No, really, I'm waiting for an O(n^4) algorithm to finish processing a full HD frame to confirm that it works before I put in the effort of building a GPU version.
The noprocast feature does not work for me because if I am not procrastinating, I will open several tabs and keep them there for short breaks during the day. The noprocast rules will only accept my procrastinating behavior.
I sometimes feel like these articles are popular because procrastination is just a universal part of the human condition. I doubt anyone scrolls past these articles and thinks “that doesn’t affect me at all”.
I procrastinate to the point where it’s causing me real problems in life, yet it feels kinda indulgent to say that as if I’m the victim of some disease, when I’m actually just failing to deal with something that’s hard for everyone.
Perhaps this feeling is actually contributing to the problem, because I’m continually frustrated that I can’t just snap out of it like (most) other people.
I think that might be the British in us. I feel like Americans are much more open to diagnosis of mental conditions like anxiety and depression. Perhaps because they are constantly bombarded with advertising for medications for them and other conditions.
I guess I'm the same in a lot of ways. I can end up in a spiral of self destructive procrastination. I do identify with some of the other symptoms and experiences but not all of them.
In truth I think that a binary classification is too much of a blunt instrument. The reality is probably more of a spectrum.
> I sometimes feel like these articles are popular because procrastination is just a universal part of the human condition. I doubt anyone scrolls past these articles and thinks “that doesn’t affect me at all”.
It's normal, to a degree. When you are failing classes and having problems with your job, relationships and even your hobbies, then it is no longer normal.
I like these upvoted posts on procrastination. Feels like the HN community (like myself) struggles with this. Nowadays I embrace procrastination as necessary "evil". Unlike the cited post, I don't think one needs "help" with that - it might just backfire even more.
I have come to believe that procrastination is a healthy and necessary condition for outstanding productivity. It is like REM sleep or something :-)
I think that without some level of procrastination nothing amazing would ever be done.
A certain level of procrastination is healthy. We're not meant to be machines, constantly productive 24/7. Downtime to enjoy your life, consume creative works, and unwind is good.
I'm not talking about that here. I'm talking about severe procrastination, when it's very difficult to do the work you need to do. The goal is to strike a healthy balance.
It's like this guy has been inside my head. Sometimes I feel exactly he same way, do the same things (well, not Twitter), with the same thoughts and results. There have been times when I refresh HN and say "you're not even enjoying this, why do you keep looking?"
The section on why notecards and todo lists have never worked for him (and for me) was particularly salient:
"The problem with "systems" is that they are authorities. They have to be. If you decide "I'll prioritize things with a stack of notecards" then you are telling yourself the following:
"The notecards replace my own brain. Everything that I do must be on a notecard. If it isn't on a notecard, it can't be done. If I want it done, it has to be on a notecard."
The problem is that when you have a crisis (a day full of emergencies) that forces you to break from this system you will lose all respect for its authority. Your brain will learn that it doesn't have to respect the notecards, that they aren't in charge, and this sense of freedom is addictive and will persist. Most ADHD sufferers have left a trail of systems - notecards, whiteboards, lists, post-its, apps, alarms - that worked great for [a month, a week, three days] but are now dead to them, scorched earth we can't return to."
You can use this to your advantage to create peace of mind as I found out.
The mechanism you describe is what is the basis for the "Getting things done" framework. You learn your brain to "trust" the "authority" so it can let go of all loose ends that keep your brain busy (like stuff it needs to remember, like appointment, paying a bill, fixing something in the house, etc). But if you are able to trick your brain in not checking in with the authority (as GTD dictates) you are left with a lot of spare room in your brain to think creative, at least thats my theory.
I have ADD, and I can speak to the GTD framework being an extremely useful tool. In my case I use Trello to run what I call my "Digital Brain".
I use a typical kanban wip system (Backlog, Today, Blocked, Done) to organize pretty much all task-related things in my life and it works extremely well. Once I know its on the trello board, I know I don't have to worry about keeping it in my head anymore, and that gives me a lot more space to relax and not worry things are being missed/forgotten.
This is key. I don't care if I miss a few weeks because of being lazy. I know my life/future/path/journey is ready to start again when I get tired of being disorganized.
For me, todo lists and prioritization systems are like mental health yo-yo dieting; I've tried them all, 4 times over and nothing ever sticks.
This section spoke to me in the same way, as each time I a new system up (or an old one back up) it works until I have to deal with an emergency day, where even the act of updating the list goes out the window. And then, the next day it's "hey, I made it through yesterday, I don't need that system today." and then it's done... until my emergency is "holy hell, I have no clue what's on my plate for the day/week/month, I need to fix that." where I'll pick up my go to old system (kanban style Trello board) and repeat the cycle anew.
I think it's something that's a person by person fix; much like the 100's of methods of task management there could probably 100's of methods of task management for folks with ADHD. For me, I've been playing around with implementing a deadman's switch on my Trello board using Butler, and it's been an interesting experiment. Essentially I have a task that has to be 'completed' each morning before 10am, if I don't I'll get an email that it's overdue, if I do complete it Butler will set a new due date for the next work day @ 10am.
It's been one of my better attempts at trying to circumvent the 'scorched earth' leaving of the task management process.
I've been coming up and using various GTD systems for a better part of the last two decades. I'd be slipping in and out of different setups, tools, solutions, systems... Some would stick for years, the others I'd abandon pretty quickly.
All of them worked for me to a degree, and were very helpful in keeping me organised and efficient, but never did I find a perfect setup that I'd be perfectly comfortable and happy with.
I guess the most useful thing I learned from all these years and years of trying to get a system in place and trying to get organised is to be perfectly comfortable with changing the systems as I go along. Keep experimenting. Keep what works for you, discard what doesn't.
For a long time I've been using a combination of a Trello based implementation of a GTD-gone-wild kind of a todo list (with the centerpiece being week-by-week daily todos) and an Evernote based journal that I kept surprisingly consistently almost every day for years.
A few months ago, I got in one of those overwhelmingly busy crises, which made me drop the journal. Rather than daily, I'd do it occasionally. To an extent it was a relief, and I rationalised the hiatus by thinking in terms of the benefit from the valuable extra time that I could spend on other work, but I quickly realised that I lost an important information repository I could comfortably and consistently rely on.
And then I stumbled upon Roam Research (RR). The experience was so great that I started keeping a daily journal again. Went from 'nah, I'm not writing shit' mode to an almost obsessive 'gotta record everything' in an instant. And I'm actually enjoying it.
I've ditched Evernote (I still have all my old data there), and I did not think twice, cause I got used to evolving my system without looking back if I find something that i feel works better.
At the moment I'm still using Trello for tasks, but the todos are so easy and natural to do in RR that I'm increasingly using it for my tasks, and finding that I am having to open Trello less and less.
