Motivation vs Procrastination

When a person fails to begin a project that they care about, it’s typically due to either a) anxiety about their attempts not being “good enough” or b) confusion about what the first steps of the task are. Not laziness. In fact, procrastination is more likely when the task is meaningful and the individual cares about doing it well.

Just set one day’s work in front of the last day’s work. That’s the way it comes out. And that’s the only way it does.

— John Steinbeck

Dieser Text hätte vor knapp zwei Jahren erscheinen sollen. Zeit genug hatte ich, aber das ist das Problem mit genug Zeit: Man hat sie auch noch am nächsten Tag. Und dann kommt das Leben dazwischen, der beste Freund im Krankenhaus, der Bruder wird Vater, und die besten Saugroboter googeln sich nicht von alleine.

Putting challenging timeboxes on projects in a healthy environment can lead to serious innovation and creativity. Doing the same with impossible timeboxes in a toxic environment will lead to all of the bad things that you expect.

Der Psychologe und Forscher Timothy Pychyl, inzwischen im Ruhestand, beschreibt Prokrastination als "emotion-focused coping": Indem wir Aufgaben aufschieben, vermeiden wir das unangenehme Gefühl, mit einer potenziell schwierigen Herausforderung konfrontiert zu sein – und unter Umständen zu scheitern.

To-Do List as a Menu

📝 If you feel overwhelmed by your to-do list, try a new perspective:

• 🍔 Treat your to-do list like a menu. Instead of a list of chores you must complete, see it as a menu of options you get to choose from.


• 🤔 Acknowledge that you won't finish everything. This is a key part of shifting your mindset from overwhelmed to empowered.


• ✅

Reframe non-productive time. One of the reasons the exploration phase of the work is low value is that most of it doesn’t look like work. It’s lots of reading, and sitting and thinking, and doodling, and trying things that lead to dead ends. Non-productive time feels like a waste—but it doesn’t have to! One way to think about this kind of time is

Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation. The few tasks on his list will be by