Tricks to start working despite not feeling like it - <AUTHOR> https://www.deprocrastination.co/blog/3-tricks-to-start-working-despite-not-feeling-like-it <comment><USER2> I'd like to share this post[0]:

The last two weeks I made it a goal to run 5km every morning. A few times, particularly today, I felt lazy and run down, but I got out of bed anyway and told myself that I'll at least walk. The next thing I know I'm running and feeling amazing and on to set one of my better times.

The point: When you tell yourself "just one more game" or "just one more post", or "just one more video" and end up doing 3-5 hours more, do that with your other tasks too! "just one line of code", "just one tutorial", "just one rep", "just one line of reading/writing".

We all have this amazing mental tool that we've been honing for years, the tool of self deception. Time to use it for good and not evil.

Copied from: [0] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/cdir3g/trick_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/productivity/comments/cdir3g/trick_yourself_into_productivity_the_same_way_you/)

<comment><USER3> For me that doesn't work because then I learn that "yeah you say just walking but we both know it will end up in running." What works instead is I promise I will walk. And then I actually only walk even if I feel like running. That way you will trust yourself. If I say "ok i go to the gym 30 mins. just for a quick training." Then even if I'm in the flow at minute 30, I stop and go home. Next time I remember that and I know that if I say 30 it will be 30 and not more, that creates a trust in yourself that you're not trying to trick yourself into doing something you don't want to.

<comment><USER4> I think the problem you have is that you don't know which 'you' is making the decisions. Let's call the 'tricking' you 'You' and the one you are tricking 'Body-You'. Then here is how the conversation goes:

You: "Time to get up and run."

Body-You: "Oh hell no. I'm tired. Plus we did a good job yesterday. And we have a lot to do today. Also, we don't want to over do it do we?"

You: (sighs) "Fine. Let's at least walk for 30 minutes."

Body-You (sighs): "Ugh. Fine."

10 minutes of walking pass.

Body-You: "This feels great! Let's run."

You: "Okay."

...

First notice that You said, "at least." You is not lying. If, at minute 30, Body-You is like "Ugh, still no," You can capitulate.

Second, notice that it is Body-You that makes the decision to turn it into a run. In your version, Body-You never gets what it wants. Both times You has to control the situation. The first time, to start the run, the second time, to enforce a more-or-less arbitrary contract for the sake of the contract, even though both parties want a new contract.

<comment><USER5> I feel the same thing Valakas is describing. Which of the "you"'s is remembering the next time, "yeah but 30 minutes that's not how it went last time"?

(also, I don't think body-you would say "we have a lot to do today"?)

<comment><USER4> Body-You will say anything to get what it wants, including "We don't have time." I'm calling it Body-You but, at least for me, it's really a collection of parts of my mind that are against the action.

As for the "lying", Body-You knows it is not a lie but doesn't care. If You believes You is lying, Body-You is more than happy to use that as yet another excuse.

<comment><USER6> Personally I call these two people the "Planner" and the "Doer". Neither of them start out with bad intentions, but only one of them has to actually do things in the present moment, so resentment can definitely build up between the two.

<comment><USER7> Feels like higher mind vs primitive mind

[https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/fire- light.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/fire-light.html)

Loong but great read

<comment><USER8> Tim Urban, the author of waitbutwhy, did a talk about that same topic (pretty much about the same article).

[https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_mas...](https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Start sloppy

>Another trick to start sloppy - you might have high expectations of your finished work.

>You want to write a great book, not just a good one. Or create a stellar artwork, or start a great business. >All those expectations can put more pressure on you than you can bear, leading you to avoid it by procrastinating. >Instead, you can escape those expectations by starting deliberately badly.

I use this one a lot. I always heard it called a 'vomit draft'. It really works. It's easier to see how truly terrible thing could be improved than it is to just start working from a blank slate.

<comment><USER10> This idea is captured nicely in the book "Art and Fear" with the following anecdote:

"The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an "A".

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."

<comment><USER11> Maybe this works for potters but I don't think it'd work for developers. If a compSci lecturer suggested one group would get an A for writing a perfect, bug free app and the other group would get an A for writing 50,000 lines of code, I wouldn't expect the group writing as much code as they could to make the best app.

<comment><USER12> Knuth suggests, in TAOCP, that the best way to write a program is to write it once, scrap it completely and rewrite from scratch. Very much in line with spending an entire semester making one perfect program vs spending a semester writing and rewriting new programs from scratch.

<comment><USER13> I used this extensively for code assignments in university, but for a different reason. We had to do most things in C, which can be very painful for prototyping and experimenting with new approaches. So I would solve the problem first in Python, try different approaches, and then after I was happy with the solution I'd write it again in C. Saved me a lot of time in the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have ADHD, so this is a constant struggle.

Make sure the thing you have to do is something you want to do. While you can procrastinate on the things you're truly interested in, ultimately you're more likely to follow through with the things that interest you than the other random tasks that require doing.

Writing that design doc, report, or review at work? Meh. I drag my feet until I'm the last person in the office and I have to finish.

That obscure side project that really interests me? Hell yeah. It's called hyper-focus, and those with ADHD know what it's like.

Check out my Github streak. I think I've got the world's fastest faster-than- realtime CPU-only neural TTS and Voice Conversion (VC) systems with multi- speaker embeddings outside of Google. And I wrote an entire data ingestion, cleanup, and curation engine to build massive data sets for training. A year ago I didn't even know what any of this stuff was, and now I can't pull myself away from it. Building is magnetic and addictive, but it's not the thing I _need to do_.

Sometimes you can pivot the energy you have from a desirable task into an undesirable one. I tell myself I can't work on the fun thing until I get the mundane one done. It's a hack that doesn't always work.

I want to structure my life around things I want to do to the exclusion of all else. I think I'm starting to get there. I've trimmed a lot of unnecessary things from my life.

My dream is to get rich enough doing desirable side hustles that I can pay people to take care of all the undesirable tasks. Delegation to achieve efficiency.

I can work like there is no tomorrow on random side projects. I just wish I could redirect all that focus and energy at will into the areas that need them.

I can't. So I have to become what interests me.

<comment><USER15> I don't have an ADHD diagnosis, but I struggle with procrastination.

Does it help you at all to have external recipients of your work, or does it not factor in at all in what gets done?

It helps me if I tell someone else "I'll send you the report today", because it makes me more accountable. I'll probably delay it until panicking at the end of the day, but I will at least hammer something out and send it off. Or worst case finish it tomorrow morning, after having started, but having to leave work the day before, which is still better than postponing even longer.

For me to do tasks, I need to reach the "Screw quality and completeness, I need to send _something_!", which usually turns out to be plenty good enough based on feedback. I just need to find someone to promise sending the result to for my more important tasks.

<comment><USER16> Not OP, but.

It helps, because eventually people will start to call you and inquire about the thing you promised them. This of course causes anxiety.

Eventually, after spending enormous amounts of energy on riding that guilt wave some work gets done, typically at night.

<comment><USER17> This does have a downside. Sometimes you associate that anxiety and negative feelings with the person that would inquire about it. This can make you just want to avoid them as much as possible, even if it costs you elsewhere.

<comment><USER16> Very important insight, yes that happens.

Basically all things ADHD has are downsides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Procrastination is a tricky beast.

I'm not going to discount advice like this, because it _is_ helpful. But it is only one piece of the puzzle. There's a _stark_ difference between "I don't quite feel like starting this yet, so I'll put it off for a little bit" and "I absolutely want nothing more than to start this but I can't force myself to", between laziness and a genuine _inability_ to begin.

Not to give medical advice in the comments section of a web article, but if the latter description describes you, understand that _most_ people don't go through those struggles. This may be an issue that needs more work to solve than reading self-help articles; it may be caused by burn-out or ADHD or some other executive functioning issue. Do look into this is procrastination is something you are _constantly_ struggling with in your life.

I wrote [an article][1] about my experiences with procrastination and ADHD, if you're interested in more. I'd also recommend the fantastic [ADHD Alien comics][2] for a nice digestible summary of what ADHD is like.

[1]: [https://invisibleup.com/articles/27/](https://invisibleup.com/articles/27/) [2]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHDAlien/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHDAlien/)

<comment><USER19> I read your writeup on ADHD. I really appreciated the advice that you give (seeking help, finding ways to commit, etc), but you (as any other existing resource on ADHD) could not convince me that ADHD is a thing.

The symptoms you described, you explicitly say, are rather unique. If I think about most of the people I know, I would instead say that they are quite common. Either everyone around me, me included, has ADHD, or the definition for this disorder is quite fuzzy.

Just think about the astonishing number of people that buy books, watch videos, read threads - like this very one - that propose solutions to procrastination. All these people have similar symptoms, but I wouldn't say they are ill (even though they all have problems, and they all would greatly benefit from help, don't get me wrong). Nor I would be satisfied with the simplicistic way of classifying some of those as "sick and allowed to legally do amphetamines" and the rest in the negative set.

I read the official set of symptoms to diagnose ADHD that you linked in the article. I found that embarassing. Lacking in scientific soundness. Please pardon my bias as a data scientist, and allow me to distort a quote for an increased dramatic effect, but a thing like "if you have at least 6 symptoms among: moving too much, not wanting to do your homework since before you were 12, etc. - > then you have ADHD. But if you are more than 17, you only need 5 symptoms. Because you know, 5 is the magic number" doesn't strike me as a sound classification method.

