I promise I’m not crazy. I am just genuinely curious if anyone has tried and noticed any benefits of staring at a wall for some time before starting work—it’s a trend on social media in the “productivitymax” call it realm.
Some people say it's a waste of time and then will just tell you to get some caffeine in to get work done, how do you feel about it?
I’m a working mom of two kids. I work from home.
Please give me some tips on how to be productive at work and managing my home effectively.
So I've always been hitting the gym after work but lately I started to feel really sluggish after work and because of that I skipped a few days, also I hate how busy it is at night so I've been thinking of switching to before work. The gym is like 13 minutes on foot from my house but I don't intend to go back home after since it's already on the way to my office but also I hate gym showers
I wasted so much time hating myself for procrastinating
For real though. I downloaded like 12 productivity apps, tried time-blocking, Pomodoro, cold showers, waking up at 5am... the whole self-help starter pack. Nothing stuck longer than a week.
Then I stumbled on something in a behavioral psych book that hit me hard: procrastination isn't laziness. It's your brain running from uncomfortable emotions tied to the task. Not the task itself the feelings around it.
That clicked for me because I noticed I don't procrastinate on everything equally. Some stuff I avoid because it feels too big (I freeze), other stuff because I'm scared I'll do it wrong.
Turns out there's a few common patterns. I'll share the ones I personally relate to:
The it has to be perfect trap I used to rewrite the first paragraph of anything like 20 times before moving on. Then I'd run out of energy and quit. The fix that actually worked for me was forcing myself to write the ugliest possible first draft. Like intentionally bad. Then editing later felt easy.
The it's too bigةfreeze When I see a massive project I literally shut down. I'll close my laptop and waste hours on my phone feeling guilty. What helped was making my goal stupidly small. Like "just open the document." That's it. Most times once I'm in, I keep going.
The i work better under pressure lie Man I told myself this for years. Yeah sure I'd finish stuff last minute, but it was always mediocre and I'd be destroyed the next day. I started telling my friend fake deadlines so someone would actually hold me accountable. Game changer.
I think the key thing I learned is that fighting procrastination with more discipline is like fighting fire with gasoline. You gotta understand what emotion is blocking you first, then reduce the friction around that specific thing.
Basically what I want, is a program or an app that allows me to log and keep track of all my personal projects, and maybe chores/things I still have to do.
I'm looking for something that has a progress-bar on how far a project is completed, when I started it, how long a certain project has been running / open / not worked on - something that allows me to just dump all tasks relating to a project in it and then allows me to prioritize it.
So far, google and AI have only suggested (shocking) AI cloud-based stuff - not looking for that, I just want something local.
Not a problem if it requires a bit of setup.
What do you guys use?
I’ve tried it all. The Pomodoro technique, beautifully organized Notion dashboards, time-blocking, color-coded calendars... You name it.
But let's be honest. Nothing—absolutely nothing—makes me code, write, or solve complex problems faster than the realization that a massive deadline is exactly 4 hours away and my career/grade is flashing before my eyes.
Under normal conditions? I will spend 3 hours micro-optimizing my IDE settings or researching the perfect domain name.
Under intense pressure? My brain enters a flow state so deep I feel like Bradley Cooper in Limitless. I become a flawless, high-speed execution machine.
Is this a sustainable long-term strategy? Probably not for my cortisol levels. But at this point, I have to admit that anxiety is my co-founder and panic is my project manager.
Anyone else unable to function without a fire under their seat? How do you cope with being a "deadline-driven" mammal?
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If you’ve ever wondered why no productivity advice ever works for you, at least not for long, here’s what might be stopping you. It certainly stopped me for far too long.
Most people are aware that if they want their life to be different, their actions need to be different, and ultimately, that means they have to part ways with at least part of who they currently are.
Long story short, we fear change. But it is a 100% irrational fear, and dissolving this fear is the first and absolutely crucial step that a lot of people ignore, which keeps them indefinitely stuck.
Imagine you were born in a prison cell. That’s all you’ve ever known. Life there sucks, but there is one thing that makes it a bit more manageable: there’s a PlayStation in your cell, which you can play at any time to alleviate the suffering of the prison cell, at least a little bit.