RR is so powerful and flexible and natural and easy, that I am genuinely excited about a prospect of evolving my next system on it. I have a sense this one will stick for a while.
There's a very helpful article on Medium, written by a guy that's quite serious about getting the most out of RR. I'll try to find it and link it below.
I have used the note system (with google calendar) and it worked for me in meeting deadlines(most of) and being objectively more productive. I am currently a graduate student and it has helped me to maintain good grades and complete assignments.
The trick is not to let the notes and calendar act like a "master". I usually view it as a friend who suggests things to do in a given time frame. The friend(calendar with notes) and I are symbiotic, our interests are linked.
Changing the view from an "authoritative master" to a "benevolent friend" would help. Sometimes I would discard the note and keep binging youtube video/or hackernews. Other times, I would reschedule the work for some other time. But most of the time I am able to get things done on time, without any help.
It does require some discipline, but once you get a hang of it, it becomes easy.
In my personal life, I have a habit in the morning of making a short list of things that need to get done soon on the back of a business card. I don't even really have a solid intention of getting all (or even any) of the tasks done that day. Nonetheless, it often turns out that at the end of the day most of them have been done, or at least significantly advanced.
This is even more effective if it's a weekend, and I'm drinking.
Definitely right. Sometimes I look at notes I made for myself, telling myself what to do, and then ultimately rebel against my past self because I don't want to do what I'm telling myself to do.
Systems are better when they're an augmentation of your memory that you can appreciate. For example, I always put events in my google calendar so I can remember when they are and catch overlaps early.
I've had a bad relationship with todo lists. They get stale really quickly. If I look at a todo list that's a few days old, I might think, "Why should I do that now? Why should I factor the work in this way? Just so I can say I'm done with this item?" In practice, the way I factor a task changes constantly. So now the way I do todo lists is more like an aid to my memory. When I have time to do stuff (which is rare) I'll write down the things that are most important at that exact moment. Sometimes I'll skim through todo lists from previous days to jog my memory, but I won't copy over everything. I'll arrange the things into an itinerary for the day and see how many of them I can get done. Usually it's not all of them. And that's OK.
Past me thanks you, kindly. "Now" me says "Screw past me, and you for being a sympathizer. I know I said I'd go to bed on time but I need to watch 10 episodes of Game of Thrones right now!"
Before mindfulness became a category in the app store, I read a Kurt Vonnegut book where he passed on advice given to him by his uncle.
> "But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
> So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is."
I think your ability to navigate the ego can be trained.
I'll be the first to admit that I maintain it inconsistently, skipping days, weeks, even months. Much as I have with other paper-based planning systems.
But, and this is critical: the bullet-journal method facilitates for me at least returning to the system. That is, if I take a hiatus, I'm not confronted with pages-on-end of blank, unfilled dates as with a pre-printed planner.
I've seen some people suggest omitting the index, and can only say from my experience DON'T DO THAT!!! It's the most critical part of the journal, as it lets you find things. That's what distinguishes the bullet journal from a simple sequential notebook without an index. Everything else -- bullet notation, brief-vs-long notes, spreads, etc., builds off the index IMO.
The flexibility of the system is fantastic as it suits my highly ideosyncratic needs. Sometimes a day needs a dozen pages. Sometimes I really need to make a spread. Sometimes I'll just have a few notes, or none, for days on end. There's no pre-printed form I'm fitting into, I just make what I need (or skip what I don't).
And again: if time goes by and I don't use it, I can re-start.
I've been looking at other systems, some covered in Getting Things Done (which ... took me nine years to read, just sayin'), including the notion of 43 folders, a tickler file. Not yet implemented, but after looking at ring / circular buffers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_buffer), I totally grok the concept.
I've recently started a journal-based research/reading journal based on a similar concept of "BOTI" -- best of the interval -- pages.
Rather than Starting a List and Simply Letting It Grow, the BOTI is either time- or space-constrained. You add to it, and when completed, open a new page, later in the journal.
Individual items on the BOTI aren't
You can also skim the top items from individual BOTI lists and create a next-higher-aggregation BOTI, the best of the best. And so forth. So you might have BOTW, BOTM, BOTY for week, month, and year. Yes, rolling weeks into months is inexact, this is not a precise system.
(Dev-Ops and sysadmin types will recognise this as similar to an RRD aggregation, and the idea borrows from this.)
And "best" can be multiple categories. I'm thinking of books, articles, authors, and ideas, but you might include, say, wines, beers, films, components, devices, or anything else that has a wide range of properties and quality levels that are otherwise hard to track with time.
The handy thing is that at the end of a year, you have a way to easily list out the top items of a year, or decade. Or should the Singularity arrive any time soon[1], centuries and millennia.[2]
I've also been accumulating a collection of index cards related to research interests, now approaching a decade old. That's also proved an interesting journey.
One thing I'll point out is that recordkeeping and planning tools require both time and space. Your journal, your files, your index cards, need a place to live. If you're living a highly disrupted or mobile life, that can be very hard to arrange. I tend to find physical systems far superior to digital ones, for numerous reasons.[3]
And no, I'm not expecting any one system to solve All My Personal Organisational Failings. But there are systems w...
Someone can have this scorched earth effect and yet not have adhd, yes? In particular if they can sometimes return to a system after tidying it up.
I do have a large trail of systems and nothing has worked permanently. However, I’m nowhere near as unfocussed as the author of that article. That one section resonated however.
What if close people hold you accountable? You tell them: “hey, I’ll clean my room by Friday next week or I owe you (or your favourite organization) 20$.”
Eventually you will end up avoiding those close people by essentially any means necessary. You'll think of some excuse to avoid doing it. Sometimes sitting out in the cold street feels better than having to go home and do the task that has to be done. That $20 is eventually going to be lost as is the closeness to that person.
Possible explanation: one has appeared here by chance a few days ago, and then people read stuff about procratination on their own and some are submitting some of this stuff here.
"I find it extraordinarily difficult to just... relax. Sit on a bench and watch the clouds. [...] But even if I'm in that perfect scenario where there's nothing to do... my brain will just fill the void with absurd daydreams and rabbithole trains of thought."
I have the exact same thing, but I always thought of it as a brilliant feature, not as a problem.
As soon as I sit around and get bored, my brain will make up absurd daydreams and stories. Usually they are pretty funny, so afterwards I feel relaxed and happy. Isn't that the whole point of taking a break?
