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Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

deprocrastination.co

121–130 of 225 posts

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a medical expert or anything but I guess there is a good chunk of population who just procrastinates or can struggle with focus without having ADHD? Or is there always a 1:1 relationship?

Deep breath in... Many people who suffer from ADHD actually have undiagnosed allergies. My father was told he had ADHD late in life... he had allergies. I had problems with focus and being scatterbrained... on days the tree pollen was up. Kiddo was starting to get easily distracted and unable to focus on schoolwork... It was an allergy to the hard wheat used in U.S. bread making and preservatives. You [edit: most peo…

No that's not true. ADHD is a real thing that exists. You shominimize that.

Now are there other disorders/illnesses/allergies that affect concentration definition.

A lot of people have deviated septum or allergies that make nasal bresthing incredibly hard without effort. Of course this has a major effect on concentration.

Other examples surely exist. But please don't minimize real debilitating ADHD.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#122
post #12

The oversimplification and promises that if you just buy their thing you'll have a distraction free life in 14 days really irks me. I struggled with this stuff for over 40 years. Only last year, after a disastrous crash, did I start learning about ADHD, which finally gave me the language and tools and access to support that I needed to start making a meaningful difference. Without the understanding that diagnosis gav…

It's the classic situation of someone without ADHD telling us "just focus!" or "you just need to write things down!" or "you're just lazy". I have ADHD, and I also do not have a sense of smell (lost it in a TBI when I was a teenager). I tell people, "you take for granted what it's like to have a sense of smell. It affects every moment of your day, catching your interest and directing your attention all the time. Imag…

In defense of whoever said it to you: I find that writing things down goes a long way for me. Even just the act of it, without ever reading it back.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#123
post #12

The oversimplification and promises that if you just buy their thing you'll have a distraction free life in 14 days really irks me. I struggled with this stuff for over 40 years. Only last year, after a disastrous crash, did I start learning about ADHD, which finally gave me the language and tools and access to support that I needed to start making a meaningful difference. Without the understanding that diagnosis gav…

I could have written this... I've spent thousands on productivity and organization courses, and put a lot of effort into them, only to find myself unable to follow the system, for reasons I don't understand.

My whole life I've suffered from massive guilt, shame, and stress over not getting things done that were really important to me, and nobody understanding. "Clearly it's not important to you, or you would just do it."

I was actually diagnosed with ADHD 12 years ago, and the first medication and dose I tried didn't work, so I stopped, and basically forgot I even had ADHD. In part, I think I internalized the shame and dismissals from other people and still believed I was just "lazy" and "bad" and needed to try harder even despite having a clinical diagnosis.

It didn't help that my (now ex) wife also was totally dismissive of the idea that I had ADHD, as were most of my friends and family. Even from other people I know with ADHD, they would get angry or dismissive when I mentioned my diagnosis, saying I can't possibly have ADHD because I have been successful so far in my career.

I just recently decided to start looking into it again, now that my son has also been diagnosed. If I can learn how to help myself, maybe it will help me help him.

I recently heard a podcast interview with Jessica McCabe, and she said something that was mind blowing to me: that there is no one solution or cure for ADHD, and we need to stop looking for that. You will need a large toolbox of things to help, and will need to keep adapting and changing this, and it still won't ever be a "cure."

If anyone has any good info or resources to learn more about ADHD, please post them.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#124
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For both of your cases, the "25 to 30 minutes task" trick won't work at all. For a case that persists for years, what I've learned is that it's either real ADHD, or some emotional problem around the topic. For me, it was 100% an emotional problem, though I do have a bit of a scattered mind, but I can focus it, whereas I've seen people with serious ADHD who can't do it at all and need meds (among other things). For ex…

> For both of your cases, the "25 to 30 minutes task" trick won't work at all. For a case that persists for years, what I've learned is that it's either real ADHD, or some emotional problem around the topic. For me, it was 100% an emotional problem, though I do have a bit of a scattered mind, but I can focus it, whereas I've seen people with serious ADHD who can't do it at all and need meds (among other things). I'm…

