I definitely feel it like an addiction, and I often try to describe it like a drug. I build up this anxiety for a task, in small increments throughout the day. Then, finally, mercifully, at some point, my brain finds a way out. I find something easy to replace the thing I was worried about, or I find a somewhat valid justification for why I can do it tomorrow, and the anxiety just vanishes and I get this hit of dopamine that feels a tiny bit like weed, honestly.
Wow this struck a chord with me, because it's actually exactly how I feel. Finally when I DO decide to start working on the task, often just as midnight hits, I feel like all the buildup and stress gives me a wave of energy to just plow through it no matter what. But it's a horrible way to do things...
> Finally when I DO decide to start working on the task, often just as midnight hits, I feel like all the buildup and stress gives me a wave of energy to just plow through it no matter what.
This speaks to me more closely than I'd like. I've pulled off some admittedly productive all-nighters (where "productive" means that the results satisfied the recipients), but at great personal cost. For years, I've yearned to harness the mental state of procrastination-induced late nights of solitary work.
I'm not a professional, but it sounds like you're adding challenge or pressure to the task at hand to make it more exciting and gratifying.
Unfortunately, a lot of tasks / work are just boring and ungratifying, that's the harsh reality of e.g. software development. Going to e.g. HN and seeing how everyone else is doing something cooler is not helping in that regard.
For me exercise and internet reduction helps to a degree. Daily exercise (like 45min+ with some real sweating). For the weed: It fucks with my short-term memory and once I really understood that, it got boring. However I'm still smoking cigarettes, less so with weed - choose at least one or two shitty addictions is it for me it seems :/
