The Acceleration of Addictiveness vs Willpower, Productivity, and Flow

http://tantek.com/2011/204/b1/accelerating-addictiveness-vs-willpower-productivity-flow

by revorad • 15 years ago

128 29 15 years ago

anukulrm• 15 years ago

Just curious, does anybody know of any studies that supports the OP's claims about willpower? The OP describes it as though willpower were a muscle.

kbd• 15 years ago

Didn't read the OP's link yet, but it sounds like it's talking about this: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/your-money/09shortcuts.htm...

lostmypw3• 15 years ago

If this page doesn't load for someone... just refresh. I've been getting a "page unavailable" response at first, but the link does, in fact, work.

gwern• 15 years ago

There are studies supporting that, yes, but there is also a study or two which seem to say that the muscle model is a self-fulfilling prophecy! It's a complicated area, let us say. See:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/2y2/willpower_not_a_limited_resource...

http://lesswrong.com/lw/1fe/antiakrasia_technique_structured...

http://lesswrong.com/lw/1yn/what_would_you_do_if_blood_gluco... (and all the studies in the comments especially)

http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3/superstimuli_and_the_collapse_of_...

static_cast4• 15 years ago

Hardcore procrastinator here.

Reading good articles like that won't change anything. That's the bitter truth. At least this is the case for me, and probably some other people on the internet.

I'm nowhere near to have myself in full control again but I'm sick of wasting my days and feeling bad over this.

Willpower for me only works when I'm concentrated.

So there is a concentration problem. Being able to concentrate is also a muscle. I'm having a habit of actively avoiding exercising concentration.

Related to programming it's difficult for me:

A problem in my Code appears? I'm starting to Google solutions instead of trying to get a complete understanding of the problem. I'd fool myself into saying: I would look into this but I don't have the time and nobody will pay me for that. Googling and somehow trying to apply the results often works but it gives you an feeling of being unable to create something on it's own.

Then there is this thought: I would like to do something but there are too much people out there that could it better, so why bother trying?

And Instead of spending the days and nights learning and working on something I'm jumping around switching between problems I never fully understood nor am I able to afford the time to understand them...

So it comes down from willpower to concentration and at the moment I'm believing the cause for a lack of these skills is a lack of structure.

Structure for me is planning, planning in advance. Revisiting your plans and having clear ideas about yourself and the surrounding world. So creating structure requires concentration...

It works like a Circulus vitiosus in both ways. If you are structured for a longer time you're concentration and willpower will go up. If you lack concentration your structure get's weaker and concentration will fall, procrastination will rise.

How to solve this problem? Honest question.

(Sorry for hijacking this thread, but I think it is somewhat relevant to productivity and flow to sort these things out)

hammock• 15 years ago

Nothing wrong with googling solutions to code...or is there?

static_cast4• 15 years ago

No I think there isn't. It is effective and often there is probably no other even mildly realistic way to solve some problem in time (e.g. a bug that is reported in the software bug-tracker)

I missed to make a concise point with that (concentration anyone?) It's more like 'Googling for a solution' became my default behaviour in most parts of my life. Be it education, food, advice... I think this is dangerous at least for me.

sliverstorm2• 15 years ago

A problem in my Code appears? I'm starting to Google solutions instead of trying to get a complete understanding of the problem.

The insidious thing about this is just how effective it is (if you are good at it)

Then there is this thought: I would like to do something but there are too much people out there that could it better, so why bother trying?

I have my own version of this demon. Everything I can think of to do, I know has been done before, and done better. This knowledge, combined with my need to make things that are new or better, is a terrible roadblock to me.

static_cast4• 15 years ago

> The insidious thing about this is just how effective it is (if you are good at it)

Yes, but not if you want to learn something. Then it is disastrous because you skip the "actually solving something" part.

skybrian• 15 years ago

There are two things I've tried that work:

  - programming the router to block all traffic when it's time to go to bed.
  - installing Chrome nanny and blocking social sites in the morning.

I can disable them, but it takes enough effort that I don't. (And I remember that I don't want to.)

These aren't full solutions, but I go to bed earlier and start work earlier.

Mz• 15 years ago

How to solve this problem? Honest question.

Honest answer: Consider the possibility that you may have a hidden health issue. Look into that angle. Addressing my own health issues has been the single biggest boost to my productivity, ability to concentrate and ability to stop being a serious hardcore procrastinator. If you simply lack physical energy and ability to concentrate, willpower is not going to overcome it.