Imagine that brilliant feature isn't just "a break" but the norm... it's not just "when I get bored," it's:
- In the middle of flow
- Trying to fall asleep
- Trying to go back to sleep
- In the middle of important conversations
- During meetings - even one's you're leading
- When you're getting dressed
- When you're making breakfast (where the hell did I put the 3rd spoon I've pulled from the drawer)
- When you're in intimate moments with a partner (or by yourself - no judgement here)
- When you're making lunch (just burned my second grilled cheese because I can't stay on task for 5 minutes)
- During exercise
- During free-time and hobbies
- Between small tasks
- In the middle of small tasks
- etc
- etc
- etc
The article itself is about the issues surrounding the person's ADHD, not just "procrastination," which for many people is a good thing, because it's a brain break; but for many of us with ADHD it's the norm and a cycle we have to fight instead of embrace.
I would say the article nicely highlights the problems with ADHD diagnosis, because when I read it, I thought for pretty much every point "oh I also do that sometimes"
Yeah, they did a good job covering the social issue around it; as most people do most of what we do sometimes; and the key word is always 'sometimes,' ADHD is a daily occurrence of high tide and low tide marks for attention and active effort; some days are easier than others but that isn't always setting the bar very high.
Like for me, depending on where I'm at in existence from day to day my therapist has said the 'H' portion of ADHD is minor for me, other times it's been a major contributor to issues; but I have to have a level of introspection to even catch when certain parts of my diagnosis are sitting at high tide or low tide...
Sometimes I can remember every detail of every interaction and task for weeks at a time, nearing eidedic memory; but most days I'll misplace a knife I was just using for butter.. and yesterday I forgot all the time I spent doing chores because I essentially was on auto-pilot, my wife thanked me, I said "for what?" high tide and low tide...
I'll hyperfocus on creating a task-list for a project I'm super excited about, and __usually__ forget the Trello board exists or misplace the papers or let the notes go through the wash or... high tide and low tide...
Some days I'll be able to fall asleep as soon as I lay down. Most days though I can't get my brain to shut up, taking notes to free up the brain space makes more room for something else to jump in, meditation/breathing exercises are momentary fixes that don't last long enough to allow sleep to come, a glass of water or bathroom break turns into an hour on reddit, etc and then suddenly it's 5am... high tide and low tide...
But then you want to go to sleep and your mind keeps making these things up and you can't go to sleep for hours at time until you are just so exhausted that it takes over after three hours laying in bed....
I'm coping by putting podcasts on almost audible levels when going to sleep, otherwise there would be no sleep. This helps to distract the mind just enough to pass out. But lately it's working worse and worse....
This is doubly/triply/quadrupley difficult for those of us with ADHD; I've spent years working on meditation, and I only get glimpses of silence; and that's only on the best of days. To take a medical condition such as ADHD and say, "hooboy, everyone gets distracted" is to entirely dismiss what those of us with it are dealing with. It's not just sometimes I get distracted; it's nearly all the time I get distracted if I am not bringing my 'A' game to even the simplest of tasks - without exacting intentionality there's no chance I'll have the left-over neurons to even think about being in the present.
So, it doesn't just take intentionality, as most people can clip off daydreaming or rabbithole trains of thought with minimal friction, but for many of us with ADHD the act of attempting to break the "distraction cycle" can essentially have the opposite effect, or just left turn us into another avenue of distraction. I know for myself, there's an anxiety that builds when actively (we can't passively quiet our brains) attempting to quiet my brain; as the doubt builds as you find it more and more difficult to step away from your racing brain and into the now. This becomes a self defeating cycle which is difficult to steer out of when attempting something like meditation.
"I've spent years working on meditation, and I only get glimpses of silence; and that's only on the best of days."
Just out of curiosity, what meditation technique do you use, and what's been the longest meditation session that you've had without quieting your mind?
For me, who doesn't suffer from ADHD, and whose technique of meditation consists of simply focusing on the sensation of air flowing past my nostrils as I breathe, I'll always eventually quiet my mind if I meditate long enough. The primary challenge is just giving it enough of a chance instead of getting up and doing something else.
Of course, even when mind quieting is achieved, the moments of quietness are of finite duration, and some thought or other will eventually (usually sooner rather than later) pop in.
I suppose I should clarify some as well; 'traditional' mainstream meditation doesn't work well for me; I've spent up to an hour doing either box breathing or air flow focus breathing as attempts to clear my focus and quiet my brain, and in general it just doesn't reach a desired effect. On the regular though, I would say I average about 15 to 30 minutes a day attempting this meditation form. This may at best allow for 3-5 second times of 'blank' space but never longer.
That being said, I do martial arts, and I would compare intense focus on performing an intermediate to long kata to the generally expressed trance or meditative states; and in those times I would consider it similar to either art or programming flow.
And I think that's where the distinction is, as 'traditional' meditation tends to be a more passive meditation style that doesn't work well with the active needs to essentially distract my brain into a present tense form.
See if you can double your meditation time to a full hour, then re-evaluate the effects. I have a feeling you're just not meditating long enough. The longer the meditation session, the deeper the effects.
I've gone for 3 to 4 hours stretches myself, with valuable results, and I know some people meditate all day, for days, weeks, or months at a time. Most people don't have the luxury to do such extended meditation sessions except maybe on vacation, but several hours a day on weekends should be doable. Try to stretch your limits.
> I'm really prone to letting my thoughts get off on the worst tangents, and it will take a while to get myself back on track
Sometimes I'll be listening to an audiobook and I'll start thinking about something else. By rewinding the audiobook I can figure out how long the distraction was (could be over a minute). It also amazes me how I have no recollection of the portions of the audiobook that were playing while I was distracted.
I've mostly been able to solve this problem (unless I'm really frazzled and have a lot of other things on my mind) by adjusting the audiobook's playback speed.
Too slow and I'll be bored and my mind will wander a lot, and too fast and I'll miss chunks even with the smallest mind wandering. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.
For reading written material, I found a trick that worked for me in college, when I had mountains of assigned books to read. Whenever I noticed my mind wandering, I'd make an arbitrary mark (like a simple checkmark) on a piece of paper and immediately go back to reading. This kept my focus and I was able to barrel through a ton of reading.
Happens to me with audiobooks, physical books, movies... even in-person conversations. The latter can be awkward, but I've gotten pretty good at guessing what I missed, or asking reasonable questions to get myself back on track :).
Letting the mind wander like that is precisely why I read books in the first place. Sometimes I'll only read one chapter in 3 hours and the rest is just daydreaming.
For the kind of person who frequents this site and endures suffering due to procrastination, even seeing their clinical definition of maladaptive perfectionism (and learning why procrastinating provides relief from it) could reduce your level of anxiety and self-flagellation, if not help you change your behavior.
The first section of their book provides a framework for understanding what is happening when you procrastinate, then orients your investigation into the underlying causes specific to you (or those not applicable to you). The book's second section offers self-directed cognitive behavioral therapies.
