably all this work will be worthwhile, but there's no way to tell, I just need to force myself to have faith" to "ok, it seems what we're doing is achieving progress". But along with that change all sorts of other things just fell away too. All sorts of things that were, "oh my god, this has been hanging over me for years, it shouldn't be that hard, but even if i do it, I'll have so many other things to do too" became "oh well, most people probably don't have time for all those things, if I do even some of them I'll be kicking arse".

Getting things done shifted from predominantly "I need to force myself to do X, Y and Z today, inevitably I'll leave them as long as I can before starting so I have some rest" to "I could do A, B and C today, if I do I'll feel really good, and if I start them now, they shouldn't even take so long". I did more flop.

One possible instigation was work coming into focus from having clear deadlines with clear goals. Another was my resolve to set myself no long term goals for december, but try to relax. Another was my resolve to focus less on specific goals, and more on seeking self-reinforcing loops, of small mood improvements that let me do small tasks, which in turn lead to larger mood improvements.

I thought about this in terms of my putative productivity app. I realise that historically, the productivity tool I need is primarily about forcing myself to do a minimum. Of choosing what I can consistently do, and doing it EVERY SINGLE DAY, because then I can build up a habit of doing it, and a sense of achievement at sticking to it. But when my mood lifts, it's more like, I want to do all the things and I need to channel myself into doing a reasonable mix and pacing myself.

One question is, can I keep it up? I hope so, but I don't know for sure. Another is, am I actually being more effective, or happier, or neither? I think both are true but I'm not completely sure.

I've been at the new job over three months and it's going fairly well.

For a long time, I've felt like, each project goes through phases, of "just getting started and full of ideas" and "wrestling with someone else's code I don't understand" and "filling out features and making something fairly complete" and "dealing with an urgent problem". And they basically ALL caused me to procrastinate. But with very very many varied productivity tricks and techniques, I seem to finally be reaching a point where, in most of those phases, I can just go ahead and do work, without constantly struggling not to freeze up and get nothing done.

The last couple of weeks, I was a bit stuck in a "it doesn't work and I can hopefully fix it but I don't know for sure" loop, and hadn't realised how much it was dragging down my mood. It also seemed to be, I wasn't content if there was *any* major upcoming problem hanging over my life, I had to make progress on *all* of them before I felt at all better. But I eventually did.

Overall, that's really quite good. I still need to test if the improvement is ongoing, but it's an improvement I wasn't sure I'd ever quite reach. Unfortunately, because I'm me, my brain is less excited, as depressed that it took so long, and that afterwards things will not be significantly better.

There's been a slow shift. It used to be, if I had a little bit of time, I could never just, do something small (washing up, or code tidying, or replying to some emails). I could only ever do things when I made it so I *had* to. But as things improved, that resistance melted away, and "how intimidating tasks seemed" shrunk back to something related to how much work they actually were. Which I guess is where many people were all along.

Doing month-by-month goals or projects was definitely good, I think I want to keep that up. Sometimes they've been a specific project, like learning rust. Other times they've been just "catch up on these paperwork/chores". But having that structure helps a lot letting me see progress. And knowing a project is self-contained, I can see how much I can do, and then *stop* and force myself to re-evaluate my goal, not get stuck in a dragging-on project for ever.

I haven't done anything very spectacular this year, but I've learned about rust (and contributed!) and learned about writing an android app. And started a new job. And am confident that if I try to work on a project in a language I already know it would have gone a lot faster.

It feels like, given the slightest pressure to do things a particular way, even in my imagination, my brain immediately collapses into thinking "i have to do things that way" and it's really hard to *notice* how I'm stuck let alone dig myself out again. And that applies not only to specifics, "colleague refused to listen to idea, so can I ever consider that idea again in the future in any way?" but to meta-skills. It always feels like I *have* to fix everything by sheer force of will, not by, well, techniques that work, because that's what people expect of me. But it's not true, no-one does think that, but it *feels* like they do.

I realise I've had *another* shift in habits.