(there's a typo in my post: "the ones who don't a solution and get out of the problem" ought to be "the ones who find a solution and get out of the problem")

> I'm not so sure about that. Mind you, I had already been thinking that putting some effort in limited amount of time instead of doing nothing at all before reading the article, so if anything the latter gave me some more confidence that it's actually a solution that at least worked for someone

Yes, absolutely, but for the kind of people I'm talking about, it's like telling an overweight person to "just go to the gym, bro". It works, yeah, but there's some who do buckle up and go to the gym, and there's others who stay stuck in a cycle and don't take any steps out even thought from the outside, what they have to do is obvious (for example, some cope with stress or anxiety by eating. How can they become healthier without tackling the root of the issue, which is the source of the stress/anxiety? This is what I mean by things having emotional causes) For ADHD, you needn't look too far. There's a top comment in this thread about someone who spent 40 years with these issues until they got actual help. Once the root is identified (diagnosed) then the difficulty in dealing with the problem goes down.

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> Actually even better, was it that for you?

It's good that you ask this, because I don't know your situation. As for me, I basically tried to exhaust the possibilities by reading self help books, then moving into philosophy (mostly eastern) and then moving into psychology (via Jung's books, and Alok Kanojia's youtube videos). No tip or trick helped me, and intellectually, I knew what the right answer was all along (an equivalent of "just go to the gym"). But that still didn't translate to action, which surprised me. In the end, I was forced to leave my overly intellectual/rational view of the world, and delve into what Jung called Eros, a contrast of Logos. But don't be distracted by the name. Perhaps it's better to talk about "intelligence quotient" (IQ) and "emotional quotient" (EQ). My underdeveloped EQ was causing me quite a bit of problems, because I wasn't aware of my emotions, of what I was feeling, of why I moved towards some things and not towards others. EQ is related to motivation, among other things. That's where what I wrote in the DIY path comes in. It took me a year of work. And it taught me a very interesting meta-lesson: I noticed in hindsight the amount of effort that I had put into this problem. It made me feel so desperate that I spent hours and hours going through books, taking notes every day, and learning a lot. But for the areas that really mattered to me, I had been led away. The lesson is that the more intellectually important something is to me, the harder it becomes to deal with it. This can manifest as perfectionisn. For example, I don't care at all about how my books are arranged in my bookshelf. So I place them as they fit. But if I care a lot about organization, I may keep them in boxes for years while I fret over the best way to implement the Dewey system for my 1000+ books and also planning (but not writing!) an app to scan my books into a local database and so on. (What do I mean by "intellectually important"? It's whatever we aren't led to by our emotions yet still matters to us. When I was led by the emotion of despair, I studied ceaselessly to get rid of it. But when I think about wanting to do something without a strong emotion backing it, it's harder to jump into it without forcing yourself)

So I care about a lot of things, and I care a lot. Also, I want to work on everything. So my inaction here was because I was scared of the possibility of letting go of the others if I dedicate myself to a few things, and truly focused on them, devoting my time and energy to that endeavour.

That's what annoyed me when I saw others, who spent years on making their passion project (whether a game, a set of paintings, a program or a tool to help others, a web novel they self-published, or whatever else)... And I knew what I had to do. Do what they did but for what I care about, for my ideas that I feel so strongly about. And I wasn't doing it. It's fucking annoying, like trying to lift your hand (which you know works perfectly) but you can't.

As for your case, only you can find out. The first link that therapists will try to find inside you is trauma, because that kind of stuff has far-reaching consequences on everything in your life, including motivation. But it's not always trauma, so don't think that there must have been something suppressed inside you or whatever.

For example, I had a lot of problems from having been a "gifted kid", being treated like I'm super smart and whatnot. That pushed me away from hard work and from things that weren't immediately easy, and that a big root cause. But it wasn't a trauma of any kind - I had a normal childhood

About my progress... I'm working on it and getting much better. I recently passed a big exam, and I'm honing some of my skills, putting in the hard work.