"Procrastination" is based on decades of the authors’ clinical experience. The 25th anniversary edition pulls in updated academic research from as far afield as behavioral economics (future discounting) that didn't exist when the book was first published.
[This comment is a reposted version of one of my own previous comments]
Along similar lines, there's a fantastic video by procrastination researcher Tim Pychyl here: [1]
I've watched a ton of videos on procrastination, and read a lot about it, and this video is head and shoulders above everything else. Highly recommended.
He also has the iProcrastinate Podcast[2], which also has some useful and interesting episodes.
Doesn’t this contradict the other article that was upvoted on how procrastination is more emotional than anything else?
To say it is ADHD is to suggest it is neurological e.g. some chemical imbalance in the brain, but if it’s really an emotional response then saying you have ADHD is more like pointing out the symptom rather than the cause here.
This isn't saying that __ALL__ procrastination is ADHD, and the other article didn't say that __ALL__ procrastination is emotional. This article is saying that this specific person's procrastination is linked to their ADHD - and even covers some of the emotional response portion (the section on feedback dysphoria).
Most psychologists and psychiatrists worth their salt will tell you that ADHD and Anxiety are kissing-cousins; and will usually look for the other if someone has one of them. Guess what is a great emotional inhibitor to doing things... Anxiety.
More generally, a strong emotional response of any kind could be considered as a chemical imbalance by how you're categorizing ADHD. ADHD isn't as hard and fast assigned a "chemical imbalance" like Depression, and more closely related to Asperger/Autism as an executive function/communication disorder (via DSM 4r9 and all of DSM 5). The reason that some of us are given something like Welbutrin or Proponolol instead of a straight stimulant like Ritalin or Aderall is because ADHD can in many cases be clustered with Depression, Anxiety, or other mood disorders (which are in the "chemical imbalance" group, and knocking out one can help the other).
So, short story long, there's no contradiction; but like with most things, there can be multiple root causes for a single, broadly defined outcome like procrastination.
Difficulty regulating emotions is a component of ADHD.
ADHD is a shortcoming of executive function, which manages near-term memory and keeps people "on task".
"I'm going to endure this unpleasantness for a better future" is a goal that requires executive function to hang on to – you have to continue grasping it with the part of your subconscious that ADHD undermines.
So you end up prone to a brand of nearsighted emotional hedonism because it's difficult to keep track of the "why"s that motivate long term management of emotions. It's basically time blindness.
In other words, keeping your cool, keeping your word, and keeping your car keys are all "keep doing X", and ADHD will kneecap all of those in equal measure.
A second component – and this is just anecdotal – is that ADHD makes the emotional component of procrastination worse. You drop tasks more often, and if you've got any self awareness at all, you'll notice that. Of course you feel a little bad about it. Now noticing dropped tasks makes you feel a bit worse. But your ADHD means dropping more threads, so you feel more badly more often. The pit of emotional misregulation surrounding procrastination gets steeper, faster, for someone with ADHD, because there's a compounding fit where you're twice as likely to take blows to your productivity, and half as able to recover.
For context, I've been diagnosed with ADHD and this article resonates with me a lot, and I also related to the other article. But I'm no neuroscientist and it's possible my understanding is flawed
I don't think this is inherently contradictory. ADHD isn't _just_ a neurochemical imbalance (and imbalance is weird because that 'balance' differs from person to person (and characterizing all neurological issues as chemical imbalances is a bit reductionistic) ). ADHD is also characterized by an under-developed prefrontal cortex, which is the region of the brain responsible for executive function.
More directly addressing your point, as far as I understand, emotions are largely just temporary changes in the availability of your neurotransmitters/your neurochemical balance. So yeah, sure, procrastination is an emotional thing, which is just minor changes in your neurology.
Ultimately, ADHD is kinda characterized by the Severity of these neurochemical changes and, more specifically how they affect behavior. It's a label for behavior, and also a number of traits that result in that behavior, but not a Thing in and of itself, if that makes sense.
In other words, saying it's both isn't inherently contradictory, cuz ADHD also has an "emotional" component to it. You could argue that the emotional part is a symptom or side effect.
My therapist (who specializes in ADHD) says the root cause of procrastination is different in people with ADHD. I gather then that the emotional response explanation is likely true for neurotypical individuals but it may not be quite the right explanation for individuals with ADHD.
Calendars and to-do lists matter, but the unpleasant aspect of these things is that I become a human scheduler, similar to an operating system scheduler. The scheduling function consumes so much time on its own, and it's psychologically uncomfortable.
Dare I say it: I don't like context switches and would prefer first come first serve, until completion. The real world, however, is unforgiving on which scheduler I can choose.
I have a theory that different things work for different people and not all things work for all people. Any particular book or blog post should not be taken as a gospel but rather a set of tools from which you can try and pick up what works for you.
What worked for me: (1) getting more sleep - counterintuitive, as one gets less time to be productive, but I find that sleep deprivation affects my mood, attention, and executive function big time (2) writing it down and drawing up my day hour by hour. Even if I do not follow the plan to the tee - it helps me visualize the day and find large chunk of times that are best for getting into the zone (3) batching up small but mundane tasks and sticking them into the short available chunks of time that would not be good for deep work, then focus on this list of tasks and racing to compete as many of them as possible, using the short rush of pleasure of completing one task as a burst of energy for the next one and create momentum.
There really needs to be some test scale of procrastination since nearly everyone does it. Something like being 5 degrees from Da Vinci (the Mona Lisa took 16 years).
My feeling is that anyone w/o an A average going into college should have a first term class in time/study strategies, and register for no more than 4 classes (outside Loafers 101). Many people much brighter than I crashed and burned early in college and our vaunted centers of learning had nothing for them.
Standard counterpoint objection here that I'm not sure I "buy" ADHD. How much of it is just "being human" (and in particular "being a young human") in a world that's inhuman? Is it a coincidence that the condition was first "observed" around the onset of industrialization a couple hundred years ago? There are numerous evolutionary advantages to being tuned-in to your environment. Certainly every tribe could've used at least a couple people like that. But in an industrialized world, with industrialized education & work processes, where you're called-upon to sit still for hours doing things that don't matter (and that you hence, don't care about), where subtly you tend to find more success the more you act like an automaton, it's apparently maladaptive, a liability and an aberration. Because we've made it one. It's industrialization itself that's maladaptive.
The is sort of the issue with most deviations from neurotypicality. It's a disease only when it stops you from doing what you and society wants you to do. That's why lots of people manage without treatment. But what are you recommending? That people with ADHD should just move somewhere they can live in a non-industrialized setting?
I suspect also that you may have an outdated view of ADHD. It's more about a lack of executive function than 'hyperactivity'. In fact one of the ADHD types is 'inattentive'. Did you read the whole article? The author discusses some of this.