Now imagine, after years in prison, someone threatens to take this PlayStation away from you. It would trigger horror, panic, and an existential crisis. Understandably.
But now imagine that after 20 years, someone comes to you and gives you the key to the prison cell. You are free to go at any time, but you have to leave the PlayStation behind. The one thing that made your life at least somewhat manageable.
The thought of losing it would still cause panic and horror. After all, you have never lived life outside, so you have no experience of how much more exciting it is, or that you probably wouldn’t even bother playing PlayStation anymore.
So, there’s no rational reason not to leave the prison cell today, the same way there’s no rational reason to postpone working on your goals until tomorrow. But fear is not always rational, and it’s the reason why even the best and easiest to implement productivity advice will fail you:
Because you are afraid it might actually work, which would bring change to your life, which on one hand you fantasize about, but on the other hand you are also irrationally afraid of.
I will leave it to you to explore what your fears might be about. But regardless of what they are, here’s a mental note that helped me enormously:
You can always go back to your prison cell and PlayStation if it turns out life outside sucks. There are no long-term commitments to be made today, just taking a peek outside and only then deciding whether you want to go back or stay for at least a little while.
Tried everything to learn chess and bounced off all of it. Long puzzle sessions, opening videos, My System, Logical Chess. Brain checks out within minutes every single time. What's weirdly working is airlearn's chess format. 3 min sessions, streaks, rating ticks up, next lesson pops up before I lose interest. Same reason duolingo works on adhd brains, the dopamine loop is just tight enough.
Went 600 → 1050 rapid in 5 weeks which shocked me bc I usually quit hobbies by week 3.
Is this just me dressing up dopamine hits as "learning" or have other adhd ppl had the same thing where the short format actually built real skill?
Andd books for sure are not for my brain.
Hey guys, I’ve hit a wall this week. I have a mountain of tasks to get through, but every time I sit down at my desk, my brain just completely shuts down and looks for distractions.
I’ve tried the Pomodoro technique, but I usually just end up ignoring the timer.
What is your ultimate, foolproof "emergency reset" routine when you absolutely have to be productive but have zero motivation? Would love to hear your go-to tricks.
Something I've been experimenting with is really letting S**t go to solve procrastination.
Like really just relaxing, taking walks, and not getting too into my head about things. Like involve less thinking or feeling if possible.
Like if I have a task list. I just do it, without thinking about it much. Just make it as transparent as possible to just move from one task to the other.
If I have a mental hangup about a task, I use to charge straight into it, to then not complete it, and feel even worse about it. Then the next day, I finally finish it.
I found out that if I just stopped caring so much, I usually just finish the first day.
Which is pretty ironic.
Like if I just let s**t go, like I let go of the guilt of not doing it, or the worry of not doing it right, it ends up getting done way faster. And I feel way better, and then I can do the next task even easier.
I want an app that...
I've used Obsidian, Notion, Amplenote, Zotero and OneNote and I can't figure out why this is so hard. Is this really too much to ask? Is anyone else having a tough time with finding their holy grail notes app? (Esp as a student)
I almost want to switch to MS Word to make my study notes, but its formatting glitches make me stabby. Plus, no zettelkasten-like possibility there, which I'd really like.
I recently had health problems and quit drugs and booze, that part was pretty easy but quitting weed has kicked me in the ass. I’ve wanted to stop smoking for a while it was just a waste of money atp but I’ll admit to using it as an adhd med since my early teens, it’s just such a quick dopamine fix. Not smoking isn’t really the hard part it’s actually doing everything else without it. Since I’ve quit I’ve just lost all motivation I’ve fallen behind at uni, my room is never clean and I don’t even want to see people. It sounds like I’m depressed but I’m just.. unmotivated? I need a new reward system that gives dopamine to trick my stupid little brain into doing things. I was wondering if anyone else had this problem or any advice on sorting out my dopamine again. I expected a drop considering my brain hasn’t been producing its own to due the weed since I was like 14 but it’s just so annoying and I don’t have time for this. I was exercising for a bit but I’m postop still atm and have to be careful. I know it’s the right thing to do quitting but why does it have to be such a bitch to get my life together without it
I'm going 30 days without tv/books/videos/livestreams/music/video games etc to see what happens when I create more space to listen to myself.
