Help with regaining ability to focus and fight procrastination (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago by helmet91@lemmy.world to c/books@lemmy.world

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I'm looking for book recommendations in the topics mentioned in title.

I often find myself feeling down and not being able to accomplish anything, and the tendency has been increasing.

I cannot even work on my hobby projects, because I'm just staring at the screen and my brain is not functioning, which leads to launching a game or watching YouTube videos and waste time.

I cannot find the way out of this madness, and my last resort is to find some books that might help with my issue.

I don't wanna rely on search results on the internet, because I don't trust random compilations of "read these 10 books to be productive".

Well, this is optional, but in case the book you recommend indeed helped you, I'd be curious how permanent the impact was for you, if that makes sense. I know mostly it depends on the person; it's me who has to make the effort, not the book. But I'd be curious how easy it is for you to consistently maintain what you learned from the book.

Regarding the format, it has to be in epub. And I'd very much prefer DRM-free books, price doesn't matter. If the only good books are all DRM-enshittified, that sucks, but I'll consider that too if I have no other choice.

Thanks in advance if anyone can help with recommendations!

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[-] lurklurk@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

Not a book, but an article

What worked for me was the realisation from articles like that, that I wasn't lazy or unmotivated, just in a loop of: some reluctance to get started → distraction → feeling bad about not having started yet → distraction → feeling even worse → distraction → ...

It was pretty much an emotional management issue rather than a motivation of focus issue.

The solution wasn't to try harder, be more disciplined or structured or anything. The solution for me was to learn to identify the feeling and take a moment to go "I am feeling reluctant to start this and want to do something else. I'm feeling bad which is ok. Now I'll just get started anyway until the feeling goes away" and usually once I got going I felt a bit better

Pretty much I dissociate for a little bit, which sounds bad but it really works for me. The bad feeling for me is mostly at the start, and once I'm actually making progress, that feels good

Longer term I have learnt ways to make getting started easier

For a cognitively heavy task I try to make the first step easier; e.g. before I leave it one day, I make a note of what the next thing to do is, which means starting it takes less effort.
For a manual task that is hard to keep doing because it's mentally unstimulating, I do it while listening to an audio book or while having a phone conversation.
For any big task I try to find small bites I can do and feel I have made progress, so I get a mental reward rather than an insurmountable thing. Even if the big thing is 1000 small bites, if I just make regular progress I will get there in the end.

The more I do these things, the less bad feelings I have about these tasks

Everyone is different and your tools might end up looking different, but there are probably ways you can get past it