Anti-procrastination tips?

In the comments section of last week's post, "Structuring unstructured time", UK Reader writes:

This is the thing I've struggled most with since moving from a non-academic job into a PhD program. In particular, I find what you describe as 'Commitment. Put deliberate effort into meeting this goal...' incredibly difficult to maintain!

It's not that I'm not committed. Of course I am. But in academia one has to be self-motivating to an extent rarely found in other walks of life. No one's there to make sure you're up and at your desk by 9am each morning, no one's going to disapprove if you take yet another unscheduled break, no one's going to give you a pat on the back for working steadily for several hours and achieving a breakthrough... Rewards and punishments and enthusiasm and energy all have to come from within. This is totally different from lines of work in which you work with colleagues. Humans are social creatures and, in many respects, the life of an academic is very unnatural. We're not really designed to sit alone at a desk with only our own brains for company day-in-day-out.

In short, I'm pretty good any goal-setting. But I'm terrible at holding myself to actually meeting my goals. It's so easy to just sort of drift by, permanently feeling slightly guilty for one's endless procrastination.

I wonder if you have any tips on how to deal with this malaise. 

I'm very curious to hear what tips readers have. I used to be a terrible procrastinator. As I've explained before, at one point in grad school (after comp exams_, things got so bad that I didn't get anything of consequence done for about a year-and-a-half! Since then, however, I've gotten very good at avoiding procrastination. Although (as usual) I cannot claim that my strategies will work for everyone, allow me to share a number of tips that I have found work for me:

Finding the right work-space: During graduate school, I tended to do most of my work at coffee shops. I worked there because I loved coffee and it just felt comfortable. Unfortunately, I found it wasn't the most conducive place to work effectively because of (1) internet access, (2) interruptions by friends/colleagues, and (3) people-watching. Right after grad school, in my first job, I tried mostly working in my office. That didn't work well either, once again due to internet access but also for harder-to-pinpoint reasons. Surprisingly, I only began to work effectively once I got a dog and started working outside. Nowadays, I do almost all of my work outside in the shade at a park picnic table by the water. Aside from removing me from internet-temptations (including the temptation to check and respond to email), working outside just does something to me. I don't know if it's the fresh air, or the sunlight, or whatever: working outside just puts me in the right frame of mind. Whenever I try to work inside, my mind feels cramped and I feel less motivated. Whenever I work outside, for some reason the "lightbulb" goes on and I start to work effectively. Importantly, I might have never figured out that I work best outside had I never gotten a dog. Given that I'm not much of an outdoors person, I probably never would have tried it otherwise. So, if you're a procrastinator, that's my first suggestion: consider experimenting with where you work. If you're like me, you may end up working best in the last place you might have ever expected!

No internet or email access: I have friends who are procrastinators--and it's clear to me that this is the biggest problem for many of them. They check email, chat with friends on facebook or instagram, check the news, etc. One of the biggest benefits of working at the park is that doing so automatically removes these temptations. Although I still have my iPhone with me, I disable email and social media notifications so that they don't distract me. It's a bit of a pain sometimes--especially when I could use to download a journal article--but in my experience the benefits far outweigh the costs. I usually download relevant articles prior to going to the park, so it's not that big of an issue. In any case, I've found that simply telling oneself not to check email or go on the internet isn't good enough. To reliably avoid these forms of procrastination, I need to work somewhere (e.g. the park) where I don't even have access and the temptation doesn't exist.

Developing intrinsic motivation: UK Reader writes that, "in academia one has to be self-motivating to an extent rarely found in other walks of life." This is almost certainly right, which raises an important question: how can one become more self-motivated? Research on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation indicates that:

[I]ntrinsic motivation is a strong predictor of performance with or without any external rewards...External rewards can motivate people to a point, especially over short periods of time or when the focus is on quantity over quality. But intrinsic motivation is always a factor, and inspires more quality in performance.

