Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time

Hyperactivity affects only 50% of people with ADD. Check out this video where Daniel Amen shows 7 types of ADD, maybe you will recognize your patterns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWnJ4wjVu9k

There are layers upon layers in that reward system, although everything should be explainable. So how did the reward system come to a point that it does not want to believe it will die at some point and for that reason it had to create several imaginary stories such as religion etc? I wonder if it maybe has to do with group dynamics? In order for some conscious systems to be controlled by more powerful entities they would have had to been fed delusions in order for their reward systems to be happy and not feel cheated upon. Eg reward system wants to maximize survivability and when it is controlled by other systems in power it has to be led lies that after death it will be better so all in all the reward system gets so skewed that eventually it is likely to believe any other type of delusions as well. Such as for example that itself is not a reward system and if it was it would hate itself.

So in the end are all delusions defense mechanisms for that reward system to accept that things are unfair, this reward system might not be able to achieve the desired goals so it has to adapt itself? But why can't this reward system just hibernate without delusions?

Edit: actually I think coming to hate itself as a reward system is part of societal pressures. Society pressures each reward system to do common good for that society and creates morals. These morals have been created in a manner that one has to be something more than a selfish creature or otherwise gets shunned so reward system will create all those thoughts in order to avoid having to face selfish desires vs societal pressures head on?

I've only just recently started to appreciate how much emotions can utterly dominate our thinking. We believe we are rational creatures, but we have all these emotional mechanisms in our brain that kick in and do a hardware override of everything. For me the first step in getting better control of this is just to understand that it's happening.

I came to this realization from a fascinating book about anger[1]. The idea of this book is to explain how your brain activates anger so that you can deal with it better. Hopefully my explanation won't butcher the technical stuff too badly, but I believe the gist is that anger is a useful mechanism in your brain that is supposed to kick in when certain conditions are met and drive you toward taking action when you really need to.

As such, there's a part of your brain that's sitting around monitoring to figure out if any such conditions have been met. When it decides they have, then two things happen. One is that it sort of juices your brain with something that heightens alertness and focus. This boost gives you the mental energy to act. (Think of something kind of like an adrenaline rush.) The other is that it directs your attention to the issue. It does this over and over and over again until it is resolved. If you don't act (because of impulse control, lack of opportunity, or failure to decide how), it's like hitting a snooze button. You can put the thought out of your mind, but the alarm will go off again and bring it back.

So, in computer terms, there's a hardware control system here. It turns on and periodically generates a non-maskable interrupt which jumps you into a routine it provides. And it cranks up the CPU clock speed to the point of nearly overheating. And there is no instruction to just make it stop. The only way to shut it off is to change the conditions that enabled it.

Anyway, the point is that our thoughts exist within the framework of this system. Our brains are capable of rationality, but this framework can kick in and preempt that. And anger is just one of many systems!

Therefore, if you want to gain control of your thinking, you must gain control of your emotions. (Emotional regulation is supposed to be important to mental health, and after learning about this one emotion, I can see why.) Gaining control might be a misleading phrase here because you can't stop or eliminate them. Instead, your only choice is to learn how they work and how to manage them. You need to learn to work within the framework. Which takes practice and honing skills. If you don't, then you are just being led around blindly by them, leaving everything up to chance. Either you get a handle on them, or they control you. Or maybe I should say they do control you, and your only choice is to control how they control you.

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[1]: The book is called "Healing the Angry Brain: How Understanding the Way Your Brain Works Can Help You Control Anger and Aggression". See https://www.google.com/books/edition/Healing_the_Angry_Brain...

> I absolutely think there is a such thing as ADHD and these people were prescribed the medication to manage it

Then why do you claim they were "high"? No, they're more toward "normal" than they would otherwise be.

Claiming ADHD people are high, while you are "sober" is a pejorative which diminishes the fact that ADHD exists and needs treatment, and is usually intended to embarrass and denigrate those that have it.

I don't think it's possible to procrastinate using mindfulness meditation. If you're trying to avoid something, what you're really trying to avoid are the associated emotions. Mindfulness meditation does literally the opposite.

I find that by letting the emotions I'd like to avoid come to my consciousness -- i.e. meditating -- I get used to them. That frequently outright removes my procrastinating problem.

> that I would procrastinate doing and contribute to my anxiety.

You don't have to schedule meditation. Just do it when you feel like it, expand your brief pauses. And if you don't feel like meditating for weeks or months, so be it.