Ask HN: Please, help me understand what I am doing wrong.

My understanding of your problem:

You're depressed, you can't focus on any one of your "hundred" ideas, you haven't paid off your debt on a $60k salary working for a fortune 500 company, and you aren't building cool shit like you really want to be doing. And you can't lose weight.

Solution:

Move to Silicon Valley/SF and get a job at a startup. There are tons of recently funded startups hiring right now. Guaranteed you'll make more money, and if you pick the startup well, you'll be making cool assed shit all the time. Although, I dare say, they won't let you surf the web all day.

And, the culture of the Bay Area is to eat right, and to get more exercise. It's part of the social fabric here. It's also a lot easier to eat well when there's tons of great local produce and beautiful nature to hike around within a 20 minute drive of anywhere in the Bay Area.

If you still have problems focusing, the medical care in the Bay Area is quite good. Talk to a Psych out here. They know the difference between Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder and plain old ADHD. If they still feel you have ADHD after all these changes, suck it up and take your meds. Even if you don't agree with the diagnosis, you'll probably be able to focus on your code a bit more if you're taking Adderal as prescribed.

Perhaps this is just my just ringing my own bell, but I've felt like you for a while, but in a slightly different fashion. Personally, dude, I am very religious so I always have an outside focus that helps to keep me steady, not matter what, that sort of third thing that always matters in the face of any personal problems. For somebody like Gary Vaynerchuk, his "third thing" is his family.

I'm not trying to push the religion thing on you, because that's not your problem here, but what I will say that is that even though I have this other thing outside of coding and work and even family, I still feel (felt?) drained like you do.

After long conversations with my parents, and grandmothers, what I found the problem to be was anxiety and anxious thinking. That may not sound like your problem on the face of it, but here are some things I'd ask you:

- Do you find yourself constantly frustrated by your own limitations and imperfections?

- Do you have a hard time doing anything if it's not perfect?

- Do you berate yourself internally to such a degree that you are your own worst critic and that if you do anything wrong, no one needs to tell you so?

- Do you feel guilty for having all that you have and knowing that there are people out there who'd love to be you?

- Everytime you think of a new business/project idea, do you get all excited but then as you think about it more and more, you get turned off by all the roadblocks you'd have to overcome, until you gradually just fizz out and spend time on HN?

If this sounds like you in any way, then you're probably like me. I have no problem admitting (now) that one of the major reasons I don't get anything done is that I don't LET MYSELF. If you wanna talk personally about this, I'd be happy to be someone to talk to about this. My name is David and my email is at http://scr.im/daveslab (guarded from Spam Bots).

What am I doing about it? This program (http://www.stresscenter.com/mwc/), as cheesy as it looks, is truly, truly saving my life. It is a God-send for me and it helped my father and my uncle come to things they'd only dreamed of doing because of their fear.

Maybe I'm totally off the mark, but I truly hope this might help you. There are so many people affected by this but don't know it's name.

Figuring out yourself is probably the best thing that you can do. A lot of people have the thought that their potential is limitless - this is wrong and dangerous if you equate happiness with fulfilling your potential.

What helped me a lot is learning my personality type based on the MBTI model (or any model, they're all pretty similar) - study it and find out your potential compared to other types. This gives you a more accurate scale to view your potential, and a more accurate scale will give you a more well defined measurement of success.

For instance, personality typing predicts varying degrees of hard-workingness based on nothing else but your disposition. A lot of people can't accept this even though life itself seems to indicate it and have wrong expectations for themselves. This is very unhealthy if you put all your hopes here and can't manage to fulfill it.

I already wrote my thoughts on this here: therubyway.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/how-to-view-yourself/

Sign up for a half iron man triathlon 7 months from now.

And most importantly, find someone else to do it with you that won't let you wuss out 3 months into your training.

Pay a non-refundable $250 for it and force yourself to be ready for it. Find someone to run with you once per week that won't let you quit. Work your way up to running 15 miles once per week. I started at 3 miles once/wk and now do 15 once/wk.

I highly recommend doing this; it is fun, and I lost 20 lbs doing it.

my opinion: you are spending emotional energy on judging yourself. This energy is then not available for your goals. (Emotional energy is like a limited supply of money: spend it wisely, don't throw it away.) It undermines your motivation, and your faith in your ability, without which goals are impossible to achieve (literally). This is especially serious for weight-loss, because many people eat as a way to stop the feelings that the above creates - you need an alternative way to feel good about yourself, instead of eating.

You sound desperate. If you are, I have a suggestion that will help. But you'll only be able to do it if you are desperate:

Set doable goals, do them, and celebrate them.

1. Start off with clearly doable goals - no challenging or stretch goals! A good guide is to estimate what you think you can do, then halve it. [note: if it turns out that you can't do it, it was not a "doable goal" - start again with an easier one] To give you an idea of just how easy I mean, an example is: to make a mark on a piece of paper.

2. Doing them means to remain focussed on them. No moving the goal posts! Don't be distracted by other tasks; nor by thoughts of whether you can do it or not, nor by whether it's too easy etc. The way to prevent distractions is as in meditation: acknowledge them without anger nor fighting them, and gently shifting your attention back to the here and now.

3. celebration means something very specific: you recall (visualize) the state of events before you began; and then you compare the visualization with how things are now. And you notice that there is a difference - a change in the world - that is entirely due to your power.

The key is self-appreciation. You thought I was melodramatic when I said you can only do this if you're desperate? No. Setting a reasonable goal, doing it, and celebrating it is really that hard. It requires a particular kind of self-discipline that (according to your post) you presently don't exercise. You can improve at this - if you're desperate enough.

every great achievement is made up of a number of small achievements