I'll add that the sole fact that there are significant differences in the percentages of diagnosed ADHD cases among different continents should convince anybody that believes in science (=statistics/scientific method) that the model "if you check these boxes, then you have ADHD" is a horrible one to fit a very complex reality. Symptoms are like a mixture of mostly independent gaussians, and we are trying to force a binary classification on it, clumping variables together and imposing arbitrary thesholds. But we'll never get a decent representation of reality in this way. Having only a few classes, if having classes at all, is conceptually wrong in this case.

I think this simplified way of doing things can be ok for doctors that want an easy life (tick some boxes, get paid, feel you helped somebody) and for people that want a quick improve in performance and/or that want to feel relieved/justified by being labeled as ill (it may be adults wanting this for themselves, or anxious parents for their children. And both could be not fully aware about their drives. Therefore I'm not attacking anyone here. I'm highlighting a diffuse social problem and trying to raise awareness).

But this cannot be accepted by people that care about grasping all the nuances of complex phenomena, and that want to sensibly improve people's lives (by reducing the stigma around psychological problems, which we all have, by pushing for a culture with less simplification - especially in medicine and psychology - and that acknowledges observables as being continuous, by fighting for more equality around the world in the access to drugs and nootropics and for more education on drugs and mental hygene).

Pardon my English (it's not my first language) and pardon my tones (I may sound salty but I am really just looking for a high quality discussion in a beautiful place like HN, and I would love to be proven wrong on the ADHD existance). (((And pardon all my lispy parentheses.)))

TL;DR I rant about ADHD just being a label attached with poor criteria. It does not capture the complexity of reality, which is made of all shades of unsatisfaction, lazyness and interconnected psychological issues.

<comment><USER20> I'm prepared to bet folding money that the folks who worked on the 5th Diagnostic & Statistical Manual (DSM-5) have given at least as much thought as you have to these matters.

The implication that research and practicing psychologists and psychiatrists, as a profession, are unaware of the profound variability of human beings is just silly.

<comment><USER19> I'm not saying that all psychologists and psychiatrists are unaware of mind's complexity and are sloppy/mechanical when applying diagnoses. But I would definitely say that some of them are.

However, my main point was not to attack a profession, but rather to point out that the claim that "ADHD exists" is somewhat weak, given some evidence (like differences in percentage of diagnosed cases among continents, official guidelines that seem arbitrary on some points and open to various interpretations on other points, and the fact that some of the symptoms typically assigned to ADHD are present in all sorts of mixes and magnitudes in almost every human being).

I would rather see the medical community substitute this claim with a more saner "there exist a lot of diverse psychological symptoms, and they all have roots in problems that people have".

Therefore, we need more psychology (as in "let's talk, see what's wrong, and get to the causes, to the roots, and try to solve them") and less "medicine done wrong" (i.e. "let's see what symptoms you have, let's see in what box you fit, and let's stuff you with pills for the rest of your life without ever getting to the root of your problems").

And I would like a society which is more aware of the importance of mental hygiene, of introspection and communication as ways to solve problems (which should almost never be solved with pills), and that is more educated and mature on drugs (I would love to see less kids being stuffed with Ritalin and other meths, and more adults instead experimenting with these drugs for productivity and psychological self-exploration, aware that they are doing amphetamines and aware of the risks and benefits involved).

<comment><USER20> Your objections are based on spending a few minutes looking at guides intended for the general public. May I suggest spending some time with the professional literature? These issues are canvassed by researchers and practitioners in _enormous_ depth.

But if you'd like to know the broad conclusion so far from decades of research with multiple lines of evidence: ADHD exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have a nagging feeling that any time we have to force ourselves to do a task, something is wrong at a fundamental level; that we are somehow out-of- tune with nature; that contemporary society is missing a key insight about our minds and the way we organize our work.

An eagle doesn't force itself to hunt for food; it just hunts. I can't imagine it having to psych itself up simply _to be._ Looking for and harnessing that level of purity seems ultimately more fruitful than playing psychological tricks on your mind. Easier said than done, unfortunately.

<comment><USER17> What you're thinking of is delayed gratification. An eagle doesn't have to force itself to go hunt, because physiological processes tell it that it needs to hunt. It's the same reason you don't have to psych yourself up to go have lunch - your body desires lunch.

Humans have evolved to sometimes delay their gratification. That is, we don't hunt and eat our catch immediately, but instead we hunt and preserve the food to eat next time. This has been an immensely successful strategy, because it allows us to do things like plant crops and use that as food later. Modern society is essentially built upon delayed gratification. You go work, but get paid later.

The problem is that this delayed gratification is constantly under attack by things that you could do right now that would make you feel good. Delayed gratification tends to lead to better outcomes in the long term, but our base instincts are still about getting pleasure right now. This is why people with ADHD have no problem playing a video game for hours upon hours, but have difficulty doing their job - in the video game they get the rewards immediately, but at work the rewards are significantly delayed.

<comment><USER21> I'm talking about something much deeper, more fundamental, than delayed gratification. For example:

> Delayed gratification tends to lead to better outcomes in the long term

These outcomes are mostly considered better because they are made in the context of the system we live in. Often they are only better in the sense that they solve a problem which the system caused in the first place. E.g. if you can delay the gratification of eating food now, you'll be fitter later. But is this actually a problem (being overweight) that existed for human beings prior to the current system?

What I'm saying is - perhaps we should question whether _being successful within our societal system_ is actually the same as _being successful as human beings._ There are plenty of people considered "successful" which are miserable and unhappy on a day-to-day basis.

<comment><USER17> The thing is that this delayed gratification is what allowed modern society to appear in the first place. Without delayed gratification you can't have farming or housing. Both of which are vitally important for human survival in most places in the world.

Humans, and probably all life, have a high time preference. We even have sayings about this in the form of "a bird in hand is better than two in the bush." My guess is that this has to do with the future being difficult to predict. It's essentially a balance between how many resources you should use right now vs how much you should invest into the future.

<comment><USER22> There are some people that would consider agriculture a step backwards.

Hunter gatherers had better social relationships and significantly more leisure time than modern humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It may not always be wise to start working despite not feeling it. One could burn out that way. Scott H. Young write an article about this recently. [https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2020/01/13/too- tired/](https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2020/01/13/too-tired/) I have also experienced this. When I got my first job I actually tried to work all the time, besides the occasional breaks, ignoring feelings of tiredness. This got to the point where I was feeling tired pretty much all the time I was awake. Then I concluded I should give into my cravings for purposeless web surfing sometimes.

<comment><USER24> I wonder how much of this is because of physiological aspects that have to change to keep up with your other lifestyle changes. Brain exercise takes energy, and you might just not used to eating and sleeping enough to maintain that level of exercise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Every small win is motivating. Every small win builds momentum. Momentum > energizes.

Starting small is an unreasonably good way to hack your brain. A book called "Tiny Habits" describes a system of behavior modification based on the idea:

[https://www.tinyhabits.com](https://www.tinyhabits.com)

It gives the example of flossing. Instead of resolving to floss every night, resolve to floss one single tooth every night. It takes less than five seconds. As you take on the habit, it becomes easier to expand it. Starting big in contrast is a good way to fall off the wagon.

One of the book's key insights is that the new habit you want to take on needs an anchor - something else you already do habitually that will precede your new habit.

You can pick up any new tiny habit, but you need to attach it to something you already do habitually. This will be the trigger without which no new behavior can stick.

In the case of flossing, that anchor could be brushing your teeth. So if you don't regularly do that, you might want to start there by brushing your teeth every day for five seconds. You could anchor that to the finishing dinner. Or getting out of the shower.

And so on.

<comment><USER26> In a similar vein, James Clear outlines this same sort of principle as "habit stacking"[0] in his book, Atomic Habits.

[0]: [https://jamesclear.com/habit-stacking](https://jamesclear.com/habit- stacking)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Pet peeve: when people take phrases intended for one thing and uses them for a slightly modified purpose. I take Branson's "screw it, let's do it" mantra as something entreprenurial, a call to break the rules (and stuff like that). Using it in this purpose feels more like "screw it, let's work even though I'd rather stay in bed", which is different emotionally, and kind of saturates the sayings power.

(Maybe nikes "Just do it" would fit better, but I get that its associations to big corporations isn't as well suited for the startup atmosphere we're surrounded by.)

<comment><USER28> Plus, Shia Labeouf already took the "just do it" and turned it into a meme that's perfect for this situation, so it's a much better choice anyhow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In the context of programming, every time I don't feel like writing code, I just tell myself: I'm not gonna write code, I'll just run the test suite and then come back to it later.

That causes me to open my terminal, which then requires me to getting the updates from upstream before running the tests, and then I have to inspect the new changes which then requires me navigating to the project..

By then, I'm writing code. This works really well!

For other things such as exercising, I just tell myself, I'm not gonna exercise, I'll just put on my headphones to listen to my "exercise" playlist. This causes me to walk to my bedroom to grab my earphones (I have a wireless one for exercising and always keep them near my workout clothes), which causes me to open the drawers, and by then, I might as wear change and then I'm all set!