Best of luck, whatever the answer turns out to be for you.

lostmypw3• 15 years ago

    Talking about stuff like this is bound to sound esoteric, I think. So
    I want to put this disclaimer upfront that I detest esotericism.

    I can only assume that your problems are similar to mine, so I can
    only suggest what works for me. And that might not completely work out
    for you in the end, but it's worth a try for sure.

    Concentration: The problem of not being able to keep distracting
    thoughts away can be lessened with meditation. I came across this
    suggestion in the book Pragmatic Thinking and Learning [1] and have
    found an excellent CD to listen to called Guided Mindfulness
    Meditation [2] by Jon Kabat-Zinn.

    I tend to try to avoid meditation because for a while I seem to do
    fine and so long as I do fine it just feels like a waste of time for
    me. Time that I could invest reading a book. But eventually I always
    end up having an extreme amount of distracting thoughts to the point
    that I cannot learn anymore. I've now had this problem crop up often
    enough with meditation always helping that I'm now a lot more willing
    to spend the time and meditate. I want to emphasize that for *me* it
    was necessary to get to the dead end and suffer from it to become
    willing to change something. Maybe you can relate.

    Structure: Well well, the way you write it sounds a little bit rigid
    to me. I tightened up imagining all that structure you strive for and
    I'm thinking you should relax a little bit. Or at least I should (and
    do). So maybe we are different in this regard.

    I do think you should lay back a bit and think about what really
    interests you deep down in your heart. I assume you've been working
    too much on hopelessly boring stuff, because with that I can relate
    again. I've been working a little bit on a little server in erlang but
    somehow at some point I couldn't bring myself to working further on
    it. Well I could, but all the time I felt something was wrong.

    As I'm happy to learn interesting programming languages and have heard
    all the hype about lisp for so long (I'm looking at you, pg) I finally
    gave in and started reading Practical Common Lisp [3] and now
    Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming [4] and what can I
    say. I see now that what disappoints me in erlang but also in other
    languages is having forced upon me one paradigm and/or a rigid set of
    rules. In the case of erlang that might be perfectly fine as the
    language can make certain guarantees that way. I've realized though
    that I would much rather enjoy the lisp-ish freedom while molding a
    solution. So this is my story of disappointment and fresh wind.

    One quick addition in the end: In an xkcd comic [5] there is a
    description of a solution (see the alt-text of the image) that delays
    access to certain websites (like reddit, hn for me) but does not block
    them completely. It just delays the access (-- more discussion on the
    xkcd blog [6]). This serves the purpose of destroying the notion of
    instant reward these stupid little bits of new information might give
    you, however irrelevant they may be. I've found this to be helpful for
    me because sometimes in the past I've procrastinated the hell out of
    the day. I got fed up with repeatedly spending hours with unproductive
    stuff and feeling sorry for the time in the end. See the pattern? I
    needed to run into this problem several times before I decided that I
    have to change something. I don't want to make some point here. I just
    find this pattern interesting.

    What I have done is I have taken an existing little chrome extension
    called delaybot which by default only delays for rand(1.5) seconds and
    changed the delay to 30 secs. This has worked wonders in the
    beginning. I say in the beginning because I've now disabled the
    extension as it is getting in my way now. No, this is not the
    procrastinator disabling a helpful little tool. :-) I've found that
    since I've picked up meditation again I didn't run into this problem
    anymore anyways. I also tend to just bookmark away a lot of actually
    interesting discussions to read them later, which of course I never
    do. I do this bookmarking and closing of tabs because I tend to
    accumulate too many tabs easily otherwise.

    Not all is great though, the article made me realise that I'm a little
    bit too hard with myself when I'm excerting will-power. I try to go
    through the mentioned lisp books fast (as there are more to come
    still) and at some point I notice that I can't bring myself to read a
    lot more at that point. To me this looks similar to the cookie
    experiment where a group of people is less productive after excerting
    will power in a previous task.

    So, to conclude: Even if not all is roses I can say with certainty
    that meditation is the single most helpful tool to increase my
    productivity. It changes me from being helpless to being more in
    control of what I'd like to do with my time.

