<story><title>How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go</title><url>http://zenhabits.net/leggo/?utm_content=buffer5f9b3&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jun8</author><text>You may want to not waste time reading this but instead use that time to read pg&amp;#x27;s essay on similar ideas, &amp;quot;How to Do What You Love&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://paulgraham.com/love.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;paulgraham.com&amp;#x2F;love.html&lt;/a&gt;), which, if I had the power, I would have millions of copies printed and have every kid in the world read it. It explains (at least) two simple ideas very effectively:&lt;p&gt;1. The work versus fun dichotomy is taught very early:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn&amp;#x27;t—for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;2. To compare two activities, you have to compare the area under their utility&amp;#x2F;fun vs. time curves.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn&amp;#x27;t mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.&lt;p&gt;Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vidarh</author><text>&amp;gt; Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Nonsense. This in itself is a result of falling prey to what Leo Baubata (the author of the linked article) writes about: Inability to &amp;quot;let go&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;There may certainly be things you&amp;#x27;d find more fulfilling. But if you &lt;i&gt;need&lt;/i&gt; to do stuff to be happy, you are letting yourself suffer from attachments to things that more the most part are relatively inconsequential.&lt;p&gt;PG&amp;#x27;s essay suffers from this assumption that happiness is tied to achievements.&lt;p&gt;I used to think that too. The problem with that line of thinking is that it often leads to putting the shutters on and focusing on getting stuff done to get your happiness from it eventually, while ignoring all the sources of happiness around you. Further, that makes procrastination worse, in my experience: It creates guilt that you&amp;#x27;re picking the short term pleasures instead of doing the stuff you&amp;#x27;re sure will make you fabulously happy later, once you&amp;#x27;ve just achieved something.&lt;p&gt;These days, I still get stuff done - more than ever, in fact -, but I might suddenly stop during my commute and look up at the clouds and enjoy the sight, or just close my eyes for 10 seconds and enjoy the calm, and I&amp;#x27;m happy whether or not I&amp;#x27;m doing anything. The two are not related. If you can&amp;#x27;t be happy even while doing the dishes, or fighting your way onto a commuter train, or carrying out some mind-numbingly boring menial work, you&amp;#x27;re missing out.</text></comment>
<story><title>How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, and Love Letting Go</title><url>http://zenhabits.net/leggo/?utm_content=buffer5f9b3&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Jun8</author><text>You may want to not waste time reading this but instead use that time to read pg&amp;#x27;s essay on similar ideas, &amp;quot;How to Do What You Love&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://paulgraham.com/love.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;paulgraham.com&amp;#x2F;love.html&lt;/a&gt;), which, if I had the power, I would have millions of copies printed and have every kid in the world read it. It explains (at least) two simple ideas very effectively:&lt;p&gt;1. The work versus fun dichotomy is taught very early:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn&amp;#x27;t—for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;2. To compare two activities, you have to compare the area under their utility&amp;#x2F;fun vs. time curves.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment, float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn&amp;#x27;t mean, do what will make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over some longer period, like a week or a month.&lt;p&gt;Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crististm</author><text>Actually, reading any article about conquering procrastination is better than doing actual work :)&lt;p&gt;(but this article is good and short and it reminded me that your focus should be not on the immediate but on the long term)</text></comment>