Procrastination

[Tony Flury]

As a hobby developer I am often plagued by my own procrastination. My worst example :

I started developing a game which has been whizzing in my head for years. I got some of it written (enough to get something reasonable on screen), and then realised it was getting complex already, so I started to try to use pydoc - to keep track of the various modulesclasses etc. I hated the screen layouts and colours of pydoc - so, instead of putting up with it, I firstly investigated how to change it to make the colours more palatable, and then I wrote my own - complete with webserver, web page output, and allowing for starting the web server as a daemon. I then realised that I was loosing track of what I had developed and what I hadn't in my game, so I wrote my own requirements tracking system, including supporting decomposition, and finally ready to start work on the game, I sat down and started typing: the player's guide to the game. So after an inital 3 week burst of development on the game, I have not written a line of game code in almost 4 months - although I have written two other fully functional "development support tools", and 20+ pages of documentation :-). My excuse though is that during this period I have been off-ill from work, and my concentration levels have not been what they should be.

What is your worst example of procrastination (i.e. putting something off by doing other things).

[tgalati4]

I have some cracked tile on my back porch that I need to repair. But I engage in something called "creative avoidance"--doing something creative because it is more interesting than fixing broken tile. So I am here, on this forum, anwsering your post.

I read an interesting article on how procrastinators need a stimulus to get moving. "I do my best work under pressure." or "I do my ONLY work under pressure." Deadlines provide that adrenaline rush that is needed to get us procrats to move and get something done. So you have to structure the work and turn it into a game to keep the interest level and stimulus level up. I use the pomodoro technique when I need to focus on a dreadful task. Otherwise I spend time here, on this forum, anwsering your post.

Getting distracted while doing a task (so that the task never gets finished) is part of this stimulus process. So in your case, your distractions helped to build tools that you will use to develop your game. If you ever get around to it.

Perhaps tomorrow, I will fix some tile.

[QIII]

I've been putting off being a grandparent. Younger siblings are doing it. I just can't be bothered.

One of my older brothers will be 60 when his only child graduates from high school.

[King Dude]

I procrastinate working on my 1970 Monte Carlo. That's bad, because the back seat of that car is the only privacy I get with the women I like these days, since my bedroom is currently being remodeled.


I have some cracked tile on my back porch that I need to repair. But I engage in something called "creative avoidance"--doing something creative because it is more interesting than fixing broken tile. So I am here, on this forum, anwsering your post.

I read an interesting article on how procrastinators need a stimulus to get moving. "I do my best work under pressure." or "I do my ONLY work under pressure." Deadlines provide that adrenaline rush that is needed to get us procrats to move and get something done. So you have to structure the work and turn it into a game to keep the interest level and stimulus level up. I use the pomodoro technique when I need to focus on a dreadful task. Otherwise I spend time here, on this forum, anwsering your post.

Getting distracted while doing a task (so that the task never gets finished) is part of this stimulus process. So in your case, your distractions helped to build tools that you will use to develop your game. If you ever get around to it.

Perhaps tomorrow, I will fix some tile.
I feel you. I live in an old house down in Southern California which has a bad foundation, and there's a massive crack down the middle of the tiled floor that just gets bigger and bigger every year. I think I got caught in mother earth's **** or something, and I'm just gonna be consumed by it one of these days.

[PJs Ronin]

I was going to post a response...

[tgalati4]

Yes, I have a crack under my house that developed after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. You can follow it from the street, up the driveway, under the house, and out the back porch. So every few years I have to repair the tile along that crack. The patio was repoured in 1994, but the crack will always be there, and the tile will always need to be repaired. So I'm not really motivated to fix it.

But I do have to get back to work.

[PartisanEntity]

I think ultimately

[Erik1984]

I totally understand. Although you shouldn't feel bad as you made two other well working systems (at least I assume that from reading your story) as procrastination. My problem with hobby development is that I usually am able to get my game into a somewhat working state but never in a presentable state for other people to actually play. What happens then is that I pause development for a while but that 'while' takes forever :P