I'm not recommending anything. This isn't a charged environment like Twitter, where it seems 100% of statements are either recommendations that will FIX THE UNIVERSE, or attempts by opponents to misconstrue them as same, for purpose of finding fault (since no recommendation will ever be 100% valid in all cases).
RE reading the article, that's where I'm getting it.
"My mind flutters from the window to reading the little scribbles people left on the desk to my imagination and then back out again" = I am observant of my environment and probably the first one to be aware of new opportunities or threats arising from that environment. And I dream.
"I'm really prone to letting my thoughts get off on the worst tangents..." = I pay attention to tangential (i.e. "touching," related) things and take action on them, investigate them. She looks them up on Wikipedia, learns all about them, and suffers no loss of attentiveness when the topic is meaningful to her and chosen by her. Given that new knowledge tends to come most readily from tangents, and not from out of the blue, and not from some well-intentioned-but-flawed, "legible" (i.e. bureaucratic/"makes logical sense"/industrialized) lesson plan, this is not a bad approach to learning. The problem only comes when you need to get through school, where those lesson plans are de rigueur and the pertinent skill is actually overruling/ignoring what you are interested in and not taking action on it. Huge waste BTW, whether ADHD or not.
"Executive function" - well I would simply open the question of whether the "executive" (slight pun) who is in charge, inside us, is always the one who we think it is. Our parents'/teachers' voices, or our own? Something is always being executed, even when we're not executing on our plan to do homework. The "fitting in, getting by" part of you made a plan to do homework, but the (I would argue) real part of you already realizes it's all silly bullshit & doesn't matter. The former is the one we reward with good grades & good jobs, but the latter is the one who's right.
Your first paragraph is strawmaning. At no point did I demand that you recommend a 100% fix. You made a claim about how the industrial age was the problem. I was trying to make a point that even if true, that doesn't really buy you anything, since we live in the age we live in. If I failed to communicate that well enough, I apologize.
As for the rest, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's like you're building a superpower out of failure to be able to focus when it's necessary to focus. Like if someone couldn't stand still, and you said something like "I bet it's really useful, because you never get stiff, and you burn more calories", but ignoring that it's fucking terrible, because you can't ever sit still even when it would be advantageous to sit still.
Note that executive control is also about planning. Of course it can be useful to rush of without planning, like when being chased by a panther. But it's not a good idea to have a significant deficit in the ability to plan. "Silly bullshit [that] doesn't matter" can mean not having the ability to pay for food, and it can mean having terrible stress over accomplishing trivial tasks (like filing out tax paperwork!).
Anyway. You're welcome to continue to not-buy ADHD, but recognize that people who live with, and who study it, think it's a thing.
Well yeah of course I know what age we're living in, and that it's a thing, otherwise I wouldn't be saying these things. We're saying the same thing basically, but you asked what I recommend and I'm just saying I don't have an answer, because that wasn't the point. In other words it's outside the scope of my comment to make recommendations of any kind, or try to state what an appropriate course of action might be.
It might've sounded like I was accusing you of something - I wasn't, sorry, just pointing out that rushing to a conclusion is part of why Twitter sucks. Nobody can just talk about an idea or let's say, one particular side of an idea, without it being construed as carrying a flag for that idea to take over the world and exterminate all other ideas. I'm only mentioning one thing, that doesn't mean all other things are false. But I'm focusing on this one side of it partly because nobody really needs me to enumerate the BAD aspects of having ADHD, I mean that's the side everyone has already heard!
Even in these comments here, you can see there are people for whom this article resonates deeply, and those for whom it doesn't. So at the very least there's something there that impacts people differently, and since the impact is usually detrimental, that's enough to classify this as a Disorder.
> Standard counterpoint objection here that I'm not sure I "buy" ADHD. How much of it is just "being human" (and in particular "being a young human") in a world that's inhuman? Is it a coincidence that the condition was first "observed" around the onset of industrialization a couple hundred years ago?
To some degree, you are right. Many illnesses are defined by "suffers from ___ to a degree that it interferes with their ability to function effectively". The latter half of that means that mental illness really is affected by our surrounding culture and institutions.
You need food to live and in our world you need a job to buy food. In a world where all the jobs require effective social interaction, even mild autism could be debilitating. But in a world where there are jobs that mostly involve working with machines or animals, it could simply be within the realm of healthy mental variation. So is being on the autism spectrum a disorder or just a difference? Depends on what's on the classified page today.
But it's also important to realize that for ADHD, ASD, and other mental conditions, many people are far enough along their respective spectra that these are unequivocally real diseases that cause them profound suffering in ways that can't be blamed on "society".
Watching someone with untreated ADHD fail to hold down a mind-numbing meaninless dystopian capitalist hellhole job is one thing. Watching them struggle to reach their own personal goals ("just one more YouTube video and then I'll work on that novel"), take care of their physical health ("I'll start exercising tomorrow"), and build healthy long-term personal relationships is another ("I'm so sorry I forgot to call you back, again").
ADHD fundamentally interferes with a person's ability to enact long-term planning over time. This is a fundamental human need independent of the effects of industrial civilization.
You have basically the right idea, but I think you are missing something important.
ADHD is a "disorder", but it's root cause is intrinsic, genetic.
Different people are different. ADHD isn't about "being human", it's about being a certain type of human. Everyone is somewhat maladapted to the inhumane world that has been created, but people with personalities at certain extremes adapt much worse.
I "have ADHD". Most of my relatives have ADHD. I view the modern world as an act of aggression, as an attack. If I want to survive, and I want my descendants to survive, then the modern world must be destroyed.
A lot of people here are defending ADHD/procrastination, and while I agree with a lot of the points (especially the one about industrialization being maladaptive), it's worth considering the personal cost of not mitigating these behaviors. "Rework" ends with a good quote about inspiration being a diminishing resource. You might feel really passionate about some big project, but if you don't have the skills to organize, plan, and implement the subtasks required to get it done, your enthusiasm will eventually wane and you'll never bring it to life. This happened to me perpetually throughout my twenties and I've lost track of how many good ideas I had that died on the vine because I lacked the skill to bring them to life. Figuring out how to create a system that works for you and allows you to capture and make progress on your ideas is hugely valuable. I understand the concern about becoming a slave to a system, but letting your potential wither away is an equally unpleasant fate.
Its not a workflow problem, organization problem or motivation problem. Often one can be organized, motivated, and have the skills, but be unable to apply energy towards the problem.
To try and provide feedback without being critical, the way you bold text from "So What's Up?" and through "Tips and Tricks" is very distracting. Since you use bold text for titles and the list items in that "So What's Up?" section, bold text is structural and serves a purpose to separate ideas. You overload it a bit by bolding long phrases you wish to draw the reader's attention to.
