>I do tasks on three timescales: they either get done immediately, after a shamefully massive delay, or not at all. There’s little in-between.
To anyone relating: that's an ADHD symptom.
It falls under the umbrella of Executive Dysfunction[1].
I have been beating myself up for it all my life, and turns out there are many things that work differently for people with ADHD - and many things that help (from medication[2] to social techniques, like body doubling[3]).
Here's how ADHD looks for me: https://romankogan.net/adhd/ -- if you find yourself scrolling and nodding, maybe get it checked it out, OK?
I wouldn't so quickly jump to "that's an ADHD symptom". I know many people inarguably not ADHD who exhibit similar task timescales.
I don't want to discount the fact that this can be a hallmark symptom of ADHD for those that truly have/are ADHD. However, some part of this reaction is over-pathologization.
It's increasingly accepted that ADHD is over-diagnosed [1] [2] [3], and I feel that this task timescale concept accounts for part of that.
>I wouldn't so quickly jump to "that's an ADHD symptom". I know many people inarguably not ADHD who exhibit similar task timescales.
Well that's exactly the difference between a symptom and a diagnosis.
ADHD has overlap with other conditions, and any one symptom/trait is insufficient to say "it's ADHD". Executive Dysfunction can also be a symptom of ASD, anxiety disorders, burnout, etc.
One needs to relate to many symptoms/traits to make any conclusions. The links I posted are a PSA to raise awareness.
>It's increasingly accepted that ADHD is over-diagnosed
I have been diagnosed last year, aged 34. ADHD may be over-diagnosed in some groups, but it is most certainly under-diagnosed in others (particularly, women with inattentive type ADHD)[1].
Looking at your third link about diagnosis in adults (which I think is most relevant to the discussion here), it provides a good overview of why overdiagnosis would be bad and how to potentially avoid it, but it doesn't actually try to answer the question Is Adult Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Being Overdiagnosed? I think it's fair to use this paper as evidence that some psychiatrists are concerned that overdiagnosis may be happening, but not as evidence that it actually is happening.
I know dozens of people in my life that exhibit most or all of the symptoms described in one of the parent's links, but I wouldn't diagnose them with anything more serious than 'parenthood'.
My executive function fluctuates with my anxiety and stress levels, and it's also well-recorded that poverty/chronic stress do pretty terrible things to executive function. I'd guess that 'being on 24/7 to make sure the little humans don't die' could produce similar results, particularly given the sleep deprivation. Just a constant focus on the 'now' and immediate dangers/issues vs. planning and the future.
It's definitely a sign of executive dysfunction, but executive dysfunction has causes that aren't ADHD. My executive function fluctuates with my anxiety, for example, and my MS has blown a giant hole in it.
I feel like the "after a shamefully massive delay" is a distinguishing factor for executive dysfunction caused by ADHD.
With other conditions, people seem to be at least capable of giving up on tasks that they have put aside for years. Not so with ADHD.
It took me 11 years to mail a package[1] one time, and I wish I was saying this figuratively.
The distinguishing thing here is that I did mail that gift to my friend after planning to get to it Real Soon Now™ year after year.
The mind-blowing part was sharing this experience in an ADHD group, and having dozens of people share the same exact story of taking years to mail a personal gift, feeling more shameful about it as time goes by.
A friend of mine asked me if it's still OK to mail a gift intended for a 2-year old 3 years after the birthday the gift was made for.
That was last year. She didn't mail it, and of course she still has it. That's quite ADHD.
Do you know of any research testing whether ADHD can increase when people are required to focus on one thing (like a computer) or stay in one place (like a desk) all day?
I've always wondered if there could be an environmental link to the situation people have to operate in, and certain mental pathologies.
I'm not usually someone to complain about a comment or opinion, but this conflicts so much with my experience that I feel compelled to respond. I was diagnosed about 1.5 years ago, in my 30's.
I would argue that yes, "that's an ADHD symptom". One symptom does not make a diagnosis, but if you recognize yourself definitely do your research and consult a professional. Especially for the many people you know who show similar behaviour.
It took me a long time to convince myself I might have ADHD, and during and even after the diagnosis I still had my doubts. Looking back, it was incredibly obvious if you recognize the symptoms. I'm still amazed I got this far in life without professional help, no doubt largely due to my supportive environment.
I would _strongly_ argue that it is not accepted that ADHD is overdiagnosed.
I've done a quick read through of the studies you linked, imho none of them actually support the claim of overdiagnosis.
[1] "Overdiagnosis is defined here as occurring when a person is clinically diagnosed with a condition, but the net effect of the diagnosis is unfavorable. Misdiagnosis (when a child is incorrectly labeled with an ADHD diagnosis instead of an alternative condition) and false-positive diagnosis (when a subsequent clinical encounter reveals a wrong initial diagnosis) are not the focus of this article."
Unfavorable here is:
- medication can have side effects
- it might be used as an excuse to stop trying/caring
- there's a social stigma
[2] This metastudy is about mental disorders in general, mostly referencing studies before 2000. The only study supporting the overdiagnosed claim is a german 2012 study;
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22201328/. They sent case vignettes to 1000 psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers. For the case vignettes which matched several (but not all) ADHD criteria (DSM-IV), 16,7% gave a diagnosis, and 2x more often for boys vs girls.
This proves that the therapists did not strictly followed the criteria, but does that mean that they were wrong? This is no simple blood test. They're asking someone to give a diagnosis based on a 3rd party report of a patient.
I remember in my case there was a computerized quiz with easy answers and long artificial delays, to test if you can stay focused on boring tasks and measure your response time. If you give me this test on my pc, I will very quickly switch to another window or take out my phone. But in an external environment as part of an expensive test I specifially asked and waited a long time for? Sure, I'll be polite and keep staring at the screen.
The screen was an old tft by the way, with a crappy unshielded vga cable picking up interference, causing ghosting issues in the different colour channels. If I lifted the cable hanging under the desk with my leg, I could almost make it go away.
Anyway, all of this was reduced to a number (my average response time), and ultimately to a boolean (can stay focussed). It's not an exact science.
Also, maybe the criteria are wrong? Or at least incomplete? Prior to DSM-V, ADHD and ASD were mutually exclusive. That seems absurd now, but the 5th edition only came out less than 9 years ago (may 2013), so after the above study.
The DSM is "only" a consensus of a group of professionals. Over time our understanding of things change, and that consensus might change. And over a longer time, some of those professionals (and maybe a few new ones) come together and try and update the DSM.
[3] This article raises the question, but does not actually claim ADHD is overdiagnosed. Sure, some people might seek stimulants, and might successfully fake their way to a diagnosis. But that's a problem not exclusive to ADHD. Diagnosing ADHD is not straightforward, and should be done by experienced professionals.
I suspect there is a large pushback in the USA on stimulant use as a result of the opioid crisis. But for the people who actually need the medication the process of actually getting it is already difficult enough, and should be made easier, not harder.
I'm open to having my mind changed, but so far I have not seen any evidence that ADHD is overdiagnosed, let alone that overdiagnosing is increasing.
First, thank you for sharing your perspective, which I find valuable and fully agree with.
Second, thank you for putting in the time and effort to write a detailed response that directly addresses the point, as well as sharing your personal experience.
Third, I'm so glad you finally got help, and no longer need to live your life in the hard/nightmare mode.
Fourth, I really wish everyone here read your comment, because it illuminates both why there many undiagnosed adults out there, and why getting the diagnosis (and getting over the stigma) is so hard.
And finally, it seems like writing comments of this type (much longer then average, very detailed, huge in scope, with every claim backed by either reference, personal experience, or both) is a neurodivergent trait. I feel like ADHD in particular makes one used to fact-checking themselves (because memory is unreliable), and presenting information with context that illustrates why you do know what you think you know (leading with personal experience) — since that's the way you'd want it yourself.
I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. I am 34. Part of what took so long to get this diagnosed is that it is poorly named. I do not have a deficit of attention; in fact, I have extreme sustained attention [0].
If the symptoms described by the parent poster are causing you to suffer, please consider that it might be ADHD, and that ADHD does not necessarily manifest in the way it's name suggests it should.
Please also consider that lightweight treatment can drastically improve your quality-of-life. Stimulant therapy has provided immediate relief for me, like flipping a switch [1]. The best part is that I still enjoy the positive aspects of my ability to hyperfocus. Only now, my attention feels like a servant rather than a master.
(Someone complained I'm linking to my blog too much, but I haven't posted this link yet, and I don't want to needlessly copy-paste something that I already wrote)
P.S.: "the thought of your friends not liking you makes you want to die" ... is that really an ADHD thing?? I thought that was a completely unrelated personality flaw.
I start working on something and soon there after there is a constant stream of ideas and improvements that I could act on but aren't necessary right now. I write all these ideas down to get them out of my head but sometimes this process has a cascading effect and I find myself three layers deep into something very stimulating and interesting but it is not really what I think I should be doing. This takes up time.
I've never considered this to be unnatural or something everybody isn't struggling with but I recently started to think that maybe I need to calm my mind somehow and maybe there's useful medication for that.
All I can say is that - yes, this sounds like an ADHD trait, but not necessarily something that you'd want to correct. Is time spent your only concern? If so, work with your brain, not against it.
If this is ADHD, it's something people consider to be an upside - the ability to get into the idea generation/brainstorm mode and dive deeply. Yes, it gets tricky with all the things that should be done, but there's is value in what you actually do.
The other links I've posted up the thread can shine more light on what you experience; see if you find other traits relatable as well.
I'm late to the party, but your story feels very familiar, and I likewise assumed that everybody was experiencing the same things as I.
My sincere advice is to approach a qualified medical practitioner for a diagnosis. The irony, of course, is that this is exactly the kind of thing that is overwhelming (or deeply off-putting) to a person with ADHD. To that end, I offer the following advice:
1. Don't make a big deal about it and don't be a perfectionist. Specifically, don't spend too much time researching professionals at this point in the process. Just schedule an appointment with your usual GP and bring up the subject, explaining that you'd like to investigate the possibility that you have adult ADHD, in order to improve your quality of life.
2. Don't get too hung up on meds at this point. Your GP (or subsequent psychiatrist) may conclude that cognitive therapy is sufficient for you. I can personally attest to the surprising efficacy of CBT.
3. Generally speaking, approach this with calm curiosity. Trust that you can back out of anything at any time if you're not comfortable. Ask questions. Express concerns. Make it easy on yourself.
If you want, I'm happy to talk over Zoom/Matrix if you think that would help. I can't give any definitive answers, but I can definitely share my experience and perhaps give you a general sense of what to expect. Feel free to drop me a line if that sounds appealing: louist87 [at] gmail.
Yes, it looks like ADHD symptom. It's called hyperfocus. People with ADHD often focus on something that is giving instant gratification (like learning new thing or trying to find clever solution for a problem). The other, probably simpler things are neglected. And no it's not just "caused by Internet and smartphones". I had this before I even got a computer. I was hyperfocusing on reading books (very shallow, just wanting to check what will happen next). TV was boring because it was too slow.
Good stuff. I have lived with ADHD as long as I remember. Going on and off prescriptions.
Adult ADHD has mostly revolved around depression/mood swing cycles of hyper focus and motivation (new interesting project/work, new job) and procrastination, lack of focus, and depression caused by that feeling of know I should be doing X but not being able to bring myself to.
I have some coping techniques and it isn't something I think about all the time. The worst thing about it is that while prescriptions are effective, they are not pleasant and the tolerance you build to them is even worse. I try to balance them (threshold dosages, only using when I really need it) with other techniques.
There are supplements that eliminate almost all of the negative side-effects of stims.
- L-Tyrosine to keep your dopamine levels up.
- ALCAR + ALA to reduce neurotoxicity and tolerance formation
- Magnesium and Zinc for muscle tension, including jaw clenching if you're prone to that.
And for Aderall, you can take Vitamin C at any point to rapidly flush it out of your system.
These things are a game-changer for quality of life and sustainability of stimulant medication. For example, with the ALA+ALCAR stack, I don't get any withdrawals when I take breaks. No fatigue, malaise, nothing. I would have given up on adderall a long time ago without these things.
Exactly the same for me. I'm currently in the "I know I should be doing X but not being able to bring myself to" cycle on a piece of a major project. It's not hard work, I know how to do it, but I just cannot do it.
I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, and have avoided the medication my whole life. Recently, I decided to try Adderall. It's like magic to be honest, and has helped tremendously in multiple ways. I can focus on a single task, less pain in getting started on tasks, can actually stay focused, can listen without the draining mental effort to force myself to, and am less forgetful.
But for some reason, this one project has put me right back in the same old 'cannot do this' state even with the Adderall.
You understand incorrectly, and you are propagating a harmful stereotype (which makes medication harder to obtain for people who need it).
Aderall has vastly different effects on people with ADHD vs. the rest.
The best I can say is the Adderall makes us feel the way you feel normally. To us, it feels like magic. The ability to switch from a task you're engaged in? The ability to do something that you need to do and want to do - and even enjoy - when you want to do it? Magic.
Any sources for your claims, I've read the opposite?
> Many double blind studies over the past 40 years have uniformly agreed that stimulants such as methylphenidate, dextro-amphetamine, as well as other substances, are very effective in the treatment of 70%–80% of children and adults with ADHD. One of the myths of ADHD is that ADHD children show a paradoxical effect of being calmed by stimulants, while “normal” individuals are stimulated by them. However, studies have shown that the activity levels are decreased and attention levels are increased by stimulants in individuals with and without ADHD. The difference is that since the levels of hyperactivity and inattention are much higher in ADHD subjects, the improvement is relatively much greater, giving the impression that they respond, while non-ADHD subjects do not.
I also have ADHD, and I feel like the medication benefits are vastly overstated. To use an analogy, I was lead to believe that the medication is as effective as opioids for severe pain, but my experiences have been about as effective as Ibuprofen for severe pain. I've tried many different formulations, brands, drug classes -- many of which multiple times at multiple dosages, and I don't feel "magical" yet.
