Strange solution to my procrastination problem.
I procrastinate, a lot, I know it’s a problem and I’ve done a lot of things to try and counter this problem. There are times when I think that I must have Adult ADD because my ability to concentrate on work is extremely poor when I’m not interested in the work, I definitely have a lot of the symptoms that are listed for ADD but I always thought it this disorder was over diagnosed. It’s bad enough though to affect my work and I have been determined to find a solution (that doesn’t involve prescriptions.)
My problem is that when I run into something that interrupts my work (ie. compiling/building) I switch to reading websites, the problem is that compiling/building or whatever may only take a few moments to a couple minutes but I will spent the next 15 minutes to an hour surfing. Then I wonder where the time has gone, and my line of thought on the code I was working on is long gone.
I’ve tried using “break” timers, manually blocking websites (via hosts and greasemonkey scripts,) music, all sorts of things. Then the other day I stumbled upon a counter-intuitive solution. I was working from home, and just got season of How I Met Your Mother so I decided to watch a few episodes while I worked. Surprisingly I worked almost the whole time the show was on, I had very few urges to go surf the web, whenever there was a lull or interruption in my work I’d focus on the small video window I had open but then get right back to work when the compiler finished.
It seems strange that something that is as distracting as TV is the solution to my problem of being easily distracted, but I am pretty happy to have found it as my productivity has easily doubled.
If anyone is out there reading, feel free to post your methods of keeping focused.
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