Hmm.... You're not writing long articles on PM just to avoid work, are you? ;-)

I think your issue is shared by many. In my own case, what helps is knowing what my "avoidance behaviors" are. For example, I make short to-do lists (8-10 items) to organize my work. A sure sign of procrastination is that the bottom few lines -- which tend to be less important but easy to do -- get crossed out first. When I see that, I realize I have to muster the energy to go after the top lines. It doesn't always work, but it usually helps.

So I'd say the first step is to become aware of what you do to get an "instant gratification" charge. The second step is to figure out how to change those behaviors. Again in my own case, I think it's fine to sometimes indulge, so I set aside one morning a week (more or less ;-) for fun, small items. It's a lot easier to gather the energy to go after the dreary stuff when I know I'm going to have some fun later1.The trick is to strike a balance that works for you.

Yeah, all of these require some level of determination and will power (or "won't" power). But you already knew that. ;-)

1Hmm... Delayed instant gratification? Is this an oxymoron?

In reply to Re: Programming and Instant Gratification by VSarkiss
in thread Programming and Instant Gratification by Masem

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.