</comment><comment><USER30> The basics I learnt with GTD have proven to be very useful for me in multiple occasions:

* be clear about what you are doing, ie. what is the desired outcome/end goal (especially important when delegating or receiving a delegated task)

* be very specific about the next(physical) action - break it down as much as you need, just to get started

There can be some unconscious emotional reasons for procrastination, but that's another matter :)

</comment><comment><USER31> Here's something that I think works best: Detaching yourself from everything and writing things down. Either a piece of paper or a text document.

Start writing concrete things that need to be reinforced, that are easy to answer and can be connected together. Things like the goal of the software, core modules, what you're working on now, etc. Expand to things like what new features would be nice, how to implement them, etc.

This works better than vague solutions like "do one thing" because where do you start? Writing a line of code somewhere for the sake of it is pointless. Especially if it's bad code, that just makes me feel worse knowing I'll probably have to undo it later because that's usually what ends up happening based on past examples.

Detaching yourself from the work frees you from all the things tying you down that clouds your mind. Taking a moment to reorganize gives you a new thing to focus on, and arms you with purpose which makes it easier to work.

<comment><USER32> This is also important. Some type of work need to have certain kind of plan of 'What's Next'. Even a simple checklist will do. Maybe some kind of simple month/week plan.

Some may argue that it may leads to overplanning, but I found that randomly do something everyday just for the sake of doing it but didn't move into the direction of your goal made you felt empty in the long run, because all those time you've spent lead to nothing worthwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Funny that these are all about starting where my problems are mostly about finishing things. I love to start new things and often struggle to finish something because I would much rather start something new.

I suspect the "shiny new thing" syndrome is common, especially in tech, but I have not read a lot about it (apart from GTD).

Over time, I have developed coping mechanisms for this myself but I was hoping to learn some new tricks. Any tips?

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm needing this a lot right now for a massive project to deliver at work. I get so tangled up in the mess of trying to make it perfect or thinking that I'm not approaching the problem in the best way that I end up twiddling my thumbs for hours, pretty much doing nothing worthwhile the whole time.

I'll be trying these out tomorrow and see how deprocrastinated I can get before veering off again.

<comment><USER35> I'm in a similar situation right now, and I've been in this kind of place many times before. I try to keep the seemingly idle time to a minimum, but I also acknowledge that my brain is still thinking about the problem during those times, so I don't beat myself up about it and go for a walk when that happens.

The self-doubt is also normal, and I actively push against it by reminding myself that, while someone that has done this before can likely jump to a good solution right away, it doesn't mean that it's realistic to expect that of myself.

Being tangled in a mess of something you are not an expert in is a normal way to learn. I have to remind myself that this approach worked before and there is no reason to believe that it won't work this time.

I'm going to put these tips to good use today:

I don't know if this is the right module to use for this. It looks like it doesn't do X and Y. Screw it, I'm going to try to get Z working.

I can't figure out the proper way to pass this argument in? Let's just hard- code it for now to get things working and mark it with a TODO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Mind over matter guys, "Screw it, lets do it." is the best advice: just start, anywhere. I've struggled with this my entire life and nowadays I just start writing (code or documents). It feels like getting out of bed after a night with a crying baby, but you know, have a coffee, stare into the bright daylight of a new day and that moment of actually deciding to push away the sheets is long forgotten.

Edit: I have two brothers, one with ADD one with issues with Alcohol. All three of us have issues starting and finishing things that are import for an orderly life. The one with the alcohol problem is (or was perhaps, he's ding pretty good now) really prone to feeling like a victim and just dropping everything when things don't go smoothly. The main difference between me and my brothers is my ability to kick my own ass into action. Other than that I recognize many aspects of their character in mine. Maybe the thought of the troubles they have had helps me.

Still, the most fun things always go first, but hey, I've earned that little pleasure, right? ;)

</comment><comment><USER37> "I have work to do, but I'll just check hacker news first... Oh, there's an article about how not to procrastinate... which is great, I'm trying not to procrastinate so much. Let me read that first before I start my work."

Seriously though, I agree with the approach. When starting a talk or writing a design doc, I'll sometimes just start with an outline or half-baked paragraph. From there, writing the rest comes down to filling out areas where more detail is needed, verifying statements, and so on.

</comment><comment><USER38> One thing that really has helped me with e.g. writing an email that I dread writing is to just write a draft that I don't plan to do anything else with than use as a starting point when I write the real email that I won't write until tomorrow. Often the draft is good enough to send after only small edits. Or the writing of the draft have helped me to clarify my thoughts enough, combined with a night of processing, that writing the real mail the next day becomes relativly easy.

<comment><USER15> My trick to start emails is to add To and Cc last, when I'm happy with the email.

If I add them first, I worry that I'll click send by mistake halfway through my draft (and a secondary worry is that the draft will be full of inappropriate stuff and curse words, which I never add even to drafts, so it's not a rational thought). If I add the recipients first, it also feels like they sit there looking at me expectantly as I write, which makes it harder.

An email not addressed to anyone, but of course with the recipients in mind to adapt the content, makes it easier for me to treat the first version as a draft.

Sleeping on non-urgent emails sounds like an excellent idea, because your view of the issue may change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Anyone tried using a chain calendar? I used an app that tracked how many days in a row I meditated and that's the first time in my life I was able to do a good habit consistently for 15 days straight. I didn't want to break the chain!

Later I used the same idea for studying every day, started with a few minutes and worked it up slowly. Eventually, I was able to concentrate for long periods of time. That sense of momentum and progress is very encouraging.

<comment><USER40> I thought about doing the chains, but I was always held back by the thought of having to break the chain for legit reasons. For example I'm currently practicing guitar, so I'd create a chain for that. But there are legit reasons why I can not play at a given day, I might not be able to access a Guitar because Im in a Hotel in a different country, or a myriad of other reasons.

<comment><USER15> So cheat! If you use a physical calendar, you can mark those days with another symbol, like an arrow to show that the chain carries on. If you use an app, you can mark the day anyway, knowing that you had a legitimate reason to skip it.

Think of all the benefits you would get from practicing 95% of the days marked, compared to a much lower percent without the chain. Don't let the 5% or 1% stop you.

As an aside, this is my view of veganism. When I talk to people who say they can't go vegan because they'd miss cheese too much, or kebab, or whatever, I suggest they go vegan and keep eating cheese or kebab. 95% is a lot better than nothing!

That said, I can't do chains. I get anxious after a while carrying a long streak, and will either conveniently forget a day and mess up the streak (and feel relieved), or decide during a streak that I'll stop at 30, or 100, or whatever, just to give me permission to get off the treadmill. I don't like when enjoyable things turn into a chore.

Some apps are nice and let you go back and add marks even if you forgot to do it on the day. Some apps, like Duolingo, let you unlock tokens that protect your streak if you miss a day. But some apps are really strict, which can be annoying if you finish something after midnight and realize that you just broke the chain. My wife had that with a writing app where she finished exactly at midnight, which counted for the next day and her streak was broken.

So if I did a chain, I'd use a text file, or a paper, or send myself an email a day logging that I did the task. I wouldn't trust an extremely rigid app, because, as you say, there can be legitimate reasons why you miss.

<comment><USER41> >As an aside, this is my view of veganism. When I talk to people who say they can't go vegan because they'd miss cheese too much, or kebab, or whatever, I suggest they go vegan and keep eating cheese or kebab. 95% is a lot better than nothing!

This is pretty much how I'm doing veganism, every meal I make at home is vegan. But I eat the occasional cheese and kebab. But I find myself replacing those with vegan/vegetarian alternatives more and more.

Also do vegan > vegetarian > normal food when going out. Without it becoming annoying. It's really uncommon to find a restaurant with vegan options around here, but vegetarian is pretty common.

I personally don't do chains either, as I really prefer being able to do things spontaneously. I approach the tasks I set for myself that way as well, so I end up doing things like squats when I have some dead minutes to fill in a day.

Basically doing anything is better than doing nothing, and often times you find yourself doing more than what you set out to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I use the small wins trick a lot. I start with the smallest win, which is writing down a small win on my todo list.

Then, when I see the small task, I feel motivated to do it just so I can have the pleasure of checking it off my list. By that time, I'm usually on a pretty good roll and keep working.

<comment><USER43> Same. I do it when the dishes have piled up. Tell myself I'll just quickly do the easy ones, and then next thing I carry on and decide to do the biggest remaining dishes so the bench looks cleaner, and from there it's downhill and easy.

<comment><USER15> With a counter full of dirty dishes, I tell myself that I'll just quickly fill the dishwasher with the easy stuff and start it. I'll leave the rest for later. But when I've started the dishwasher, there's usually only three items left, like a soft plastic lid or a tea mug that can't go in the dishwasher. So I wash those by hand. Now the counter is empty, but stained, so I might as well wipe it so that it's clean for next time I cook.

It all starts with the lazy "I'll just throw the easy stuff into the dishwasher", but momentum takes over. Listening to interesting podcasts help!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm generally good at avoiding procrastination. I have bad periods but months go by without me reading news or social media during work periods.

OTOH, a friend is the opposite. He's the biggest procrastinator I know. Between us I don't see an obvious explanatory factor. I would guess therefore that it's something innate, perhaps a genetic factor. He just doesn't seem to have the same discipline as me. The only thing I see that works for him is to have external pressure.

What I'm saying is - if you're a super procrastinator like my friend, maybe all the tricks in the world won't help you to be motivated without a real and pressing deadline. Compare yourself in those situations to your every day, see if there's some insight there.

<comment><USER45> I procrastinate extremely hard over things I don't want to do, and maybe things I am intimidated by their difficulty.

And yet, I am capable of steady self learning and can quite comfortably find the motivation to exercise 10+ hours a week.

I don't think it's very black and white because along certain dimensions I am hyper disciplined but others heaven and hell would struggle to get me moving. I do respond to external pressure tho.

So sample size of one, YMMV

<comment><USER46> I think most of the time we overlap lack of scheduling/discipline with laziness (being a couch potato). I'm a disaster at scheduling things, unless they involve other people. But when it comes to putting in the effort and the hours to get something done before a deadline, man, you can bet it's gonna get done.

Similarly I've had periods of 3-4 months at a time where I was super disciplined about nutrition and exercise followed by a period of extreme disregard for anything related to my health. As in eating pizza 3-4 times a week. What I noticed is that it all starts with going to the gym 1-2 times and not interrupting the routine. A trip abroad, a week long illness, they all pretty much end any kind of virtuous cycle that was forming. Maybe the trick is just to be consistent for X time? I don't know.

<comment><USER45> Routine is definitely helpful for things involving habitual tasks (like going to the gym).

Humans are loss averse and at some point, breaking routine becomes taps into the loss aversion and there actually is a friction to not going to the gym.

I suppose when you're starting out to go to the gym you are averse to breaking your existing routine (which could be bingeing netflix every night after work)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'd like to submit an another interesting motivational tactic along these lines: The Christian/Catholic practice of Lent.

I've observed many friends who practice Lent make major life changes that are hard to make at any one time (going vegan, quitting smoking, etc.) because of how major they are. Lent helps because the change is "only for Lent", but I observe that many people carry those changes on indefinitely.

Lent helped them trick themselves into taking on a major lifestyle alteration alongside a major support network of many other people doing the same thing. But once you've built a habit for a month, what's one more month? I think there's a lot of value in this tradition done well.

<comment><USER48> Agree with this, I gave up sugary soft drinks as a teenager after doing it for lent. "I might as well go for another month" lasted nearly 2 1/2 years (until I went to uni and wanted a mixer for rum...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Funny to read as we are probably procrastinating.

<comment><USER50> When my brain is running idle, my hands autonomously type "Hacker News" in the address bar of my browser.

<comment><USER51> More like cmd+l (address bar), n (autocompletes to news.ycombinator.com), enter.

At least I'm getting efficient at bad habits ;-)

<comment><USER52> I do exactly that, but with a Ctrl + T first. :)

I tend to do it with complete lack of thought.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b I use all of these, and they work pretty well.

Structured procrastination is also a good one:

[http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/](http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/)

The basic concept is that work is procrastination of something more important.

There is nothing like having a big writing deadline to get the cleaning done!

<comment><USER17> This technique was incredibly useful for me in college. I got so much programming homework done while I was procrastinating writing reports.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Thanks, I have two projects I'm avoiding right now, and even though I've started them a few weeks ago, if I drop them for a few days I feel like I have to start back again. The "screw it, let's do it" and "what's the smallest step you can take right now" approach would work in my case. The first is nice because I sometimes convince myself that I'm too lazy or unmotived to work on it. But _am_ I? Or do I just think I'm unmotivated but would actually put several hours into the job if I started right now?

<comment><USER17> One of the best ways to get yourself to take a small step on a project is to put some parts of it in places where you will stumble upon it. Eg when you put your computer to sleep have that project be at the front or leave your notes about the project in a place where you're likely to run into them etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> These life hacks have never worked for me. I realized too late in life that I do my best work at night. I'm not sure if it's because I'm bored, or tired and my brain has slowed, or the news cycle has slowed down, but I can sit down at 10pm and pop out hundreds of lines of working code by 1am. If I ever have a large project to work on, I'd guess 70 percent of it is done after 9pm. Luckily, my company doesn't micromanage and as long as I write quality code on schedule everything works out.

</comment><comment><USER55> Be aware that the brain is a power-hungry/power-intensive organ. Give the brain (and body) enough nutrients they need for functioning. The brain (and the body) enters a power-save mode if not fed properly, which may manifest as reluctance to work (to perform deeper thought) and result in procrastination and worse, in depression. Don't try to replace real nutrients with coffee or other stimulants - these work great on top of a great nutritional base. Be aware that your body has various nutrient buffers, cycles and momentums and it may take months or even years to really run out of some really important nutrients, given your diet and lifestyle, and this will be exacerbated and accelerated by aging. Other nutritional deficiencies can have a fast onset, triggered by a temporary change in diet (something "bad" you ate), or by an illness. Know, that the decline in the efficiency of your digestive tract due to insufficient diet also has its own momentum, so it may be much slower to re-feed the body all the nutrients you need, because the internal organs need to heal first.

Two of my personal "works for me" tips: explore the ketogenic diet and the effect of ketones/ketosis on the brain function, and/or try out the Wim Hof breathing method.

<comment><USER56> Cleaning up my diet has been far and away the best productivity "hack" I've ever tried. I cut bread and most sugar without being aggressively low-carb and feel sharper, more focused, and more motivated than ever. I wish I'd done this 20 years ago when my parents and doctors were pushing Ritalin and Adderall on me instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> What usually works for me: Don't start at all! Instead, tinker with the project. Just some cleanup, rename a variable, just tinkering without pressure. Before I know, I'm deep into work.

</comment><comment><USER58> One trick I don't remember the source of that I've used to great effect over the years is:

\- take a list of tasks you're procrastinating on

\- set a timer for five minutes

\- do just five minutes on task one. Then stop, and do the next, even if you were enjoying the first one

\- keep cycling over until you've unblocked them all

<comment><USER59> I've cut it down further, I'll do 30 seconds on a task just to get me going.

Then I can't cope with doing 30 secs on something and I'm up and running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I apply the LT5 rule: If a task takes Less Than 5 minutes, do it now. This works really well for me because I can concat several LT5 tasks.

<comment><USER61> I often apply this rule, then find that the task actually takes half an hour, and now i'm two hours late for something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> If you don't feel like doing something it probably sucks and isn't worth doing. Hustle culture is stupid. When you're on your deathbed you're not going to look back on your life and wish you had worked more or made mode money.

<comment><USER63> If my deathbed is under a sheet of filthy cardboard as I sleep on the street, believe me, I'll be looking back wishing I'd made more money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Keep this pinned on top of Hacker news, please.

</comment><comment><USER65> >> "Screw it, let's do it"

Similar productivity hack that works, shared by Kevin Systrom (Instagram founder):

"If you don't want to do something, make a deal with yourself to do at least five minutes of it. After five minutes, you'll end up doing the whole thing."

[https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-5-minute-hack- insta...](https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-5-minute-hack-instagram- founder-kevin-systrom-uses-to-beat-procrastination.html)

</comment><comment><USER66> And sometimes, it's great to just let an idea go and enjoy the present. Enjoying your loved ones, and just doing "nothing", has been my favorite part of life so far. I have returned to things I never thought I would get around to and ended up finishing them, but not all procrastination is bad. Go to work, work 8 hours, and then ride a unicycle with a bunch of clowns, eat pizza with friends.

</comment><comment><USER67> I think one of the best trick is to split out the work into super small pieces of meaningful work. And treat that as the work it self. Most times it's because there is no fun in looking at the huge task and getting stuck On where to start. This is why working at a corporation is easier, there are leads and managers Already divided up the work for you to do.

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm pretty sure I've used these and similar tricks over the years, and still do.

For the most part, I've found that the first two mentioned were the ones that mostly would get me going. More often than not, I find myself hours later lost in the task, having complete way more than I intended to.

The third one - starting with something small - also comes in handy, usually when I am cleaning or organizing something. I'll first look at something and say "yeah, I'll put this back where it belongs right now" and before I know it, one thing becomes another and everything is cleaned up.

But I've always been a procrastinator - especially on personal projects. It's one of my personal failings. Though if the project has a deadline (like I recall with homework in high school decades ago), I find that the pressure to finish quickly ends up gaining me a successful outcome.

I think these tips are useful, and may help others who don't know about them, or haven't developed them on their own.

Great posting!

</comment><comment><USER69> Totally cheesy, but not untrue. Although, I couldn't escape the irony that I was reading it to put off something else.

</comment><comment><USER70> Related to this post, I just listened to an interesting podcast about habits[0]. It debunks some of the common myths about willpower and self- control. According to the host, the "secret" is building healthy habits over time. The problem is that we need gratification (while forming the habit) and we shouldn't have many obstacles to perform the activity we want to make a habit. Basically, we're all (maybe not you Elon) wired lazy and the only solution is to force ourselves to have only one easy choice.

[https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/787160734/creatures-of- habit-...](https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/787160734/creatures-of-habit-how- habits-shape-who-we-are-and-who-we-become)

</comment><comment><USER71> My trick is between point 2 and 3. I try to find something, anything interesting in the subject I can play with. It can be really small or minor part of the project, but if it starts to interest me it just drags me to the whole work mindset.