Interestingly, research also indicates that extrinsic rewards can even undermine intrinsic motivation. So, it seems in general, if you want to be highly motivated, it's important to develop intrinsic motivation and focus less on external rewards. Research indicating this coheres very strongly, at any rate, with my own experience. During graduate school, I lost my love for philosophy for precisely the reasons given above: I became too focused on extrinsic rewards (getting good grades, publishing papers, etc.). Focusing on these things sapped the joy of my work. It was only after finishing graduate school--when I began doing work that I simply enjoyed--that I found my intrinsic motivation again...and stopped procrastinating! And indeed, intrinsic motivation can be developed. I explained several strategies I found useful here and here--among them, (1) setting and meeting daily, weekly, and monthly personal goals (few things increase motivation like meeting one's own goals!), (2) working on projects that inspire me instead of working on projects for extrinsic reasons (e.g. publishing, etc.), and (3) utilizing a daily writing strategy explicitly designed to improve self-motivation. Finally, I've also found that listening to music while writing can make work a ton more enjoyable. Apparently, there's a lot of empirical research that listening to music while exercising significantly increases performance. I find the same is true of music and philosophy! I basically do all of my writing to music these days, and find that it increases my overall level of enthusiasm and enjoyment while writing, enabling me to do it longer and more effectively. While I recognize not everyone may be able to do this (some people find music distracting), it may be worth trying--as long as you select the right music (I only listen to songs I know well by a single artist on repeat, never to Spotify--as I find that new music distracts me!).

Refractory time: My spouse, who works in psychology, tells me it is important to set aside "refractory time" from work (i.e. rest)--and I've found she's exactly right. Early in my career, I basically worked all the time--and it made me miserable and not want to work (it's hard to have intrinsic motivation when one is "burnt" out!). I now work each weekday from 9am-5pm, but then do basically no work, including no email, during the evenings or weekends. Ever since I started doing this, my motivation, enjoyment, and efficiency all markedly increased. 

Daily routine: I'm not by nature a person who loves routine. My Big Five personality trait scores land me in the 93rd percentile for "openness to new experience." In other words, I'm a person who craves novelty! Still, for all that, I've found that to work effectively I've had to impose a strict daily routine on myself Monday through Friday. I wake up around 8:30am, have two cups of coffee while responding to email, make two more cups of coffee, head to the park with the dog at about 10am, work for about 3 hours, eat lunch around 1pm, and head back to the park for another 3 hours. Then I head to the gym around 5pm, and spend the rest of the evening hanging out with my spouse, etc. Fortunately, I've found that with the right workspace and other strategies (see above), this daily routine is actually enjoyable! It wouldn't be enjoyable with the wrong work-space, or if I wasn't listening to music, or without the writing strategies I use: the routine works for me precisely because I found a bunch of other strategies that make the routine fun! 

Anyway, these are just a few of my anti-procrastination tips. What are yours?

Comments

[Muhammad]

20 years of research:
http://www.procrastination.ca/

[JR]

Structured procrastination is the key.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/How-to-ProcrastinateStill/93959

[Tim]

For $10 via the app store, you can try out WriteRoom. It's a distraction-free writing environment for your computer. It's minor, but it's helped me a lot.

[Axel Gelfert]

I guess I'm late to this conversation (though, for once, I'm not going to blame it on procrastination, but rather on the long summer break!), but I thought I'd mention two things I've found helpful when it comes to keeping procrastination at bay. First, when I'm in the middle of writing and need to take a break (or need to call it a day), I don't keep going until I'm done with the section (or the paragraph). Instead, I pause in the middle of a paragraph. This way, I know *exactly* where to start and how to continue when I get back (whether it's half an hour later or the next day); this significantly reduces the mental barrier to resuming work. -- Second, I've always found it helpful to have a side project alongside any major ongoing project. This way, if I get frustrated with the main project, I can always turn to the side project and still feel productive (i.e. keep writing). I guess this is a version of structured procrastination; it means you get to be productive even while not working on your top-priority project. At the same time, the side project should still involve writing-related skills, so that it's easy to shift gear again and move back to the main project. Anyway, these are two things I've found helpful -- if anyone has other tips, please keep sharing them!