Boredom and procrastination

I can only manage to study hard for two weeks, then I start to get bored and everything around me seems like bullsoykaf and useless then I masturbate and do a whole lot of drugs, it goes for a week or two then I start to get sober and start realizing that I could have accomplish so much. This is like an infinite loop from past 10-12 years. I don't know how to tackle this I have already read different books even holy books to grow my willpower but it last for two to three weeks max. It's not like I've nothing to do or I don't have any hobbies. I love playing video games, chess for good 1-2 hours, drawing and watching animes, etc but whenever I start to face difficult situation or phase like building something or going nowhere with my project it starts to kill me and my inner daemons start fantasizing about that one chick from porn or if I have magical powers I would have changed this fuarrrking world...kek. How do you guys tackle this problem?

All these self help books and motivational speakers spread a bullsoykaf myth: that motivation can be sustained. NO ONE IS MOTIVATED 100% OF THE TIME. Motivation fades and isn't reliable at all, especially if you have depression or something like it. From my experience, if you never learned a "work ethic" from a young age then you're pretty much fuarrrked, and you'll never be able to not procrastinate. So far I have found two solutions: Build habits instead of relying on "motivation" that doesn't exist, and make it so your procrastination is productive. For example, if you want to start learning guitar but you have no motivation to practice, start by just trying to pick up the guitar every day. I don't mean play it, I mean literally pick it up. Chances are, a lot of the time you will think "I might as well play for a bit", but also there will be times when you just put it back down again. That's okay completely. Slowly, over months or years, picking up the guitar will be so normal to you, that you'll start making new habits naturally as a consequence. "I'm gonna practice one scale every day", then "I'm gonna learn a song every day", "I'm gonna write a song every day" etc etc, in a few years time you will be a great guitar player all because you just picked it up. Another tip is to remove as many barriers between you and the thing you want to learn as possible. To use the guitar example again, have it on a stand out of the case near where you usually sit so you don't even have to move to use it. I'm learning to draw now, so I have all my pencils and my notepad right next to me always in the corner of my eye so it's so easy to pick it up, as soon as I have even the slightest urge to draw it's right there for me. Since you use drugs, there's a common thing that I think "I'm too high to be productive", but that's not true. If you can make something that's just OK while you're high as fuarrrk, then doing it sober will be even easier! It's like athletes doing altitude training. Real life isn't an anime, we aren't superhumans who can train every day from motivation alone. People who do train like that do it because they enjoy the act of doing it, regardless of the outcome. So find something you actually enjoy studying or doing, don't give a fuarrrk if it's not profitable or practical just do what you enjoy. "do a job you love, and you'll never work a day in your life" You like anime? Start a blog, start a youtube channel about it, resell merch, make your own merch, make fan art, write doujins, study the history of anime production, find other people who also like that! You like drugs? Write trip reports for erowid, review DNM vendors, research into testing kits, research the biochemistry of how they work! You like chess? Really see how good you can get, push yourself, you will feel good when you see yourself improving, join a club or whatever chess people do, try and play at least one game every day for example. Final two tips: surround yourself with people who will encourage you to make positive decisions, in meatspace and in the Wired. learn about meditation and mindfulness. It might not be for you and that's fine, but give it a shot I think you might like it. Good luck lain.

>>6658 This is good advice. Personally if I don't want to do something I try to be productive as well. Go to the gym read 2600 or some other book I have watch tv ive been meaning to. Also its fine to have like a day where you do nothing probably not a whole week but if you do nothing all day then that's cool. Lastly I get high. It sounds weird but if I'm just sitting around bored not wanting to do anything I get high then I kinda know what I want to do or I start something and I'll zone out till I know what I want to do. This also means I hold my sketch book or some book I'm reading in my hands so it helps to build that habit to just interact with something

>>6658 I've been unintentionally doing exactly that with the guitar. My room is too small to store my guitars anywhere, so I have three guitars sitting out all the time. Usually on my bed, by my computer, or beside/in-front-of a door. I have to pick them up to maneuver around my room, and, sure enough, every time I pick them up to move them I have to play something. Usually I'll just play a riff or finger exercise for whatever song or technique I'm working on, but sometimes it evolves into a 12-hour "write-record-tweak" process. The barriers idea is also in effect here. I use Windows for recording because some of the VSTs myself and the people I collaborate with use don't run under Wine, but when I'm not recording, I'm running Linux, and the burden of booting into Windows keeps me from recording a lot more than I'd like to admit. >>6656 Accountability and deadlines. It helps me a lot if there is a strong deadline from an authority figure that I'm accountable to, but you don't get this much outside of work and university. I'll impose personal deadlines, but have to make an effort to meet it. If it's just an arbitrary deadline, "Ah, I'll just do it tomorrow," is too easy to succumb to. Making meaningful deadlines helps, e.g. "This has to be done by ___ so I can have enough time for ___." Telling other people you'll have your project done by the personal deadline helps, too.