I still take some meds because they're better than nothing, but I am starting to wonder if people are just being overly hyperbolic, and I had too great of expectations.
Medication doesn't have the same effect for everyone. I was lucky in the way it worked for me, perhaps.
The point is, just experiencing this month of calm and ability to do things helped me overcome a lifetime of learned helplessness.
I am more effective now without Adderall than I was before I've had it, simply because I can catch myself getting into the brain fog and using e.g. the help of my partner to break out of it.
Speaking of Ibuprofen, it feels like magic to me too. I've had 100+ degree fever from COVID booster, my whole body was aching, I felt cold, but putting my socks on (which I had in my hands felt like an immense chore). Ibuprofen cleared that within an hour.
Was it "severe" pain? Let's say, I've had worse. But Ibuprofen took me from 100% non-functioning to mostly-functioning. Magic.
In any case, I feel like what you wrote does not contradict what I said.
Let's use glasses as an analogy. Arguably, prescription glasses can be used by people with good vision either to resolve finer print, or to resolve text much further away. The laws of optics work the same for them.
However, we would say that the effect of wearing glasses is drastically different for people who need a strong prescription vs. people who do not.
As they say, size (of the effect) matters.
>The difference is that since the levels of hyperactivity and inattention are much higher in ADHD subjects, the improvement is relatively much greater, giving the impression that they respond, while non-ADHD subjects do not.
It's like saying that giving food to someone who's starving is the same as to someone who's eating well. The effect is the same, the response is different.
Those who don't live in constant brain fog don't really get to feel how Adderall helps with that.
Anyway, my personal experience with Adderall is written up here:
I'll be glad to look to sources to back up my claims (or stand corrected and learn); but can you help me out and say what it is that you want references for? I struggled to understand where we're disagreeing, though we'd perhaps use different words to talk about the same thing.
> Speaking of Ibuprofen, it feels like magic to me too. I've had 100+ degree fever from COVID booster, my whole body was aching, I felt cold, but putting my socks on (which I had in my hands felt like an immense chore). Ibuprofen cleared that within an hour.
Damn, I should have tried that. I got laid out after shot #2 and #3. I just ended suffering through it for about 24 hours both days after.
I like your analogy and it does convey a good point.
Perhaps, I can word it my initial point like this. It's suspected (or perhaps merely just a product of combined statistics) that 10% to 20% of people who suffer from ADHD do not benefit from any of the mediation types - MPH, AMP, M. AMP, or the various non-stimulant formulations. So, what then? Do they not have ADHD then? What analogy would you use for them? What advice would have for them?
As ADHD as I am, I am not sure living 2/3 of my life (so far) untreated could accurately be described as "brain-fog." I have had brain-fog before from various other things, and I wouldn't use it to describe my symptoms, at least not on a daily basis. On days I go med-free, then sure, but I attribute that to the sudden withdraw and rebound-effects.
I think a huge problem for me was not the 'spacey' feelings or lack of attention, but that my attention was too good. My mind is like a Ferrari with no steering wheel. It can go fast, but there is no controlling it.
If something really attracts my attention, I can laser in on it to the point I cannot pull myself away be it video games, a topic I enjoy, etc.. (Hyperfocus, yes I know)
This a symptom medication does not improve, but actually makes worse. I guess I have to take the good with the bad. A doctor told me, "if you can find me 'the perfect' (no negatives) pill, then found a pill that doesn't do anything at all."
However, hyperfocus is my Icurus Complex. I basically cannot do any meaningful work it out, but alas it flies me too close to the sun where I can barely doing any meaningful work because of it.
Perhaps I had too high of expectations for medication. Maybe deep down I wanted something that made life easier, and not something that made life better.
To be honest he is somehow right. It's magic for everyone but for people with ADHD (like me or you) it gets us to the level of normal people. For normal people is giving them nearly superhuman focus. I don't think the theory that stimulants are working somehow very different for us than for normal people is valid. But that of course is my opinion.
This so much. I rarely attempt to communicate the experience of ADHD because it's rarely worth the effort but one of the times that I did to a good friend I was met with an affectionate "so you're a bit of a retard" and it's hard to argue otherwise.
The best I can come up with in terms of analogy is manual focus (like on old-school camera lens) vs. autofocus
* Manual focus may not be very sharp, but you can change it instantly, and get within the ballpark every time.
* Autofocus is very sharp... but not necessarily on what you want to capture. If it's not shiny enough, autofocus never locks in on that subject. If a bird flies past the window while you snap a photo of the blackboard, it will focus on the bird, and the blackboard comes out blurry. Since it's automatic, you can't just focus where you want to; you need to trick the circuit to work properly.
While I have never taken that specific stimulant, nor been diagnosed with ADHD, my partner is diagnosed, and I'm... somewhat familiar with the topic, let's say (though she's prescribed something other than Adderall). You may have read SSC[0][1] on the topic, but I'll leave it here in case you haven't, or for others.
>While I have never taken that specific stimulant, nor been diagnosed with ADHD
...you are not qualified to make statements of the sort, and I urge you to listen to people who have been diagnosed with ADHD and do take Adderall.
Another, fascinating thing to consider is that you may have ADHD. I was one of those people who said things similar to what you just did, because I had no idea that everyone, in fact, did not have the same struggles. How many of the posts in [2] do you find yourself relating to? If it's more then a dozen, consider getting an assessment (and reading up).
>You may have read SSC...
No, I have not. Thank you for linking it. If you read it, again, you will see that he reaffirms my point: that there are serious risks associated with Adderall taken by people who don't have ADHD, while it is an effective tool for people with ADHD (though, like every medication, it does not work for some, and can have side effects).
Please read what I have to say about ADHD medication, Adderall specifically, here: [1], and compare and contrast with SSC's "Summary" section.
Additionally, I should add that the introduction part of that article sounds like a failed attempt to describe a complex disorder to laymen. Part of it are not correct.
Psychiatrists are not infallible. I can go at length addressing which parts you shouldn't take, but let's say, the take-away from that article is in the summary, and please read what I have to say about it, and see how it compares with your experience of stimulants being taken by non-afflicted people.
What are your credentials? Why should we trust your blog post over some random post on Facebook or Reddit?
I am not trying to be rude or anything. I am just more likely to believe a medical professional's opinions on medical topics than a non-medical professional.
With that being said, that doesn't mean you cannot still be right. I'm just curious for my own personal reasons.
I do have an ADHD diagnosis confirmed by multiple people who do, and a PhD in math as a baseline for avoiding making false claims.
You should trust my blog because about 50% of it is quotes/art from ADHD advocates (with and without credentials), and the rest is details of how it applies to me.
I'm speaking there as a member of a community.
My blog has three kinds of information:
* My personal experience. This is obviously 100% true, as I'm the primary source on that.
* Relatable illustrations/comics, made by ADHD advocates, and relatable memes, taken from ADHD communities, which indicate that my experience is shared by many other people, and help you understand it better.
You shouldn't trust my blog. It's meant as a PSA. It's there for one reason only:
For you, to see if you relate to many of these entries.
If you do, then this is a starting point for you to understand yourself better, and get help.
This blog is also intended as an aid for ADHD people to explain the condition to others. Many people have thanked me as it helped them to that end.
Guess I'll add a testimonials section one day.
Finally, of course you should trust the opinions of medical professionals. You'll find that I'm either linking those, or if you look them up, they corroborate my experience.
However, again, this blog is not meant as a diagnostic tool or an authoritative source. It's for other undiagnosed people with ADHD to learn about what it is that they have.
I was one of such people. I learned about ADHD from memes. I'm passing it on.
Sorry for the delay. I tend to lurk more than I tend to contribute, and I still haven't investigated any methods for alerting myself if someone replies to a comment I made, assuming it's even built in.
To preface my reply, I must say that I was also diagnosed, albeit not until my early 20s. People tend to think I am intelligent, but I would argue I am just tend to luck out more than others, or at least, I am not as intelligent as people think I may appear. I just have a ridiculous strong long-term memory. Not "total recall" levels, but definitely above average.
The doctor that conducted my psychoanalysis said I had the strongest long-term memory he has ever seen, but I also went to college in a small town, so perhaps his sample size should be considered, or perhaps he was just trying to boost my confidence.
I find you math PHD to be impressive. I am probably average to low-above-average. Good enough to make it through a comp sci degree (mostly unmedicated), but I feel like my critical thinking skills would fail me before I reached PHD potential. I hated math growing up, and my significant other was a math major who now tutors children in the same school system I grew up in. It was a rather affluent area (excluding my middle class family), and the school system reflected that. However, she said she can understand why I struggled in school growing up with the way they still teach students, so maybe weak fundamentals are partially to blame. But look at me, I am already getting distracted. ;)
Regardless, your lack of medical credentials does not mean much in a world, where credentials may have some positive correlation with domain knowledge, but the relationship is definitely not causative e.g. I've met many medical professionals in my life, like any other field, that baffle me as to how they even made it that far into their field. I feel like many never read another journal or book the second they step out of med school. There is natural distribution to all elements of humanity, I suppose. But, that is just my opinion.
> * My personal experience. This is obviously 100% true, as I'm the primary source on that.
> * Relatable illustrations/comics, made by ADHD advocates, and relatable memes, taken from ADHD communities, which indicate that my experience is shared by many other people, and help you understand it better.
For both these points, how do you mitigate confirmation bias, or do you not even try? I have yet to read your blog, but I will when I have more time available. Confirmation bias is a problem I have noticed with ADHD material e.g. "I forgot my lunch on the way to work because I am so ADHD" implying that only ADHD people do this, or "I can barely focus on anything, but I sleep only 4 hours a night, do not exercise, and eat junk food all day." Again, those are things that ADHD can be attributed to ADHD, but any body in those same circumstances would ail the same way.
> However, again, this blog is not meant as a diagnostic tool or an authoritative source. It's for other undiagnosed people with ADHD to learn about what it is that they have.
But what do they have?
Im curious about your opinions:
Do you really think ADHD is a disorder or a set of naturally distributed attributes that cause disorder circumstantially based one's environment? While a reductionist might think the differences are semantical, I disagree. I believed the first option when I was initially diagnosed, and when I learned more about the condition.
However, as I have aged I am starting to believe the latter.
How are all these disordered people like Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, etc. able to be the best of the best in their Olympic sports medicated or not? How are you able to achieve a math PHD, but I struggled in Calc II? Maybe there is more factors in life that hinder one than just ADHD. (I'm not implying you didn't struggle in your studies or life in general, I am just using you as probably inaccurate example -- the idealistic image I have of you perhaps.)
I am not saying ADHD is "not real." All I am saying is that the way society is structures, and given the demands of society for a particular type of person, anything outside the scope is considered to be disordered.
For example, I am not particularly tall -- I am with the mean range for adult human males. While many professional basketball players are n + 1 standard deviations taller than the average person. If I were to be compared to them in a game of professional basketball, would I have Height Deficit Disorder? I would have a height deficit in comparison to the other professional around me, and surely might height would hinder my abilities and probably cause disorder for me during the game.
Am I making any sense? Society tends to swing towards whatever works for the majority of people e.g. boring and dull classroom setting tend to have a distributed effectiveness for different types of people. Some people thrive, some people survive, some people derive, and some are buried alive.
I have no problem focusing on this novel I am typing right now, but I also should be working, but why can I not focus on work? Is it because I have ADHD? Because I hate my job? Perhaps both?
Besides attention, what other human attribute isn't on a spectrum? Height, like we already covered, but also weight, intelligence, athleticism, strength, longevity, skin color, eye color, hair color, etc.. Do you get what I am saying?
I just often wonder how much ADHD is really a disorder, and how much is socially induced. I know the "Woe is me" type will instantly shoot my claims down with something absurd like, "I am so ADHD, if I were on a deserted island I would starve to death because I would be so distracted that I forget to eat until I die." Hyperbolic or not, if that were true, then I am sure evolution is just doing its job weeding them out of the gene pool, as dark as that may seem. After all, modern medicine thankfully allows us to "play God", so to speak, but let's not forget the Law of Unintended Consequences.
What bothers me most is that we allegedly have known about this disorder for how many centuries now? Didn't the ancient Greeks even notice it? I wonder how/if the "less advanced" societies noticed these attributes. Medicine even acknowledged it a century ago +/- a few decades. Obviously, science grows damn near exponentially, so many of those centuries accomplished less than we could accomplish in weeks currently, so I am not trying to say that we have had 1000s of years to solve this. I just wish we had more answers than we currently do.
All this time, and we still have no other reliable way of verifying the condition other than symptom-based diagnostics where the person doing the diagnostics might have an implicit bias -- every screw looks like a nail to the man with a hammer.
"But fMRI brain scans have shown difference in the prefrontal cortex and the nucleus acumbines in people with ADHD vs. a controlled population" Great, it's 2022 where's the diagnostic criteria? But wait, even much of the research claims the difference isn't significant enough to be used for diagnostic purposes. Then are the brains truly that different? Maybe it's a lack of technology? Who knows?
What is thefamous quote med school professors tell med students when learning about rare conditions? "Don't look for zebras, when there are horses in the room." Maybe when trying to find differences in the brains, human biases might create zebras. Imagine how damaging it would be if the research claimed there were no differences at all? Then what? The world of psychology might actually implode upon itself.
Perhaps I have a bias -- some axe to grind. But, real or not, there is disorder in my life. I do not care about naming conventions for my disorder, titles, identities I can cling to, all I want is to live the best life I can with my one and only chance. Sometimes the meds work, and sometimes they do not, but it's a small price to pay for a chance to improve my life regardless of whether ADHD is socially constructed or not.
Anyway, sorry if this is too long. It's easier for me to type than to read lol.
I will check out the blog, and if you haven't have you ever considered writing about how one can tell if their medication(s) are working well or not? Doctors act like I asked them to solve if N=NP when I ask that question. Not saying your blog is lacking without it, I just thought I would throw out a helpful suggestion. After all, life for many doesn't magically turn to easy mode once diagnosed, but for the lucky ones I suppose it does.