Now I'm keeping a daily/weekly todo list more as standard, any emails I need to reply to on a specific timescale get duplicated into that system.

But that means I've shifted to starring emails that need a reply, and going through them occasionally, and the rest of my inbox has gone back to being "everything I've received recently0-ish that might be relevant". But mostly without the problem of "agh the important emails got lost".

Of course, gmail divides that into five folders: primary; social media notifications; corporate mailing list type stuff, and a couple of others. I could do something similar with filters. But it would be harder to cope if those were all muddled together. Non-starred mail in primary tends to be "conversations which are relevant in the next few days but don't need a reply right now". I tend to use social media notifications for marking comments I'd like to reply to, although that's fiddly. And the others rarely need any action (if they do, it's usually important and I move it into primary).

Resolutions

Last year, I decided to try having month-by-month goals instead of trying to do new years resolutions.

Nov was NaNoWriMo which was what gave me the idea. That was a big commitment, which I think averaged out to about 2h per day, with some "thinking time" on top. Dec was to recover. Feb will be "start new job".

Jan was "learn some rust, if possible contribute to rust compiler". That was a bit speculative, I wasn't sure how big a goal was reasonable. But it turned out fairly well. I think I got a reasonable handle on the basic syntax, and the borrow checker concepts which most people find a hurdle to getting to know it. I build a couple of "hello world" programs to be sure I understood the building and packaging system.

And I built the compiler from source, and submitted a pull request to fix one of the "easy" documentation issues from the issue tracker, and learned how the project was organised. Which is now accepted!

So I think on balance that was about the right amount and specificity of goal. And I count it as mostly a success.

I reckoned the time spent stacked up something like 1 week of work, minus overhead faff, was about the equivalent of an intense weekend hackathon, or a not-very-intense project over a month. Nanowrimo was about twice that (more on some days likely). And some projects lend themselves to a brief burst of activity and others to a longer steady progress.

I'm simultaneously pleased that I *can* expect to focus energy on some projects and actually get somewhere with them. But also depressed that there's only so many months and each lets me achieve comparatively little.

I have lots of ideas of what I might do, but not sure what is most worthwhile to spend that effort on. Some coding projects. Some self-improvement projects. Some social things.

Daily todos

I shifted my daily todos a bit incorporating some ideas from bullet journals (as linked by ghoti).

I started keeping my daily todo-list IN my diary, and when I've done an item, changing the "-" bullet point to an "x" and moving it down to the bottom of the list. So what I'm GOING to do naturally becomes a diary.

I also started, instead of having subheadings, having a few different types. "=" bullet point for largish task. "-" for anything small but needs to be today. "s" for social-type task. (todo and social get postponed in different circumstances and consume energy in different ways.)

It feels easier to plan what I WANT to do, without feeling like I've failed if I don't do all of it.

I also started keeping my actual diary in multiple bullet points with a different bullet, instead of strung together. I'll see how that goes.

I feel like I'm slowly re-evolving a system lots of people already recommended to me. But I couldn't just *do* it, it depends on having confidence that putting things in a list actually works, and I've only slowly acquired that.

Likewise, maybe I don't need to record so much. But doing so was a step in the process of not worrying about it so much. And what's useful I keep, and what I don't need I've got better at just deleting, and not thinking "but I might need that one day".

Similarly, I keep a parallel diary I call my therapy diary for rants where I know they won't seem as persuasive in future but I have to make them. "WHY WHY WHY can't I just do X without screwing it up" "why does y keep going wrong". "this happened and now I feel really bad about it". The idea was, I'd think through the things later and come to terms with them. But actually just writing them down helped a lot. Now I've ranted in it much less often that I did to start with.

For I think the first time since starting habitRPG I failed to shave and get to work by 9:30 just because. I did do most of the other parts of my morning routine.

I'm proud of keeping it up so far, and hope that I can get over the hurdle of keeping it going even when one failure. That's often the riskiest time, when you start thinking "well, I can't do it perfectly, so what level of imperfection is ok?"

