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You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

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Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#91

Post by SubiculumCode »

echelon wrote: post #30
kayodelycaon wrote: post #4

As with most posts of this type, it assumes you are neurotypical and not dealing with other issues that compromise executive function. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just important to point out there is a prerequisite condition that must be met before this advice becomes useful.

I've got ADHD and this. I couldn't be happier this came across the HN feed today, because it seems to accurately answer so many questions I've had about my performance on personal projects recently. I spent months working on the next version of https://vo.codes , and I've only got about five hours of frontend work to do before launching it. I've sit on it for a month now. What I think is happening is that I'm worried…

The fear of finishing in real. The last push is always the hardest.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#92

Post by _moof »

n8cpdx wrote: post #68
nzmsv wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In before the other comments to this effect: - You are weak - Your grandparents had it worse - Think of the people working for minimum wage - Some of us actually love programming so much we will happily sacrifice our health; this choice is morally superior because we say so - I haven't had a vacation in 20 years and neither should you /sarcasm off

I really like society as it is. I, as rare as it is, identify as a neoliberal and I generally am invested in how things are. I like to see people working hard, I work hard myself, and aside from wanting a larger safety net, largely value the idea of a competitive market for labor. Those ideas, I suspect much more prevalent on HN than other sites, lead to defensiveness when antiwork or work-critical ideas are shared.…

> I like to see people working hard, I work hard myself

Yeah, see, this right here is the problem. There's this belief that people objecting to current norms and standards around work constitutes "not working hard," which is a non sequitur.

In my experience most people want to work. They just don’t want to do it on the terms currently laid out for them--terms that employers like to pretend are inviolable laws of nature, not choices they make and are responsible for.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#93

Post by chrsig »

navjack27 wrote: post #57
navjack27 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're worried that all of the stimulating part is over in launching it will be the boring part. I have ADHD too I hate the ending part of any project I've ever done and I've never finished anything. My favorite parts are setting up projects organizing projects and figuring out a workflow for projects. Making them and doing the actionable part is reasonable but actually finishing it and still having Steam and…

But yeah for sure blaming yourself or calling yourself lazy or saying you don't know how or any sort of negative self-talk when you have this kind of brain is just not healthy and it's something that I wish a lot of other people with ADHD would realize that they should not be doing

It's a challenge, because on the one hand, the negative self-talk can be motivating, in a not so great way (ie., hyper-vigilance)...but also, we've got society continually calling us lazy, uncaring, unmotivated, etc. to the point of even denying that ADHD is a real condition.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#94

Post by myself248 »

n8cpdx wrote: post #68
nzmsv wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In before the other comments to this effect: - You are weak - Your grandparents had it worse - Think of the people working for minimum wage - Some of us actually love programming so much we will happily sacrifice our health; this choice is morally superior because we say so - I haven't had a vacation in 20 years and neither should you /sarcasm off

I really like society as it is. I, as rare as it is, identify as a neoliberal and I generally am invested in how things are. I like to see people working hard, I work hard myself, and aside from wanting a larger safety net, largely value the idea of a competitive market for labor. Those ideas, I suspect much more prevalent on HN than other sites, lead to defensiveness when antiwork or work-critical ideas are shared.…

I'm not anti-work, I'm anti-toil.

The industrial revolution was supposed to free humankind from backbreaking labor and usher in an era of comfortable enlightenment.

Instead, we got rampant inequality, environmental devastation, sociological manipulation, and the internet of shit. (Whose true effects we won't see until Cranky Bear decides to show us all at once.) And huge numbers of people still toil 50+ hours a week to keep their head barely above water.

Work is fine, but the systems surrounding work have robbed us.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#95

Post by coldtea »

jokoon wrote: post #43

It's weird how we don't want to admit we are overworked. Competition is such a horror show. I really disagree with the whole "procrastination" thing. It's normal to feel depressed, it's part of nature of being tired, our brains are fragile and require a lot of energy and sleep. I bet that I would generally would be much happier working at a moderate pace in a farm rather than using my brain to do some other complex t…

>It's weird how we don't want to admit we are overworked.

Or that evolution works to make big changes in cycles of 1000s of years, and that 6 million years of hominin evolution out in nature in accordance with pre-electricity natural day cycles (and more malleable schedules), are not compatible with the mandatory:

(1) ass in the chair,

(2) looking at a screen,

(3) working with abstract information,

(4) 9 to 5, 5 days a week,

(5) inside an interior environment

(6) with technical lighting"

that's been "the norm" for a large part of the population since the 60s...