It’ll definitely stimulate everyone, adhd or no, but most people don’t have a brain fog that will be lifted by the meds. Nor do they have a plethora of other symptoms that amphetamine salts alleviate.
I was very defensive when my wife said that I should consider being screened for ADHD, I have the exact experience you do (a the OP) around this stuff. The defensiveness was something that I sorted out, and looking back on things, so many of my "vices" were just self-medication for ADHD. They were mostly coping strategies (with the exception of some social vices).
My adult diagnosis has been a game changer for me. I know most people don't mean that literally, but I mean that literally. It changed the game.
- follow my curiosity
- take advantage of times when my curiosity and focus aligned with work
- manage the anxiety that came as a consequence of focusing on things I shouldn't be.
My new game is:
- channel my curiosity to solve relevant problems (get distracted sometimes, but not near as much as I used to)
- since I am more in control of my own focus, my anxiety is dramatically reduced, so I don't require as aggressive management of it as I used to (binge sessions to decompress, chemicals (alcohol, nicotine), meditation and breath practice. I still do the meditation and breathing, as I like it and feel like it is a net positive, but I don't need it to tame the demons.
I think is important to add that being able to control someone's focus is a skill that is necessary for everything in life. It's not just about work. It's the whole life - work, education, socialising, even recreation (travelling was a hell for me before stimulants, every minute trying to focus on not lose tickets, money, baggage)
In my experience getting an adult ADHD diagnosis is a long process. Especially if you've never looked into it. After getting lost in the process last year. Re-attempting this year, i'm again stalled as they want my anxiety/depression scores to drop before testing for ADHD. So don't give up, when the system puts up walls. I assume this is due to the potential addiction side-affects for the drugs (stimulants) for non-ADHD folks
Yup when i got diagnosed it required investigation into my school records (20 years prior, I got diagnosed as an adult).
Looking over my life since childhood, diagnosis is clear cut. I was lucky to have old school reports and letters from teachers.
To be honest, it isn't difficult for some. I've heard of others walking in and getting "diagnosed" within 5 minutes. I do think some people getting diagnosed with adhd as adults may instead have depression rather than adhd. Unfortunately they don't want to admit to depression.
I don't have ADHD, and I have this issue. I have (or have had -- seems to be in remission at present) issues with depression, which can also result in this.
Just want to point out - one can have symptoms of a disorder that don't rise to the level of a disorder.
I have what OP describes like crazy, I beat myself up over it frequently and think I need to do better. Yet somehow I keep getting glowing reviews at work and even just got promoted without asking.
So don't automatically think, "omg I do that too! I need medication." Start to worry if it has a substantial negative impact on your life.
Doing well at work is not an indication that you don’t have ADHD. Plenty of people with ADHD are perfectionists and overachievers, even those without medication.
“Having a negative impact on your life” can be about more than just whether you perform well at work, it can be about how you feel about yourself and how you take care of yourself. I agree, medication is not always the answer. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile to learn more about ADHD for those who have symptoms. Just understanding more about ADHD can help people develop coping habits to work with their brains instead of against them.
Doing well at work is not an indication that you don’t have ADHD.
Of course it is. Maybe if you changed "indication" to "guarantee" I would agree with you but as it is that sentence is objectively wrong.
And of course there are other factors. I've definitely had symptoms of ADHD my entire life but once again that doesn't mean it rises to the level of a diagnosable disorder.
No that statement just isn’t true. ADHD in high IQ individuals frequently creates high performing individuals with very low self-esteem.
They succeed in complex environments tackling difficult problems, but still struggle to perform basic everyday chores. High performance at work, but consistently poor performance in other aspects of life is an indicator of possible ADHD.
It also can NOT be ADHD but can be executive dysfunction. Important because things like anxiety can also cause these issues, and generally stimulants aren't a great idea for anxious people. (Unless the anxiety IS caused by ADHD... humans are weird.)
>I have what OP describes like crazy, I beat myself up over it frequently and think I need to do better. Yet somehow I keep getting glowing reviews at work and even just got promoted without asking.
Hey, I have a PhD in mathematics, work experience in Microsoft and Google (among others), glowing reviews and all.
And you know what would have been great? Getting treatment in high school, so that getting here would have been a much more peaceful process, without so much pain, beating myself up, and being chronically depressed because of it.
Professional success is not the only metric in life. Beating oneself up endlessly can get to you too. Understanding how my brain works allows me to live a happier life.
>So don't automatically think, "omg I do that too! I need medication." Start to worry if it has a substantial negative impact on your life.
Well, of course. And medication doesn't work for everyone (does nothing for about 20% of people, IIRC, and many others don't enjoy the side effects). There are, however, many other things that do help - from lifestyle changes to body doubling.
For me, these little things had an immense impact on my well-being:
* It's OK to have 4 pairs of scissors to keep them where I use them instead of looking for them each time. Minimalism is not ADHD-friendly.
* It's also OK to have cabinets full of hobby supplies that I come back to once every few years. "If you don't use it for 3 years, throw it out" is not how ADHD works. Time is a dark matter for ADHD folks.
* I can't reliably estimate time, especially the time it takes me to do things. I can improve my estimates by asking other people to estimate time. If it's important, I should trust judgement of other people when it comes to time, even if my brain tells me that surely, it's feasible to do X things in Y time.
* I will not remember where my phone is, and it's OK. I can keep Google Home Hub, and tell it to find my phone. As long as it has power, it will ring.
* For that matter, the best phone for me is the one with immense battery life (currently, Moto G Power with its 3-day battery, but I'll gladly take a 7-day brick). Because I will forget to charge it every day, and it will be nothing more than a silicon slab when I need it the most otherwise.
* It's OK to buy a gadget/tool/thing just to perform a task, because it adds novelty. Consumerism be damned, I can give things away on Craigslist and make someone's day - or I can acquire a hobby. I bought a bullet smoker on sale last week on a whim, and now have five pounds of smoked fish in my fridge (OK, that might have been an overkill). I bought a slow cooker, a toaster oven, an air fryer, an instant pot, and a cast iron skillet to make cooking more fun - all of them get used a lot.
* It's OK to temporarily lose interest in a hobby I'm passionate for. It doesn't indicate a lack of passion of interest. It's just ADHD.
* To do a boring/tedious task, I need to do a fun thing first, and then ride that momentum to victory. "Rewarding" myself with a fun activity for completing a tedious/productive one simply doesn't work: I neither complete the task, nor get to do the "reward" activity. The ideal way is to incorporate the reward into doing: cooking, but getting to use a new implement. Coding, but only using list comprehensions instead of loops. Being on a lookout for something novel to island-hop from task to task without strain.
* I am not effective in open-floor layouts sitting next to colleagues, but very productive in a library/coworking environments. People that work on the same thing (especially if we bond over it) are a distraction, and added guilt when I'm not productive. People working alongside me add accountability without judgement, and enhance my productivity. That's called body doubling, and it works even if it's over Zoom (as long as people don't talk to each other). There are Discord study groups, and Zoom sessions at https://adhdactually.com that facilitate that.
* My storage cabinets either have transparent doors, or no doors at all (IKEA Kallax cube organizers); when using cube organizers, transparent containers are the best. It's optimal for my brain, even if it doesn't look best to some.
* I often need to stay up late, later than everyone else in the house, and it's OK. I stopped forcing myself to go to bed early when I don't feel like sleeping. The AM hours after everyone has gone to bed have a valuable peacefulness to them, where I can focus on things that I might not get to do otherwise.
* If I feel an urge to do the Boring But Necessary Thing, I act on it immediately, even if it's disrupting the plans or is at an unusual time. Cleaning at 2AM? Cooking at midnight? Mailing that package when I was planning to clean? Whatever, I need to ride that wave, because who knows when it'll come next.
And so on, and so on. ADHD lifehacks are different than neurotypical lifehacks. Just being aware that they exist helps a ton.
I appreciate the effort behind this post a lot. Some of the life hacks seem helpful, and the some of the realizations are affirming. Thanks for sharing.
It took me until I was 45 to finally get screened. I really wish I had done it sooner, it is not that rough. But I said the exact same thing when I bumped into this notion. I was quite resistant to the idea, which is itself a fascinating mental knot to untie.
Primarily: medication
Secondarily: being able to have a short hand category for looking up strategies to handle my own challenges and finding a sympathetic community of people with eerily similar challenges.
The medication has been surprising. I have all my life thought that I had anxiety. So I did various compensating behaviors to manage the anxiety. I now know that I was anxious because of my ADHD behaviors, and addressing the anxiety made things tolerable, but didn't really deal with the underlying problem. I am a curious person. I will hyper-focus on rabbit holes, which is a super power when you are hooked on a relevant problem. But if I should be doing work, but I am hyper focused on something interesting but irrelevant (like, for example, the history and usage of the Shopsmith woodworking multi-tool), it creates anxiety because I should be working.
The drugs are helping me control my focus better, which is something I have never been able to do. I just had to ride the current before, but now I feel like I have some control of the current.
It's not perfect, I am still sorting things out, I have only been on this path for a few months.
I think that "ADHD" is poorly named, because I don't think of my hyper-focus as "hyperactivity". And I don't really think I have "Attention Deficit", so much as difficulty controlling where my attention is directed.
Thank you for the interesting perspective! You and I sound fairly similar in terms of symptoms.
For the anxiety I went with a book that someone recommended to me on HN called, "Learned Optimism". I went from having moderate to severe anxiety for decades to pretty much zero. It's work, but was tremendously worth it.
I have spent time on solving procrastination with less success. Most notable was reading, "Solving the Procrastination Puzzle". For me the most successful technique is "Just get started". I think I have two issues that cause me to not start on things: 1) before it's started, it's a perfect little idea. after starting, it leads to imperfect compromises to get it done. 2) I fear it will be harder than it actually is. "Just get started" pushes through both of these for me.
I spent about a third of 2021 more or less consumed by this phenomenon. In my case it was triggered by job searching: I quit my existing position, intending to do a leisurely search over a few months... and then avoided nearly everything related to the job search for over four months. (While still experiencing a ton of stress as a result of constant anxiety and guilt about it.) Once I actually started, I landed an amazing new position within two months.
The thing that made the difference for me was directly and consistently involving my girlfriend. All she did most of the time was sit in the same room as me, working on her own stuff, but some combination of being unable to completely avoid working while she was there, having her there to vent anxiety to, and being able to make commitments to her rather than myself made an enormous amount of difference.
I'm not thrilled with myself for the procrastination I did in the first place, but I'm taking it as a hard-won lesson: doing difficult things can be vastly easier if you have someone you trust as support and confidant.
What really gets me is that if I push stuff off and then finally get around to it how little time it usually takes to deal with the thing I've been putting off. I'm quite capable of spending 3 days to avoid 10 minutes of concentrated hard work. Very frustrating.
I discovered this in my early 20s and it has been the key to my rarely if ever dealing with with issues with procrastination. When I think of something I don’t want to do immediately, one of the first things that pops into my head is both how quickly it will get done and how good it will feel to have it done, and so I do it right then and there.
The satisfaction of knocking off something you didn’t want to do is the corollary to the negative feelings holding you back, and it’s the key to establishing a positive feedback loop in place of the painful one you’re experiencing.
For that to work you need to be able to frame the problem as something that can be done immediately. If the problem has a blocking step, like "fill out this form, then in two weeks, check back to see if it worked," I find it much harder to see the joy in completing the task.
I normally approach that mentally as advancing the task towards completion, and as a matter of framing I try to remember that larger tasks feel better to complete than bite-sized ones. The regular practice of this approach gives one reinforcing feedback loop of ‘momentum’ and a mental image of oneself as a person who gets things done, which reduces the feeling of inertia that contributes to the sort of shame spirals we’re talking about.
That's an interesting observation: yes, I do get stuff done, in the end. But the path to it is usually long, torturous and leads along many places that weren't the destination along the way and plenty of that could be avoided. And quite a few of my achievements are probably the result of procrastinating on something else!
I wonder how the real achievers (Fabrice Bellard?) deal with these sort of things.
And also: what I need to do makes all the difference. Work on my bike: Present! Work on the company VAT reporting? Oh, I think I need to go play some piano. Hm, interesting bug in pianojacq, I should fix that. Hm, even more interesting, this allows me to refactor that bit. Then, on the 29th of the month I will work on the VAT filing.
I can relate to this a lot. The one silver lining of the shameful, interminable hell that is procrastination is the random skills that come out of it.
I was so dysfunctional at my last job during covid-induced WFH I found time to completely redo my backyard, which included tasks like "research sod options, schedule a delivery, learn how to install it and lay it before it dies" which if someone officially assigned me to do I never would have been able to get myself to complete.
This feels very relatable to me. Looking back, I'm pretty sure a few large projects spawned out of procrastinating on some other project I was supposed to be doing.
One was installing a tile floor in the kitchen, including lots of research, sistering joists, ripping up the old floor, etc etc. And replacing the kitchen range, which required a range hood, which required some cabinet mods. Lots of interesting new DIY skills learned in that project.
And then last year, building a video editor, instead of recording some videos for a course.
Pay someone to do the VAT filing for you. There are people that actually likes to play with that stuff so why don't you do the things you enjoy doing? Ok, I have no idea how much work the VAT stuff is, I'm not from US. But in general, remove the unneeded stress from life and enjoy it instead. Don't try to be a success, it's OK to just get along with life and family. Live on one salary if you can, split the time 50/50 between the two of you and just live cheap instead. Spend the extra time together with family doing things you enjoy.
I do. But even that requires me to hunt up all the receipts, send in all invoices received and all invoices sent. So there is always at least half a days' worth of work in there.
This is interesting since it reminds me of the dynamic I have with my boyfriend as well. We seem to be opposites in this regard.