I'm basically conning myself into liking the task :)

</comment><comment><USER72> My small bit of advice is to think everything what you do as feedback loops. Eg if you start browsing youtube videos, you'll get by each video more and more into it and at some point cant stop watching. Same for work or workouts or whatever. Once the initial cognitive burden of starting the work has happened, it's should be your utmost priority to just keep at it. Minimize the distractions and get back to the 'looping' as soon as possible. In time the act of doing becomes so easy, that you dont need to invest that much in starting up. Just to stay focused. And your flow-state becomes so strong that you dont even become distracted as the work is so interesting to you

</comment><comment><USER73> The two best tricks I've found:

0) Getting antidepressants because you won't want to do anything much when you're depressed.

1) Getting meds if you have ADD because you will always be starting something else to never finish in order to repeat the cycle over-and-over again.

</comment><comment><USER74> If you found the advice valuable, you may also like the two part series [0,1] on procrastination from waitbutwhy. The value there is the detailed analysis of the "just starting" part, why it is hard and how to still do it.

[0][https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators- procrasti...](https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators- procrastinate.html) [1][https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat- procrastination.h...](https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat- procrastination.html)

</comment><comment><USER75> Has anyone here come across good research-based methods of dealing with procrastination?

<comment><USER76> Try [http://www.procrastination.ca/](http://www.procrastination.ca/) and the iProcrastinate podcast. Main takeaways are:

* Just get started.

* Don't give in to "feel good".

* Use implementation intentions to put the trigger for action in the environment.

* Procrastination is an existential issue. One who is procrastinating is not getting on with their life.

* Approach goals are better than avoidance goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I always used to leave myself a few simple tasks at work ready for the start of the next day, so I could ease myself into the day.

Nowadays email has helped with that, at least reading it. Learned best to draft reply and then after lunch go thru and edit/rewrite before sendings.

Worked well for me. Though the biggest issue (and gift) I have is actually over-thinking and with that, seeing the bigger picture can be darn depressing on so many issues that I often find my zest for life lacking that anything else struggles to stand a chance of having a shot. But, just one more day has worked for decades.

</comment><comment><USER78> I shot out of bed for the 5th morning in a row today to make it to Mysore style yoga class at 6am.

I was tired and hungry.

I had to pick up my better half from the airport last night at 2am because her flight was delayed.

I was nervous that I wouldn't remember the standing sequence for the 5th time in a row.

I lost my chant card already that I was just given yesterday...

I had every excuse in the book not to go, but I went anyways.

Turns out I wasn't that tired or hungry, I remembered the chant and the standing sequences almost perfectly, and I made it a few more poses into the seated series.

I can't wait to go back tomorrow.

No matter the circumstances.

<comment><USER79> If you can manage to do it everyday in a row for 5 months, then we shall see the truth of those last two statements.

<comment><USER78> I've done yoga every single day for 11 months straight now...

I only just started Mysore 5 days ago (from the time of this comment).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> I have tried all these things, but they dont work for me.

How about when you dont feel like working, simply don't work. Do something you feel like and then work when you feel like it again.

<comment><USER81> Yep, often when we don't find the energy and motivation to do something, there's something wrong that needs fixing. Depression, the work being pointless, FOMO and other desires that should be addressed. Work as escapism ("start sloppy until the task has all your attention") works sometimes, but it's not really victory over procrastination nor even desirable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> For me, recently, procrastination (at work) was something deep down inside telling me that I was not happy where I was at work. When I got a new job with much more autonomy, and the position was what I could make of it, my procrastination problem pretty much vanished.

At my old job I tried all the tricks and ways to frame it mentally, but all it served to do was suppress something my instinct was telling me I need to get out of.

</comment><comment><USER83> I started publishing a daily dev log. Coinciding with YC SUS Winter 2020

[https://okaq.github.io/log](https://okaq.github.io/log)

Just simple markdown pages with daily progress. Eventual goal is a live video stream

For my own part, I can say that once you reach the point where the thing you are working on is more interesting than anything else. The rest of the world melts away

<comment><USER84> Link results in a 404

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> How do people still fall for advertorials like this?

<comment><USER86> Presumably they found the content interesting. That's the high-order bit, and in the end the only thing that really matters on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Our focus on results (and in turn expectations) is completely wrong. The result is subject to million things which are not in our control. The only thing we can do is to do our part as well as possible and enjoy whatever the result there is.

This way one can be as productive as currently possible for him/her and at the same time have no struggles with stress or failure.

</comment><comment><USER88> Doing something bad intentionally first is a really great tool. I do this a lot with my Go projects; I'll write a really crappy, huge `main` function, push it to GitHub and then my mind tells me "hey, you can't let that be out there in public like this!" and I can't help myself but to start actually writing on it.

</comment><comment><USER89> I found that, if I have to meet a deadline, writing down the deadline on a post-it note and making it highly visible, i.e. taping it to the side of the screen, will increase the chances of me meeting the deadline. Also, explicitly promising to the client that I'll do it motivates me to not let down the client.

</comment><comment><USER90> Hi, I'm wondering what reasoning for getting banned for describing this as a "1st world problem." Not only down-voted but my comment completely disappeared (not only faded out but gone from the page.) Isn't that a violent reaction to a very ordinary exercise in free speech?

<comment><USER91> I wasn't there for that but you aren't gone, you are on the second page. You might not have showdead enabled? Or not realized you are on the second page?

People likely downvoted you because they didn't feel the comment contributed to the discussion. They may also have felt it was dismissive or likely to cause acrimony.

I think it's best not to take this stuff personally. It's take a lot of effort to maintain a high level of discussion on Hacker News, and people try to help out by downvoting comments that seem to need downvoting.

I've had comments downvoted and even flagged. I felt upset at first, but then I just decided to view my communication skills as a work in progress.

It's not a big deal, in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> I find this post on Wisdomination applicable to this scenario. It changed the way I approached tasks.

[http://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motivation-what-you- need-...](http://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motivation-what-you-need-is- discipline/)

</comment><comment><USER93> put a coffee on, start the project while the coffee is still brewing, have your first cup as the reward to push you into gear. Those 5-10 minutes will give your brain a chance to frame the essential challenge of the moment.

</comment><comment><USER94> For me I like to remember that the hardest part is just getting started.

Even when I don't feel like doing X, I've gone through it often enough now that I know starting will get me into the flow eventually.

</comment><comment><USER95> I switched to podcasts instead of music to workout. Most of the podcasts I listen are very motivational, also keeps my english from getting rust and I can learn something while I pumping iron.

</comment><comment><USER96> Three advices given by the article - and many more - was given in "Rework" book (by creators of basecamp). Book worth reading, even though many advices are, well, obvious.

</comment><comment><USER97> This works for everything except one big case. Project with 90% of work done but the last 10% is the one holding the project to be released because it's a hard but core functionality of it and all previous programmers didn't touch it/knew how and the customer is adamant about it. So I get the ugliest part with the high expectation from the client to be finished fast. I usually avoid this type of projects as well, but in few cases where I did it I found the only working solution is the rubber duck one.

Usually I use my wife (non-technical person) as the rubber duck and I explain to her, while she is in the kitchen cooking, all the steps I need to do in order to complete the last 10%. After the 2 hours filling her head with technical details, to which she pays absolutely 0 attention to it, I can do it.

So, tldr; -> rubber duck technique.

</comment><comment><USER98> this post was terrible

<comment><USER99> agree. i dunno how stuff like this gets so many votes and a lot of quality contributions do not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> I always thought procrastination was a good thing. Why trick yourself into doing some thing? If it's worth doing, you won't have to trick yourself.

</comment><comment><USER101> "If you're not planning, you're planning to fail." Benjamin Franklin

This is what got me from a slump to a very productive, accomplished man. I plan every 15min of my mornings (Elon Musk plans every 5min!), then freestyle afternoon because that suffices me. You should write your tasks as Daily on Google Calendar then you can Sync with Samsung Galaxy Watch (because yes, it is so amazing that it is time to grab a smartwatch!) and display the list of tasks for the morning. Just a tip. Planning.

<comment><USER102> I always heard it as "if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail", which has a nice ring to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> Normal Mailer once said he writes even if he doesn't want to because he was always able to write himself into a writing mood.

</comment><comment><USER104> I'll read this later when I feel like it.

</comment><comment><USER105> > Check out our new 4 week program on how to defeat procrastination

Great, that should help me put things off for at least 4 weeks!

</comment><comment><USER106> Perfect timing. Just need to start writing out code for an email. Screw it, let's do it!

</comment><comment><USER107> This post led me to finally create my perpetual motion machine!

"Screw it, just do it right!?"

</comment><comment><USER108> Obligatory UT Admiral William H. McRaven Commencement Address[1]

Worth the whole watch, however it's makes he makes a very compelling argument for making your bed in the morning. I'll add cleaning as part of the morning routine is also highly effective to get moving.

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=pxBQLFLei70](https://youtube.com/watch?v=pxBQLFLei70)

</comment><comment><USER109> Start sloppy works well for people who have perfectionist problems.