(or with factory-style work, that's been imposed on populations since the 18th century).

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#96

Post by jcims »

jokoon wrote: post #43

It's weird how we don't want to admit we are overworked. Competition is such a horror show. I really disagree with the whole "procrastination" thing. It's normal to feel depressed, it's part of nature of being tired, our brains are fragile and require a lot of energy and sleep. I bet that I would generally would be much happier working at a moderate pace in a farm rather than using my brain to do some other complex t…

IMHO the problem with programming isn't the total stress on the brain, it's that there is very little observable output of all of that effort.

I spent some time working with commercial HVAC and some of the problems there were on par with the most difficult technical problems I've worked through in information systems. The difference is that, with HVAC, all of that effort results in an outcome that connects with the limbic system in a way that doubling throughput or halving latency doesn't.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#97

Post by kwhitefoot »

bob33212 wrote: post #23
hirundo wrote: post #12

Here's a sci-fi movie I'd like to see. A (space alien, mad scientist, corporation, imp) unleashes a (bomb, virus, force field, spell) that suddenly removes internal resistance from everyone. Whatever intention wins the internal vote gets full control of the rest of the psyche. Everyone immediately starts working full bore on their (world saving invention, romantic pursuit, profit plan, great novel, hare brained schem…

This is my biggest problem with all the people promoting entrepreneurship for everyone. If everyone took two years off to start a company there would be no one keeping the lights on.

> there would be no one keeping the lights on.

Why would that be? Two years is only four percent of a working lifetime and it won't be at the same time for everyone. And not every company takes two years to create anyway.

Another way of looking at it is that two years is less time than it takes to get a degree.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#98

Post by ttul »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #90
moosey wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anxiety will do it too. So will hypervigilance, which presents with ADHD like symptoms but arises from trauma.

My procrastination dropped a lot once I medically intervened on ADHD, Anxiety, and Depression. I wonder where I'd be now if I had taken these steps 20 years ago.

20 years ago, the science was a lot less conclusive on ADHD. The drugs were far less sophisticated as well. Today, the condition is highly treatable (90%) with medication.

Re: You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

#100

Post by courtf »

n8cpdx wrote: post #68
nzmsv wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In before the other comments to this effect: - You are weak - Your grandparents had it worse - Think of the people working for minimum wage - Some of us actually love programming so much we will happily sacrifice our health; this choice is morally superior because we say so - I haven't had a vacation in 20 years and neither should you /sarcasm off

I really like society as it is. I, as rare as it is, identify as a neoliberal and I generally am invested in how things are. I like to see people working hard, I work hard myself, and aside from wanting a larger safety net, largely value the idea of a competitive market for labor. Those ideas, I suspect much more prevalent on HN than other sites, lead to defensiveness when antiwork or work-critical ideas are shared.…

Appreciate this comment, thank you.

For many years I had a sort of ruthless determination to get ahead and work hard. It mostly helped me back then, as many obstacles then were the sort that could be brute-forced, and it was addictive in a way as well. I could feel myself improving, could see the progress happening etc. I made lots of money for a while, got myself and my husband ahead in life etc.

A few things happened that sort of scuttled my motivation. The intrinsic rewards for the hard work I was doing stopped arriving. In order to keep progressing personally, I would need to engage in ever more competitive search for fun/challenging work. The competitive aspect might have excited me in the past, but I had by then been shafted one time too many by petty politics and discrimination to feel much interest in engaging with that aspect of the industry.

I could keep doing senior engineer work, mobile/backend whatever, and occasionally find some new topic to excite me, but often spend most of the time rehashing similar ideas, or cleaning up other people's messes. So I burned out, took some time to address my depression and have gotten myself back together mentally, for the most part (some amount of madness is crucial to hold onto).

But even now, when I look at new programming things I could work on, I can't help but see them all as simply paths back into a world that has lost its luster, full of people and situations that waste my time and energy. I can still work hard and build good software, but I just don't see why I should when it will inevitably lead me back to a place that almost destroyed me. Maybe that isn't true, maybe I should be better about forgetting the past and not presuming what my new experiences will look like. I'd love to be that foolish again someday, but I just can't afford to take that kind of risk anymore.

My temporary solution has been to work on stuff that isn't programming, to become like a beginner again in some other field. Philosophy, political science, history, anthropology, classic literature and others have been great to explore on my own and I've grown from these explorations. So now I'm getting my rewards from new sources. I still have the urge to make money, like a survival instinct, but I'm fortunate to have a decently stable life raft that I can float on for the time being.

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