191–200 of 243 posts
Now I'm just crazy but no one can accuse me of laziness.
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You're enabling your wife's depression. Stay married. Just stop enabling her. Be loving and respectful, but stop helping her. In the short run she'll likely flip out on you. It will take a few months to get results. Don't tell her what you're doing, just do it. Don't be tough with her, don't tell her what to do, just go back to being happy and taking care of yourself.
Tried that. Believe me. I appreciate the advice though.
Both cause a kind of short-circuiting of the “automatic thoughts” we have in response to emotional triggers. In cognitive behavioral therapy, something like procrastination is addressed by listing all of the thoughts you have in response to the thing you’re avoiding, identifying irrationalities, and forming rational responses. It can be very effective at easing anger, fear, sadness, and lack of motivation.
With mindfulness, over time it’s possible to begin decoupling your true self from all of the labels. This is also known as “ego death”, and can be somewhat painful and uncomfortable - the ego tends to fight back when it feels you letting go of it. In deep meditation it can be almost frightening to experience the ego disappear; we go through most of our lives thinking we are the labels we’ve associated with ourselves. To let go of the labels can feel like letting go of yourself. Blissful meditation is a state of just being; no labels.
I recommend checking out the book “Feeling Good” if you want to know more about CBT, and there are tons of resources on mindfulness, but Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind is great (as well as most of Alan Watts’ lectures you can find on YouTube).
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I think there's an important distinction here: in "stop being lazy" it is a verb, an act which is temporary and can be overcome, while in "he is lazy" it is an adjective, an attribute which can all too easily be taken as an indelible personality trait. I think it's only the latter that can be harmful.
> in "stop being lazy" it is a verb It isn't.
Warning - rant. I wish HN would ban BS psychology articles. There are real, scientific, actionable steps to understanding perceived motivational deficit and this article doesn't get close to them. It retreads stigmatizing labels, regurgitates useless advice, and provokes high confidence low value anecdotes. 1. Motivation is a chemical state. You can induce motivation generically through dopamine reuptake inhibitors.…
I hear you but any suggestions on what can we do to increase our motivation short of Adderall and bears? Is it a diet thing or.. genetic lottery?
Diet is a big one. No (extra) sugar - definitely no soda, cut back on the dessert, no fruit - it's just dessert vegetables). No caffeine - a large highly caffeinated Philz coffee is the legal equivalent of a small amount of meth. No alcohol either.
Get enough sleep every night.
Get enough physical exercise to take the edge off.
No background TV noise. Dim the lights.
Get out in nature, which is generally less stimulating - fewer brightly colored billboards, cars, amplified music, etc.
Google has a large list for those that don't want to resort to Adderall.
My wife is very similar to the person who wrote this article. She will not do anything she can procrastinate. Nothing. I personally think its some sort of insidious depression. It's destroyed our lives together, and I'm on the verge of asking for a divorce for the... 3rd time, except this time, I'm going to just file. It is absolutely impossible to have the energy for both people in a relationship. My health is suffe…
I don't know you or your wife and can't presume to tell you how or whether to fix the situation (assuming it could be), but the lesson I learned long ago regarding relationships is to honestly evaluate yourself and define your capabilities and needs (not wants, but the things you absolutely require) and to either have your partner do the same (or less optimally evaluate them yourself as best you can). If you have a need that cannot be realistically satisfied by the _current_ capabilities of your partner, or vice versa, then end the relationship as quickly as you can. Attempting to have a relationship with someone who does not satisfy your needs, or you cannot satisfy theirs, is a doomed effort and the longer you remain in the relationship the worse and more hostile it will become. Walk away as friends before you build up resentments and end up leaving as enemies.
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Tried that. Believe me. I appreciate the advice though.
I'm so sorry. Why did you go back to covering for her?
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I hear you but any suggestions on what can we do to increase our motivation short of Adderall and bears? Is it a diet thing or.. genetic lottery?
There are non-chemical ways of treating ADHD (which is what Adderall is generally prescribed for. I am not aware of any disease for which bears are a generally accepted treatment, however), so I suspect that non-chemical techniques to combat ADHD may also work for those who's attention issues don't rise to the level of having been professionally diagnosed. Diet is a big one. No (extra) sugar - definitely no soda, cut…
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Indeed there is, and the way psychiatry approaches it in terms of diagnosis isn't really good, either. There is a long but very insightful article on this topic that was recently featured on HN, by Scott Alexander, who's a practicing psychiatrist: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mor... Key quote for this topic: > But “ability to concentrate” is a normally distributed trait, like IQ. We draw a…
Do you think that in fifty, maybe one-hundred, years people will look back at our present day understand of psychiatry and shake their heads.
Concentration is a skill that can be practiced. I've struggled with it myself and have found that meditation is far more effective than medication in dealing with it. Moreover, when I do retreats or backpacking trips where I'm cut off from the digital world, all my concentration issues disappear. It's made me believe that modern psychiatry is myopiclly focused on identifying and treating symptoms and largely ignores the avoidable causes of those symptoms.
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Is there a good way at all to tackle the issues you mention? I ask because, well, I kind of recognize myself in this description.
As someone who has struggled (very, very hard---high test scores, terrible grades, the whole bit) with this, I have recently taken the following approach: 1. The battleground is not a single choice or moment, but all of them. 2. There is a tendency to conflate results with character. If I have not done laundry and am wearing dirty clothes, am I a) a slovenly person, or b) a clean person who has not done laundry recen…