I waste a significant amount of time each day doing meaningless tasks because I enjoy them. I know I’m holding back success as a result. Yet I can’t seem to change my habits.

I had the same issue. You have to get to the point where your desires for success in the long term are more important to you than the immediate pleasure that you get from doing those meaningless tasks.

What helped me is seeing people from my high school who are now enjoying much more success than I am. Seeing that makes me angry at myself for having taken it so easy and motivates me to work hard every day so that I can be much more successful than them.

I think that it is only a problem of organisation.

You should use a tool like Trello (trello.com) or others, if it is not already the case, to manage your todos, notes, etc.

For instance, I allow 1 or 2 hours each day for my “meaningless tasks” and I take notes about it sometimes.

At the end of the day I have a good vision of what I’ve done and what I’ll do tomorrow.

Sometime it’s just about a bad feeling, but if you organise yourself you will see that :

1. You officially allow time for your “meaningless tasks” so you will not feel guilty

2. You will have a look of your day and will see that you have worked a lot

3. Now you will not let your feeling dominate but you will have watch the reality and if you see (not feel) that you haven’t worked as expected you will be able to focus the next day

My two cents.

Anonymous says:

March 30, 2014 at 6:16 pm

I’m the guy from the first response. In my opinion it’s not a problem of organization. I had the same issue and even when I got organized I still wasted time.

It’s more so a desire to avoid pain(hard work) for a long term goal when one can obtain immediate pleasure from the things that distract us. We humans are very good at accomplishing tasks when the reward is immediate.

For instance if I told you that if you clean your house I will give you 1 million dollars. You would quickly jump up and start cleaning, if I was legit of course. But, if I told you that I would give you 1 million dollars 50 years from now if you cleaned your house every single day, you would likely not do it since that would be too much pain for a reward that’s far off.

This is why the OP has a hard time staying on task; because he knows that his reward is so far off, it discourages him from trying. What helped me is the feeling of anger at being left behind. That motivates me more than the reward itself.

Reply
- dana says:
  
  March 30, 2014 at 6:49 pm
  
  I’m the OP. You totally nailed it. It’s an avoidance technique for me. I get done the things I need to get done, but it’s usually at the last minute. I’m a total procrastinator on the things I don’t enjoy doing.
  
  I appreciate the organization suggestion. I’ve tried it, but organizing is something that doesn’t come natural, thus I don’t enjoy doing it, thus it falls into the procrastination bucket.
  
  Finding the motivator is what I need to do. Just need to figure out what that is.
  
  Thanks all for the feedback.
  
  Reply
  - Anonymous says:
    
    March 30, 2014 at 7:17 pm
    
    No problem. I’m the guy who made the first response and the one just above yours. Nothing will make a difference until you get the motivation to work hard every day.
    
    Doesn’t matter how smart you are, doesn’t matter how organized you are; if you don’t have the motivation you won’t accomplish your goals. I’m sure you’ve met many smart people who are lazy; so they don’t accomplish much in life; they lack motivation.
    
    I think I wasn’t clear enough earlier when I said that anger at being left behind is what motivates me. To expand on that a bit further, anger is a response to pain. If I punch you in the face, you’d likely get angry. If I accomplish more than you, and we were close friends, you’d likely get angry, and if not you should.
    
    It is pain that motivates humans; the desire to avoid it I mean. We can understand this easily when it comes to pain caused from short term trauma like getting punched or putting your hand on a stove while it’s on.
    
    When we have long term goals, our brains are naturally inclined to avoid trying to accomplish them because we know how much pain will go into doing so.
    
    It’s easier to just slack off and have fun every day, rather than work hard for a long term goal. After all, our genes don’t care if we accomplish long term goals like starting a big company; all we are designed to do is live long enough to procreate.
    
    A man who becomes wealthy but never has offspring is a loser in terms of natural selection, while an idiot who fathers 18 kids by a bunch of different women and works at McDonalds is a big winner in terms of natural selection.
    
    This is what our bodies are designed to do; gain immediate gratification and avoid pain. What will help you is if you can derive more pain from not accomplishing your long term goals than from accomplishing them.
    
    So, if you can project into the future and see yourself as an old man, not having accomplished your long term goals while you see your friends in the future being much more successful than you; that pain might motivate you to work hard now so that you avoid that fate.
    
    That mental exercise works well for me, so I think it might work well for you. Basically the point is to make it more painful not to accomplish your goals than it is to accomplish them. So, showing up to work hard every day is painful, but it’s not that bad when compared to being a failure in life.
    