</comment><comment><USER110> I've a side project extension underdevelopment "Baitblock":

[https://baitblock.app](https://baitblock.app) that helps people deal with this.

We've pretty advanced stuff coming up like in page distraction blocking using machine learning, 1st party tracking protection (deletes cookies on websites that you're not logged in to), TL;DR before clicking the link submitted by other Baitblock members, blocking sites (although it is pretty standard), etc. Keep in mind that the already implemented features have a few bugs (to put it politely), while the others are in development but this is very early preview (latest version is under store review that is shown in demo vid in site) :)

Since I'm from Pakistan, we dont have Stripe and Paypal here, so Baitblock is free for early people.

<comment><USER111> This looks cool! Thanks for making it available for free. Awaiting Firefox support so that I can give this a try.

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> TL;DR every journey start with one step. so make that first step no matter how small it is, and don't give it __too much__ thought nor emotions. after that in most of the cases the second step will come naturally and so on and so forth.

</comment><comment><USER113> Oh wow, I totally misinterpreted the headline.

</comment><comment><USER114> Don't go to hackernews might be one...

</comment><comment><USER115> >Billionaire Richard Branson has a catchphrase: "Screw it, let's do it"

He is a black swan. Britain has only one Richard Branson and that is Richard Branson.

<comment><USER116> Sir Richard Branson is British.

<comment><USER115> His successes were in the United States

<comment><USER117> Dont be stubborn just to save virtual face, you are losing an opportunity to learn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER118> The harder I try to trick myself, regardless of the technique, the harder my inner miscreant screams to procrastinate. It's like a resistance to being told what to do, even by myself.

Honestly the most reliable solution I've found is amphetamines. Less than ideal advice to depend on substances, but a therapeutic dose of Adderall can be the difference between surfing the internet and half-assing all day until finally starting work in earnest 5-7 hours later, if at all, and starting work within an hour of dosing. Coffee comes in a distant second.

Of course coming up against a tight deadline does wonders for motivation too...but in my experience if I set an arbitrary deadline I know I'm just lying to myself - there have to be real consequences.

</comment><comment><USER119> Two books by the same author that I recommend on this subject-

\--The War of Art \--Do The Work

Both by Steven Pressfield. They're imperfect -- they call out to imaginary forces uncomfortably too often, and they take a relatively concise bit of content stretching it to book form, leaving it sometimes a bit threadbare, however they're an easy, enjoyable read and I found them useful.

</comment><comment><USER120> Over analyzing leads to inaccuracies and hairy loops and sometimes actively experimenting, with conscious damage control is the only way to go. I would also like to add start funny. Solemnness is for dead people.</comment>


Why digital natives prefer reading in print - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/why-digital-natives-prefer-reading-in-print-yes-you-read-that-right/2015/02/22/8596ca86-b871-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html <comment><USER2> Digital media are failing, especially eBooks are, and it to me it feels like a huge cultural regression.

In the nineties, I digitized my CD collection and haven't looked back. I did the same with my DVDs, and eventually I got (DRM-free or cracked) eBook versions of all books that were important to me. Doing away with all those physical storage objects felt _so liberating_ , I can't even describe it. Plus, I can have _all_ my stuff with me wherever I go. I do enjoy reading on my iPad, too.

However, nobody I know of made this leap. Usually, older people like me do have some sort of ripped movie or eBook collection which they don't use. Millennials, however, use physical media all the way, and even where they don't they accept only DRM'ed, thoroughly walled gardens where you can rent stuff for a limited time and those companies only allow you to consume things in a very restrictive manner. They have _huge_ DVD collections, they started printing out their photos again, they mostly _only_ read paper-based books, they prefer streaming content via crappy proprietary channels, and I'm not even sure many of them would know how to copy a file if their life depended on it.

This feels like an immense failure to me, not only because I feel isolated in my content consumption habits, but also because we've somehow managed to move backwards for purely cultural reasons. It's a loss of capability, and a loss of personal freedom and empowerment.

<comment><USER3> >they started printing out their photos again

You lost me here. I'm firmly a "millennial", and I can't recall ever seeing a friend with printed photos from the last four years other than the occasional art student. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your overarching point, but this part really rings very hollow to me.

<comment><USER4> My family prints out pictures. We of course have hundreds of gigs of digital, but the pleasure of having physical books of curated sets of our most loved photos, e.g. of our vacations and kids, is way more powerful than staring at them on our TV or laptops. (&FWIW I'm right at the cusp of gens X and Y.)

<comment><USER5> That might be fine if you have lots of space in your house and don't plan to move any time soon, but I've kept everything digital because I don't have much space in my apartment and I might move within a year (when my lease is up). It's fantastic not having to deal with physical goods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most of the fiction books I've read in the last decade I've read on a screen. But I still strongly prefer print as long as it's not prohibitively expensive. There are so many advantages to printed books that people ignore it's not even funny.

Most of the fiction books I've read in the last decade I've read on a screen. But I still strongly prefer print as long as it's not prohibitively expensive. There are so many advantages to printed books that people ignore it's not even funny.

\- No need for batteries.

\- You can gift them.

\- You can lend them.

\- You can sell them.

\- You can add sticky notes to bookmark and add notes without relying on some crappy software.

\- No need for constant backups. Many books have been preserved for _generations_. People have trouble finding files from couple years ago.

\- Format-agnostic. Remember about all the dead floppy drives and outdated formats, such as VHS and ZipDrive.)

\- Great decoration, conversation starter and a kind of personal statement.

\- As ridiculous as it may sound, I can visually "scan" a paper book faster than I can scan a file on the screen. This often is much more useful than search because I rarely remember the exact wording of things I need to find.

\- Personally, I remember when and where I bought most of the physical books. Seeing them on a shelf serves as a great reminder. You are less likely to forget about physical book, than about a file. Before you proclaim this a silly point, take a look at your Steam/GOG "library". Do you even remember what's there? Do you remember how and when you bought it? Does it bring any contextual memories?

I can continue the list, just don't want to.

<comment><USER7> > \- As ridiculous as it may sound, I can visually "scan" a paper book faster > than I can scan a file on the screen. This often is much more useful than > search because I rarely remember the exact wording of things I need to find.

This is the main reason I still use paper. While digital may be cheaper and more portable, print is so much easier in the eyes and I tend to read much faster than on a bright panel.

<comment><USER8> Have you tried an e-ink screen?

<comment><USER7> I haven't, but would to give it a shot in the future. I feel like it would be a hassle to convert books that aren't already ePub/(insert DRM format here) though. Do you find this to be a problem?

<comment><USER8> Well, I had an old Sony PR-505 eReader and while it could read PDF's it ccertainly wasn't ideally suited to it. I did usually preprocess them by at least cropping the margins as much as I could (a program called briss makes this easy). But I think modern eReaders are much better and might be able to zoom in on PDFs.

Every other format I came across I converted to ePub using Calibre, which is fairly painless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The short version is that physical books have a much better user interface than electronic books by almost every criterion. Part of this is because of counterproductive DRM restrictions, but software and hardware limitations ensure that many uses of books, especially textbooks, fall far short in any electronic format.

We take for granted, or are just unaware of, many of the ways in which physical interaction with objects adds to the human experience of using them. Sense memory/muscle memory/spatial memory can all play a role in absorbing the content of the book, as can the physical interaction required to turn pages. For reference work, things like tabbed pages or over-printed index points or even just the ability to flip through the book or a section of the book at a glance has no equal in electronic form.

<comment><USER10> I'm a huge fan of the Kindle for your typical linear fiction. It has many advantages over a stack of paperbacks.

For any other kind of book, e-readers are an unsolved problem in terms of both hardware and especially software. I'm convinced that it's possible to make some really excellent textbook-oriented software (for a large-ish tablet device), but it certainly doesn't exist yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I vastly prefer ebooks for pleasure reading. I read them on my phone (white text on black background with the brightness waaaay down). It's great because I can read anywhere - in many places that I normally couldn't, because 1) I always have the book with me, 2) I only need one hand (in fact even that only occasionally since you can set the 'book' down without having to go to great lengths to keep it open), and 3) I can read in the dark without disturbing my wife.

That said, I would never want to try to study from an e-textbook. All reference books I still buy in print. You would think with their searchability, ebooks would have an advantage there, but I've always just found it too awkward trying to jump between sections. It's much easier to have a mental model of where information resides in a physical book than a digital one.

<comment><USER12> What app do you use to read the books?

<comment><USER11> I use the Kindle app, but more due to inertia than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Lovely. Just a few points:

\- Reading is only problem in crappy screens. When 14" e-paper becomes norm, paper books will be obsolete

\- As children I almost broke my back, because I had to carry 10 kg of books every day. Even today I still walk funny.

\- In Ireland some schools banned wheeled school bags because of some school uniform nonsense.

\- It is impossible to buy some digital books. You can only rent some DRM nonsense. If you want to use book for decade or longer, you must buy print

\- in many professions textbooks are major (sometimes only) study cost. Good gatekeepers to keep poor out.

\- for some reasons it is illegal to buy textbook from India in US.

<comment><USER14> > \- Reading is only problem in crappy screens. When 14" e-paper becomes norm, > paper books will be obsolete

Many of my books would suck in ebook form, no matter how big the screen is. Color, predictable layout so text, meta-text, and diagrams/images can be laid out sensibly and helpfully, and having two pages visible at a time are important for some books.