>>6658 Thank You, senpai. This is exactly what I am talking about. Though I want to point something, I was heavily bullied at my junior school and sometimes I would get beaten up because of my shy nature. I remember reading Orison Swett Marden Book that my dad bought for me. I got so pumped up reading that book, I ended up fighting for a good 10 minutes alone with those guys the other day...thinking about this makes me chuckle. I think sometimes these books can help if you're going through some serious depression.

>>6669 >Accountability and deadlines. How do you deal with "Umm, I made this deadline for my project I can make another one"? Because it happens to me all the time. I guess I've implement >>6658 for now.

>>6679 It's a hard thing to do and I can't stop myself from doing that all the time, but like >>6658 said, nobody is motivated 100% of the time. To help, I'll line it up with other deadlines I have to meet, so that I know if I don't get it done on the deadline I wont be able to work on it for a while. That also allows me to more responsibly change personal deadlines if I don't want to work on the personal project, because I can work on the project I need to have done, finish it early and basically swap the deadlines. Involving other people in the project also helps a lot. Wanna learn guitar? Start a band. Writing a program? Get a friend to get involved, too, or throw it on GitHub and post it somewhere. Exercise? Work out partner. It helps me because I don't want to be rude by not pulling my weight and I feel like have a commitment.

>>6656 Having a dedicated work area away from distractions is a common technique. If it's somewhere public then that's even better. It might just be me but I find it impossible to procrastinate in a library.

>>6708 Probably because the library closes at some hour, or there's a bus schedule at the back of your mind. Some external framework anyway that is telling you, time is limited.

>>6709 I'm not >>6708 but my library is 24/7 and going there to get work done still helps me immensely. Even thought it sometimes ends up with me leaving the library at 5am

>>6709 >Some external framework anyway that is telling you, time is limited. I think more about people watching me and how embarrassing it would be to be caught goofing off but I guess that makes sense too.

Having somebody I want to please instruct me to do something works for me. I wanted to stop pulling all-nighters this year, so I told my girlfriend to remind me to be asleep by ~2AM. I'm not there yet, but I'm consistently getting to bed before 5. It's an improvement, and it takes a long time to change these bad patterns I've reinforced in myself, so I'm tempering my desire for instant improvement with self-forgiveness. I'm just a silly hairless ape who's doing his best. I tried going to the gym with a friend, but he has a lot more drive than he has maturity. Doesn't know when to stop pushing, doesn't know proper lifting techniques, that sort of thing. So I started going with my dad, and things are better so far. He knows what he's doing, and seeing somebody I share half my genes with lift 36kg dumbbells is great inspiration. He encourages me without acting like a dudebro, and I'm already feeling slight improvements in my muscle mass, energy level, and sleep quality after about a week. I guess what I'm saying is find the people who care about you and want you to improve and let them help, and then do something that gives you consistent feedback. I find a carrot works better than a stick because I'm stubborn and I tend to accept negative outcomes if it means I can be a lazy cunt.

>>6732 I've been training for years with my dad and he is the best gym buddy I ever had. I feel you so much about sleep patterns. I can try so hard and manage to sleep every night at 12 and wake up at 7 and then it just takes two or three days for me to relapse sleeping at dawn and waking up at afternoon. The thing is that when I manage to sleep well I feel so energetic and balanced. I don't really know if the sleep thing is a placebo. I don't need to wake up early since I don't intend to ever work 9-5, so maybe I just need to make peace with my sleeping habits and try to regain my energy. I'm not really sure about this though, since sleeping well is giving me a sense of stability.

>>6761 >don't ever intend to work 9-5 How are you planning to manage this? And can you teach me the secret?

>>6756 find a safe space elsewhere or contribute to the thread, autismo. >>6761 Sleep patterns are fragile things, it seems. I do best when my day roughly lines up with the sun, so my plan is to try doing all the things I normally do late at night as part of a morning routine instead. I don't know if you're like me and depend on lining up with the usual day/night cycle to feel well, but it's something to think about. Either way you're right about sleeping and waking up at the same time, whenever you choose to do it it's still better to do it regularly than erratically. I let a friend of mine who can get by on 4hr/night disrupt my schedule every so often because it's easiest for us to meet in the late evening, but I'm thinking of telling him we need to allow for enough time to be done by midnight. I get headaches when I don't sleep right and I'm ready to put this bad habit behind me. Good luck in your efforts lainon

>>6765 P A R T TIME JOB

>>6656 I don't I do the same thing, I hate my cycle but this soykaf gotta end.

>>6668 >2600 dont you mean 2666? Is this a good book?

>>9508 not him, but I think he is talking about the hacker quarterly

>>9508 >dont you mean 2666? Is this a good book? It's a cyberpunk imageboard, obviously he meant the obscure spanish /lit/user crap with a similar name and not the hacker magazine actually called 2600.

>>9508 it would be better if he was.