    Regarding your lack of passion: Man, search your feelings. If you find
    something that really interests you, you probably wouldn't think much
    about what other people could do better than you. That AI book [4] I'm
    reading? It features ancient techniques at the point where I am right
    now but it's still a great read and I'm learning a heck of a
    lot. That's what keeps me going. Also, lisp.

    Phew, that was long.
    I would love to hear feedback. :-)

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Thinking-Learning-Refactor-P...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Guided-Mindfulness-Meditation-Jon-Kaba...

[3] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

[4] http://www.amazon.com/Paradigms-Artificial-Intelligence-Prog...

[5] http://xkcd.com/862/

[6] http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-corre...

EDIT: I've changed the formatting because it renders with long lines otherwise.

maigret• 15 years ago

Sorry to answer on the most superficial aspect and last line of your post... But I wonder why PG's site is so thin in width, making it extremely well readable, while HN uses the whole screen width? I consider the whole screen text use a UI anti pattern.

static_cast4• 15 years ago

Thanks for your great reply. I've looked into mediation and I should start now doing it. Nice to hear that it helps you.

I really guess I have to look after my feelings. Something went wrong along the way and now I'm struggling.

wslh• 15 years ago

I am not so pesimistic about youself, probably because I am I and not you :-)

I think hack is a good word for that, but many mental hacks don't work. So here are my suggestions:

- How you work with other person? how about pair programming or pair <something> ? may be being a lonely developer is not the answer.

- How do you imagine a small team that leverage your strengths and take charge of your weaknesses? can you progress in that environment?

jamesteow• 15 years ago

I suffer the same thing.

I wonder if it's just finding the right project to code.

astrofinch• 15 years ago

Set an alarm (on your watch, or whatever) to go off every evening. When it goes off, spend a few hours planning the next day. When you wake up the next day, follow your plan.

Worked great for me. Gradually, my personality changed and I didn't need to do it any more.

keeptrying• 15 years ago

I really think the effect of our environment on our behavior is very underestimated. The longer you've spent in one place, the harder it is to change your behavior when your there. And I mean physical places.

That's why it's so difficult to work on your home computer if your used to surfing the net or gaming there.

And that's why travel helps. Each time you travel, you get the opportunity to change and you usually do.

I think willpower is overrated - change your environment - and that includes the people you work with - and you'll make progress. Sitting in the same room with the same people, is making it harder on yourself than you realize.

awakeasleep• 15 years ago

Terrific Article-- thanks for writing.

We've found similar 'rules' while attempting to direct our lives. About a year ago the futility of defining negative goals ("Don't smoke, don't waste time online") became clear to me— but I saw more to it than the notion that saying "Don't X" makes you think of X. I thought it also has to do with the fact that behaviors are in our lives because they serve a purpose, and removing certain behaviors without addressing the needs they filled leaves ya unbalanced. Going on walks, like you linked from the article, really works for me.

About that time, there was a slideshow on here covering effective ways to change your behavior & the role of willpower when you're doing it. The main points of the presentation were: 1) willpower is limited, and 2) changing our environment makes the most difference when altering our behaviors. Here is my summary:

1. Willpower alone isn't sufficient motivation for long term change. - Know that willpower won't sustain a long term change by itself, although it can get you started.

2. Attempt Baby Steps, not Big Leaps - Seek tiny successes and tiny changes. Then build on what you've done with another step

3. Notice how the environment shapes your behavior - Changing the context of your life helps sustain long term changes in your behavior

4. Focus on creating new behaviors, not stopping old ones. - Focus on action, not avoidance.

5. Failures don't necessarily indicate a lack of motivation - More like a failure of planning. Find a way to make the behavior easier to do

6. Recognize and understand the power of triggers. - No behavior happens without a trigger. Find ways to remove or alter triggers in your environment

7. Information alone doesn't lead to action - Our environment needs to be set up in a way that helps us capitalize on that information

8. Focus on concrete behaviors rather than abstract goals - Abstract: Get in shape. Concrete: Walk 15 min. today. Turn your abstract goal into a series of baby steps.

9. Try to change a behavior for a short time, rather than forever - A fixed period works better than "forever"

10. Remember, behavior change need not be difficult. - Behavior change can be relatively easy when you take many steps to increase the probability that your desired behavior will occur.

billswift• 15 years ago

>Willpower alone isn't sufficient motivation for long term change. - Know that willpower won't sustain a long term change by itself, although it can get you started.