I work better alone. Having someone else there, even if they aren't purposefully distracting me, just adds another tiny bit of awareness: Is he hungry? Is he bored? Does he want coffee? We haven't had lunch - should I cook? I should tidy. I feel like when there's a guest in my house I need to take care of them somehow, and make the place (and myself) presentable. When I'm by myself I can just focus on work, forget to eat for a day, and not bother cleaning my house and nobody will give a crap.
Even when I know he is totally fine fasting all day with me if that's what it takes while we focus, I still get concerned with starving the poor guy while I'm in "the zone". And often he cooks for us as well, which is nice and very appreciated, but then I'm distracted by eating and then thinking about how I should return the favor that evening by preparing dinner. But what if I was going to work through the evening?! You get the idea... I much prefer to be selfishly alone and not think about anyone else's presence.
But my boyfriend seems to be the opposite, and closer to what you're describing. He sometimes likes coming over specifically to work. He says my focus on work during the day helps him focus and stop procrastinating, too. In the end, we compromise. I find a way to still be productive and focus when he's here, and accept that I'll just feel a little bit bad about not paying attention to my visitor.
I'm a non-eater (24-hr faster, usually this goes along with other manic, focused, driven episodes where I'm really being the best I can be at what I do). I lived for 10 yrs with my ex-gf (still my business partner and best friend) who used to have these worries about me, even though we were both working together. I was like don't worry about me, I'm fine -it was always she who needed to eat. She kind of put it onto me. Eventually, she'd get up and cook herself food. But she was more like me. She was driven to work too.
Now I'm with a woman who's the opposite. She'll come over for the weekend and sit there quietly for 8 hours while I work and the whole time I know she's starving or bored and I feel like a shitty boyfriend. She'll be reading a book or texting her friends and in the back of my mind I'm like, uh, why are you in my house? Like, you could have this much fun in a dentist's waiting room. You think you're not experiencing aloneness but you don't know how to be alone with someone else so we're in this situation where I have a knot in my stomach because all I want to do is work, and you have a knot because you're waiting for me to say something to you. This is not how it was with my ex.
I think maybe if I read way between the lines, you and your bf haven't quite established how to truly be alone together and take care of your own needs (or he hasn't).
On the other hand, this is what it's like to have a pet. The more expensive the pet, the more care it requires. If you're a true nihilist and you don't even enjoy the company, maybe you just enjoy that extra little bit of stress it brings you to have to deal with their problems.
It's true that when my gf or my ex ever had problems, they lit a fire under me and gave me a reason to care; my work became more stressful, but it was in service to something that I finished it. Because there's some other, imminent problem in my life, in the form of another human being who needs my attention. People with children can probably attest to this, although, thank God, I'm not one of them. They say it makes your life seem more meaningful. Occasionally that might be true.
Thanks for sharing. I think in my case it's mostly like you and your ex-gf. I just have trouble internalizing the fact that I don't need to think about him while we're working. My boyfriend says he's totally fine sitting there not getting any attention when he knows we are in work mode. He _does_ have a higher requirement than what I was used to for spending quality time with each other in general, but it does not extend to work-time (according to him). It's just that on weekdays, my entire day late into the night could be work-time. I think knowing quality time is important to him is partly what makes me feel this need to pay attention to him, or feed him, or something while he's here for work. But that is a me-problem vs a he-problem.
He regularly tells me that he is fine eating one meal a day or not at all, but I still feel the compulsion to make snacks all the time when he's here. He is a big person and needs way more calories than I do to maintain his desired weight. Even though he says he's fine with not eating I see him shoveling down three times as much food as I normally do when we do eat, and then making more rice or popcorn later to top up. It makes me think "Holy crap, poor guy hasn't eaten all day and now he's starved." Which is silly, because of course he can get up and get his own food while we work if he's hungry.
I also have pets, and do enjoy their company. They are quite high maintenance, but they're cats. They come over and lick my head when they want attention and then go back to napping nearby. I could not handle children and am in awe of those who do.
I mean, maybe it's not really a problem. It can be really hard to work and live with someone, and there's always a balance; we perceive that it might be rude to switch into work mode and ignore someone who we know wants to spend quality time, but we only care that it might be rude because we do want to spend quality time. We want these people in our life but we want them on certain terms, and that's okay. The boundaries always shift back and forth a little. As long as you're happy with the time you do give them, I think it's natural.
With my ex, we lived together; my current gf and I have separate places. But we quarantined together through most of 2020, and she was out of work. The pandemic really forced a lot of people who might not be so compatible in terms of their expectations for attention, work habits, sleeping and eating habits, into constant close quarters. Almost all of the unmarried couples I knew split up from 2020 to now (some more than once). I think my relationship has survived this long because we're both very aware of each other's needs - including the need for alone-time and boundaries.
Anyway, it's interesting to hear someone talk about it this way. I don't know too many people in parallel work-from-home/relationship situations. I guess it's really just about communication, and it sounds like you do have that in your relationship.
> He sometimes likes coming over specifically to work. He says my focus on work during the day helps him focus and stop procrastinating, too. In the end, we compromise
FYI: That's an ADHD trait, and what you are describing is a common technique to combat executive dysfunction called body doubling[1].
One trait isn't an indication of anything, but a dozen could be; maybe show him this- I wrote up my experience here: https://romankogan.net/adhd
I have a similar issue. Its hard for me to get work done when there are other people around whether its at my place or someone else's. Just the fact that another person is there can be super distracting to me and it makes it difficult to get into a flow state. This is a problem I don't know how to deal with honestly, besides just not working on important stuff when around other people. It does impact me a little at work but luckily I'm pretty solo 90% of the time when I'm there
The mere awareness of stuff happening around in the office is enough to prevent me from focusing on anything. At home, the main source of distraction is the endless queue of undone household chores all around me.
Over half of my committed code has been written at work after hours in complete silence.
If you work freelance with someone who's also your lover, I highly recommend going to a cafe where you can sit across the table and literally only talk about (1) work or (2) a brief, funny thing you saw on the internet, which I don't want to bother you with but it's so good you have to stop for 30 seconds and see it. During your work hours. And where you can otherwise ignore each other, or go on a walk alone, or read a book, and there are servers to bring you coffee or food so you don't have to do it for yourself or each other. And then you finish and you don't take the work home with you. Tip your waiter well.
[edit] This presumes you are really good at working with random conversation happening around you. To me, it actually helps me focus if there's chatter going on. But it really helps if the chatter is in a language I don't understand well.
I'm curious how long you've been dating your boyfriend. I've been with my girlfriend for a little under three years, and I think I would have felt much more pressure to attend to her like you're describing if we were only, say, a year in. (Although I don't actually know, because at that point we were in a long-distance relationship, so all the time we spent together in person was intensive relationship time.)
The other factor for me is that job searching is not like coding: it's a series of separate tasks/decisions/evaluations, rather than me trying to immerse myself in a problem or system, so interruptions or distractions aren't nearly as costly; I'm not going to go into flow state from job searching. And a lot of the difficulty comes from the emotional aspect, so I found having someone to talk/vent to about it very useful.
It's been three years, but a very weird three years (as is probably the case for most people) because of the pandemic. He was unable to self isolate due to his job, and was around hundreds of people daily. I worked from home and self isolated for about a year and a half. There was maybe a handful of times where we could work out ways to spend time together for a few days to a week at a time safely over that year and a half, but for the most part we barely saw each other except in video calls. So I don't think that three years of real time really amounted to three years of relationship time.
Good point about job searching vs coding, I think you're right.
A lot of my guilt around my job search is failing the trad "male provider" role and seemingly inherent status anxiety around being a man.
I would feel fine working at 711 and coming home to grind on code. I'm not an atom though. My wife can't pay the rent alone forever and my dog needs to seemingly eat every day. I've gone through this cycle previously before pursuing coding professionally, and this time I at least have the consolation of knowing my next salary will more than make up for my many strings of resigned couch tending.
I'm also now thoroughly convinced that our behavior can be chemically diverted. I don't feel like a piece of shit when I feel sad or unmotivated anymore, just more like a puzzle that's temporarily missing some neuromolecular pieces.
I can relate to working with others. So far in the WFH pandemic I've been mostly all right, but I work so much better in a team, with someone actually telling me what to do, what they expect, instead of me having that responsibility myself.
I'm guessing it's a 'subservient' personality trait of sorts. Others are 'natural' leaders, good at keeping an overview of what needs to be done and distributing that. Others are self-motivated and driven and make amazing things all on their own. And all of those probably fit in a venn diagram.
I don't think you're subservient, you just prefer to be part of a tribe which is normal. Even the self-motivated, natural leaders have strong supports to ensure that the tribe around them keeps them sane.
It's much more difficult to proliferate culture at home and I think people are having to compensate by forcing themselves to work, without any of the cues they normally get in the office.
I really like my current company because it's small but people have well-defined wheelhouses. I don't really have to think too hard except when I need to defer to more experienced engineers.
The level of pessimism here seems a bit gratuitous. Working with my partner worked well for me, but I've seen people in similar situations achieve a lot of success through participating in supportive online communities (e.g. a Slack group for alumni of a coding bootcamp), or coworking with friends (whether or not everybody is working on the same stuff). Therapy can also be helpful, both in addressing the roots of the problem and in providing some external accountability. And there are doubtless many other options if you look around a little.
i read an article about how we should all form squads, that is turn your main memetic friendgroup into a economical and carework selfhelp squad... or something, i have since lost the link to the article though...
nah. you can have non-romantic accountability partners.
in fact, i'd say it's more the norm than the exception. (and often sort of emergent and far from the phrase "accountability partner", which is a bit formal)
If you landed a good job afterwards, I’d say those four months were necessary and even beneficial. Sometimes your body/mind will simply force you to stop, and procrastination can be one of their tricks to convince you to do it.
I'm quite sure that they were not: anxiety-driven avoidance is far more stressful and exhausting for me than any fruitful work. And having a constant feeling that you ought to be making up for lost time is a serious bar to genuine relaxation.
I did need a break after my last job, and it's very possible that contributed to the problems I had, but this was definitely a bug, not a feature.
Exactly. It's not a way to relax, it's more like spinning your wheels in place and having the engine overheat from all the wheel spinning. You just feel worse and worse the longer you stay in that state.
Would you believe me if I told you I’d explained this with that exact metaphor to someone relatively recently? I literally mean with those same words in that exact order. This feels matrix-y :)
I was going to mention doing things in pairs really helps, or maybe just mentioning plans to others.
Me and my fiancee are both slackers in general, but when we start even discussing doing a project aorund the house or similar which is in any way together we always give it 100%.
Ugh I feel you, had same situation, except I can’t live with my gf due all the border closures and lockdowns so it was extra hard for me. You should consider yourself very lucky and privileged.
I do - and I sympathize, because I was living 600 miles away from my girlfriend before the pandemic, and it was everything going remote that let me move to be near her.
I don't think it is totally straightforward what to take away from that experience. I mean one option is to tackle everything that has to be done eventually right on instead of postponing it. But on the other hand how about learning to relax and have some trust in yourself and that things will work out. This is what I would strive to learn. And I am saying as somebody suffering from the same ailment. I experienced what you describe myself. Why so anxious, so worried all the time - I'll die eventually anyway most likely from cancer like all of us - but I cannot even relax a few months? I'm not even financially stressed.
Been battling with this mindset shift myself. When I get annoyed with myself for delaying a task I try to remember the concept of "last responsible moment" from the Agile methodology books; after all I've never missed an important deadline so far, so clearly my effort-estimate calibration isn't far off.
I've been dealing with overcoming some severe procrastination issues again. I was doing some "Spring" cleaning over the last few weeks and came across several books I had bought and read in the past. I picked up, The Now Habit[0], and opened it to page 103 (of my version/copy).
Below is a bit of a wall of text with I assume several typos. Please forgive me, I read the following excerpt out loud and used speech to text to get in here.
--Excerpt Begin--
Worrying can warn you of danger and evoke action to prepare for that danger. Respect your ability to worry as a means to alert you to potential danger. But the rapid flow of frightening thoughts characteristic of most counterproductive worrying simply creates more threats - you think, "it would be awful if that happened. I couldn't stand it. I have to do well or else." Stopping there, with simply the frightening aspect of worrying, is like screaming "Danger!" Without knowing what to do or where to run. In effect, your screen has caused a lot of disturbance in people but has not told them what they can do to escape the danger. By alerting yourself to a potential danger without establishing a plan for how you will cope, you have done only half of the job of worrying. You've left out the positive work of worrying - developing an action plan.
Once a threat is raised it must be dealt with to avoid worry and anxiety - that trap energy that can't be used productively now. Until you reach a solution or cancel the threat, worrying can operate like a recurrent nightmare that repeats a puzzle or problem. Plans, action, and solutions are required to direct the energy and complete the work of worrying.
Procrastination is an ineffective way to cope with worrying because it stalls action and simply piles up more worries. The worry that accompanies procrastination is usually learned very early in life. Parents, bosses, and teachers often use threats and images of disaster to motivate us to achieve goals they have chosen. This belief that vinegar can motivate better than honey is so prevalent among those in charge of our schools, factories, and offices that most of us suffer from some form of fear of failure and worry about being unacceptable because of our imperfection.
Familiar examples are the boss who stingly withholds compliments for the work completed while freely criticizing what is unfinished and imperfect, saying, "You'll have to do a lot better than this.. there's a lot more to do and I need this as soon as possible." Or the parent or teacher who tries to motivate by saying, "So what if you got three A's, why did you only get a B in math?"
This terrible training - that your work is never good enough - leads to the belief that you are never good enough to satisfy a parent or a boss. Feeling ineffectual regardless of how hard you try is very depressing and damaging to yourself work. Without an established sense of worth that bounces back from criticism in the face of normal mistakes, it is extremely difficult to step into the work arena, where some failures can be anticipated and where the longed-for praise for hard work and progress is seldom forthcoming. Eventually the risks seem too great to take and the threats lose their ability to motivate you.