I think this what some of habitRPG's class features are for, to allow you to fail occasionally but maintain a "perfect" record, except I haven't started trusting them because previously I didn't need to and didn't know if they were well-balanced or not.

I think my problem is that for the first few weeks, checking things off was exciting and made me feel good. Then I started to get complacent and doing the minimum didn't feel like an achievement any more -- so I lost motivation and didn't do it, which is exactly what I was trying not to do. I think maybe I need to start watching the streak counters, how many days on the trot I've done it. If I can say "every day for N months", it gives me just a small amount of investment in keeping it going even when it's become normal.

I've been very cautious with setting up daily resolutions on habit rpg because the punishment is a really crappy way to learn. Several friends have used NO dailies and I think that's wise. Or rather, I like developing streaks, I'm not sure about taking damage -- that makes sense, but is very dispiriting, rewards are generally better!

But I did use them for things I know I CAN do every day, but have had difficulty actually motivating me to do, such as a regular morning routine when I don't skip half of it most of the time. After a week and a half, that's gone very well -- I have fulfilled them basically every day with no angst. Go me!

But one has been very difficult, "take a lunch hour less than an hour". I knew I sometimes ran over, trying to fit in too many things, trying to reply to some emails, etc, trying to do shopping, go for a walk, play some Ingress, write a blog post, etc... when really "eat lunch, say hi to people, stretch legs and rest eyes for 20 minutes" is about all I usually have time for. But I hadn't realised that had been almost EVERY day. It's not been a big problem as long as I work the rest of the time, but I think I need to stop pretending that trying to fit things in isn't distracting, and find things I can do to relax that don't involve "and I'll just do one more thing"...

More than a year ago, I started using beeminder.com to track my resolution to go to the gym two-three times a week. I only used it to track, not any of the pledge-money options, but I already found that really useful, and I've stuck to it ever since.

But it's partly successful because it's a resolution I know I'm physically capable of, and it's important to me to keep, and doesn't take that much time -- I can plan a week and say "other than work, I can work everything else round this without doing significantly less". I don't have to say "is this excuse sufficient" -- I've a pretty clear idea of what's genuinely exceptional, and everything else, it's not that I literally don't have time, it's just that I'm looking for an excuse.

But then, chuffed with success, I added a lot more resolutions (and there's more I'd like to add) I want to get into the habit of always keeping up even when I'm busy. Going to work on time. Hours spent at work concentrating not trying to stop procrastinating. Phone mum at least once a week. Phone/email Liv at least twice a week. Shave every morning. Eat fruit. Blog thrice a week. And all of those are good, and I've improved massively on them, but I've reached a point where I can't reliably do ALL of them ALL of the time, and every time I "bend" a goal a little, I feel the habit of keeping resolutions get weaker and the whole system get less reliable and the bad habits start to come back.

Partly, I need to plan in advance, and say, "I can't do all this at the last minute because there may not be time, I need to know in advance when I need to spend a couple of hours catching up on stuff".

Partly I need to be realistic about priorities: some resolutions the ONLY reason not to do them is procrastination, and I should be able to just always do them; but some resolutions, actually take time and sometimes they're less important than socialising or hobbies or spending time with Liv.

Partly I need to concentrate on building habits. If I can ALWAYS get up at the same time, shower, shave, dress, and leave, I never think "oh, lots of time, I'll just check email first" and end up being late.

Partly I need to calibrate my expectations. Doing what I'm doing now is lots better than I was a year ago. But now it feels like it should be "normal" so if I shave, go to work on time and go the the gym, I don't feel "yay, successful day", I think "that's exhausting, now I actually need to get something done". But I need to be realistic that many days, doing all the things I've precommitted to and nothing more, is as successful as much as I have time and energy for, and I should either be pleased with that (and schedule long-term progress for other days), or accept that if I want to get something else done, I need to compromise on one of the things I previous said I'd try to do.

Partly I need to be realistic about what's achievable, so if I can't keep everything, I don't fall into the habit of fudging and assuming I'll be able to make it up later.