A good 14" e-ink screen won't make books obsolete. It'll take some much larger advances in technology and in standards (ha ha, good luck) for ebook readers to match paper books.

<comment><USER15> Typesetting differences between different devices is a problem that needs to be solved for e-books to become feasible in classroom settings, book club settings, etc. If a group wants to discuss a particular scene, argument, metaphor, etc., it's important to be able to point to a page number -- ebooks make this tricky.

The typesetting problem also ties into the navigation problem. There are some books in my area of study that I make use of with great frequency (e.g. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Wittgenstein's Tractatus). For the most part, if you ask me to jump to a section, I can get there (within a dozen pages or so) just by opening up the book to the right location. The TOC in something like Adobe Reader do this effectively, but I haven't seen an e-reader that makes jumping to sections as quick.

Annotation is another tough problem. In one particular copy of Plato's Meno, I have a series of diagrams attempting to work out a geometry problem posed in a somewhat controversial passage [1]. Some e-readers have made advancements with text annotations, but nothing I've gotten my hands on comes close to paper (yet).

I don't think these problems are insurmountable, but I agree with 'ashark that a 14" e-ink screen won't suffice to make books obsolete until certain problems are solved.

Even then, I enjoy having a large bookshelf packed with books. Call me old fashioned, but I love the smell of old books :)

[1] [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/635623?sid=21105440821...](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/635623?sid=21105440821771&uid=2&uid=4)

<comment><USER16> You're old fashioned. I used to write book reviews, and for a couple of years I literally got boxes of books from publishers every week.

After a while it got insane. The local charity shops and libraries hated me on sight.

Schools wouldn't touch the leftovers. I still have no idea why.

I kept a few thousand for the house, and the rest ended up in the wood burner.

Ebooks would have been _much_ more practical.

The flip side of paper is the way that entire forests are laid waste. A print run of a million - not unusual for a best seller - will clear cut a huge area.

Then the pulp has to be bleached, which is a nasty process.

Eventually most of that paper simply gets thrown away.

The whole process is incredibly, stupidly _wasteful._

<comment><USER15> I won't deny that I'm old-fashioned :)

The environmental impact of paper vs e-books is something I had not considered, but the effects of producing e-readers is still non-zero. I'd believe someone if they told me the impact was less than paper books though.

I'll also admit that e-books are more practical in some contexts. For instance, I prefer taking my kindle out for casual reading on the beach or in the park -- navigating the book, annotating, etc, aren't big issues for pleasure reading.

In academia, there is also another advantage to e-books: an e-book never really goes out of print. In my second year of college, I had to order an expensive copy of Gaston Bachelard's _La formation de l 'esprit scientifique_ from the UK because it was out of print in the US.

I look forward to a day when e-book annotation will suffice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm going to focus on textbook (because it makes my point easier). To me there are three distinct issues with digital books:

\- Backlit displays give you eye strain and make reading less pleasant. This can be solved with eInk but then you lose colour diagrams/graphs and even the largest eInk device is smaller than a single textbook page (and the layout within textbooks is key to understanding in some cases).

\- Saving multiple pages is very painful. Almost all ebook readers (both apps and devices) allow you to save your current page, close the "book," and then continue later. Very few allow you to tag multiple pages with "sticky notes" and then jump back to any of them.

\- Some people like to highlight their $100 textbooks or to write notes on the pages. I am not one of these people, however that is a legitimate argument against buying the digital book. You rarely can do this type of thing.

Unfortunately eInk was here to save us, and I think as a technology it hasn't really succeeded. It gained popularity for a brief period, but then the iPad got popular and people just decided to read on the device they already own (and then give up, and buy paper copies because it was so unpleasant).

So unless someone invents an RGB eInk device, I think we'll be stuck with either paper books or terrible backlit flicky displays forever. Too bad if you ask me.

<comment><USER18> Hm, I'm going to guess that the Kindle is probably the most popular e-reader, and it has the ability to add notes, highlights and bookmarks, both with the hardware device and in the apps for tablets and computers. It also doesn't have the eye strain issue.

Actual remaining issues:

* complex layouts get messed up, as you mention

* it's not very easy to leaf through an ebook and to quickly jump from section to section

That said, I still read 90% of my course materials on my Kindle, Kindle app for OS X or Mendeley. For all its disadvantages, having a digital overview of all of your annotations is a godsend when doing research or studying for an exam.

For that same reason, I don't take paper notes anymore: while convenient, often they get lost, you can't search through them and you can't edit them.

<comment><USER19> > it's not very easy to leaf through an ebook and to quickly jump from section > to section

This is available on Kindle for quite some time now. Tap on top to show menu and then slide you finder on bottom bar - preview of pages will show and you can look back and forth without changing your current position.

<comment><USER18> It's an improvement, but not nearly as easy to use as leafing through a physical book. I'm thinking of the use-case where you're solving exercises in one place but also want to sometimes go back to the theory or to a reference section in the back.

<comment><USER20> This is probably as easily solved by just having multiple ereaders, honestly.

<comment><USER21> Have an ereader for every book! It's flawless!

<comment><USER20> Within reason, it probably is cheaper and more workable for many people to just have two or three ebook readers than the myriad of physical books and shelving necessary for them.

Additionally, for textbook style things, it was already common to have "student handbooks" that go along with the book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I digitalized all my book collection long, long time ago, and DRM FREE ebooks are much better than anything on paper.

Unfortunately there is no legal software solution that reaps the benefit of digital, because what makes digital great, like an open interface to access the data, makes it easier to copy.

Reading on a 55 inches OLED in portrait mode, with black background, letters in green or white is gorgeous. I can search the book, make it to talk me,read on multiple columns like a newspaper, read different books at the same time(in order to reference one from another) or have an open browser.

But for using digital you have to stop trying to emulate paper.

<comment><USER23> I'm amazed the publishing industry has managed to completely ignore the lessons of the music industry. In the meantime, piracy gets you a version that does it right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's pretty obvious... reading books digitally is a lousy experience. IMO, the only people who benefit from e-books are the people publishing them, except for reference books.

The textbook cost problem is about the implicit corruption of the process promulgated by publishers and colleges.

My nephew has the 45th edition of some Accounting 101 textbook, which is almost exactly the same as the 20th edition that I had a long time ago. It costs like $150, which is criminal. This situation exists because everyone is getting their pound of flesh from the poor students.

<comment><USER17> It exists for one reason and one reason only:

Because the professors, department, and college cause it to happen. They choose to assign a $150 textbook instead of picking something else, they choose to likely get kickbacks from the publisher (e.g. free lesson materials, free teachers edition, free grading, etc) and they choose to ignore their duty as guardians to educational access. They're sellouts.

Publishers and authors are designed to make as much money as possible. It is their legal and moral imperative. It isn't even the publisher who forced you to buy that $150 textbook, they didn't assign it, they didn't fail to include it in tuition, they just sold it in the open market.

I want John Oliver to do a bit on this topic. However as long as people continue to blame the publishers it will never get fixed. If people started [correctly] blaming the schools/professors/departments/etc and actually started to complain in that direction, things would change for the positive.

Think about who actually forced you to buy that book, and that is the answer for who you should be mad at. I'd honestly like to see legislation that forced public colleges and universities to include all books in the tuition, that way students can compare the relative cost because two classes (e.g. one assigning $150 books, and one assigning $50 books).

<comment><USER25> > Because the professors, department, and college cause it to happen. They > choose to assign a $150 textbook instead of picking something else, they > choose to likely get kickbacks from the publisher (e.g. free lesson > materials, free teachers edition, free grading, etc) and they choose to > ignore their duty as guardians to educational access. They're sellouts.

I'm offended ... I'm still waiting for my kickback from the publishers for the books I choose for my classes ... anyhow ...

If I choose that expensive textbook for my class, it's probably because I think you need the book even _outside_ of my class.

Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest--"Introduction to Algorithms" is about $100. Yes, it's expensive, but it's an important book for your professional reference. A programmer better have a copy of that on the bookshelf.

And before you get too huffy about your lecturers, you might want to consider that anyone lecturing in your class who isn't full-time, tenure tack is probably getting about $5,000 for one class for the semester (I know this to be true for UCal system and Stanford). Given the amount of time it takes to teach, working at McDonald's probably pays better.

<comment><USER24> Back in the 90s, a big controversy on my campus was the Barnes and Noble takeover of the school bookstore, which had previously been run by the university's auxiliary services (3 old ladies + work/study students). Part of the deal was something like $5 million annual pledge to the university's struggling athletic program. (Ie. The kickback)

In other cases, the corruption was more blatant... Like the department where all books were authored by professors in the department.

In my example, I used the accounting textbooks as an egregious example, because accounting 101 is pretty cut and dry, and a professor time traveling from 1980 could teach it today. Engineering is a little different, and the textbooks tend to be more niche and have more lasting value. There's a difference between a technical reference and s $75 "Mercury Reader" that may largely consist of public domain works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Books provide a great tactile experience. Books are immediate. But the real difference? Books make you slow down.

This is a great example of "The Medium is the Message". The words are the same, the information is the same, but the experience is completely different.

There's just something about screens. I think we're already seeing a trend among people who spend a lot of time around screens: we're starting to try to find ways to spend less time around screens.

It's not just the distractions -- the alerts, the temptations to switch over to a web browser. Though, certainly that's part of it. No, I think it's more about the medium itself. Just something about screens that's an entirely different experience.

Not saying screens are bad -- I love screens :) But, I think we're seeing a desire to find balance via slower mediums. For me it's cooking, reading, bicycling, etc.

<comment><USER27> Interesting! Hadn't thought about the psychology of it all, but it rings true for me: when I'm reading a book, I seldom put it down every few minutes, like I do when reading the same book on a screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Meh, wait until they have to move house a couple of times, or their kid wants a piano so they go from a nine foot library bookcase to a couple of Billys from Ikea.

Anyone who is worried about not 'owning' their books is more than welcome to accompany me on my biannual trip to the Friends of the Library donation desk. I guess I lose the tax credit on my ebooks, but at least I've gotten to keep them so far.

<comment><USER29> I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I moved to Kindle a year ago and haven't looked back.

For technical and art books, yes I'll still buy the paper version. But for non-fiction, fiction, saved long-form articles, and magazines... I'll take Kindle any day of the week. The ability to bring countless sources of content with me anywhere I go or at my bedside while saving incredible amounts of space in my house is a godsend.

I'm a designer, but perfect layout and typography of printed layout is far less important to me than the ease of consuming the content itself.

<comment><USER28> And it's not like the majority of books people own are that great as physical objects anyway- grab a random hardback from the fifties and compare it to any hardback you're likely to grab at Costco or B&N- the quality isn't even close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This doesn't say anything about the actual e-books themselves, which are frequently terrible. Not only that, they're often priced at parity with the physical books, which takes some real gall.

I really do mean they're terrible, publishers would never release the print equivalent of the crap they put in e-books. Terrible typesetting, breaking important parts of books, no ability to handle things like accented characters, it's embarrassing stuff. Or, it should be, but publishers are so focused on not being subsumed by the onslaught of technology that it seems to be a low priority.

</comment><comment><USER31> It seems like people constantly overlook the differences between reading textbooks versus reading novels. When reading for academic purposes (including novels for say English majors), the pattern of reading is often non-linear. People may read through it once or more times, but the majority of the time is spent skipping around, constantly flipping back and forth trying to find the relevant passages for reference. Personally, this type of reading is a very visual experience for me, I remember where a certain equation or figure was on the page and can quickly flip to it even if I don't remember the exact contents. Something that is not possible in the same way digitally.

On the other hand, I would guess that when most people read novels recreationally, they are reading in a linear fashion. There is a much smaller need for readers to constantly be flipping to different sections of the book while reading a novel.

There is also the issue of where people read. For textbooks, it is pretty easy to set a large book down on a table or desk at home, in a dorm room, or in a library. It is much harder to do so if you read primarily on a train or bus during rush hour or at a bus stop.

<comment><USER8> Maybe people overlook the differences because few people actually do both kinds of reading?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I, for one, prefer a e-book to a hard to navigate book.

* And I presume I'm a "digital native" (whatever that means) since I'm 13.

<comment><USER33> For fiction or for non-fiction?

And if non-fiction is it still more of a narrative (like a history text or biography) or is it a technical text which bounces around more?

If it's a technical text that bounces around, there's hardly any easier tool for navigating a math or science text than flipping through the pages until a diagram or formula that matches something like what you're looking for pops up. The cool thing is, the human visual system is good enough you can spend a fraction of a second on each page flipping through it like a flip book. You'll realize you passed it about 20 pages too late, so you repeat the search a little slower over the most recent pages until you find what you wanted.

On a computer with a PDF you may be able to do this, but no e-reader flips through pages this quickly, and most tablets start choking when you flip through hard to render texts too quickly.

And this doesn't even count the ability to markup a textbook, or slip loose sheets of paper in with your notes. My physics and calculus texts in college ended up being about 80% textbook and 20% engineering paper by the end of the semester. Annotations on e-books are certainly possible, but the UI is far more cumbersome than just a pen in hand.

<comment><USER32> For me technical text is the exact place where e-books are preferable. I can easily add bookmarks and swap around places and Ctrl+F phrases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I read on my phone. It has a 5.2" display at better than 400dpi. I can read in the dark, in daylight, and I can do it one-handed while standing up on a bus or train. When I'm only reading on it, I get about 8 hours of battery life.

I read about 200 books a year on my phone. I prefer it...

except for comic books, technical books, and art books. In those, the layout or the physical format requires something much bigger, and still 300dpi or higher. That's very expensive right now.

</comment><comment><USER35> Sent to my Kindle (via Pocket->custom Calibri script->Kindle email) to read later.

<comment><USER36> Hmmm, I usually just use "Send to Kindle" (by Klip.me) for web pages. Though I do use Calibre->Kindle email to handle books not in the Kindle ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I didn't see mention of the thing that always bothered me most: eye strain. I'm not sure if this is still an issue with newer "Retina"-style displays, but if I recall correctly, the human eye will constantly try and refocus on individual pixels while reading online. This comes across to the reader initially as distractedness, and after prolonged periods, eye strain.

<comment><USER38> That is not at all an issue with an eink display. It's almost exactly like paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think there is a distinction between textbooks and literature. Reading the average novel on a Kindle or tablet is not hard or distracting... Reading a Statistics textbook is darn near impossible. This article spends a lot of time focusing on college students and textbooks/required reading.

</comment><comment><USER40> Myself I am in between. I read primarily on a Kindle. However if I am trying to find quotes, or additional subject matter, I go to the net for a quick search resulting in many resources. When it comes to magazines I still keep them around and use them more than the many complimentary electronic versions that are offered as I default back to open searches using google/bing over the online magazine.

I guess where I am going is, for mostly static information a book and magazine are great but for immediate need the power of search engines trumps all including many electronic versions of books and magazines which don't offer the same ease of use

</comment><comment><USER41> I have the exact opposite experience. I love my Kindle paperwhite.

I can now get books right when I'm excited about them, not a few days later.

I can take a pile of books with me everywhere I go and read them when I have some spare time. Public transport and traveling are the common ones.

I'm also quite sick of carting around the physical books I've already collected every time I move.

I will admit to being disappointed by lending facilities in my kindle, but it's a minor quibble in my eyes.

I feel a little sorry for bookstores, which I really enjoy browsing, but I'd buy ebooks from them if I could.

</comment><comment><USER42> Penny Arcade has a good pitch: [http://www.penny- arcade.com/comic/2009/03/09/](http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/03/09/)

</comment><comment><USER43> > school systems are buying millions of tablets and laptops for classroom use

Taking notes on a laptop has been found to be ineffective compared to writing: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning- secret-...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t- take-notes-with-a-laptop/)

This is why laptops in classrooms is utterly retarded.

<comment><USER17> > utterly retarded

Do you really think it is appropriate to be using the term "retarded" as a derogatory term in 2015? Why not just bring out "gay" and the n- word too if while you're at it...

I actually agree with you regarding laptops and tablets in the classroom (and I work in technology). I just find such language pretty distracting to an otherwise great point and interesting link.

<comment><USER43> Ah, political correctness...

<comment><USER17> Ah, poor vocabulary...

English has a bunch of words meaning "stupid" or "foolish." For example: absurd, asinine, brainless, cockamamy, crazy, daffy, daft, dazed, deficient, dense, dim, dippy, doltish, dopey, dotty, dull, dumb, dummy, fantastic, fatuous, feebleminded, foolish, futile, gullible, half-baked, half-witted, harebrained, idiotic, ill-advised, ill-considered, imbecilic, imprudent, inane, incautious, indiscreet, injudicious, insane, insensate, irrational, irrelevant, jerky, kooky, laughable, loony, loser, ludicrous, lunatic, mad, meaningless, mindless, moronic, naive, nerdy, nonsensical, nutty, obtuse, pointless, preposterous, puerile, rash, ridiculous, senseless, short-sighted, shortsighted, silly, simple, simpleminded, slow, sluggish, stolid, stupefied, stupid, thick, thick-headed, trivial, unintelligent, unreasonable, unthinking, unwise, wacky, weak, witless, zany

<comment><USER44> And several of those were formerly clinical descriptions of "mental retardation" \-- "idiot" and "imbecile" for two -- exactly the same as "retard". The only difference is that they're further back on the euphemism treadmill.

You can argue against the use of certain words if you'd like, but you can't pretend that it's anything other than political correctness.

<comment><USER17> It shows a lack of professionalism, a poor vocabulary, and a general disrespect towards the mentally handicapped. It just isn't up to the standards that people expect in this day and age.

You seem to think "political correctness" is some kind of dirty term, rather than just accepting that times change, and society has moved on. Homosexuals are no longer seen as a negative (per "gay" as a derogatory) and the mentally handicapped are no longer seen as being idiots or fools (per "retard" as a derogatory).

It surprises me that some people simply do not appreciate this and how their use of language reflects on them as people.

<comment><USER45> /me tips his fedora.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just having fun with the title. Why are digital natives preferring non digital for reading? Because there are no true digital natives, yet. At best we are all digital immigrants.

</comment><comment><USER46> The article has a false premise.</comment>