This syndrome is particularly sad when people with talent will not risk trying for fear of being less than number one. At its worst, their perfectionism and fear of failure ( failure being defined as being less than perfect ( cause them to let their own talents atrophy rather than complete a task and risk being found second best. The more common solution for individuals raised on threats is to use their own threatening self-talk in an effort to win approval by mimicking their critical mentors. Rather than helping them to face their fears, such threats will only contribute to the procrastination cycle: threatening self-talk leads to anxiety, then to resistance, resulting in procrastination. Procrastination May temporarily lessen the tension of facing a challenging project and the risk of failing, but it cannot help you escape worry.
. . .
For 10 years Judith, a bright young accountant, suffered from worries about losing her job because of her continual procrastination. Judith continued to push herself to work in an insurance firm that others had left years before because of the cold and pressured atmosphere. After all, she had learned at an early age that she was lazy and inadequate, that there was always more that could be done, and that she needed constant reminding and pressure from those who said they cared about her.
In Judith's family individual progress was seldom acknowledge unless it was compared well with what others were doing. This pressure to do the best was constant whether the arena was school, sports, or musical talent. So it it did not surprise Judith when her boss turned out to be someone who provided a similar scarcity of praise and in abundance of pressure. From the boss's point of view, Judas motivation was supposed to come from her salary and the pressure and threats he used so frequently.
But for Judith, her working conditions only verified insecurities learned much earlier. She felt that she didn't deserve much, and fear both failure and success. She said: "I might do something wrong, and they'll think I'm dumb. I feel that people are constantly judging me and that I keep coming up short. But I know, if they were to say I'm smart or talented, I'd still feel anxious because then I'd have to be that way all the time."
The constant fear of being criticized or fired kept Judith in stress and poor health most of the time. But it was her procrastination and her fear of doing increasingly poor work that motivated her to seek help. Like most procrastinators, Judith was a good worker. She wasn't lazy. It was the pressure and the fear of failure that began to block her ability to work. As the stress of anticipated criticism for inadequate work increased and the praised dwindled, Judith's motivation and self-confidence began to dry up. More and more she relied on procrastination as a way to escape and to express her resentment.
It didn't take much for Judith to see that her boss's threats and withholding of praise recreated her family environment. And when Judith recognized that her family environment had taught her low self-esteem, victimhood, resistance and then destructive coping strategies such as procrastination, she was eager to change her current environment.
Even before I discussed the work of worrying as a way to reduce her stress, Judith on her own had begun to consider "what is the worst happened." She realized that though it would be extremely embarrassing and difficult for her, she could face being fired and that, in some ways it would be a welcome relief. In fact, given her timidity and low self-esteem, it was hard to imagine how she would ever be motivated to look for a better job unless she was fired.
But Judas had decided she wanted more. She wanted to be freely acknowledged for her work and her talents. Judith was determined to find people who could appreciate her for who she was and what she could do, rather than seeking out those who always demanded that she be something different. She no longer wanted to work under conditions that lowered her self-esteem. Having face the worst that could happen - being fired - Judas has prepared herself with safety nets of compassionate self-talk and concrete alternatives that would help her cope while looking for a new job.
Judith had started the first step of a six-step process for facing fears and creating safety. These steps take you beyond "what if" and direct the block energy of anxiety towards constructive preparation for potential danger. When you are continually worried about failing on a project or losing a job, ask yourself these six questions as part of your work of worrying:
One. What is the worst that could happen? Too. What would I do if the worst really happened? Three. How would I lessen the pain and get on with as much happiness as possible if the worst did occur? Four. What alternatives would I have? Five. What can I do now to lessen the probability of this dreaded event occurring? Six. Is there anything I can do now to increase my chances of achieving my goal?
By using the work of worrying, creating safety, and using the language of the producer, you are establishing skills for maintaining genuine self-confidence. Most people wish for an illusory confidence that says, "I must know that I will win; I should have a guarantee that nothing will go wrong." This leaves you at a severe disadvantage because you haven't considered "what will I do if something does go wrong?" Trying to control things so they go just as you imagine them takes enormous energy, keeps you blind to what could go wrong, keeps you from planning for a strategic retreat, and drains you the energy necessary for bouncing back.
True confidence is knowing that whether you're calm or anxious, whether you succeed or fail, you'll do your best and, if necessary, be ready to pick yourself up to carry on and try again. True confidence is the ability to say, "I am prepared for the worst, now I can focus on the work that will lead to the best."
I had this issue with my first software job right out of college. I was unproductive for weeks, just due to culture shock and (shamefully) malaise. The procrastination snowballed. Luckily a fellow engineer eventually noticed, sat down with me, and recognized exactly what was going on. In the kindest way possible, he sat down behind me and basically made me finally start my next project. He stayed there with me for the rest of the day, answering and asking questions to keep my progress going. It had quite an impact on me. Having another person involved and actively care about my work went a long way.
I remember teaming up with a former colleague at a point where their SRI had just kicked in, and my motivation was down the drain. I felt they were doing me a huge favor, and they felt the same way back. Pair programming is, so far, the only certain cure to my procrastination. I'll certainly work when not pair programming, but pair programming will make me give 100% for 12+ hours simply because of the commitment to another person, and the reward of continuous socialising.
I'm guessing Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. I've seen friends on it and it has a weird effect of being extra optimistic and helpful toward others. I can see how if you're feeling in a low energy state pairing up with someone like that can be a good thing. Second hand meds ;)
Eventually that person couldn't be standing behind you making sure you were doing your work and at that point how did you make sure you were being productive?
I don't have a great answer for that, as it's still something I occasionally struggle with. I try to pick work where I can closely collaborate with another person. It sounds silly and maybe a bit childish, but just knowing someone else will be happy/proud when I finish a task helps a lot.
Not the person you replied to, but I've had similar experiences. Just having another perspective to compare to can help. If I've had a good experience, I can tell when I'm not there. That's often enough to close the gap.
I didn't know that. I once hired someone to do that but didn't know it had a term, or that it was common, or that you could find a service when you needed it.
Highly recommended! While I still procrastinate this understanding has helped me control my urge tememdously. A true gem! (This is also available as a video in Tim Urban's TED talk on YouTube)
I used to get yearly emails from Pocket when I used it saying I was in the top single-digit-n% of readers with a word count in the low six digits. That's maybe an hour of reading a day, which suggest the later never comes for most articles saved to Pocket.
These days I accept I don't care enough about most things to read articles on it until I get interested, and then it's hard to find good reading on it unless I've drilled my well. Now I save any interesting-looking article in Notion for when I get interested and go searching.
While the analogies in these articles are great, from personal experience, the second article's tips on how to beat procrastination are abysmal. Yes, breaking large steps into small chunks is good advice, but your goal should not be to live in a constant state of stress and anxiety by setting up "panic monsters". That's just a recipe for getting yourself burned out and becoming a "disastinator".
What I would instead suggest is reducing your workload, resting, and if that fails to fix the problem, seeing a medical professional to check for ADHD or other executive dysfunction issues. (It also really does bother me that Tim Urban never even mentioned that "procrastination" is known in the medical community as "executive dysfunction" and that clinical treatments are an option. Not saying that it's the root of all procrastination issues, but for major problems, it's worth looking at.)
FYI, I'm not posting "the" link to my site. I'm linking to the specific posts I've written that directly relate to the comments I am responding to. I believe my writing is useful in such cases - not in the least because people have directly reached out to me to say thanks.
Just trying to increase the chances that someone stumbles upon something that helps them. I don't see many people talking about ADHD here.
If public awareness of ADHD was anywhere where it needs to be, I wouldn't have spent 34 years living without help.
I just want to say that I think it's awesome that you are sharing your personal experience with ADHD here. The stigma around mental health does no one any good, and too often when ADHD comes up on HN, the loudest voices are people dismissing ADHD as a boogeyman that's over-diagnosed. It's important for people to know that ADHD is real and too often it isn't even diagnosed until adulthood.
I don't have a problem focusing per se [1]. The disorder's name is misleading [2].
In fact, I often have an excess of focus: focusing on something to the detriment of everything else [3].
Like, coding (or making music) till 5AM, forgetting to eat and sleep.
The problem I have is directing where the focus goes.
Let me make a camera analogy:
* Most people don't have laser-sharp focus, but it's good enough for what needs to get done, and they can switch it quickly and at will, like a manual focus on a camera;
* My focus is laser sharp... but it's automatic, and with a janky chip. So it takes time to engage, and often picks out the wrong subject.
Whatever it focuses on looks great, but if there's a squirrel in the frame, the focus always goes there, and it never focuses on some things just because.
Anything shiny and fine-textured (jewelry, fine art) will come out excellently, in super fine detail.
Anything that's bland and the same throughout (like plain cloth) doesn't have enough edges for the autofocus to catch on.
-------
Does music help? Well, it's one thing I can focus on. That's how I failed gym: I couldn't leave the music lab on time to make it to the next class... Every time. Breaking hyperfocus is painful.
Music isn't an ADHD cure, but what it is, is a place for many ADHD people to find themselves, and feel comfortable at. It ticks all the boxes: creative, important, necessary, and urgent — if you are performing. It's the shiny thing my autofocus chip can lock onto.
It gets the dopamine flowing, and when you get enough, you suddenly get the action points to do other things.
It's also a way to meet and connect with people. I made many friends through music — unsurprisingly, quite a few of them have ADHD.
So it helps, but not in a way you might think.
And classical piano music instruction is outright harmful IMO. I'm mostly self-taught/playing by ear; the skills I needed to play live weren't taught in school. People who spent years playing classical pieces somehow were never taught basic musicianship: playing by ear, improvising, arranging, basics of composing, etc; not to mention zero knowledge about music tech (of which we have more than a century now).
That said, I have taken several semesters worth of music production classes — and barely scratched the surface of what there is to learn.
On that note, I can highly recommend Huang's class on Monthly if you can truly dedicate time and effort needed for it, which is much more than the minimum required to just get through it. It's super condensed and hands-on.
Let me know if you want more info about music and resources.
Usually, I solve this by making it the only thing on my list that day, and clearing as many hurdles as possible the day before. This can mean anything from preliminary googling to cleaning up my workspace and taking out the required tools.
This means that on the fateful morning, it’s the first thing I do after making coffee. No checking emails, no small chores, just a shower, coffee and getting to work.
I read somewhere that a lot of procrastination is fear of failure or fear of the unknown. Sometimes tackling the latter is the best way to start. I circle the problem late in the evening when there is no pressure to start working. I just read, take notes and draft plans. Making it easy to get started is sometimes the best first step to take.
This is great advice, even if it sounds cliché and obvious. I like to say that you have to set yourself up for success. That is, make it as easy as possible for your task to actually be easier and more straightforward (i.e. get the other stuff out of the way the day before, clean up, mute your phone, empty your agenda, etc) It’s very common for us to do the exact opposite, and then we feel bad later because we failed. Of course! We made it even harder for ourselves then it already is. I think that many people (especially coders) got used earlier in life to do things naturally, to have natural motivation to work and that was enough. If at some point that’s not the case anymore, because you’re older, has more responsibility, is tired, or a combination of all these, you lose your “method” and don’t know what to do. So: recognize the difficulty of what you are going to do, and set yourself up for success. And also learn to expect less from yourself and be happy when small goals are achieved (you’ll learn this the hard way anyway; after not doing anything, even a small thing will feel like success).
I try to get as far as possible without actually starting work. I'll get all the little things out of the way.
- Prepare clothes for the next day
- Prepare a mug with a teabag, sugar and a spoon
- Close tabs, launch the IDE, start the Docker containers
- Gather the addresses, emails or phone numbers I need to call
- Write a very short term to-do list to get the day started
- Clear small unrelated tasks if needed (inbox triage, small errands etc)
It's very similar to mise en place when you're cooking. You take care of the small tasks first, so that the main task goes smoothly.
It's really effective. In fact, it's sometimes hard to snap out of it and do other things.
There's a book called "Eat That Frog". The main advice, as the title of the book suggests, whatever the biggest most-important task, regardless of how unpleasant (akin to eating a frog), just do it first and do nothing else until it's done.
>I read somewhere that a lot of procrastination is fear of failure or fear of the unknown
The Brain Science podcast from Changelog has an episode about perfectionism and how it can lead to procrastination, by the fear of rejection or failure.
Reminds me of the tale in this podcast [1] where the guy's desire to avoid a difficult conversation spiraled into totally ghosting his employer for two weeks.
It's a really tough tendency to fight. One thing I think is helpful is to acknowledge failure as early as possible. If meeting the deadline would require me to work faster than normal or make some heroic last-minute effort, I've already failed, even if that deadline is still a long way out. Admitting that to myself and others now, so that expectations about the future can be adjusted, is a much smaller blow than admitting it weeks or months down the line. And it means I only have to feel a little flaky and underperformant, rather than super flaky and underperformant and also dishonest.
in my experience, if you tell your boss you're not going to make a deadline, their reaction is not "dont worry" but "yes you will"
of course ymmv. had only 5/6 such bosses.
the only one that wasnt like that, was not in software but a little shop selling custom built computers and i was a teenager back then, so that might have made it a little easier on me too
YMMV indeed, I have not encountered that yet, and have definitely missed initial deadlines.
But some things help - when giving estimates or timelines, I go through my usual charade of "they are guestimates, usually you should double or triple them, the further out they go the less likely they are accurate etc".
Also, I promise I will monitor progress, keep them up to date, and let them know as soon as possible when plans deviate. I also discuss backup plans early (cutting features or pushing back, starting with pilots and tests, etc..)
It has worked pretty well for me so far. Not to say it's _just_ about how you handle the situation, you can have a shitty manager, that part is out of your control unfortunately.. :)
So many people suffer from this. I guess most of us had at least stretches in their career where procrastination dominated the work day. For some, this is just the standard mode of operation.
It is important to understand that this is a sign of exhaustion. Work is hard and if we don't have the energy to start then it doesn't get done. Personally I found the following to help:
1) Get enough sleep. Every day. Nothing drains your energy more than consistently not getting enough sleep.