Here's the latest update :)
Day 7+8
You probably won’t believe this, but I’ve realized something totally transformative.
Rest is important.
Groundbreaking I know… but I felt that sink in on such a different way on day 8. After a super peaceful day 7 where I went on a relaxing walk, worked and played piano, I slept poorly.
This led to the strongest desire yet to just slam easy dopamine into my face.
I was down so bad I found myself wanting to scroll gifs when replying to a friend’s message.
But I didn’t, and instead found some comfort from lying down then doing yoga.
What’s interesting is that partway through, my inner world shifted, and I was motivated to work again. It showed me that when we find comfort through activities that don't suck us in, it becomes a lot easier to continue to move towards what you actually want to be doing in life.
Day 9+10
In the past two days I noticed a couple interesting changes.Â
One was a heightened sensitivity to other forms of comfort.
When dealing with life's inevitable difficult emotions I found that physical touch, food, and even smell have been important ways for me to relax and find comfort. One of the days I lit a stick of incense and sat down next to it to enjoy the smell as a way to slow down.
Second was how much easier it is for me to move towards my hobbies.
Last year I rescued a perfectly fine guitar someone was throwing out and then proceeded to almost never play it. In the last few days I've been just picking it up multiple times during the day to practice a few chords.
I’ve also been playing piano a lot more too and finally finished learning a song I'd been working on for ages. Working on my hobbies has become the new version of picking up my phone when I'm bored (although that still happens out of habit).
Haven't brought either into the bathroom yet though xD
Well, that's it for my quick little update, so let me check in with you.
How much have you been listening to yourself recently?
And how could you listen just 5% more?
See you in the next one!
Cheers,
Luke
Attempt #1: I downloaded it, attempted to set it to be active from 23:00-5:00, said to block all websites. Didn't touch daily time limit or make a group. Nothing happened right away. The next day I opened my laptop at 3:00 pm and all websites were blocked. It said it was blocked 00:00-23:59. I uninstalled and reinstalled, set my active hours again, and only blocked three specific sites.
Attempt #2 (one week later): It's 2:00 AM and I realize that I have once again been on my distracting sites for hours and StayFocusd never kicked in. My settings look right, it's within my active hours and I'm on the blocked sites.
Even though I never set up a group, it says there is a 1 hour limit on groups. But I've been on for more than an hour. And it seems to be frozen with 52:51 left.
I really want this to work so I stop accidentally doing my puzzles until 2:00 AM! It won't let me attach screenshots, but any suggestions? Thanks a lot!
Hi everyone! Hoping you can help me out as I've seen a few posts in here about calendars/google calendars specifically.
I'm in search of an online calendar / something cloud based that allows notes to be added to events. It's a very specific scenario though.
I work for a dog kennel/daycare, and we offer a special enrichment program that dogs can attend during daycare. When enrichment is attended, the enrichment specialists type notes about that session into the event on the google calendar. The issue is, these notes have to be manually carried over on anything that isn't a recurring event. So if Max the dog just randomly signs up for enrichment, we have to manually copy and paste his notes over.
Is there a calendar option that could recognize "max" as its own entity and retain notes about Max, even if Max can't be set up with a recurring appointment because he changes week to week?
Silence feels super uncomfortable. I don't use any social media apps but YT and Spotify kill me. I play podcasts in the background while i work and its wrecking me, even if im not focused on the words they are saying. it just paralyzes me to stay in one spot. I switched to audiobooks - i listened to 60 books last year - and i didn't feel any different.
How do you focus without something in the background? How long do you stay on one task with ZERO distraction, even checking the time on your phone?
Hey everyone! I'm curious, why don't you use productivity apps?
​Personally, I don't use them because my life is just too chaotic, making it incredibly hard to plan things out the way most apps want you to. What about you?
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