Serious question incoming.
So my brain has been fucked by instant gratification, I now spend the majority of my time doing pleasure inducing activities. Now I'm ready to change that. I figure rewiring Is the best route. So associating pleasure with positive activities to cut down on procrastination. What are your tips? I'm really at a loss.
>brain
>has been fucked
>rewiring
>rewiring
>brain has been fucked
Soak your brain in urine for a week and you'll be fine
Have a psych degree and work in the field.
You need to make note of the moment when you decide to procrastinate. Start telling yourself that you're wasting your time and your life when you start doing these instant gratification activities over something productive. Other than that, I need more details to be a better help.
By the way, just telling yourself won't work unless you actually take this seriously and realize it's genuinely what you're doing.
Bumping for interest, I'm in the same boat as OP doc. I always procrastinate school work and its causing me to fail... What do
Same thing as hereI suggest beginning with really thinking of how much you're fucking yourself, and reminding yourself every time you switch to procrastination mode. It's a rush of relaxation when you decide to drop the idea of doing something productive in a moment. Realize that and counter with remembering how much you're fucking yourself. Try and use imagery in your mind when reminding yourself as well, for some people it makes a huge difference.
I like my grass and my tobacco. Lets say I want to learn to program, It's within my intellectual grasp but when I work on It I want to go listen to a song, smoke some weed and have a smoke. So I have inadvertently taught my brain when I listen to music I can expect some endorphins to release. Same with video games or other useless activities. I assume using the same methods that got my brain associated with music/endorphins probably Isn't a good way to "rewire" so to speak.
That enough detail?
Sounds like you probably aren't legitimately interested in programming. Probably just interested in the payoff.
Well music and smoking are both pleasurable activities on their own, so you've combined them and started doing that every time you go to learn to program. That's another piece of the procrastination, every time you decide to stop you get
A. the negative reinforcement (yes I'm using this correctly) of taking away a stimulus that is hard work in lieu of relaxation
B. The positive reinforcement of getting high
C. The positive reinforcement of music.
You're basically rewarding yourself for procrastination activity, making it even that much more appealing. You are literally training yourself to procrastinate by accident.
Now, that doesn't mean that smoking weed or listening to music while learning to program is a bad idea or will hinder you. I personally suggest that you just listen to music while you do it, and the weed if you can handle it. Just because you used those pleasurable activities to teach yourself to procrastinate, doesn't mean that you can't learn coding while doing them.
In case I wasn't clear, I do suggest that you stop rewarding yourself when you decide to procrastinate, or at least start by realizing what you're doing there and how it's making your problem worse.
Following the logic of this thread, everybody could become the president of the USA but we are all lazy cunts.
FFS what a bunch of bullshit
No dumbass, nothing I said is even close to that. Op wants to know how to re-wire his brain, I'm giving him the empirically verified method to do that. More importantly, this only works for changing habits of thinking, feeling and behaving. It won't make you more intelligent, if you're a dumbass like you, you will still never be president.
Okay, not OP, but I share his problem.
For MONTHS I have been wanting to set up a consistent schedule of reading, writing, and practicing my guitar. However, the internet is everywhere and I always find myself getting sucked into Youtube or Quora binges. What is the best way to cut out internet use and start building positive habits?
Have you tried focusing on one of those activities at a time to get them to a consistent level? Have you tried making that schedule less intense to start with?
A lot of times when people make a plan to change habits, they get too ambitious, put themselves in a position where they can't change these habits this dramatically, get overwhelmed and give up.
People reading the might have a knee-jerk reaction to say this is laziness, but it's better than never adopting these habits.
Start where you can do those things consistently by either focusing on just one or two instead of all three. OR by just making your proposed schedule less intense. What you want to do is reach the highest frequency of doing these things to the point that it's a consistent habit, then you work your way up.
People often overestimate the speed at which they can change habits. If you can do it all at once, good for you, but since you have this problem it's clear you need a different approach. It's normal.