You use bold text well before and after these sections, when you're only bolding a few words at most at a time. Once you start bolding whole phrases your paragraphs start looking like striped lines. It was very distracting to try to follow your sentences when my attention is getting drawn to all the bolded text around me. It almost felt wrong at times to read the plain formatted text.
Your content was very engaging and I relate to it quite a bit. The illustrations are fantastic thanks for posting.
I think the bolded parts were really good for emphasis.
I’ve found myself thinking those exact thoughts ever since I suspected I suffered from ADHD, and I plan to quote them at my doctors when I seek my own ADHD diagnosis.
Like with all things, laziness/conscientiousness exists on a spectrum, and it's hard to tell where normal variation crosses over into pathology. I do have to wonder if self-proclaimed laziness among nerdy types comes from a tendency to set very high standards for ourselves and to compare ourselves with extraordinarily productive people. I think the average human being might be lazier than we give them credit for. The author complains about not being able to stop browsing reddit and get out of bed? Well, it seems that's how a great many people choose to spend their time these days if given a choice, so can we really say that's a sign of pathology? You feel like you're not working hard enough on your personal coding/science/art/whatever project? Well, most people don't have any personal projects, they produce very little beyond what is required to make a living, and for the extra amount that they do produce they don't hold themselves to very high standards and they don't care if they ultimately abandon the project, so you're already way ahead of the curve there.
I say all this as someone who has had severe problems with laziness and I empathize with the author of the article a lot, so I'm not trying to make light of the problem. I'm just suggesting an alternative perspective that may be useful.
Actually, I think it's your tone. There are other people who are expressing similar ideas in this thread and are being upvoted. I'll also correct you, since your last statement is wrong.
I procrastinate a lot. I am also extremely successful by most measures. I have a lot of education and an advanced degree. I have started companies and sold them. I have worked for VCs. I consult. I make a lot more money than almost anyone else in the world by percentage.
I did ALL of those things while fighting with and tackling procrastination. And sometimes, I lose. I lose really hard. I procrastinate for weeks on important things that could take minutes.
I am glad you don't have these social anxieties and disorders. But they are quite real and take real work to get past. Successful people are not those who don't procrastinate. Successful people are those who take challenges and find ways to work around them.
Yes I would absolutely tell that to a depressed person. And I have said it. I was depressed for a decade. And yet people spoke to me this way, because that's life. I was on antidepressants. I took care of my problem(s) and I still got my job done while struggling, medicating, and going to therapy. A big part of therapy was learning to separate "them" from "me" in my internal dialog.
You know what? I'm glad someone spoke to me that way. It got me up and motivated to work on myself. I can't imagine how poorly I would have turned out if I was coddled and allowed to stay in bed and read about all of these new pop-psych diseases I could blame. But that's just me. Maybe I can reach someone the way I was reached.
However, you are conflating two completely unrelated things. I am not responsible for your internal mental state, nor is anyone responsible for mine. This is a crucial skill that I believe is sorely lacking.
> You know what? I'm glad someone spoke to me that way. It got me up and motivated to work on myself. I can't imagine how poorly I would have turned out if I was coddled and allowed to stay in bed and read about all of these new pop-psych diseases I could blame. But that's just me. Maybe I can reach someone the way I was reached.
I think that is the problem. Maybe it is just you. The language you use, coddling, and how you speak of mental diseases as if it's some made up thing suggest maybe you weren't going through what others are going through.
> Maybe I can reach someone the way I was reached.
I doubt it. I read your first comment and then the edit, and thought maybe you'd come to your senses, but no. You do lack empathy and understanding. You sound very like your not trying to reach some one, instead, you're trying to tell them how it is from your point of view. No empathy. People actually suffering don't need that from you.
I'm sure some people who have beaten depression might say, "I'm glad I received empathy, kind words, and gentle encouragement; it helped me get over it." Others will say, "I needed a kick in the ass to get my life on track." I'm in the latter camp. Sounds like you're in the former. You can have empathy in both cases. Don't accidentally confuse "empathy" with "enabling."
Maybe you need to suspended disbelief, and imagine that it is possible that people do have mental health issues with various causes, perhaps genetic or because of trauma, and that some of those issues might cause people to "procrastinate", which I have put in quotes as it sounds like a pejorative anyway.
I am interested where your viewpoint comes form, can you elaborate? Maybe you are trolling? Or in your experience of life, people and your own mind can you bootstrap your way out of anything going on in your mind?
I'm procrastinating so hard today that I don't even feel like reading procrastination articles on HN!
Yesterday was decent, I started off a bit sluggish but okay, but by mid afternoon I really got going and got a bunch of good things done. I was actually on a productivity high!
Today I came in with that same good energy, and then an alert came in: "user suchNsuch has been blocked due to high volume of suspicious emails sent!" Damn! Total derail. I've been able to do the basics to mitigate that situation, but lost all of my enthusiasm for other projects.
Maybe getting out of the office for a second lunch will help! If I feel like reading these articles after, I will know some progress has been made.
Well, after posting that, I felt better. Then I ate my salad while looking at those articles. Then I was able to take on some helpdesk tickets, and am gearing up to do the projects I'm actually interested in and most reluctant to start.
I definitely agree with the other procrastination post today that its mostly to do with emotional state. Part of the issue at work is that I hesitate to get into big projects when I know I will just be interrupted by trivial shit again. Beyond that it's just mustering up the discipline to make myself start. It's not really that hard, but it still feels like it is.
Best advice I've ever gotten: don't overthink it (procrastination, ADHD, productivity systems, etc). Trying to fight the mind with more concepts is like trying to fight the wind with a kite.
165 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 197 ms ] threadNo, really, I'm waiting for an O(n^4) algorithm to finish processing a full HD frame to confirm that it works before I put in the effort of building a GPU version.
I procrastinate to the point where it’s causing me real problems in life, yet it feels kinda indulgent to say that as if I’m the victim of some disease, when I’m actually just failing to deal with something that’s hard for everyone.
Perhaps this feeling is actually contributing to the problem, because I’m continually frustrated that I can’t just snap out of it like (most) other people.
I’ve often wondered whether I have ADHD, but I don’t have the other symptoms of forgetfulness, disorganisation and hyperactivity.
Procrastination is a huge problem for me and I’d love to have a label for it, but I don’t think procrastination alone qualifies as a mental disorder.
In truth I think that a binary classification is too much of a blunt instrument. The reality is probably more of a spectrum.
It's normal, to a degree. When you are failing classes and having problems with your job, relationships and even your hobbies, then it is no longer normal.
I have come to believe that procrastination is a healthy and necessary condition for outstanding productivity. It is like REM sleep or something :-)
I think that without some level of procrastination nothing amazing would ever be done.