Good luck on your path

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the classic situation of someone without ADHD telling us "just focus!" or "you just need to write things down!" or "you're just lazy". I have ADHD, and I also do not have a sense of smell (lost it in a TBI when I was a teenager). I tell people, "you take for granted what it's like to have a sense of smell. It affects every moment of your day, catching your interest and directing your attention all the time. Imag…

I'm not a medical expert or anything but I guess there is a good chunk of population who just procrastinates or can struggle with focus without having ADHD? Or is there always a 1:1 relationship?

People love to label things, and parents overlabelling ADHD has been a common warning among anyone working with kids now.

In broader context I think we are now finally starting to pay attention to the fact every single human is subtly or not so subtly different, and we haven't even scratched the surface of mapping all those particularities and so we put people into categories we know, not necessarily where the actually belong.

It's great were slowly letting go of 'normalising' ourselves, but we're going to have to learn entirely news vocabularies to says describe who we then are. Also, by thinking about yourself you define yourself, so if you think differently you define differently. I.e. we are fluid, to a certain extent.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#126
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep breath in... Many people who suffer from ADHD actually have undiagnosed allergies. My father was told he had ADHD late in life... he had allergies. I had problems with focus and being scatterbrained... on days the tree pollen was up. Kiddo was starting to get easily distracted and unable to focus on schoolwork... It was an allergy to the hard wheat used in U.S. bread making and preservatives. You [edit: most peo…

No that's not true. ADHD is a real thing that exists. You shominimize that. Now are there other disorders/illnesses/allergies that affect concentration definition. A lot of people have deviated septum or allergies that make nasal bresthing incredibly hard without effort. Of course this has a major effect on concentration. Other examples surely exist. But please don't minimize real debilitating ADHD.

I'm not talking about difficulty breathing. I'm talking about a systemic inflammatory response from allergies that includes neurological symptoms like an inability to focus, problems with reading comprehension, and uncontrolled daydreaming or "tuning out." Every time I got my allergy shots, my concentration was shot for the day, and it had zero to do with my nasal passages.

I'm not minimizing the problems of those who suffer from ADHD. I'm hoping that they work with their doctors to see if there's more going on.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#127
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD is a spectrum, so it can have different severities. Some people simply find it more difficult to function well whereas some people find it absolutely and utterly impossible.

What spectrum means in this context is that it's a multi-dimensional problem- different levels of severity across a large number of different dimensions. Executive function is typically broken up into a large number of different functions, and people have different levels of each, so a person that functions well in one context might do poorly in another, and vice versa.

> What spectrum means in this context is that it's a multi-dimensional problem

I used "spectrum" to mean that ADHD is not always severe enough to cause outright disability, but the underlying problems can still be present to a lower degree.

The parent mentioned "procrastinates or can struggle with focus without having ADHD" (emphasis mine) and I wanted to point out that some of those people may also have some very mild form of ADHD.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#128
post #48
post #13

I'm not comfortable taking advice on "deprocrastination" from someone who made procrastination their career (or side gig?), except for the advice "if you find yourself procrastinating, quit your job and make what you'd rather do your job". But that rarely pays the bills .

There's also the "Price goes up in" and a counter (4 hrs from now). So don't procrastinate, buy now! Geez.

I believe that is 4 days, actually

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD is a spectrum, so it can have different severities. Some people simply find it more difficult to function well whereas some people find it absolutely and utterly impossible.

> ADHD is a spectrum When analyzing people what is not a spectrum? Every human attribute can be placed on a spectrum. Even other diseases, disorders, etc.. A broken bone can be a hairline crack or shattered into pieces.

Someone can have a mild form of ADHD without it being severe enough to cause executive dysfunction outright. That's what I mean by spectrum

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memories of my ex-wife admonishing me, while in the throes of a deep, disabling episode of clinical depression, to "Snap out of it!"

"Snap out of it!" lol Sorry. I actually relate to this!

Same. And all the comparisons akin to "Hey what are you sad about? You don't live in a third world country struggling from meal to meal!"

Very helpful, thank you.

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