How to work when you don’t want to: Understanding Hyperbolic Discounting.

You want to reach the moon and touch the stars. You want to travel, be a ladies’ man and get good grades. You want to win the Olympics and the Nobel prize. You know nothing is beyond your reach if only you would work for it.

But you don’t. Why?

You see the movie Limitless once and decide you’ll change your life from today. Maybe you even do get some shit done for a day or two. But never more than that. Why!?

This question bugs every ambitious person that ever sets out for greatness.

Well don’t worry. You are not sick. This is a curse every human being is born with. You see, we are not very good at taking the future seriously.

They even have a name for this phenomena. Hyperbolic discounting.

If I offered you a 100 dollars now vs 300 dollars 5 years later, you will probably take the $100 bill.

Because money has a time-value.

Similarly, there is a time value of pain and pleasure!!

If you smoke today and the cancer is 20 years away, who cares! Right? If you work tonight and the fame and glory is waiting for you 8 years down the line who cares?!

I know you do care. Everyone does. But that’s the Pre-frontal Cortex talking. Sadly that guy isn’t in charge. He’s just an employee of the reptilian brain you have. And the reptilian part of your brain could care less about the future.

So, yeah, there it goes. We humans are in big trouble. By default :3

It’s a manufacturing defect.

Well now let’s see what we can do to work around this handicap.

I suggest 2 BIG Steps,

1. Get Clarity
2. The Farmers mindset.

how to beat procrastination and be more productive

Here’s what I mean by these terms:

1. Get Clarity:

   Productivity problems are often clarity problems. Here’s some steps towards greater clarity:
   a. Get clear on what exactly you want to do.
   b. Figure out how you are going to do that. And
   c. Break down the tasks to tiny little tasks.

2. Develop a farmer’s mindset:

   See every task you do as a seed you sow, It’s not the final product. It’s still on the embryo phase. Create  a good environment for your tasks and nurture them. But don’t worry if they are not perfect. They will eventually grow and become full fledged awesome crops if you keep nurturing them regularly.

P.S.

Here’s my top 10 tips for a productive day.

For some more awesome ideas about procrastination read this.

The 30 day productivity challenge- Day 2

(For those of you who don’t know the rules of the challenge, its simple. I can’t go more than 15 minutes of unproductive activities. Whenever I leave my reading table, start watching a random YouTube video or minimize my coding environment- I start a stopwatch on my phone, and as soon as it hits 15 minutes, I go back to being productive. For further details here’s yesterday’s post- The 30 day productivity challenge for the chronic procrastinators among us)

Day 2 update-

Yesterday was a disaster. I had to go visit an aunt with my dad and that really messed with my schedule. But aside that, I did well in the time I did have for myself. I woke up early, so had coding and blogging out of my way within 12 pm. Then I had to make the journey and came back at 7pm.  I was tired because of the journey, so had to rest for an hour. Then left home for tutoring and called it a day after that.

Yesterday was nowhere near as productive as the first day of the challenge. But, thanks to the challenge, I did use the little time I had wisely. I am back on track today and hopefully will continue the challenge at full throttle.