Ask HN: Is it 'normal' to struggle so hard with work?

Post by dboreham » Tue, Feb 20, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

tlrobinson wrote: post #62

zinckiwi wrote: post #5

I'm familiar with this. There's no magic solution, sadly, but I'll share one thing that has helped me and may apply at least to some of your situations. I realised a while ago that my main issue was with nebulous tasks -- that is, the more concrete, defined, and _meetable_ a task was, the less trouble I had with it. So I started to break down large tasks, which never got started much less finished, into smaller ones,…

I've been wondering, is there a todo / task tracking app that can somehow aggregate tasks across multiple applications? Currently my tasks are spread across emails and email drafts, Github issues, iOS reminders, Slack, my head, etc. It's a lot of work to keep track of them all. Maybe I should just carry around a paper notebook and make that the authoritative source of tasks.

Post by thecatspaw » Wed, Feb 21, 2018, 11:26 AM UTC

andybak wrote: post #4

> Am I suffering from some form of undiagnosed ADHD? It's worth looking into this. I know people who found a diagnosis extremely helpful - even those who chose not to avail themselves of the medications available. There's several online questionnaires that would give you an idea of the kind of questions you'd be asked if you went for a consultation. Some of the traits are quiet distinct and you'll have an immediate s…

Post by ghostbrainalpha » Thu, Feb 22, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

whiskyant wrote: post #270

teekert wrote: post #214

You mention playing video games as a rewards and I immediately wonder: how much of your problem is the fact that video games made you get used to fast and easy rewards? How much did you desensitize your innate reward system by video games? I'm probably going to get down voted for this remark but I encourage every gamer feeling the urge to down vote to take a critical look at themselves before doing so, be honest, my…

I would say most video games do not have fast/easy rewards. There may be numerous small wins scattered throughout the completion of most games, but I would argue it's not much different from the distribution of small wins you could find at work (completing a small function, finding/fixing a bug, getting a large subtask done, etc). Most video games are decently challenging on a whole, and requires some persistence. I…

Post by kpennell » Sat, Feb 24, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

endymi0n wrote: post #59

I can relate a lot. I'm still burning through self-motivation hacks at 35, some of which are helping while most don't. Eventually, the hack with by far the largest impact (which brought me to currently being cofounder and CTO of one of the more successful German startups) was realizing that while I simply suck at self-motivating, I never had a problem getting stuff done when working for others. I effortlessly produce…

Post by timtas » Mon, Feb 26, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC