Sometimes, brain function is actually to blame for procrastination, and not attitude or perception of the work before you. When I‘d slept too little, or am going through caffeine withdrawal, my procrastination goes through the roof. I‘d just rather sleep than do anything productive then. My anti-procrastination toolkit is:
- Like you said, going for a walk (activates beneficial genes, helps circadian rhythm)
- Stop caffeine as soon and often as you can. Sometimes situations force me to use a pick-me-up, but I try and stop the day after.
- Go to bed early (10PM ideally)
- Vitamin D, Magnesium, etc. also check out near infrared therapy to improve mitochondrial function
- Moderate exercise (overtraining has a bad net effect on nearly everything, so stop if working out makes you feel worse; if you have a heart rate variability monitor, you can use that as a metric for overtraining)
- Small talk (works for me to „wake the brain up“)
But really, 90% of the time I just have to sleep more. The others are just hacks to keep me going if I can’t get enough sleep (sometimes not easy with 2 kids).
- Like you said, going for a walk (activates beneficial genes, helps circadian rhythm)
- Stop caffeine as soon and often as you can. Sometimes situations force me to use a pick-me-up, but I try and stop the day after.
- Go to bed early (10PM ideally)
- Vitamin D, Magnesium, etc. also check out near infrared therapy to improve mitochondrial function
- Moderate exercise (overtraining has a bad net effect on nearly everything, so stop if working out makes you feel worse; if you have a heart rate variability monitor, you can use that as a metric for overtraining)
- Small talk (works for me to „wake the brain up“)
But really, 90% of the time I just have to sleep more. The others are just hacks to keep me going if I can’t get enough sleep (sometimes not easy with 2 kids).