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Comment by quarterto | Hacker News Reader

This is basically a stripped-down article version of The Now Habit [0], without the good bits, such as guilt-free play, the idea that you should set aside time to do whatever without constantly thinking "I should be working", or the Unschedule, where you mark down the times you actually did good work.

[0]: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Now-Habit-Overcoming-Procrastination...

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Can you expand on the "Unschedule" bit or link to some reading?

Keeping track of what I've worked on time-wise during a day is something I've attempted many times and it has never taken. Perhaps there is something I am missing.

Unschedule is a reverse psychology trick - a schedule where you fill in the play, not work. Being in the gap between periods of play motivates you to start working. Also, google it.

I have not actually tried Unschedule so I cannot really recommend it but I have read "The Now Habit" and it is the most high-level anti-procrastination book. It goes straight to the root causes of procrastination, IMHO.

That's actually more like the theory behind guilt-free play. With the Unschedule, you mark any completely unavoidable block of time (meetings, meals, sleep etc). Whenever you happened to have done a half-hour of completely focused work, you mark it. This lets you a) spot patterns in when you work best (e.g. I seem to do my most focused work on a Tuesday morning for no apparent reason), and it gets you thinking "It's 2pm, I have a meeting at 3, I could get this small bit of work done".

I would also recommend Getting Things Done; even if you don't subscribe to the entire method, there are bits that gel quite nicely with the Now Habit; the bit about just starting which this article also touches on falls nicely into place with GTD's "next action" workflow.

You can download a summary of the book here (in mobi i.e. Kindle format): http://www.amazon.com/Summary-Strategic-Overcoming-Procrasti....

also can't go wrong with Brian Tracy on such topics

http://www.amazon.com/Eat-That-Frog-Great-Procrastinating/dp...

This is also a basic Getting Things Done principle: do first whatever is currently in front of your head and constantly nags.

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