I'm not talking about that here. I'm talking about severe procrastination, when it's very difficult to do the work you need to do. The goal is to strike a healthy balance.
If you're going to comment on someone's article, and their blog has an "about" page, read it before leaving the comment. It's baseline etiquette.
The section on why notecards and todo lists have never worked for him (and for me) was particularly salient:
"The problem with "systems" is that they are authorities. They have to be. If you decide "I'll prioritize things with a stack of notecards" then you are telling yourself the following:
"The notecards replace my own brain. Everything that I do must be on a notecard. If it isn't on a notecard, it can't be done. If I want it done, it has to be on a notecard."
The problem is that when you have a crisis (a day full of emergencies) that forces you to break from this system you will lose all respect for its authority. Your brain will learn that it doesn't have to respect the notecards, that they aren't in charge, and this sense of freedom is addictive and will persist. Most ADHD sufferers have left a trail of systems - notecards, whiteboards, lists, post-its, apps, alarms - that worked great for [a month, a week, three days] but are now dead to them, scorched earth we can't return to."
The mechanism you describe is what is the basis for the "Getting things done" framework. You learn your brain to "trust" the "authority" so it can let go of all loose ends that keep your brain busy (like stuff it needs to remember, like appointment, paying a bill, fixing something in the house, etc). But if you are able to trick your brain in not checking in with the authority (as GTD dictates) you are left with a lot of spare room in your brain to think creative, at least thats my theory.
I use a typical kanban wip system (Backlog, Today, Blocked, Done) to organize pretty much all task-related things in my life and it works extremely well. Once I know its on the trello board, I know I don't have to worry about keeping it in my head anymore, and that gives me a lot more space to relax and not worry things are being missed/forgotten.
This is key. I don't care if I miss a few weeks because of being lazy. I know my life/future/path/journey is ready to start again when I get tired of being disorganized.
This section spoke to me in the same way, as each time I a new system up (or an old one back up) it works until I have to deal with an emergency day, where even the act of updating the list goes out the window. And then, the next day it's "hey, I made it through yesterday, I don't need that system today." and then it's done... until my emergency is "holy hell, I have no clue what's on my plate for the day/week/month, I need to fix that." where I'll pick up my go to old system (kanban style Trello board) and repeat the cycle anew.
It's been one of my better attempts at trying to circumvent the 'scorched earth' leaving of the task management process.
If someone reading this feels the same and would like to hack together something like that, let me know and we could try it together.
I've been coming up and using various GTD systems for a better part of the last two decades. I'd be slipping in and out of different setups, tools, solutions, systems... Some would stick for years, the others I'd abandon pretty quickly.
All of them worked for me to a degree, and were very helpful in keeping me organised and efficient, but never did I find a perfect setup that I'd be perfectly comfortable and happy with.
I guess the most useful thing I learned from all these years and years of trying to get a system in place and trying to get organised is to be perfectly comfortable with changing the systems as I go along. Keep experimenting. Keep what works for you, discard what doesn't.
For a long time I've been using a combination of a Trello based implementation of a GTD-gone-wild kind of a todo list (with the centerpiece being week-by-week daily todos) and an Evernote based journal that I kept surprisingly consistently almost every day for years.
A few months ago, I got in one of those overwhelmingly busy crises, which made me drop the journal. Rather than daily, I'd do it occasionally. To an extent it was a relief, and I rationalised the hiatus by thinking in terms of the benefit from the valuable extra time that I could spend on other work, but I quickly realised that I lost an important information repository I could comfortably and consistently rely on.
And then I stumbled upon Roam Research (RR). The experience was so great that I started keeping a daily journal again. Went from 'nah, I'm not writing shit' mode to an almost obsessive 'gotta record everything' in an instant. And I'm actually enjoying it.
I've ditched Evernote (I still have all my old data there), and I did not think twice, cause I got used to evolving my system without looking back if I find something that i feel works better.
At the moment I'm still using Trello for tasks, but the todos are so easy and natural to do in RR that I'm increasingly using it for my tasks, and finding that I am having to open Trello less and less.
RR is so powerful and flexible and natural and easy, that I am genuinely excited about a prospect of evolving my next system on it. I have a sense this one will stick for a while.
There's a very helpful article on Medium, written by a guy that's quite serious about getting the most out of RR. I'll try to find it and link it below.
[1] https://roamresearch.com/
- https://nesslabs.com/roam-research
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22104366
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22085837
Personalny I just use git repo with markdown files and Bash script miss.sh to quickly send/get new content to central repo
The trick is not to let the notes and calendar act like a "master". I usually view it as a friend who suggests things to do in a given time frame. The friend(calendar with notes) and I are symbiotic, our interests are linked.
Changing the view from an "authoritative master" to a "benevolent friend" would help. Sometimes I would discard the note and keep binging youtube video/or hackernews. Other times, I would reschedule the work for some other time. But most of the time I am able to get things done on time, without any help.
It does require some discipline, but once you get a hang of it, it becomes easy.
This is even more effective if it's a weekend, and I'm drinking.
Weird.
Systems are better when they're an augmentation of your memory that you can appreciate. For example, I always put events in my google calendar so I can remember when they are and catch overlaps early.
I've had a bad relationship with todo lists. They get stale really quickly. If I look at a todo list that's a few days old, I might think, "Why should I do that now? Why should I factor the work in this way? Just so I can say I'm done with this item?" In practice, the way I factor a task changes constantly. So now the way I do todo lists is more like an aid to my memory. When I have time to do stuff (which is rare) I'll write down the things that are most important at that exact moment. Sometimes I'll skim through todo lists from previous days to jog my memory, but I won't copy over everything. I'll arrange the things into an itinerary for the day and see how many of them I can get done. Usually it's not all of them. And that's OK.
"Screw you (me). You don't know what now is like. This is a priority now."
The ego is a tricky thing to navigate...
> "But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
> So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is."
I think your ability to navigate the ego can be trained.
Yes, there are systems that don't work. And yes, the dynamic by which they don't work tends to resemble the scorched-earth dynamic mentioned.
I've been keeping a Bullet Journal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_Journal) for several years now.
I'll be the first to admit that I maintain it inconsistently, skipping days, weeks, even months. Much as I have with other paper-based planning systems.
But, and this is critical: the bullet-journal method facilitates for me at least returning to the system. That is, if I take a hiatus, I'm not confronted with pages-on-end of blank, unfilled dates as with a pre-printed planner.
I've seen some people suggest omitting the index, and can only say from my experience DON'T DO THAT!!! It's the most critical part of the journal, as it lets you find things. That's what distinguishes the bullet journal from a simple sequential notebook without an index. Everything else -- bullet notation, brief-vs-long notes, spreads, etc., builds off the index IMO.
