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Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#281
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Pathologising the normal range of human behavior is a popular activity of neurotic western privileged people. Or whatever the mental illness that's trending at the moment.

Before I went to med school, I was similarly skeptical about the med/pharma industry. But like the global warming debate, once you understand the science, you begin to realize how facile the conspiracy theories are. Here's the science behind ADHD: Functional MRI allows us to image actual brain activity. And there are clear differences between the brains of those diagnosed with ADHD and those diagnosed without (and ye…

Look, I am not disputing that ADHD is a very real thing.

What I am being sarcastic about, is this completely unrelated thing that people on the internet do, this game of "Guess the mental illness", which usually isn't very helpful.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Pathologising the normal range of human behavior is a popular activity of neurotic western privileged people. Or whatever the mental illness that's trending at the moment.

Another favourite past-time of Western-privileged-folks: waxing poetic about subject matter they have no acquaintance with outside of internet articles and forum comments. Regardless of contrasts with "more serious" psychological or physical illness, ADHD is debilitating without treatment and destroys the suffer's quality of life.

My aim was not to devalue the suffering of people who have ADHD. My aim was to make fun of armchair internet psychiatrists.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you make 130k, you have a whole team working under you, and you are 21 years old, and you have trouble getting laid. That's it, this guy is a troll.

you make 130k, you have a whole team working under you, and you are 21 years old, and you have trouble getting laid. That is the description of the entire SF tech industry.

except for the people who work under him and make less money. Those don't count as real people though.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you make 130k, you have a whole team working under you, and you are 21 years old, and you have trouble getting laid. That's it, this guy is a troll.

I don't see why that's hard to believe. I'm very good at selling myself and my skillset but I'm deathly afraid of girls.

Well sure, but you have lots of money so that doesn't matter.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you make 130k, you have a whole team working under you, and you are 21 years old, and you have trouble getting laid. That is the description of the entire SF tech industry.

except for the people who work under him and make less money. Those don't count as real people though.

I didn't read him mention people working under him.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#286
post #194

The fact that this has been going on for years, and that you feel the procrastination is holding you back from your full potential does sound like it could be ADHD, as others have mentioned. Also, ADHD tends to run in families. So if your dad is the same way... Most people associate ADHD with kids who struggle in school. But highly intelligent people can have it too. It still holds them back from reaching their poten…

Thank you for posting this. There a lot of misconceptions about the disorder, and more people need to be re-educated so the stigma is removed.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#287
post #194

The fact that this has been going on for years, and that you feel the procrastination is holding you back from your full potential does sound like it could be ADHD, as others have mentioned. Also, ADHD tends to run in families. So if your dad is the same way... Most people associate ADHD with kids who struggle in school. But highly intelligent people can have it too. It still holds them back from reaching their poten…

I saw a school psych when I was in college and all it really did was piss me off. The guy spent 30 minutes asking me these types of questions except even more generic and then afterwards said "Yep, you have ADD". I hardly talked about myself and the way he phrased the questions made it super easy to say yes to all of them. He wrote me a prescription and I never got it filled because of how little I felt he actually h…

That you took a bunch of meds doesn't mean you took the ones right for your particular condition. That you spoke to one psych who seemed a disinterested quack doesn't mean all doctors are.

The human brain is very complicated, executive function is one of its highest and most complicated tasks. Fixing it with Pill Powerball doesn't seem likely to me.

That you felt you were fighting the drug may suggest you have other issues to work out. Which really isn't surprising. If you've got serious ADD / ADHD, the hookup between events and your feelings / reactions to those events has been seriously impaired. Which means that all the internal mechanisms for monitoring and managing your emotional state, and the mechanisms for monitoring your relationships with other people and their reactions to your behavior, were seriously fucked up. Which your emotional development to date has been working with a distant echo of good information about how you and other people react to stuff.

That doesn't mean you have these conditions. It does mean you are improperly excluding the possibility.

Think about why that may be. Why might your brain fight a drug that might be helpful? Are you embarrassed by the possibility you have such a condition? Worried you'll be dependent on a drug? Well, too bad. If that's what's going on, that's what's going on, and running from it won't get you anywhere but right where you are.

I take a pill every day so I can think. I hate needing that pill. Well, boo-hoo for me. Again, I don't know whether you have this condition or not. But you certainly have a deep problem, and fixing it is going to take a long hard look in the mirror, and probably admitting some shit that you really don't want to hear. If you're batting away plausible explanations with responses like this, you aren't going to figure this out.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#288

This is just my two cents, take it with a grain of salt as I am simply a humble observer peering into your life, with the little information you have given me. I dont think you are lazy; I think you are afraid to fail. Thus far in your life, you've had it easy. SAT's, Valedictorian, probably started programming when you were 12. You have seen your peers struggle to no end with this stuff, yet you've always been able…

I believe that you have a key point here, STAY HUNGRY, stay hungry forever. You got 130k a/y know? Set a goal for yourself aim to have a million in a year (I do not know how, but try it). As someone else said before in the comments is not for the money.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you set up an automatic data source (as opposed to replying to the email bot with datapoints, which for many things is not so bad either -- you're already in the habit of checking your email) then I don't think you have to develop new habits to use Beeminder. For what it's worth, we've been praised on ADHD fora and know of users with ADHD who swear by Beeminder. Note that we're not targeting people with ADHD speci…

I applaud what you're doing, by the way. I didn't mean to attack or offend & I apologize for my tone earlier. Based on what I've read in the past few months of my research, it seems as though there's a subset of people with ADHD who don't have much success with standard approaches. I don't have more information about that group, but I do think I may belong to it. The theory I've developed about myself is that I have…

Oh, wow, yes, "digital nanny" sounds very intriguing. Pinging you now! (And thanks for kind words!)

Re: Ask HN: I'm a chronic procrastinator – how do I break it?

#290
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Pathologising the normal range of human behavior is a popular activity of neurotic western privileged people. Or whatever the mental illness that's trending at the moment.

Before I went to med school, I was similarly skeptical about the med/pharma industry. But like the global warming debate, once you understand the science, you begin to realize how facile the conspiracy theories are. Here's the science behind ADHD: Functional MRI allows us to image actual brain activity. And there are clear differences between the brains of those diagnosed with ADHD and those diagnosed without (and ye…

I think the truth lies in between. The conspiracy theories are not completely off regarding that about half of the authors of the ADD/ADHD sections of the DSM-IV were paid by pharma companies [1].

That does not change the fact that ADHD is a dysfunction of the brain where the regulation of Dopamin and/or Serotonin does not meet the requirements of the environment.

I think it rather tells us something about the diagnosis which isn't handled very carefully in many cases, especially for children. A proper long term validation of symptoms and evaluation of treatment methods should be a starting point, not a standardized set of questions and a recipe at the end of the session. Behavioral therapy can sometimes be as effective as drug use but it is not even considered most of the time.

Without extended knowledge of the topic the public almost has to think that ADHD is a fraud. It's nothing one can see as a broken leg and the media only reports about Fraud and instant subscriptions to children that might not even have ADHD. Sometimes even MD's claim it's not a real disease because of these reasons. It's not their field and what they hear about it only makes them suspicious. There is so much misinformation about the topic it's just sad.

[1] http://www.naturalnews.com/019404_psychiatry_psychiatric_dru... ( sorry couldn't find a better english source )

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