One of my observations is that people procrastinate because it is entropically favorable, not necessarily because they want to procrastinate or because procrastination is fun. The Internet does not help with its vast potential for incessant context switching.
The obvious solution to this is to reduce entropy, and slow things down. Stay without the internet and television for a week, since these are the primary ways in which you procrastinate, think of it as rehab therapy. Eliminate all sources of deviations, and try to systematically lengthen your attention span. I would suggest meditating every day for an hour[1].
Secondly, stop reading the news. It's a complete waste of time. The set of all thought sequences you can have between time A and time B should be small. Watching the news, or reading HN greatly increases the number of irrelevant thoughts you can have. A perfect Bayesian with a utility function like "maximize knowledge gained" would not read the news at all. It is always a good idea to ponder about what a perfect Bayesian with your chosen utility function would do.
It's true that the only thing stopping yourself is you. And it's also true that you can do amazing things if you spend long enough on any particular thing[2]. I would suggest making an Excel sheet with the time spent doing productive work per day, and optimize for that.
I went from averaging around 30 minutes a week when I started measuring my productivity (I'm a college freshman .. so I'm free the entire day) to around 4 hours in the last week.
[2] Einstein spent an entire decade on General Relativity. Andrew Wiles spent 7 years trying to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Persistence is the most important trait anyone can have.
The obvious solution to this is to reduce entropy, and slow things down. Stay without the internet and television for a week, since these are the primary ways in which you procrastinate, think of it as rehab therapy. Eliminate all sources of deviations, and try to systematically lengthen your attention span. I would suggest meditating every day for an hour[1].
Secondly, stop reading the news. It's a complete waste of time. The set of all thought sequences you can have between time A and time B should be small. Watching the news, or reading HN greatly increases the number of irrelevant thoughts you can have. A perfect Bayesian with a utility function like "maximize knowledge gained" would not read the news at all. It is always a good idea to ponder about what a perfect Bayesian with your chosen utility function would do.
It's true that the only thing stopping yourself is you. And it's also true that you can do amazing things if you spend long enough on any particular thing[2]. I would suggest making an Excel sheet with the time spent doing productive work per day, and optimize for that.
I went from averaging around 30 minutes a week when I started measuring my productivity (I'm a college freshman .. so I'm free the entire day) to around 4 hours in the last week.
---
[1] Music I find helpful for meditation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPni755-Krg
[2] Einstein spent an entire decade on General Relativity. Andrew Wiles spent 7 years trying to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Persistence is the most important trait anyone can have.