Stop postponing things by embracing the mess

Many decades later even mundane things can be a battle - ringing a doctor to ask for an appointment, or a provider to query a bill, filling in forms and so on. Most of my procrastination stems from my experiences back them. It is easier in my mind to defer action than to risk the imagined verbal abuse. I'd imagine a fair share of non-ADHD related organisational issues can be traced to similar experiences.

Just like you can't out-train a bad diet, you can't out-live a shitty childhood.

The thing I don’t like about adhd is that the premise is the brain doesn’t produce enough dopamine so we return it to normal levels…but the brain always seeks homeostasis so it will adapt by producing more dopamine reuptake cells. There are no conclusive imaging studies or genetic markers for it.

The meds certainly do work but if you ask someone to explain their condition to you they have all have the same simplified and erroneous explanation as to why they can handle addictive meds and the general population cannot.

I think it’s pretty much a general smart drug but with high risk of addiction.

One of the main things holding me back in life is this fear of taking risks (which translates into a lot of things, like procrastination)

I'm great at mapping project risks though. So there is that. :)

> Just like you can't out-train a bad diet, you can't out-live a shitty childhood.

I think I’d challenge this slightly. Out training a bad diet probably doesn’t work, but is better than a bad diet with no training. And when you fix your diet, the training can start working wonders.

My childhood left deep and unhealthy imprints, but I’m no longer in that environment. I think you can out-live a shitty childhood, by changing your diet so to speak. This is grueling work, painful, slow, and often frustrating. But replacing old patterns can really transform living in the same way changing a bad diet can transform the process of training.

Over time I’ve come to believe strongly that the only thing harder than dealing with the past is not dealing with it. And over time, this gradually transforms the present. I very much prefer the late 30s version of me to all of the preceding iterations.

Best of luck on your own journey. Send me an email if you ever want to chat. (Not selling anything, just someone who cares about this topic a lot).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_fallacy (if you haven't encountered this one weird quirk yet, it's a must read/skim). I believe most mammals tend toward optimism... They naturally have less fear of doomed endeavors.

I had an essay on Emergent Design Principles around here somewhere... For instance, I do a quick and dirty stab in the dark to map the problem space. Then totally rewrite and refactor now that I can make a more educated guess. Right then I generate the API and all (public function stubs), organizing and documenting everything. Management will demand I "ship it" without full docs and full of kluges otherwise...

I'll save the rest of that for a more on-topic thread. The gist is that procrastination can be countered by allotting time to play around in the problem space (incorporate procrastination into workflow -- can't beat it, join it). At worse I try a deliberate attempt at failure (well I knew it wouldn't have worked, but it would have been cool if it had), and at least I got myself into "code mode" doing something at all. No fear of failure, since I planned to fail that time anyway. Then I'll at least know a bit better the "lay of the land" (problem space features to fit against). It's oft the first step for me that's the hardest.

My favorite trick is to have at least one side project that I work on as procrastination of doing main projects. Without fail I'll be worrying about the main project enough that I'll realize some side-project procrastination-code I've just written shows an elegant way forward in the main project and I can no longer resist the urge to see it in action. At the least I'll be making some manner of progress, and getting closer to that "Zen" state wherein I do my main project work.