I do the SAME fucking thing, and its taking everything over and making me fail.
So slowly build it up. hmm. That makes sense. Thanks user.
Once again keep in mind, the reason why people don't change immediately when they want to is because we are creatures of habit. You want to make these behaviors a habit, and you need to start below where you've been previously aiming to begin the act of creating a regular habit.
Yeah, luckily I have gotten better with it to the point where I prioritize school work and studying, but still, I wasted so many hours this semester where I could have been improving myself.
Yup, just start as high as you can while still consistently performing this behavior habitually, and gradually increase the frequency. It's much more in tune with how people actually work. No problem dude.
What would you recommend to begin with?
Ive only gotten worse with school. Whenever I get overwhelmed with school work, I begin to either browse Sup Forums, play minecraft, or watch youtube.
Either focusing on less than all three at the same time, or just doing it as much as you can while still maintaining them as habitual activities. It's different for every person and you need to find your personal spot where you will do it consistently without overwhelming yourself.
There is is, everyone does the same thing. The decision to procrastinate is always paired with the decision to do multiple rewarding activities.
It's training yourself to procrastinate.
How can you break this cycle?
...
OP here, from his logic It seems like pairing the activity you've trained yourself to procrastinate with ( music, youtube, ect ) and a productive activity helps beginner the transition. Or atleast that's what It seems like he's asserting. Kind of like titrating off of drugs.
begin*
Well the key is stopping yourself from being rewarded when making the decision to procrastinate, along with reminding yourself that you're fucking yourself over.
The part about still doing those activities while being productive only applies if that's possible and if it personally works for you. It might help you ease into being productive, but this part really isn't the main point.
In order to re-wire your brain, you need to target the sensations, activities and emotions necessary for training the bad wiring that you've created while simultaneously using your internal monologue and your visual imagination to remind yourself that you're fucking yourself over and need to change what you're doing. It's a multi-faceted approach, otherwise it probably won't work.
Problem is, if I want to start playing guitar more, I can't really incorporate that into a Sup Forums habit.
Honestly, the past couple of days my internet habit has skyrocketed in degree of severity because I've been single for about a month and have tossed my morals and principles to the side and been scouring tinder and craigslist for girls.
Can you give me a concrete example of this in action?
The pairing of the activities you were doing before is not the main point at all, it's a side-note and only applies where it can be feasibly done in the first place.
Okay, so say you have to write a paper today. The first time and everytime after that you get the urge to procrastinate, you need to remind yourself right then and there that you're fucking yourself over if you do this.
Along with that, you need to especially refrain from your reward activities if you do decide to put it off for any amount of time, because you need to make the act of procrastinating less rewarding.
When you remind yourself that you're fucking yourself over with your inner monologue, you should also close your eyes and imagine the scenes where you fail this paper, fail this class, seeing the dissapointed professor's face, arguing with your parents, etc. This visual imagery part doesn't make a difference for some people, but it makes all the difference for others. Depends on you as a person. Either way, try that along with everything else I told you.
This may sound like voodoo but this is the way that people re-wire their brains. It's a series of habits, shaped by rewards and punishment, guided by thought processes/behaviors that are created and shaped through emotions, imagery and words.
I see. So every time I get the urge to procrastinate, just pause, close my eyes, and think about how it is going to fuck me over and how bad I'm going to feel about myself if I indulge that impulse.
Yes absolutely, that's the main part essentially.
The other main part being that you need to fully understand that you have a habit of rewarding yourself with other activities for procrastinating, and make a strong effort to stop doing that. You are literally training yourself to sabotage productive activity.
Also, don't get discouraged when this doesn't work consistently immediately. Mark my words, it will work, you just need to keep doing it until your neural pathways re-wire themselves. You will start to see a real effect soon.
So if I want to put something off, procrastinate it, I ought to do that by just sitting and meditating rather than going on stimulating websites.