#160: Instant Gratification Monkey, 10-Minute Rule & Yak Shaving
3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on How to Stop Procrastination
👉 I’ve put together a bonus mini-essay on the dangers of conflating correlation & causation. It features a clever cartoon, misleading data and the secret to making more money. Now available for all Patreon members.
I. Instant Gratification Monkey
What causes people to throw themselves into productivity limbo by perpetually postponing the task at hand? Writer and stick-figure artist Tim Urban blames his Instant Gratification Monkey.
It seems the Rational Decision-Maker in the procrastinator’s brain is coexisting with a pet — the Instant Gratification Monkey.
This would be fine — cute, even — if the Rational Decision-Maker knew the first thing about how to own a monkey. But unfortunately, it wasn’t a part of his training and he’s left completely helpless as the monkey makes it impossible for him to do his job.
The fact is, the Instant Gratification Monkey is the last creature who should be in charge of decisions — he thinks only about the present, ignoring lessons from the past and disregarding the future altogether, and he concerns himself entirely with maximizing the ease and pleasure of the current moment.
—Tim Urban, Why Procrastinators Procrastinate
II. 10-Minute Rule
The 10-Minute Rule is a life hack meant to stop procrastination. Author Amy Morin explains how and why it works:
Simply tell yourself, “I'm going to do this for 10 minutes. Once I get to the 10-minute mark, I'll decide whether to keep going.” Nine times out of ten, you'll decide to keep going long past the 10 minutes. […]
Since science says dread is the most difficult emotion to tolerate, eliminating dread could be the key to performing at your best. So rather than waste time immersed in dread, the 10-minute rule will help you dive into a task right away.
The other reason the 10-minute rule works is because it helps drown out those exaggeratedly negative thoughts.
When you don't want to do something, you likely build it up in your mind to be worse than it really is. Perhaps you imagine yourself being too tired to work out. Or maybe you make catastrophic predictions about how frustrated you'll feel when you try to do your taxes. Those thoughts influence your behavior and cause you to keep procrastinating.
The 10-minute rule challenges those thoughts head-on. And there's a good chance once you get started, you'll be able to keep going.
—Amy Morin, Want to Stop Procrastinating?
III. Yak Shaving
The term Yak Shaving was coined by MIT software engineer Carlin Vieri in 1990. He was inspired by the animated series The Ren & Stimpy Show. His colleague Jeremy H. Brown explained the concept in an email to researchers at the MIT AI Lab:
Yak shaving is what you are doing when you’re doing some stupid, fiddly little task that bears no obvious relationship to what you’re supposed to be working on, but yet a chain of twelve causal relations links what you’re doing to the original meta-task.
Yak Shaving has its advantages. You could justify taking a business trip to sunny Hawaii as long as it will remotely benefit your work. Unfortunately, Yak Shaving can also lead you down the path of procrastination. When you pursue a big goal and lose yourself in increasingly trivial tasks.
The good news is that you can beat procrastination with reverse Yak Shaving. Start with trivial micro-routines, preferably some that are still remotely connected to your actual goal. Then work your way up towards your main task.
If this idea intrigues you (or you just want to procrastinate at work) check out my updated essay on Yak Shaving. 🐘
Have a great week,
Chris
themindcollection.com