Lifehacker: When you have a project to work on but just can't get started or make significant progress, it's easy to beat yourself up about it—which also doesn't do much to put you in a go-getter mindset. When you're feeling stuck, you can certainly choose a productivity method that might work better for you, but before you do that, it's a good idea to orient yourself by asking yourself a handful of questions about what you are hoping to accomplish.
9 comments:
I really liked all these tips for getting yourself out of a block situation. I especially like the delete, do, defer, or delegate idea where you really have to prioritize how/if certain tasks need to get done. I am the kind of person who feels the need to always be doing something, and if I’m not doing homework, I find it difficult to relax, because there is a nagging sense that I should be doing something. But I think this article did a good job of pointing out how menial tasks, such as the dishes, or self care, are real tasks that serve a greater purpose in one's life than they seem to at face value. Overall I liked the advice of jotting down ideas of why I feel productive when I do feel productive in order to get myself out of jams that I may find myself in.
I think that the author of this article had a very clever way of framing and juxtaposing motivations with how they affect your productivity. I struggle a lot with productivity along with everybody else in this capitalist machine where we have to optimize each second of the day within a system that provides us with constant distractions to keep us from being bored. I think knowing your motivations for why a task needs to be done is very very very important. This has helped me tough it out and just get things done no matter what. If I don't feel motivated to do an assignment or do not want to, I remember how much it will suck to have to make it up late piled along with the rest of my work. Addressing why I might not want to do something is also really important, and framing the task in a way that makes me want to do it is very important.
This article was very helpful for me because I started off this semester with a very productive mindset, and a clear plan of approach that allowed me to complete all my homework without procrastinating for the first two weeks. However, after that I suddenly had a drop in productivity, and a couple of days passed where I was struggling to complete the simplest of assignments within a reasonable amount of time. It took two weeks to completely regain my work flow and rhythm. As I read this article I realized that I already do some things that are similar to what the article suggests, but until now I haven’t really been able to put a name to them. While I think I was just overworked and finding myself wanting to rest, it is entirely possible that the reasons given in the article were relevant to me. Next time I find myself being constantly unproductive, I will go back to this article and use it as a tool.
These questions are helpful to hear and provide important examples of how we can rethink and reframe our work to be more productive and attempt to finally get started on projects that fall to the side. But, I would add that a prerequisite to these questions is knowing or at least attempting to figure out how you work best and therefore better understanding how you work as a person. Understanding the environment that best serves you, the physical and mental state to be in when working, and certain tactics to help you do work when you don’t entirely want to are key steps to being able to adequately answer the questions provided in the article. While helpful for providing tools for becoming productive again, they are only as helpful as the answers are accurate to what will actually work for you based on your knowledge of yourself.
This article was interesting to me because it caters to something almost everyone has felt at one time or another: lack of motivation. I liked how this article pointed out that this phenomenon can happen for a multitude of different reasons. In addition, their point at the end is about prioritizing what needs to get done made a lot of sense to me because it is something I often find myself unconsciously doing by figuring out what the most urgent thing is. The one thing I would add to this article is taking stock of how much time there is on hand. Sometimes, if I only have an hour at the moment for example, instead of looking at the most pressing thing that needs to get done, I’ll find what I can complete during that time period, that way I know it’s off my plate. This kind of thinking about what I can do right now often helps me get out of the headspace of feeling like there is too much to be done.
This article was interesting and definitely filled with techniques I plan on trying in the future. I always organize my responsibilities by priority and I think it is one of the most helpful ways to tackle everything. It is a lot less intimidating to see 2-3 things to focus on right now, then my whole list of 8-9 things I need to get done today. My philosophy is if after an hour or two, it feels like I have made little to no progress, then that means that task is not getting done right now and I need to spend my time working on something else and then come back to it. When I procrastinate, it’s never by doing nothing. I procrastinate by doing other tasks. If I’m avoiding homework, I start cleaning my room. The only problem I have with this article is it feels a little vague. It says to ask yourself these questions but what then?
Procrastination is something that almost everyone faces but I feel like no one chooses to do anything about it. Being able to ask yourself questions like the ones mentioned in the article becomes a skill within itself because many people including myself will not realize immediately when I'm slipping into bad habits in regards to work completion. But I really liked the advice that was given after you asked the questions. Being able to take it a step further and notice that when looking at activities and work that you're excited to get done many of these steps are subconsciously taken such as breaking it up. Nobody is going to get through a large project without laying out a schedule and breaking up the work but if you can shift your thinking and apply those same skills to something you're less excited to do is key to overcoming procrastination.
I often find myself procrastinating on projects for school. I don’t currently have any strategies that work for this problem even after trying my hardest to get myself motivated. I have found that more often than not the times where I am able to work on a project it is because I have a passion for at least one aspect of the project. I think better questions for me to ask myself are: How can I make this task fun? What am I excited about in terms of this project? The last question is an important one: Is there something more important for me to be doing right now? I find that one of the biggest ways I procrastinate is by ignoring the bigger and scarier projects by doing the smaller and less urgent ones, while they do need to be done this can often cause stress to accumulate surrounding the bigger projects and make it harder for me to work on them. I think it’s important for each person to find something that works for them, be it psychology-based like the questions in the article, or more personally chosen questions like my own.
So, after reading about rim lights, I gotta say, this technique feels like it’s all about creating mood and separating your subject from the background, which is crucial in filmmaking. It's kind of like when you see a character on stage in a play and the lighting shifts just enough to make them look like they’re in a completely different world. That change in lighting isn’t just about being dramatic; it’s about telling you something about who they are or what’s going on in their mind. A rim light does that, too—it highlights your subject, and suddenly they’re not just “there”; they’ve got dimension. I love how it helps you control the tone of a scene, too. Like in film noir, where shadows and light are everything. The use of rim lighting adds that dramatic, almost haunting quality to characters, making them feel more complex or mysterious. It’s the same vibe you might get with a dramatic spotlight in theater that focuses on just one actor, leaving the rest of the stage in darkness.
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