The most important motivation for long-term change is to have a goal. Enthusiasm for that goal is what will get you started. Willpower is for powering through the (hopefully brief) periods where your enthusiasm and your focus on your goal falter. All three are necessary for sustained achievement.

>Failures don't necessarily indicate a lack of motivation - More like a failure of planning.

The big benefits of planning is to clarify your goal and then provide path for reaching it that will help you maintain your focus on the goal.

ruang• 15 years ago

I take advantage of my addictiveness to getting things done by planning out the next 5 steps so I don't get distracted by new tasks.

zipdog• 15 years ago

Great article, although I wonder about the assertion that willpower is a solo thing. Surely social pressures act as motivating forces on our will to do things - for instance if we tell a few friends that we'd going to run a marathon then we'll be more likely to train for it. Or even better, if we agree to meet a friend at the gym at 7 then we're much more likely to get ourselves to the gym than if we just write "gym at 7" in a to do list.

But perhaps this only applies to initial motivators and isn't enough for focus (sustained motivation to concentrate on a task)

jberryman• 15 years ago

Haven't finished the article yet, but the bit about framing reminds me of a core principal of Alexander Technique which is to forget about introspection and judging your position and movements (primarily because these judgements are often incorrect) and instead to give your body the directions that you learn from your teacher.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_technique

It's really something I believe in if anyone is struggling with pain or tension.

bcl• 15 years ago

Excellent article! Much better than the normal post we see about focus or procrastination. But now I have something like 10 more tabs open and a couple of book I'm probably going to be buying... Thanks!

olliesaunders• 15 years ago

I don’t agree with this willpower is a muscle hypothesis. Relying on willpower is a mistake. Willpower should be the force that begins a commitment to a new thing. After that you want to use other forces to keep you going. And you don’t need to be worried that this minimal usage of willpower will reduce your overall ability to have willpower because the thing that really builds willpower—much more than just blindly exerting it—is being successful.

What I’m essentially saying here is that addiction itself is not the enemy. You just have to pick the right addictions. Get addicted to the process of making long-term changes in your life, improving yourself, and doing what ever it is you truly want to do.

The problem with willpower is that exerting it is exhausting and one day you might not have enough energy to exert it and then, because you’re relying on it, you’ll slip and feel crap about yourself. You may wonder why you even bothered. The author does suggest at least one good alternative: change you environment to avoid temptations. Other good ideas are:

* Repeatedly remind yourself of why you are doing this difficult thing. Write down the reasons and make a point of reading them once a day

* Tell lots of other people about it so that it is embarrassing if you quit

* Make a step-by-step plan with each step being well-defined, easily achievable, and time-boxed. If this sounds like too much BDUF (Big Design Up Front)—I’ve started to hate planning because so often the plans need to change—then only plan up a couple of steps in advance

* Celebrate your successes: document each achievement you make toward your goal: even if it’s just ticking things off your step-by-step plan, have a physical action you perform that represents “Yes, I did it.”

* If behavior change is your thing, tie your behavior change to specific real-world triggers. For instance you can use walking through doors as a trigger to become aware of your posture. This can be difficult because often the triggers don’t exist: the last example does little to help a person who spends consecutive hours programming. But you can create your own triggers with timers, alarm clocks, software that makes use of accelerometers, or simply leave things out and open in your environment or tie bits of string to your finger etc.

* If you’re actively trying to avoid something, come up with something else to replace it. Particularly good is switching from one bad habit that uses up no limited resources to another that does. For instance if you want to stop biting your fingernails, which you can do pretty much anytime, you could take up chewing gum instead. The advantage to doing this is that once you habitually chew gum instead of biting your fingernails you can just stop buying gum.

(A lot of this advice comes from a book called 59 Seconds that has a section on motivation. All of it is based by scientific studies.)

flocial• 15 years ago

The only time I ever feel productive is when I develop a full-on obsession to do something and improve at it. Other times it's the feeling of being part of a greater force for the better. Then I start cruising and here I am.

Cardiovascular exercise is one helluva drug but my experience tells me it's effects on behavior are pretty domain specific (although there is a lot of research on how it will enhance mental functions and executive brain functions). It clears my head like nothing else but the spillover into the other aspects of my life isn't that dramatic.

yesbutno• 15 years ago

Great article apart from the plug for Apple - I wish it was possible to get away from hearing about them :)

The Acceleration of Addictiveness vs Willpower, Productivity, and Flow

Related Stories