Hi. Can I be frank? I find it a bit hard to believe that your "real work" is "fun, time critical, and offers REAL rewards". Are you maybe trying to convince yourself here?
It happened to me to believe wrongly that I had fun and rewarding tasks at hand. But when I really have such tasks, procrastination is completely out of the way, and I am certainly not on HN to discuss about it.
When I have a task that is really interesting to me, I think about it when I shower, before falling asleep, while riding my bike, and when I quickly parse HN (because I have this habit), one of the first five titles will be remotely related and pull some strings, and I'll quickly go back to my code.
However, most of the time, I still say (and believe) that my work is "very interesting", "very rewarding", but I procrastinate on HN like everyone else (and right now).
"But when I really have such tasks, procrastination is completely out of the way"
I know for me it doesn't work that way. I assume "REAL rewards" means long lasting meaningful rewards rather than a quick dopamine hit. But hyperbolic discounting [1] is a bitch, so even if I know that once I start some real work it will be engaging and interesting, and tomorrow or next week my happiness will be partly determined by how much of it I got done ... maybe I'll do just one more HN story / Watch Dogs online hacking mission / etc.
It's a pattern I recognize and no longer really adversely affects my life like it did when I was younger but I definitely still feel that pull that makes starting things more difficult than it would otherwise be.
Do you know exactly what changed for you so that hyperbolic discounting doesn't effect you anymore? Family, discipline, maturity, other specific lifestyle changes?
A while ago I decided that a few ingrained bad habits I had needed to go. I changed my lifestyle quite a bit in slow careful steps. The focus was on mindfulness and tracking the progress diligently. I also got really interested in research about habit building and modern scientific views of consciousness.
At this point I am still as affected by hyperbolic discounting as ever but I have more of an ability to recognize it for what it is and steer myself towards/trick myself into what my rational self wants to do.
I frequently feel like I'm trying to train part of my self (the unified self is an illusion) like I would train a dog.
It happened to me to believe wrongly that I had fun and rewarding tasks at hand. But when I really have such tasks, procrastination is completely out of the way, and I am certainly not on HN to discuss about it.
When I have a task that is really interesting to me, I think about it when I shower, before falling asleep, while riding my bike, and when I quickly parse HN (because I have this habit), one of the first five titles will be remotely related and pull some strings, and I'll quickly go back to my code.
However, most of the time, I still say (and believe) that my work is "very interesting", "very rewarding", but I procrastinate on HN like everyone else (and right now).