2) Cultivate interaction with other people outside work, in person. This is particularly important now. Talking with others and listening to their little problems can help put your perceived misery in context. So does having a life outside work.
3) Say "No" more often. Focus on the tasks that need to be done to meet your life goals. Decline the tasks that look interesting or even fascinating when they don't help you move forward.
Maybe a wakeup light would be helpful. really helps you feel awake if you dont feel very awake when you get up, so you are not tempted to sleep some more in the morning.
Unlike other comments, I don't think this is always associated to ADHD. Rather, I think this is a natural tendency for the current normal hivemind of always being distracted at work.
John Cleese in his book about creativity talks about how procrastination is actually our natural ability to be most creative. If we are leaving something until the last minute, it often means we don't really have a great solution or don't have enough time to think about it. Even if we do have a solution in mind, leaving it till the very last minute gives us enough time for other ideas to come up.
This seems to be a recurring problem in knowledge work where a large effort that has "deadlines" tends to keep being missed. The cause? Not having enough slack or diffused time to just think. Often it's juggling the task ontop of a thousand others and being constantly distracted.
> John Cleese in his book about creativity talks about how procrastination is actually our natural ability to be most creative. If we are leaving something until the last minute, it often means we don't really have a great solution or don't have enough time to think about it. Even if we do have a solution in mind, leaving it till the very last minute gives us enough time for other ideas to come up.
YES. This is why I don't code as a job; to me, coding is a creative exercise and I just hate doing creative things for a living. (I've supported myself/made money with both development work and fiction writing.) I can't force myself to be creative on a deadline, and if I rush something through without giving my brain enough time to think through it, it bothers me because there might be a better way and I get annoyed if I'm forced to give out work that isn't my best.
> Often it's juggling the task ontop of a thousand others and being constantly distracted.
Yes. How the hell am I supposed to problem solve if I'm never allowed any time to think or allowed to make mistakes, explore, etc?
I work in political communications/education as the only techy person on a non-tech team. I have a background in front-end/UX + librarianship and instructional design. So while I do code when I make instructional materials + use my knowledge when I do things like our metrics/data analysis, it's not the majority of my job and none of my teammates can code at all (all but one of them break out in hives if they have to look at HTML).
Minuses: Nobody appreciates when you pull off something difficult/do something impressive.
Pluses: Coding is black magic to them so if I need more time I can say 'this will take me longer' and they're like 'alright'. That wouldn't fly in an actual developer job.
I also do research, outreach, and do things like give educational talks on civics + administrative law concepts. So I prefer to make a living with my research skills and public speaking/presentation abilities as opposed to my creative/coding ones.
I like to use my creative/coding skills as an extra: I'm a LOT better at my job than I would be without my tech background.
I feel like the medications can make my "doom loops" even harder to avoid. The stimulants make it easier to hyper focus on one task, and feel even less guilt for ignoring the rest of the world. Executive Dysfunction is killing me
That's true. It's important to remember that you need also to "rewire" your brain It's often accustomed to many years of your life without meds. And many of this years were probably hard, full of anxiety and depression. It will take time to change how you think and you subconscious.
That's me too; and I've also been diagnosed with ADHD last year.
Medication[2] does help me quite a bit, but it's not a silver bullet.
Have you tried Body Doubling[1]? It works wonders for me. The idea is working alongside others, when everyone is doing their own thing. There are online Zoom and Discord groups that facilitate it (look up Discord Study sessions; and also more at [1]).
> this makes me think that it's not something that can be solved by a pill.
2 years after my diagnosis (and medication since then), I'm still stuck. I've never had anyone professional to show me how to deal with this other than "here're the pills". I'm currently looking for a therapist.
Most likely, especially that if it's exactly like described in the article it's more like a anxiety and/or long-term-miss-conditioning problem then one caused by a short attention span.
I've only tried xanax once but if anyone thinks that will solve this.. it probably won't, because once on xanax you lose the anxiety but also you won't care about the thing that's causing anxiety, in my case I didn't care about anything, said "stupid" (things I wouldn't normally say so casually that hurt them) shit to people I knew because I didn't care about the consequences. This likely stems from me usually just doing stuff that feels or doesn't feel right instead of actually thinking about things rationally so if you think you're a rational person this might not apply to you. All I'm saying is be careful.
> xanax you lose the anxiety but also you won't care about the thing that's causing anxiety
but I didn't as I was missing the expertise/experience with that.
Just from my understanding anxiety is (often?, sometimes?(1)) a unhealthy over reaction of the same "thing"/"system" which makes you care about thing. I heard about it before that for some people with anxiety disorder and depression, the time they where least anxious was the time they where most depressed, because they simply didn't care about anything anymore.
(1): Anxiety and especially depression are not a very clear cut defined (i.e. not like a broken bone) and can have noticeable different effects on different people, I do not
have the expertise to guess in which range this effects can
lie for it to still count as depression and/or anxiety.
I had a very similar experience with Selank, minus the saying dumb things. Intended to "chill out" a bit about some tasks to get them done, suddenly did not give a single whit about the tasks or anything else surrounding them. Not a productivity tool!
The pills help but motivation is not some emergent property of normality. You first need to care about, and genuinely want to do, the task required to accomplish your goals.
I’m a fan of this quote from Steve Jobs – (paraphrasing) “every day you wake up and look in the mirror, do you like what you’re doing that day? If not, it’s time to do something else.”
The other quote I like is Jeff Bezos and his “picturing myself on a rocking chair when I’m 80, do I regret not doing this?”
If you can solve these problems then the pills become just a tool to help you execute on the solutions.
Source: Diagnosed with ADHD (because I asked for it - duh, this is the only way), never had a real job but fairly happy with my direction so far. YMMV of course. Be happy with yourself first and foremost and everything else will follow.
ADHD is not a motivation thing. Generally speaking. You might struggle with motivation and that's okay, but framing it as a ADHD trait might harm others. Be cautious about that.
I was burned out and got into depression because I was going hard on myself for years. Blaming my motivation and asking myself if I even "genuinely want to do the task required to accomplish your[my] goals". Getting my diagnosis was a huge relief. Looking back, I have been motivated beyond everything. I put in at least double the time and effort of everyone else and got not a half out of it than others. Motivation was not the problem and it took me years to realize that. Finally: Actually, I am good enough.
I completely agree, I think that’s the point I’m making - motivation is separate from execution. No pill is going to make you want to do something or to accomplish some goal. You need to decide that for yourself, and only then can execution even make a difference in the first place.
In fact I’d say the clearest indicator of ADHD is a surplus of motivation coupled with a dearth of execution. You know you want it, but you can’t do it, despite being acutely aware of your day-to-day actions fucking it up. This is what medication helps with in my experience.
That advice does not resonate with me; I can definitely see the point, but the how of getting myself to do "something else" (whatever that could be) consistently escapes me.
Thinking about how I might regret things I haven't done just gives me worse anxiety, not motivation to start doing stuff.
I'm also not sure how you're supposed to "be happy" if you already aren't. Controlling emotional states is not something you can actually directly do rather than trying to affect them indirectly through behaviour and exercises.
In your experience does the medication get more effective if you can find ways to work with it? I've been trying to make it work for a while now and it seems like it either does nothing or makes me lock on to some random tangential (usually useless) task I'm near when it kicks in. Really not getting a quieting like with caffeine, which has been disappointing.
When I first started working with my psychiatrist, she had me try several different stimulants and I found that the effect was surprisingly different for different formulations. My experience with a generic for Ritalin was a lot like what you described, but my experience with dextroamphetamine was totally different: it does quiet my mind down and I don't get pulled into hyperfocus nearly as much. The subjective feeling was different too; I'm not sure how to describe it, but the dextroamphetamine just felt softer.
I've found that the effects change massively with sleep quality. When I'm short on sleep for a few nights, it almost feels like the medication stops working. It still has an effect—I am noticeably more clumsy and forgetful without it—but it feels different and the higher-order effect on focus or executive function is less pronounced.
Another thing I've heard is that protein in the morning helps. I've tried drinking a protein shake for breakfast and it seems to make the day better in general, but with a much smaller effect than sleep quality. For all I know, it might just have been the case that I only remembered to have breakfast on days when I had slept well...
I’ve gone multiple years on medication, followed by years off it and then back on again. In aggregate I’d say it’s a wash, but the benefits of each phase are different.
In terms of raw productivity, it can definitely make things worse (like the comment I replied to). Or at least, it can replace one problem with another – suddenly your creativity is gone and your hyperfocus is completely misdirected.
Personally I’ve sought out the (re-)diagnosis at times when I felt creativity was less of a priority than execution. If you know exactly what you need to do and can commit to it, the pills can help keep you on track. But they are not the original source of the commitment.
I’m honestly not sure whether it’s worth it, but the dopamine it releases sure does its best to convince me that it is.
Its a tool. You need to be self aware enough to take the meds, and then consciously engage with tasks that you want to get done - this wont be a skill you have developed, as its likely never been possible/effective previously. You can, when medicated, actually consider what you need to get done, and then decide to act on those tasks.
You can also set timers/alarms to timebox tasks, and reign in hyper focus - it should be relatively easy to change tasks with the alarm interruption (vs. unmediated, where I find it practically impossible to move to any new task).
Have a plan before the start of each day, drink lots of water, exercise, eat, get plenty of rest. Maybe take a day or two off meds over the weekend, if it's burning you out. It's tough to get into a groove and don't last long enough but if your force yourself to do these things you can find a rhythm for a time and that's the best I've found.
This sounds like the meds dont work (for you). Try different ones, if they do not help much then depending on how clearcut the diagnosis was, consider that it might have been misdiagnosed.
Why would I ever want to contribute to this roiling cesspit of a society? Why would I ever be happy working to increase the share value of some faceless company? What value does the human species have when life is mostly pain? Why would I care to try in a world full of selfish ignorant entitled morons? While I work to be an honest decent human being others around me lie and cheat and have so little self awareness that it's like competing with a swarm of locusts. I cannot fathom how decent, intelligent people ever have motivation in this place. Let alone for something as utterly unproductive as programming for a corporate.
And these ludicrous notions of needing to provide because you are male and that's your job. Get lost. So the world wants me to perform in a certain way because I was born into it and will judge me harshly if I don't. Take a hike world. But my mind exists in a cage of hardwired pleasure responses and no matter which way you twist and turn you cannot escape the pain of not confirming to them. Get lost world you are too cruel and too stupid to be worth my effort and as a side note, I will not be dictated to by some mindless watchmaker.
Well, the society isn't just cheating locusts. It's also people like you. And like me.
Find your people, and you'll see a world worth contributing to.
I subscribe to the view that the notion of a dream job — as opposed to a dream vocation — was created by those you call mindless watchmakers.
That said, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. There's a lot of middle ground. Is there place for you there? Not all work is corporate work, after all.
And if not, what would your vocation be?
Is there something you'd see yourself doing if the constraints of the world were not a concern?
If you struggle to answer this, the only thing I can recommend is taking a break from the rat race to heal and find your bearings. Therapy is something that helped me in this process, as therapists are like Stack Overflow for human problems (and, like with SO, it's quite rare to have a problem that nobody has already experienced and found a solution for).
Professional coaches are another resource that can help avoid stepping on the same rake again. It sounds like corporate isn't a good environment for you, and if you are still trying to find what is one, they can help to home in on the next step that would feel fulfilling (and, hopefully, provide income you can live on).
Best of luck, and if you feel isolated, reach out; you can find my info in the profile. Things really don't have to be this way.
I might be off in my comprehension, but I sense a tone of disappointment or cynicism.
In broad terms, taking humanity's current state as a starting point, what would the nearest (aesthetically? existentially?) acceptable point in the human-cultural phase space look like for you?
No intent to antagonize, but I am curious since I have passed through similar worldviews here and there.
Pair programming can be a solution. Your employer may fear you are slower than on your own but in reality it will vastly increase your productivity and make you feel better at the same time. Also the result will often be better than what you would have eventually achieved by yourself.
Me also, which is why it threw me immensely when I joined a team where they're somewhat dismissive of pairing.
I realized that I'd been using it as a sort of crutch for a while.
It not only motivated me it drew me out of my shell. It made me more willing to reach out to people i needed coz i was already in a "social mindset". It also made it easier to assess and take risks as a pair.
Whereas alone I become somewhat risk averse and asocial.
Yes definitely. I had quite a long a period of procrastination a while ago, then suddenly a colleague called and asked me to help debug some issue he had problems with. That day the time went very quickly and we solved the problem together. I felt a lot better afterwards, not only because the problem was solved but also felt so productive. Sometimes I need a trigger like that to get out of procrastination mode.
Another trick that I haven't seen anyone talk about in this thread is visualization. I'll use this whenever I notice the loop, but still don't have the courage to actually stop. I'll pause for a moment, tell myself that I am NOT going to do the thing exactly at this moment, but instead I will just visualize the exact steps needed for when I eventually sit down to do it.
This helps for those situations in which I'm procrastinating due to a realized or unrealized ambiguity of a given task. If I'm slacking because I don't know how to do something, it gives me the questions that I need to go find answers to. Googling around for answers or pinging a coworker is way easier than actually doing the work, and thus I can 'get the ball rolling' so to speak.
Even if I still procrastinate a bit afterwards, the tasks seem much more manageable as I already 'know' what needs to be done, letting ideas stew at this point. Usually after a snack or bathroom break, I'll come back and just crank out the work (or at least start!) because I'm so sick of thinking about how simple that first step actually is, again, because the details are already worked out in my head.
In a literal sense, this is 'work/working', but it never feels like it, and that's part of the key for me to overcome it. It's just thinking, right?
The trick you describe is known in the ADHD community as "climbing the Wall of Awful"[1].
It's effective for people with ADHD because ADHD makes it difficult to see that first step, preventing one from getting started[2]. Visualizing the steps helps build the ladder over the wall of awful that you need to climb to start Doing The Thing.
