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Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

deprocrastination.co

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Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#51

Post by dartos »

adadadadadad wrote: post #29
dartos wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s likely that a lot more people have ADHD than we think, but I don’t think everyone who procrastinates does so bc of ADHD

If you read the diagnostic criteria that is used, it’s so broad it could easily apply to most of the world’s population…as long as they declare they have trouble focusing.

Yeah it’s hard to write specific criteria for some mental disorders.

They’re not all uniform in presentation or affect.

It’d really be up to the therapist.

Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like most of the ADHD meds usually have long lasting adverse effects.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#52

Post by prometheus76 »

darkwater wrote: post #22
prometheus76 wrote: post #17

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?

I was diagnosed with anxiety and ADHD about 8 years ago, and since then, I have mainly worked on my anxiety. My anxiety has diminished drastically, and I have found that my ADHD symptoms are now manageable without medication (although I still struggle some days). For me, ADHD led to failing in my daily duties as a kid, which led to higher and higher levels of anxiety, which really exacerbated my ADHD symptoms. Now that I have learned how to control my anxiety, and with the resulting calming of my nervous system, the ADHD isn't nearly as problematic.

TL;DR: anxiety and ADHD are often intertwined and they spiral each other out of control, so what looks like ADHD is sometimes much worse because of anxiety.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#53

Post by adadadadadad »

dboreham wrote: post #44
sanderjd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I really don't relate to this. I don't have tasks I can do in 25 or 30 minutes, except for the exact kind of "marking messages read" tasks that leave me feeling empty at the end of the day. > Even if you didn't finish it, note down progress and next steps. Go at it again in the next slot. For me, these notes would mostly be "spent 25 minutes rebuilding context, got pulled away" over and over again. I think…

I didn't read it as embrace the chaos, rather to not fixate on the perfect non-chaotic day that's coming (it isn't). Instead adopt a "continuous improvement" stance where any little deviation from total chaos is a win. Iterate that process. Basically the same thing as continuous delivery: start delivering a crappy thing and progressively fix issues / add features until it's done.

Sometimes I said to myself: just spend 2 mins on this side project and get as much done as you can. Surely I can do as little as 2 mins regardless of where it gets me.

Yet I simply can’t. It’s a total mind fu*k.

Yet we all do this all the time. Maybe someone has always wanted to learn some language, and then they’ve never spent even a few minutes starting.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#54

Post by dartos »

criddell wrote: post #50
dartos wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be a little weird, but the from us music from brain.fm really helps me. I’ve measured the work I get done over sprints where I listen to brain.fm and where I don’t, and I usually get 2-3 more cards done of weeks that I do. Not a scientific measurement, but it is what it is.

I'm intrigued, but brain.fm requires a credit card for a free trial. Bummer. Edit: I just checked my email and (in the spam folder) was an email from them with a link that works for 3 days. I'm trying it now.

FWIW I’ve been using brainfm for about 8 years.

Granted, I got my account with a lifetime subscription back when they were just spinning up, but I’ve used them pretty consistently since then.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#55

Post by WhitneyLand »

snazz wrote: post #33
darkwater wrote: post #22

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?

A lot of people (myself included) procrastinate on something because it's emotionally uncomfortable, without necessarily having ADHD. For example, when I was much younger, I'd procrastinate on math homework specifically, not because I struggled with focus, but because it was difficult to admit to myself that I didn't know how to do it and would need to practice. Subjects that came more naturally to me (English, scien…

Makes perfect sense. Kind of interesting the opposite can bite too: Math came naturally to me, but after seeing some high standardized test scores adults paraded them around and made a big deal of it, so it became stressful to do without perfect outcomes. For my own kids I just refused to allow a lot of that stuff like IQ testing, etc.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#56

Post by corobo »

adadadadadad wrote: post #39

I wonder if anyone had success by handing control of their life to a higher power…like ChatGPT. I wonder if you could prompt it to be a vicious task master boss who demands regular status updates and can adequately shame you.

Tiny successes in something like this - I've got a whole system of timers that are either tracking what I'm doing or tracking the time when I'm not doing something during work time.

From there I've got an automation that will send me a notification warning me the timewaster timer is about to start and that I should start working on something. There's a tiny slither of shame in there that seems to be helping! :)

I am also working on a more thought out app/system/service/bot that does indeed use GPT (and regular old if statements and cron jobs) to help me schedule out my tasks for the day, recover my schedule after missing tasks, shame me via a messenger interface for leaving a task on my list too long, etc... but in the most obvious case of irony I keep procrastinating on actually building it. It's getting there slowly :)

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#57

Post by vitabenes »

codetrotter wrote: post #14

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=deprocrastination.co Interesting that pretty much all submissions on the first page of results from this domain is both by the same user and broadly seems to be about the same overarching theme of procrastination. Is OP the author of the site? (OP also posts links to other sites, so not saying OP is doing anything wrong though.)

I post whatever I find interesting and occasionally throw in one of the articles I worked on. If people find it interesting or useful, great, if not, that's okay too.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#58

Post by helboi4 »

prometheus76 wrote: post #17
masto wrote: 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…

I just had my new therapist yesterday telling me

"doesn't it feel good to be consistent and achieve things" and I'm like yeah no shit.

"so you need to be consistent with something" yeah that's my problem dawg.

"what's the feeling you get when you want to quit?" it just happens that my life falls apart or I get really into sth else. does nobody else just lose track of all the bricks required to do things sometimes?

"it will eventually not become effort to do these things" no sir I can tell you from experience that it NEVER becomes natural for me to be organised and motivated. It takes substantial effort for me just to use a diary, which apparently is what is supposed to make me organised. Sometimes it becomes easiER because I have a streak of good habits, but it can fall apart at any moment because it's all a precarious conscious effort.

"that's because you've never stuck to anything long enough" i've stuck to different things for different lengths of time, at what point are you suggesting this actually starts working?

God I hate therapists. I sure do hope I actually have ADHD. Otherwise I'm fucked.

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#59

Post by [deleted] »

dartos wrote: post #25
LeafItAlone wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With your diagnoses, what are you now doing that is helping you?

It may be a little weird, but the from us music from brain.fm really helps me. I’ve measured the work I get done over sprints where I listen to brain.fm and where I don’t, and I usually get 2-3 more cards done of weeks that I do. Not a scientific measurement, but it is what it is.

[deleted]

Re: Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

#60

Post by bloopernova »

bookofjoe wrote: post #27
prometheus76 wrote: post #17

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…

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

I'm sorry that happened to you. The phrase that made my then wife an ex-wife for me was "you're not supposed to be fixing yourself you're supposed to be fixing our marriage!"

Led me (with therapy and time) to realize what I meant to her; I was an accessory.

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