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I conditioned myself to fail

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Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#11
post #10

I'm not a mental health professional, and I don't know the author. Please be assured that I don't mean any disrespect whatsoever: consider getting tested for ADHD by a mental health professional. I was diagnosed very late, since my ADHD was of the "inattentive" kind. I would not be troublesome at home or at school, like an hyperactive child would. A lot of people like this go undiagnosed. One of the traits of ADHD is…

how has a diagnosis helped you?

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#12
> But then whenever there’s a sale or a positive comment, I get another small jolt of motivation and I can build a bit again.

There's your solution. Positivity regarding your productivity, which is imperfectly normal, fuck your mental health.

No sale, no comment, no problem. Find something that rewards your productivity or tech savvy.

Put your projects on git, you'll get forks and stars (maybe). Maybe pieces will get adopted elsewhere. Talk about how you did what. Grow, help others. Do the opposite, hack something, for example, or reverse engineer something that'll be rewarding by itself: "holy shit, thatt's how they did it?".

If you don't have "it" internally, get it from elsewhere.

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#13
Well, zero criticism IS a form of criticism so I don't blame the author for not being motivated after the fact. I'd even say its the worst kind of criticism because it leaves you with nothing to build next.

But I think they are highlighting an important thing here that most of us struggle with...building is fun, progress is discrete and clear, the feedback loop is very tight. Selling and marketing to people sucks, its clunky, the feedback loops are variable, and if you're inclined more to being an introvert it is very exhausting.

I'm not sure the author is conditioned to fail as much as they are just more inclined to build.

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#14
post #10

I'm not a mental health professional, and I don't know the author. Please be assured that I don't mean any disrespect whatsoever: consider getting tested for ADHD by a mental health professional. I was diagnosed very late, since my ADHD was of the "inattentive" kind. I would not be troublesome at home or at school, like an hyperactive child would. A lot of people like this go undiagnosed. One of the traits of ADHD is…

how has a diagnosis helped you?

I did get depressed for a while, which is a common comorbidity. Drugs helped somewhat. Ultimately sleep, diet, family, friends and sport helped more.

I am less hard on myself. My therapist helped me realize that some of the things I was blaming myself for were actually not my fault. I have some techniques to help me with some of my everyday struggles. I sometimes are able to aim my hyperfocus instead of just letting it point to whatever random thing crosses my mind - the trick there is realizing that almost anything worth knowing has some interesting nuggets, you just have to dig for them sometimes.

My son was diagnosed at an appropriate age (he has hyperactivity so it has been visible for a while).

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#15
post #10

I'm not a mental health professional, and I don't know the author. Please be assured that I don't mean any disrespect whatsoever: consider getting tested for ADHD by a mental health professional. I was diagnosed very late, since my ADHD was of the "inattentive" kind. I would not be troublesome at home or at school, like an hyperactive child would. A lot of people like this go undiagnosed. One of the traits of ADHD is…

how has a diagnosis helped you?

Druhgs. Dropped his dealer and got the Gustav.

I'm kidding. Once you know what, you can check your patterns against the standard and the deviations. Then you can approach the circuits that are fucked and identify triggers.

Best to get to the roots of the reinforcement in childhood, though. Behaviors and preferences surpressed, people you didn't beat up for reasons and so on, behavioral triggers, when you held back and why. What distracted you when you did a specific thing or the other. And, of course, the standard stuff, what were you rewarded for and did you really care about that thing yourself?

Might take a while but it'll be worth it.

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#16
Very much relatable. I have dozens of high effort GitHub repos that I didn’t touch after launching it. For me it works by sparring with friends to really grasp if something is a viable long term idea or not and then stick to it.

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#17
I’ve found that I like the thrill of designing a project as I get older. But not building. By design I don’t mean UI - which I suck at.

I have experience up and down the stack from requirements analysis and pre-sales, enough project management to get by, back end development, database, cloud architecture and “DevOps” [sic] and creating deployment pipelines. I’m not bragging, I’m just old (50).

I would have to hire someone to do any front end work except ironically hosted call centers.

I can do all that myself for a large project and for smaller projects I could simplify the “DevOps” portion. But knowing the work involved, I would rather lead a team at this point in my life and work with the “business”, project managers and people who want to be heads down.

Honestly though, the one thing I wouldn’t be good at anyway is marketing and sales and that’s the most important part of getting a project off the ground.

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#18
post #10

I'm not a mental health professional, and I don't know the author. Please be assured that I don't mean any disrespect whatsoever: consider getting tested for ADHD by a mental health professional. I was diagnosed very late, since my ADHD was of the "inattentive" kind. I would not be troublesome at home or at school, like an hyperactive child would. A lot of people like this go undiagnosed. One of the traits of ADHD is…

I am very similar to op.

What type of mental health professional should we seek out?

I talked to a PA about ADD a couple times, but dropped it because they seemed doubtful and I felt a bit ashamed (because you treat ADD and ADHD with a controlled substance).

I went on phentermine for a few weeks, for weight loss, and my mind felt absolutely amazing on that medicine. It’s apparently dangerous for long term use though.

I’ve written my own story; how to lose money with 25 years of failed businesses.

https://joeldare.com/how-to-lose-money-with-25-years-of-fail...

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#20
This resonates hard with me. A huge list of partially-completed projects, work stopping right around the "boring but easy finishing off work". Incredible waste.

Edit: this is why we have teamwork and division of labour, btw.

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