Telling yourself that you're not going to Do The Thing now, you're just going to _______ (think about the steps, just do the first step, etc) is also a very effective ADHD srategy: you're fooling your brain into doing what you want to do by taking the pressure off. The whole task seems insurmountable, but finding that first thing that's relevant to the task and seems easy is the trick to getting started — and once you get started, there's a decent chance you'll go until it's done.
These techniques are helpful for everyone, but they're doubly important for people with ADHD, and are frequently discussed in the community.
And yes, it's absolutely work even if it doesn't feel that way. To the outside world, you might be sitting there being stuck. In reality, you're climbing that wall.
100% this. I've commented similar elsewhere in the thread with a similar position - essentially, there's something you need to do that you're avoiding, some problem you need to resolve, and it's emotionally uncomfortable. Many of us have learned to avoid discomfort, but often times you need to go through it to make progress. It's best if you can minimise that discomfort in order to make headway, and simply breaking down what needs doing in your head can help make it less stressful.
I definitely agree. Procrastination is a feelings problem and it took me a long time to realize that.
Often when I actually do the thing, I realize it is harder or feels worse than I was consciously feeling. It makes me think, "Oh yeah, no wonder I was putting this off. This is hard."
An example of this is decluttering, which sounds easy but in reality involves making a lot of difficult, often emotional decisions (i.e. coming to terms with the fact that I'm not actually going to use something any time soon so it would be better to get rid of it than keep it hanging around taking up space).
Yeah, hard agree - procrastination is about avoiding emotional pain. The saddest part is that we usually create the emotional pain for ourselves by pushing ourselves slavishly or not acting with kindness towards ourselves, and this leads to some kind of inner rebellion. Like TFA says they procrastinate when things are overdue and they guilt and pressure themselves over it. That's totally unnecessary, we don't need to be cruel to ourselves for making very human mistakes.
I'm in the middle of a big declutter at the moment (actually not only decluttering but moving rooms around) so I can totally relate. Remembering things you once wanted to do but ended up on a shelf, can really suck, especially if the conclusion is "actually I'm never going to do it, so might as well donate it".
Anyone have coping mechanisms they can suggest? This is really getting out of hand.
So far the best I've been able to do is intake massive portions of caffeine and use the resultant high/numbing of emotion to allow myself to push through. Not the healthiest or most sustainable option.
(1) learn why your habits are bad and how to fix them through hit and miss self help and therapy until, after a lot of trial and error you find something that works for you.
(2) just stop caring at all about the emotions. They aren’t real. It is made up guilt. Not giving a fuck is a super power. Embrace your inner distraction and become a being of pure Internet.
I’m sort of kidding, but, sort of not. Maybe check out the new book that’s popular called Atomic Habits, it’s a cool book. I’ve been dealing with ADHD and it’s effects for over two decades, I’ve been there and done that. Ultimately, it requires a lot of difficult fixing of your life loops. There are really specific reasons and habits you probably have that lead to NGTD (Not Getting Things Done). You have to decide if you are going to address them or not. At some high level concept it is choices we are making that fail to steer the ship right. But be kind to yourself, the underlying mechanisms making you do this are deep and not obvious things… you don’t have complete control over them. You must guide your thinking you to a place that makes your not thinking you get it’s shit
together.
I found that understanding the physiology behind the problem helped me best. Refer to this excellent podcast episode from Dr. Huberman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcs2PFz5q6g
I find that the biggest hurdle to getting things done is the context switch. Just getting started is so hard, but after I get started I can keep going until the task is done.
So I trick myself and say “I’m not going to do the whole thing tonight, I’m just going to do a single trivial thing.” So I do it. It takes a second. Then I do another. Then something more substantial. And before I know it I’m working in earnest.
For instance, if I have to do a sink full of dishes and clean up a whole dinner, I will say “just one dish”. But after one dish the water is hot, the gloves are on, so why not a second dish? Then a third. Before I know it the dishes are done!
It's not simply a matter of willpower to avoid procrastination. The "doom loops" emerge in the absence of a structure that returns awareness to a task (but does not require anxiety about the task BEFORE that return). We've all made to-do lists...then avoided looking at the list for some unhealthy period of time. That's the cognitive dissonance hell (don't look! don't acknowledge the problem!).
The answer presumably lies in habits, external structure, and patterns that allow items to be acted upon, quickly captured with minimal thought (e.g. "Getting Things Done" or some such system), and then, crucially, returning to that external structure early and often!
I somehow managed to break to the other side of things: when I'm tasked with something, I say "okay I'm gonna do it anyway sooner or later" and start getting the job out of the way. Instead of stressing myself out and procrastinating and postponing, I start them as soon as possible. Also did it when I was in college back then: when I had to study for a final, I started a relax study cycle days before, not in last night.
I know we tend to procrastinate and what I've explained is easier said than done. But next time you're tasked and is about to procrastinate just remember that you'll be doing it anyway and if you did things ahead of time everyone will be happier and less stressful, and you'll have all your time to do whatever you want when the task is finished, without the stress. Maybe it will help someone.
I doubt there are many procrastinators around who don't realise that if they "just ... did things ahead of time" it would solve their procrastination, but you must realise that failing to do this is the very definition of procrastination. None of us like being procrastinators.
All you're telling us is that you're not a procrastinator.
I once read that procrastination is rooted in fear. I think this generally holds true for me. I've often found it helpful to identify the source of fear and that this sometimes breaks the loop. But just starting sooner? Yes, it's that simple but no, it's not that simple.
> I once read that procrastination is rooted in fear. I think this generally holds true for me.
For me as well. It's rooted in fear of failure, fear of the unknown. I notice it quite clearly when I switch jobs or teams, initially when I'm out of my depth with the new domain I'm working in I get almost paralysed with starting something, eventually I started it after guilting myself on not being productive. Then comes a period of back-and-forth procrastination on the task until I get my mental model in place and feel somewhat productive.
Slowly I chip away the unknowns by gaining more expertise and feeling confident and comfortable with new tasks but up to that point I will struggle with: fear of failure, fear of not knowing enough, fear of delivering a subpar solution. There is some kind of prestige fear in there that I haven't yet wrapped my head around, therapy has been helping, in the least to be able to actually notice the pattern and start some coping mechanisms.
> But just starting sooner? Yes, it's that simple but no, it's not that simple.
Exactly my take as well, it follows the same line I share with people trying to lose weight: losing weight is actually pretty simple, it's just not easy at all depending on your habits.
Some simple solutions are just not easy when you consider the human.
One other thing that sometimes works is that I will tell myself: Ok, you should start this thing, but you only have to do ${trivial-amount} on it. Then you can do ${more-enticing-thing}.
I don't know why this works since obviously I'm fully privy to the subterfuge... but if I can manage that first trivial amount (e.g. when I was writing tech books it would be one paragraph) I would often end up finishing the task (e.g. drafting a whole chapter) as I discover that the thing I fear is illusory.
It's all very frustrating. As often as not the thing I'm procrastinating upon is something I actively enjoy once I get going!
Nothing is new and we aren't all that unique, haha.
The more you described your issue and how you deal with it the more I thought the same "are you me?".
Instead of tech writing I try to produce music (still learning, just 3 years in) and I ended up using the same subterfuge: when I avoid opening my DAW to make music I just tell to myself "open it, create a motif with a preset sound you like and save the project", something that wouldn't take more than 5-10 minutes to be done with. After I start with that most of the time I simply keep going.
I try to apply the same to work tasks, it's just a little harder to get the initial commitment when I feel very paralysed, every time I do the "just 5 minutes" thing it does work though.
Well, yes and no. I also partly procrastinate still, so it's on and off kind of relationship. Just shared how I can make it go away when I can do. I sometimes just can't and know exactly how hard it feels.
The trick I've used to get things done that are extremely hard for me to do because of a mental block of some kind is to somehow involve another person, even if they're just mostly watching. Sounds dumb, but for some reason it works.
Because we are relational creatures. To even accomplish a task in a totally isolated state requires it be intrinsically motivated to an outrageous level. Things like a matter of basic survival qualify. I think anything outside of that sphere that we are so motivated to work on beyond a state of half-minded play are rare, obsessive fascinations.
EDIT: also after looking at your profile I want to say, I hope your authorship goes well. I hope the reply I've written could even be of help in that endeavor.
I'm convinced that procrastination is a rats nest of things which is constantly changing shape and that nobody can give you advice for your unique situation. Getting past procrastination is like hitting a plateau in a gym and everyone just gives general advice on how to get bigger. Maybe the answer is that you have to change things up to shock your body past the plateau.
Maybe getting past procrastination is shocking your brain with a frame which puts you in a situation where you're not settling towards some sort of rot. Seems like we get into this rut in most things in life.
I am reminded of the concept of "deep procrastination" by Cal Newport. He's written about it in a handful of articles from a decade ago, rather disappointing that the concept hasn't caught on and isn't talked around more. It sounds a lot like burnout- either a cause or a symptom of it.
> Deep procrastination is a distressing affliction. Students who suffer from it lose the ability to start school work. Deadlines pass and they hand nothing in. Professors provide special extensions, but the students still can’t bring themselves to do the work. And so on.
> One way to understand deep procrastination, therefore, is as a rejection of an ambiguous, abstract answer to the key question of why you’re going through the mental strain required by the college experience.
His solutions involve mindset refocusing (diving into the why's of the goal that is being procrastinated on), which I think I've seen in another anti-procrastination guide posted somewhere on HN before recently, and seem to be a bit cursory.
I share the same problem for a very long time and the situation gets worse as I grow up.
But recently at least I have more understanding of my problem on this. The most important thing I want to share with you is that:
Not most of things online are not useful to people like me, because the people are different. A lot of advices can be misleading too.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU) this one especially. Because for different people, the procrastination experience is very different.
If you have the same issue as me, the core problem is not actually about planning and decision making. It is about my ability to do things. It's a long essay but I will put the essence here: To some of the people (about half the population as I estimate), there are two way to obtain knowledge, one is learning, the other is training. People tends to acquired knowledge by learning and lack of training will be highly likely to have my kind of procrastination, especially on something we are not really trained on.
The common experience of me doing things is plan things, make time estimates and do it. This sounds familiar but it is extremely different experience among people. As a "learner" although I made the time estimates, I don't really know them well. But with something that I am more comfortable with, I have a special feeling about the time estimates, that will have a strong confidence on that I can finish in a certain time frame. I tend to have no decision hesitations on tasks like this. This is usually the reason that I can finish tasks at the last minute, because usually I will assemble the things I trained more often, and use less the things I learned.
The solution that now I am trying on, is to train more and learn less. Also I have done more things that I already familiar with(with I force myself to do because I need to resist myself considering it as waste of time), to at least know that I can get things done.
Hope this will help you. comment here if you need more clarifications or advices.
I've noticed myself doing things like this, and I think the root cause more than anything is an inability to say no.
If you're getting other things done but not some particular task you've agreed to, then that's probably a good indication that the various subconscious processes in your mind have come together and deemed it unviable. These processes evolved for a reason and shouldn't necessarily be ignored (at least, not usually!).
Rather than tyrannising yourself into completing every single task asked of you, I think a much healthier way to approach this is to simply stop and ask yourself whether or not it actually makes sense for you to do something before you agree to do it.
I have the same but it feels more like a type of paralysis rather than a loop. I'm finding the more I'm mentally trying to multi task, the worse this gets
I can only do one task deeply at a time but while doing that, I will think and worry about other tasks that need to be done. This stops me from what I am working on, leaving it half way and starting something else. When I reach a point when two or more tasks compete for my attention (or someone drops something on my plate) I feel locked up.
The best thing I've found is to capture tasks as soon as I get them and try to ignore things until my current task is done. Otherwise, i drift of into mindless scrolling
>I have the same but it feels more like a type of paralysis rather than a loop
See: "ADHD Paralysis"[1]
>I can only do one task deeply at a time but while doing that, I will think and worry about other tasks that need to be done. This stops me from what I am working on, leaving it half way and starting something else. When I reach a point when two or more tasks compete for my attention (or someone drops something on my plate) I feel locked up.
See: "Executive Dysfunction" [2]
>The best thing I've found is to capture tasks as soon as I get them and try to ignore things until my current task is done. Otherwise, I drift of into mindless scrolling
See: ADHD switches[3]
I've been beating myself up for 30 years over this stuff, until I learned that I'm very much not alone - and that ADHD doesn't mean what the name says (it's named awfully[4]).
I have similar issues, I've found that cannabis edibles help me a lot with getting into a flow and grinding hard on some single task while minimizing noise
In my experience the only way to get these things done is to find a bigger thing to procrastinate about.
This hopefully gets you a bit of mileage until there's one thing you really don't want to do; which you can either hand off to someone else to do (possibly at great dollar or favour cost), or fail at.
>1. I commit to someone that I’ll do something “soon,” or by a deadline.
The elephant in the room is that you can commit to, or you are committed to something that you don't want to do ("hi, IRS!").
Why should the mind be able to do that? We can't do things that we don't want to do.
Procrastination is a form of self-preservation that prevents us from following any silly thought that randomly pops up in our heads. Procrastination is not a bug but a feature.
Step 2 should be: call that 'someone' and chancel your commitment.
You can improve your PDL. Procrastination starts with a permissive thought, like "okay later" or "it isn't that bad yet" or "wait, a new episode, that's important". After thinking this, or in advance, make a list of 5-10 things you usually, in practice, do/think/feel to do your routine. E.g. I want to clean up my room, what do I usually do:
1. Get up and look around
2. Decide what goes where
3. Foreach: take it, go, put it there
4. Optimize movement by buffering items that go to the same place
5. Feel bad when you have to go the same route twice, because you forgot something at the first trip
Now mark important points and points you don't want to do. The former hides your vulnerability, the latter shows it. E.g. you have a chronic lower back pain and a low muscle tone from sitting all day, which makes you want 4 and stops from 3, because that involves bending over and feeling pain. Now guess what? You've found a problem: fix your back pain and sign up for a gym.
Now you don't want to go to gym, rinse, repeat.
Eventually you'll find out some deadlock like "I can't afford a gym and a doctor because my room demotivates me to get a job", but at least now you are aware of the issue. Or you may conclude that you don't really like your physician and maybe it's time to go check another one.
Something I’ve noticed is that the worst thing I can do, strangely enough, is to write the task down on my todo list. While it might make me feel good in the moment to take a minute to write it down (at least I’ve made some kind of progress, right?), it now poisons the entire todo list; I can’t bear to look at the list because I know it includes a task that I don’t want to think about.
100% ... I read somewhere to only think about just the next step.. Nothing more. And I did. No grand plans just what I'll do tomorrow. I was going great.. then I started to get ideas and I made a to-do list I haven't worked touched it in 4 days now... It's like mind is at limit of processing.. like on 2% battery you can get by on light work auto pilot but do something intensive it will shut down, which is try thinking about tasks in to do list why? Not sure but I think probably because I visit reddit, HN, other stuff daily and already have brain bucket full of things to think about... I'm not sure how doers type manage it
The best advice I think I've heard so far against procrastination is: First, find a small sub-task of the thing you want to do, and lay it out clearly. Then commit a small amount of time to starting on that sub-task. Not on finishing it, just on starting it. Usually once you started the thing, you will have no trouble seeing it through in time. Rinse, repeat.
For me that happens when there are two or more nontrivial and longer-running tasks at the same time that have a certain level of uncertainty/difficulty associated with them. I can’t really focus on one because the other one is also in the back of my mind worrying me, so I procrastinate to avoid either.
Oh! Beeminder's not actually affiliated with TaskRatchet. We're just friends with the creator of it and have promoted it a lot and have an autodata integration with it, etc. See https://blog.beeminder.com/taskratchet -- which is a guest post by the TaskRatchet creator on the Beeminder blog (so, um, I can see where the confusion came from!).
I have to commit to something within the context of an interpersonal relationship of intense, nigh existential importance to me, fight to get it done, and to admit with as much dispassion as possible when I can't do it for some reason or another. That's what seems to work.
We tend to be attached but uncommitted, when we need to committed but detached. Otherwise the emotional angst of failure eats away at efforts we know to be weak.
OK, so I used to have this problem, hardcore. Gave me a lot of trouble, I often overcommitted and ran away from tasks - but I've actually solved this problem now. It's not a fun solution, I have to do it every time (for now - the issue itself may fade with time) and it can be stressful, but it works and it isn't uncomfortable for very long.
So when I get distressed by a task I've put off, I use mindfulness techniques to stop myself from dissociating (going into my head, criticising myself for not doing it, psychoanalysing myself, other stuff that's not directly related to doing the task) and redirect my focus back to figuring out the first action I can take to progress the task. Thinking about the bigger-picture benefits of completing the task also help (how does completing this task advance goals that I care about?) Once I've figured it out, I continue to use the mindfulness techniques to remain present while I complete said task, only allowing my mind to wander in the direction of thinking more about the practical completion of the task (resolving other unknowns, breaking down big tasks, etc). Once I get this ball rolling the anxiety goes away, but it's hard to start because as TFA says, it comes with a strong repulsive instinct to avoid, procrastinate, do anything but the task that needs doing. You need to overcome that through focusing on the first step and doing it. "One foot in front of the other" as they say.
I think it comes from being overwhelmed - either from seeing the task as a complete object rather than breaking it down, not knowing how to advance it, feeling guilty over not having done it in time, or a million other reasons. You can't let being overwhelmed turn into avoidance - you have to confront and resolve the problem that's causing the emotional disturbance.
I have noticed I tend to procrastinate on a task until the anxiety caused by potentially running late or failing exceeds the anxiety of starting the task.
I relate 100%. On work commitments I can usually get it done, or when the stakes are high enough that failing would burn me hard in some way or another.
Awful, maybe one way to deal with this is to just admit that's how it is with commitments and just don't do them. I often fear that leads to a life of dullness and regret tho. The alternative is a struggle until the end of our days.
I don't think it's bad to admit that you are "not a burning furnace of ambition" as Norm Macdonald would say, if you really aren't. Most people just go to work and consume entertainment in their spare time. As long as you're not burdening anyone else, who cares?
Yea, it's just hard to come to terms with that. Ambition and success are drilled into us on a daily basis. It's hard to come to terms with maybe not fitting in and how that is okay.
Procrastination, definition:
"to delay doing something that you should do, usually because you do not want to do it"
Should, definition:
"used to show what is right, appropriate, etc., especially when criticizing somebody’s actions"
Appropriate, definition:
"suitable, acceptable or correct for the particular circumstances"
I think we're going into circular definitions here. However, it all comes down to motivation, i.e. what's the motive for doing something? Disapproval of one's social group? Disapproval of one's employer? Disapproval of one's customer? Disapproval of one's neighbor? Disapproval of one's self?
Uncomfortable question: are the social norms themselves actually healthy or can an entire society be fundamentally sick, such that many of the norms encourage destructive behavior, mental illness, etc.? In which case, certain forms of procrastination (i.e., not conforming to said social norms) can actually be healthy. See: workaholic syndrome.
When I first heard the term "doom scrolling," I thought it was something along these lines. Scrolling some feed or another, past the point when you should have moved on, to avoid confronting these types of tasks for just a bit longer.
That to me feels like a much deeper and more terrifying doom than simply reading bad news.
It seems to me that doom scrolling is the web equivalent of old TV's zapping phenomenon, where people just keep cycling through the stations in the hope that on some channel something interesting will pop up, sooner or later.
It feels the same, talking with my therapist she summarised it to me with a question: "is that a feeling like wanting to eat something that doesn't exist?" and since then I kept that in my mind. I doom-scroll/TV-zap usually without even knowing what I want, I just want something that will satisfy this "food that doesn't exist" appetite.
I solved this by lowering the expectations of how much I'm going to do - I usually just say to myself, let's do 1-2 things today, where these things are well defined, small pieces of work. Sometimes I can finish and can take 1 more thing of the list, sometimes I do one thing, sometimes I need to break the task up because it's too large. But I make a bit of progress every day even it it's just a centimeter or two. It adds up and I'm less stressed.
I am more interested in which company the author works for a living.
www.synthesis.is
Its like a subsidiary for spacex which teaches kids different stuff, it looks quite complicated because its not your average classroom teaching but something more ? Does anyone here have their kids enrolled in it, tell me about their/kids experience ?
What happened to me in 2020 was even weirder. I'd worked from home for 15 years and always managed my time well before the pandemic. I always wanted to get my work done as quickly as possible, because I had built up a work/reward system where I would go out at the end of the day, meet up with friends, socialize, or just sit outside a cafe and read a book. I never had to worry about deadlines because I was always way ahead of schedule.
In 2020, the deadlines vanished - my contracts all didn't want anything in a hurry, because they were in no hurry to pay. And so did my entire structure of social life. So suddenly I had way too much time.
I always thought if I had that much time, I'd pick up painting again, or record some new music, or just read all the books I'd been waiting to get to. But 2020 showed me a new problem:
If you pick up that book, said my mind, you'll just get trapped in it all night.
If you start painting you'll blow the whole day.
So I'd panic-read news for an hour, work an hour, panic read some more, get drunk, worry, walk circles, forget I was doing laundry, mop the floor, forget I was mopping the floor, and literally never sit down and just lose myself to anything.
This actually went on for almost 2 full years, and it's been the least creative time of my life; I'm only just starting to get over it. I bought myself a new laptop, a drawing tablet, art supplies, a new guitar, and got my piano tuned. And I still jump from one to another thing like a crazed monkey. When I fall into one thing, it goes all night and I feel like a wreck the next morning, with no useful result. A couple songs, a couple paintings, and they bring me memories of this oppressive, crazed, all-night insanity and bottles of wine I shouldn't have drunk. Then I go sober for a few days and bury myself into work, burn myself to the ground. Try to make $2k a day, burn burn burn. Look up and it's dark; I haven't gone out.
I went out, a bunch, between Delta and Omicron. I'm triple vaxed but I'm at the point where I'd kick myself forever if I got long covid because I lapsed and went out to shoot pool or hang out with friends.
I've read so many articles lately about this ...procrastination... I don't think it's the right word. What we are is afraid of the future, and every day has to be divided up into smaller and smaller pieces just to make sure you're sort of trying to take care of your mind. So you listen to your podcasts or you do something that you know won't take up all day because all day is too much commitment.
Sobering up adds 4 hours, I know that. But then I just play video games and try to forget I want a drink. It might actually be better in prison, since your options for what to do are so limited. I'd have to finish the book, or keep writing, or finish the code I was writing on the wall.
I was always sure I was better than almost any freelancer I ever met at managing my time, balancing work and life. But it turns out my balance did require having a life; now I do my work in this endless slog, with jack shit to look forward to. What good is money if you can't spend it. But I'm not okay with rejoining the human viral zoo right now and I'm not sure if or when I will be.
I'd love to hear suggestions for an employer or manager who expects or knows an employee or report is in or prone to this situation. Not experiencing that now, but definitely have in the past.
I've read lots of books (Eat That Frog, Getting Things Done, The Pomodoro Technique, The Now Habit) and tons of blog posts on procrastination and rarely do I find them very actionable (heh). Here's three techniques that work for me:
1. Baby Steps
2. Warp Speed
3. Multitask
__
Baby Steps
Do the simplest possible step to start the task, and repeat. For example, just open your word processor or IDE. Just write one sentence or prototype one function. Make a list of five topics for an essay or five requirements for a new block of code. If you get going, great. If not, look for the next baby step to move forward.
Warp Speed
Sometimes Baby Steps is not enough motivation if I really find a task distasteful or my perfectionism has set in, so I challenge myself to complete the task in some ridiculously small amount of time. For example, can I complete this 10 page essay in ... 15 minutes? Of course, spending days thinking of ideas that will win a Pulitzer is now out of the question. I have 30 seconds to outline the paper. 1.5 minutes to write each page. It's a mad dash of stream-of-consciousness to try to finish. At the end of 15 minutes, I'm usually left with either: a) a pretty terrible paper but a mental outline of ideas that I can make good by multiple re-writes, b) an actually submittable paper because I forgot about the 15min deadline an hour ago and I've been in flow the entire time. The key to Warp Speed is that I'm allowed throw away the first, second, or third drafts and start again with the ideas that were gained. Another technique that works with Warp Speed is to imagine yourself hitting SEND on the email to your professor, with essay attached, or hitting submit on the PR to your team with the new code you've written. Imagining the reaction of others helps me focus on what is absolutely essential to the project. What is the minimum level of quality that I need to avoid embarrassing myself? Once I have that, I can continue to iterate and improve if the project is worth it, or submit and move on if it's not worth my time.
Multitask
I know. I know. Multitasking is bad. But sometimes I get blocked on a Very Important Project because what I really want to be working on are some pie-in-the-sky almost-certainly-waste-of-time projects like designing a new programming language from scratch, or creating a new video game, or researching Machine Learning. But it would be totally irresponsible to work on those projects before the Very Important Project, and I really don't want to work on that, so I'll just spin here in procrastination land playing video games and watching Youtube for 10 hours. Instead, I multitask. I open a window and start prototyping the new programming language, I open another window and start brainstorming game ideas, and I open a third window and start working on Very Important Project. After I've made some progress or hit a lull on the fun projects I switch to the VIP and work on that. And now that I'm started on the VIP, and it is very important, I'll just finish it off quickly so I can focus on the fun projects.
Not GP and hopefully GP might come back too and answer but I think the book is useful to different people in different ways - even if it is a very short book.
One idea that stuck with me both for myself and in a team setting:
Fear of failure and how it is overcome: at one point the book tells the reader to imagine walking across a 2x4 beam or something laying on the ground, then walking across the same beam between two highrise towers. The first is really simple, the second is something most of us would never do if we could avoid it even if we knew the beam is perfectly safe. Now the author ask the reader to imagine being stuck at the top of the high rise with a fire raging below and coming closer. Most can probably now imagine themselves crossing the beam in some way, if nothing else by sitting on their butts inching themselves across. This is a someone who has a pathological fear of failure when a deadline is looming. Last the author asks the reader to imagine walking the same beam between the same two highrises but now there is no fire and there is a perfect safety net directly below it. Most people could probably do this, many would even enjoy it. This is a challenging job with a "safety net" where failing is safe.
Procrastination is usually caused by anxiety and the way we speak to ourselves, and this book is all about addressing that. You can have all sorts of rules and systems, but if you don't treat yourself with positivity and respect none of those will matter. My biggest takeaways are that you should not let work bleed into your leisure time, and you shouldn't base your self worth on your work.
I have plenty to do but the last few years I've done a smart thing to avoid this for smaller tasks:
If someone comes with a small request that I want to help them with I do two things:
1. make sure following up on it is their responsibility. I'll do it, not be PM for it.
2. for really small things, bring it to my house at a time we agree on and wait until it is done. Nothing gets left here for me to look at "whenever I have time" because I never have. If it is important they come to my house and wait until it is done.
Just wanted you to know that you've made my life a bit better today.
"I'll do it, not be the PM for it" -> a great, more positive rephrasing of what I often tell people for this sort of thing: "please bother me until I get back with you about it."
And the second is a brilliant filter for how much someone truly needs/wants something "small".
To anyone relating: that's an ADHD symptom.
It falls under the umbrella of Executive Dysfunction[1].
I have been beating myself up for it all my life, and turns out there are many things that work differently for people with ADHD - and many things that help (from medication[2] to social techniques, like body doubling[3]).
Here's how ADHD looks for me: https://romankogan.net/adhd/ -- if you find yourself scrolling and nodding, maybe get it checked it out, OK?
[1] https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Executive%20Dysfunction
[2] https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Medication
[3] https://romankogan.net/adhd/#Body%20Double