One of my keys for productivity/unproductivity is that when I get interested in something, I become completely locked in on it. I have noticed that trying to stop a timewaster is rather futile while it is in progress, so I’ve developed a strong aversion towards taking on new distractions, obligations, or anything that will waste my time, because not starting in the first place is my point of greatest control over what I will be doing. This is one of the few areas where procrastination actually can help. If somebody tells me about some interesting thing I should be playing/watching/doing, I will either not care at all and quickly forget about it, find an excuse to avoid it, intentionally ignore it, summon my inner critic to repeatedly point out how much of a waste of time it is, or think “I’ll follow up on this later, after some Minecraft.” and never do so. Extreme laziness in the face of time-wasting obligations (which video games and shows count as) is a useful thing to cultivate for me, and my definition of time-wasting is quite a bit broader than that of my friends, though narrower than So8res definition.
The corollary for me is that if I can force myself to do something interesting and difficult for about a week or two, it can turn into a fairly strong passion.
One of my keys for productivity/unproductivity is that when I get interested in something, I become completely locked in on it. I have noticed that trying to stop a timewaster is rather futile while it is in progress, so I’ve developed a strong aversion towards taking on new distractions, obligations, or anything that will waste my time, because not starting in the first place is my point of greatest control over what I will be doing. This is one of the few areas where procrastination actually can help. If somebody tells me about some interesting thing I should be playing/watching/doing, I will either not care at all and quickly forget about it, find an excuse to avoid it, intentionally ignore it, summon my inner critic to repeatedly point out how much of a waste of time it is, or think “I’ll follow up on this later, after some Minecraft.” and never do so. Extreme laziness in the face of time-wasting obligations (which video games and shows count as) is a useful thing to cultivate for me, and my definition of time-wasting is quite a bit broader than that of my friends, though narrower than So8res definition.
The corollary for me is that if I can force myself to do something interesting and difficult for about a week or two, it can turn into a fairly strong passion.