Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?

#121

Post by richardbrevig » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 4:19 AM UTC

spawarotti wrote: post #117

Some people here suggest you might have ADHD. I encourage you to consider this, but suggest for you to be very skeptical towards this possibility. You can find extended discussion on this here: [1]. Focus first on fundamentals like sleep, exercise, diet, good social and romantic ties. Even if just one of your fundamentals is off, it might cause your brain to tell you “Hey, you want for me to put some long, hard, focu…

Excellent explanation of Maslow's Theory of Human Motivation [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs

Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?

#122

Post by internet_user » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 4:27 AM UTC

thatsenough wrote: post #85

dvcrn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving a third +1 here. I had (have) similar issues with motivation and got diagnosed with ADHD at age 25. I'd describe it as "a disability of knowing how to do something, but not actually doing it unless there are external consequences involved"

How do you differentiate this from laziness/apathy?

apathy can be part of dysexecutive syndromes, such as ADHD.

To be pedantic, apathy is lack of emotion and interest.

Often that is not the case in ADHD. The hallmark of that syndrome is the inability to follow through/self-regulate behavior/plan actions to achieve the objective they are interested in.

Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?

#123

Post by loveJesus » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 4:27 AM UTC

Praise the Lord, second commented post on Hacker News. (i try not to capitalize i) i had been diagnosed with OCD, ADHD, and eventually Bipolar Schizoaffective disorder. I had been on all kinds of meds including Haldol, antidepressants, and amphetamines like adderall. My psychiatrist back in 2003 said i was a 9 out of 10 of the worst cases he had seen. I can now focus fine for over 12 hours, yet haven't even had coffee nor any medications in over 5 years. One big thing that helped me was that my dad here would start playing hymns on the piano and i would sing along, and my concentration eventually went up to about 3 or 4 hours, then eventually took up the piano myself and now i feel normal. Another big part was being able to spend time in prayer, fasting, and service to God and others. This helped me to have much more peace with what i choose to be doing, instead of feeling like i am wasting my life when something more important may be available. I am far from perfect but the Lord has been good to me, and i want to share He does miracles like always (i think this is kind of cool https://youtu.be/Pw9iSO7rUUY ). I do want to share how God has helped me through Jesus Christ, if i can help somehow please let me know in Jesus name.

Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?

#124

Post by coder98075 » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

Try focussing on smaller chunks of 25 minutes session and take a break. There is a good Coursera course on "learning how to learn", which talks about how our brain learns and retains information. They also talk about different technique, which directly addresses mental laziness.

Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?

#125

Post by seshagiric » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

I tried Bacopa for a short while. It really helped clear the mental fogginess but shot up my blood pressure. I have much better results with

1. Timely sleep

2. Exercise (cardio or weights)

Note: Exercise takes 2-3 days before it shows results but after that I threw away the Bacopa (high BP was scary).

Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?

#126

Post by agumonkey » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

internet_user wrote: post #118

agumonkey wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody feels that ADHD or similar issues are often a sign that you're not doing things that you need to to be happy ? Like running after something for the wrong reasons ? Kinda like Bukowski "don't try" ? ps: to explain more, there were times where a) I was slowly but surely inspired by a topic and would just keep wondering and thinking about it, 'hard' or not, it was similar to walking a mental park b) I was motiva…

Depression (and many other illnesses, autoimmune, hormonal deficiencies, sleep disorders, all kinds of dementia and other neurological illnesses) will produce a dysexecutive syndrome that's very similar, if not indisginuishable, from ADHD. In your specific case you may want to read up on something called "learned helplessness". Essentially you are being conditioned by failure to quit prematurely. That is different fr…

> Essentially you are being conditioned by failure to quit prematurely.

Funny how my conclusions today are the opposite. I didn't quit early enough somehow. Well it's hard to tell, tbh, I've spent years learning hard stuff without any real benefit. So many a different course of action would make sense :)

Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?

#127

Post by jacobolus » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 4:37 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #116

jacobolus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone doesn’t have to have ADHD to shirk from hard problems. Expecting technical/intellectual problems to be easy to solve is something that is drilled into most people by the school system, which rarely if ever present problems that take more than a few minutes to solve, and pretty much never expect students to try tackling problems that require weeks of effort. The result is that when many people encounter a hard…

There's a difference between "finding it difficult to get started on the thing you don't want to do" and "literally would not be able to choose to do it for more than a few minutes even with a gun to your head". I don't know the OP but this seems a bit like telling someone that "everyone feels tired sometimes" when they might have undiagnosed chronic fatigue syndrome.

The original post is consistent with many different types of difficulties, including plenty that have nothing to do with ADHD.

If you told a new parent, an alcoholic, or someone living on a toxic waste dump that everyone who is frequently tired probably has CFS, that would be equally irresponsible.

Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?

#128

Post by eru » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 4:38 AM UTC

toomanybeersies wrote: post #18

There is the potential that you have ADHD, because what you're describing sounds similar to my situation. I eventually ended up on stimulant medication to help, but there's non-stimulant medication available (if you're opposed to eating amphetamines for breakfast), as well as counselling and other treatment options that don't involve medication. Even if you don't want to seek professional treatment, you could look up…

There's an easy experiment OP can do: see if nicotine patches help.

Nicotine is a safe stimulant that available over the counter; and works really well against ADHD and can help normal people too. Arguably much better than caffeine for the vast majority of people.

See https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine for details.

One thing to keep in mind: stay away from smoking. That's vile and addictive.

Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?

#129

Post by rubicon33 » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 4:39 AM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #105

organsnyder wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is probably an influence from inherent personality differences, but I would speculate that building up stamina for tackling hard problems comes down substantially to practice. I was diagnosed with ADHD my senior year of college. Before that, the mindset you're advocating got close to breaking me.

My “mindset” (if you can call it that) is that most people don’t get much experience tackling hard problems, at least up through school. In light of that, what I would “advocate” is that people should try to get practice working on problems at their current level of stamina/ability (which might be very low), and slowly work their way up, instead of beating themselves up when a problem much more difficult than what th…

Taking your example of your 3.5 year old's book reading attention and interest ...

What would you say if they were bored / distracted by everything you read to them, not just the difficult things?

Re: Ask HN: How do I overcome mental laziness?

#130

Post by eru » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 4:43 AM UTC

internet_user wrote: post #118

agumonkey wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody feels that ADHD or similar issues are often a sign that you're not doing things that you need to to be happy ? Like running after something for the wrong reasons ? Kinda like Bukowski "don't try" ? ps: to explain more, there were times where a) I was slowly but surely inspired by a topic and would just keep wondering and thinking about it, 'hard' or not, it was similar to walking a mental park b) I was motiva…

Depression (and many other illnesses, autoimmune, hormonal deficiencies, sleep disorders, all kinds of dementia and other neurological illnesses) will produce a dysexecutive syndrome that's very similar, if not indisginuishable, from ADHD. In your specific case you may want to read up on something called "learned helplessness". Essentially you are being conditioned by failure to quit prematurely. That is different fr…

In practice, ADHD is what you have when stimulants make you get better.

If your laundry lists of symptoms (depression, sleep disorders, lack of motivation etc) get better from stimulants, count yourself lucky. Stimulants work right away, if they work at all, and have few and relatively mild side-effects.

Some of the side-effects, like weight loss, are even seen as welcome by many people. Others like having to pee more often and cold hands are relatively easy to deal with.

For comparison, antidepressants take months to show even mild positive effects; and have major side-effects.