    Reply
- Anonymous says:
  
  March 31, 2014 at 2:32 am
  
  Agree with this. I started following a lot of entrepreneurs on instagram that have become successful in their small businesses. What motivates me to get through the difficult, boring tasks is browsing their profiles and envying their lifestyle. Their financial stability, all the pride their family/friends feel etc. It pisses me off and I tend to make HUGE pushes on the work I’m doing for that day.
  
  People are motivated by various emotions. For some its greed, for others its envy (me). You just have to figure out what you emotionally respond to best and engulf yourself in it to get you through the hard times
  
  Reply
Anonymous says:

March 30, 2014 at 9:41 pm

Alright, alright, alright: Group hug! 🙂

-Representative, procrastinators anonymous

Reply

I think the main problem that a lot of people have is that they like to stay inside their comfort zone.

Its easy to not start up a company, its easy not to ask that girl you like out for a date, its easy to live a life of mediocrity and never amount to anything because you never stepped outside of your comfort zone.

You always have 2 choices in life: 1) Do it 2) Don’t do it. Passion, motivation, and desire have little influence of your choice. Everyone wants to be successful, everyone wants to make money and everyone knows what they need to do in order to achieve those things. And yet, people still don’t do it. They don’t do it because they are content to be comfortable.

To be successful, you must be willing to be uncomfortable. You must do what you already know you must do in order to achieve success. You don’t need a reason to be successful and you don’t need motivation. All you need to do is to do it. Don’t use procrastination as an excuse to not succeed. Step outside of your comfort zone and force yourself to do what you know you need to do.

Just f@#$ing do it.

If the task is meaningless then why are you doing it in the first place? If it affects the business in any way then it is not.

I would say you just need to change things up. Do one thing in the morning like development. And do something that requires a diffrent thought pattern (customer acquisition) in the afternoon.

Also set up small patterns. Like every Tuesday I will write a blog post at 3pm. Soon you will realize that the patters form a scedual for you.

You are in the struggle

You don’t have to be in tech or even be an entrepreneur to find yourself in this position, just in over your head in pursuing a long term goal. Two things from Ben Horowitz’s post help get through everyday (though not every day is successful)

focus on the road not the wall (things don’t look as painful when you just hone in on one small do-able but important action item, and then the next and then the next. I have the bad habit of obsessively staring at the wall and running headlong into it.)
stop grading yourself or feeling guilting for finding yourself in this position

Neither of these is easy to do, I have to remind myself of these things every hour of every day. I do believe if I keep it up long enough I’ll eventually stop being quite as hopeless and pessimistic. Changing psychological habits is not easy and won’t happen overnight. I don’t recommend psyching yourself or using pain as motivation.

Anonymous says:

April 1, 2014 at 5:15 am

Ben Horowitz is a poser. Yes I’m a troll. I’m sorry I can’t help it.

Reply

I’m not the OP, but in a simialr situation. Thanks y’all for the great advice! These are valuable tricks and tips for people stuck in change limbo.

Thanks for the great discussion. I’m in the unenviable position of looking for a job and having an idea that I want to execute on. The former is the priority, but I have overwhelming anxiety in starting each day. It’s so easy to talk yourself out of doing something painful. I can go to the gym or talk in front of a large group of people without problem (and I realize these are big problems for others), but I simply have an overwhelming fear of being judged when trying to get a job. In a one-on-one situation I can sell myself, but emailing and cold calling people to ask for an opportunity is so damn difficult for me. Everyday I try to start and before I know it, it’s Friday and the week is over. The cycle just never ends and fear begets more fear.

I’ve taken the advice from above and downloaded Trello. It’s 2:27PM but I’m going to send out some emails. Then I will record it in Trello. This is the hardest part. I’ve never had a problem working 100 hour weeks or interfacing with senior management at high profile startups/companies, but I feel like a beggar just trying to get another job. Fuck. Ok, LDT.

Anonymous says:

April 1, 2014 at 1:57 am

Don’t try to cold call people asking for a job, then. Ask people how they like their work and their company, if they’re willing to respond they may be happy to tell you the real deal. Maybe start with companies you’re not even particularly interested in so that the rejection and judgment doesn’t matter to you, and then go from there.

You’re not a beggar. If you have amazing skills that companies want, you’re presenting companies an opportunity to make a bigger impact through your skills. Rejection happens. They’re not rejecting your entire identity, they may simply feel it’s not a fit. It’s okay if it’s not a fit, move on to the next one until you find the place that is.

Reply

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