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Stay off all news, social media and any distracting websites until noon.
Closely related... recognizing that everyone, including me, is just a thin coat of reason smeared on a dumb animal brain. Everyone's decision-making, including mine, is governed by a lot of reactionary, low-energy thinking patterns driven by instinct and bad assumptions, not reason - and our "reasoning" is often just thinking our reactionary assumptions are actually something we came to from careful thought. Recognizing that others are irrational helps me work with their interests and biases. Recognizing I'm also irrational helps me avoid the smug belief that everyone who disagrees with me is hateful, greedy, and stupid.
It made me realize how much "later" is a fictional time rarely arrives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad to see someone else mention cannabis. It honestly has helped me so much with slowing down and making sure I put in the time to search for answers. It's helped me creatively and passionately. It's helped me calm down my anxiety in stressful situations and be clearheaded with my thoughts. It's not for everyone but for those that do use it, I sincerely believe it works.
Having never tried it, I'm curious, isn't there a chance that it turns into an addiction ?
The hack is simple: maintain awareness of what your brain is doing, and police it: do not allow rumination.
Simple and easy are, of course, not the same thing.
If I am stuck in a problem, and I'm close to mental exhaustion, I turn off the computer, do something entirely different, get some rest, and come back to it tomorrow. The next day, I often discover a solution I didn't realize before, or that same problem/bug goes away somehow, most likely because I was too tired and overlooked something.
Decision-bias: More situations are made worse by not making a decision than making the wrong decision. Most decisions can be rapidly undone. Therefore, always bias to making a decision. Anti-schlep-blindness: Look for the thing you're avoiding thinking about. It's probably the most important thing.
Not taking any action is often better than taking the wrong action, in my experience. Not taking an action, though, IS a decision so i’m not sure how exactly this compares to your statement.
Write down what I'm going to do. It happens that I can't really 'start' with work due to having too many things to choose from, or by not knowing how to really get started with it. What always helps is writing down on a piece of paper a step by step guide of what I will do. this can be very general. But just having the steps written down helps me get started. Kind of like a "todo list" except that I don't update it w…
I almost never follow the schedule I set, but I manage to get everything done (deadlines are an advantage of being in school still, I think).
In a more freeform environment I impose a lot of structure on my schedule when I have a lot of executive function to spare (morning, coffee, 8+ hours of sleep, enough food). Then, the rest of the week (I plan in 1 week blocks) I stick to the schedule, and I don't really have to think about what I'm going to have to do.
There has to be some sense of flexibility, though. I forget to schedule things, and sometimes stuff pops up on short notice. Having items on my todo prioritized (1:=most important).
This is, of course, an idealized thing. I still strive to be consistent and effective in my routines.
The former helps a lot when trying to make sense out of chaos. Even if I haven’t learned a sense of priority, having that list in front of me makes it an easier path to finding priority. And my rule is always if there isn’t any clear sense of priority, then just pick one and ignore the rest.
The latter helps with every-day communication. Repeating things back that I hear helps me remember them, but also can lead to the person or persons you are communicating with deciding what they said wasn’t what they meant. It seems like a small, and probably annoying task, but the amount of times it’s helped me remember something between my co-workers desk and my own so I can record what we decided, or the times it’s led to a convo going just a little bit longer because something needed additional clarification is worth the annoyance, in my opinion.
(This doesn't work if you keep score on the doing of favors.)