The flexibility of the system is fantastic as it suits my highly ideosyncratic needs. Sometimes a day needs a dozen pages. Sometimes I really need to make a spread. Sometimes I'll just have a few notes, or none, for days on end. There's no pre-printed form I'm fitting into, I just make what I need (or skip what I don't).
And again: if time goes by and I don't use it, I can re-start.
I've been looking at other systems, some covered in Getting Things Done (which ... took me nine years to read, just sayin'), including the notion of 43 folders, a tickler file. Not yet implemented, but after looking at ring / circular buffers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_buffer), I totally grok the concept.
I've recently started a journal-based research/reading journal based on a similar concept of "BOTI" -- best of the interval -- pages.
Rather than Starting a List and Simply Letting It Grow, the BOTI is either time- or space-constrained. You add to it, and when completed, open a new page, later in the journal.
Individual items on the BOTI aren't
You can also skim the top items from individual BOTI lists and create a next-higher-aggregation BOTI, the best of the best. And so forth. So you might have BOTW, BOTM, BOTY for week, month, and year. Yes, rolling weeks into months is inexact, this is not a precise system.
(Dev-Ops and sysadmin types will recognise this as similar to an RRD aggregation, and the idea borrows from this.)
And "best" can be multiple categories. I'm thinking of books, articles, authors, and ideas, but you might include, say, wines, beers, films, components, devices, or anything else that has a wide range of properties and quality levels that are otherwise hard to track with time.
The handy thing is that at the end of a year, you have a way to easily list out the top items of a year, or decade. Or should the Singularity arrive any time soon[1], centuries and millennia.[2]
I've also been accumulating a collection of index cards related to research interests, now approaching a decade old. That's also proved an interesting journey.
One thing I'll point out is that recordkeeping and planning tools require both time and space. Your journal, your files, your index cards, need a place to live. If you're living a highly disrupted or mobile life, that can be very hard to arrange. I tend to find physical systems far superior to digital ones, for numerous reasons.[3]
And no, I'm not expecting any one system to solve All My Personal Organisational Failings. But there are systems w...
I do have a large trail of systems and nothing has worked permanently. However, I’m nowhere near as unfocussed as the author of that article. That one section resonated however.
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/13
This is the case for many (all?) people. I've found that you need to intentionally train your ability to not let your mind do this. I recommend this book for some exercises to help: https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Mindfulness-Thich-Nhat-Hanh...
As soon as I sit around and get bored, my brain will make up absurd daydreams and stories. Usually they are pretty funny, so afterwards I feel relaxed and happy. Isn't that the whole point of taking a break?
I would say the article nicely highlights the problems with ADHD diagnosis, because when I read it, I thought for pretty much every point "oh I also do that sometimes"
Like for me, depending on where I'm at in existence from day to day my therapist has said the 'H' portion of ADHD is minor for me, other times it's been a major contributor to issues; but I have to have a level of introspection to even catch when certain parts of my diagnosis are sitting at high tide or low tide...
Sometimes I can remember every detail of every interaction and task for weeks at a time, nearing eidedic memory; but most days I'll misplace a knife I was just using for butter.. and yesterday I forgot all the time I spent doing chores because I essentially was on auto-pilot, my wife thanked me, I said "for what?" high tide and low tide...
I'll hyperfocus on creating a task-list for a project I'm super excited about, and __usually__ forget the Trello board exists or misplace the papers or let the notes go through the wash or... high tide and low tide...
Some days I'll be able to fall asleep as soon as I lay down. Most days though I can't get my brain to shut up, taking notes to free up the brain space makes more room for something else to jump in, meditation/breathing exercises are momentary fixes that don't last long enough to allow sleep to come, a glass of water or bathroom break turns into an hour on reddit, etc and then suddenly it's 5am... high tide and low tide...
I'm coping by putting podcasts on almost audible levels when going to sleep, otherwise there would be no sleep. This helps to distract the mind just enough to pass out. But lately it's working worse and worse....
So, it doesn't just take intentionality, as most people can clip off daydreaming or rabbithole trains of thought with minimal friction, but for many of us with ADHD the act of attempting to break the "distraction cycle" can essentially have the opposite effect, or just left turn us into another avenue of distraction. I know for myself, there's an anxiety that builds when actively (we can't passively quiet our brains) attempting to quiet my brain; as the doubt builds as you find it more and more difficult to step away from your racing brain and into the now. This becomes a self defeating cycle which is difficult to steer out of when attempting something like meditation.
Just out of curiosity, what meditation technique do you use, and what's been the longest meditation session that you've had without quieting your mind?
For me, who doesn't suffer from ADHD, and whose technique of meditation consists of simply focusing on the sensation of air flowing past my nostrils as I breathe, I'll always eventually quiet my mind if I meditate long enough. The primary challenge is just giving it enough of a chance instead of getting up and doing something else.
Of course, even when mind quieting is achieved, the moments of quietness are of finite duration, and some thought or other will eventually (usually sooner rather than later) pop in.
That being said, I do martial arts, and I would compare intense focus on performing an intermediate to long kata to the generally expressed trance or meditative states; and in those times I would consider it similar to either art or programming flow.
And I think that's where the distinction is, as 'traditional' meditation tends to be a more passive meditation style that doesn't work well with the active needs to essentially distract my brain into a present tense form.
I've gone for 3 to 4 hours stretches myself, with valuable results, and I know some people meditate all day, for days, weeks, or months at a time. Most people don't have the luxury to do such extended meditation sessions except maybe on vacation, but several hours a day on weekends should be doable. Try to stretch your limits.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-English-Bhante-Henepola-G...
[2] - http://www.khamkoo.com/uploads/9/0/0/4/9004485/the_heart_of_...
Sometimes I'll be listening to an audiobook and I'll start thinking about something else. By rewinding the audiobook I can figure out how long the distraction was (could be over a minute). It also amazes me how I have no recollection of the portions of the audiobook that were playing while I was distracted.
Too slow and I'll be bored and my mind will wander a lot, and too fast and I'll miss chunks even with the smallest mind wandering. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.
For reading written material, I found a trick that worked for me in college, when I had mountains of assigned books to read. Whenever I noticed my mind wandering, I'd make an arbitrary mark (like a simple checkmark) on a piece of paper and immediately go back to reading. This kept my focus and I was able to barrel through a ton of reading.
For the kind of person who frequents this site and endures suffering due to procrastination, even seeing their clinical definition of maladaptive perfectionism (and learning why procrastinating provides relief from it) could reduce your level of anxiety and self-flagellation, if not help you change your behavior.
The first section of their book provides a framework for understanding what is happening when you procrastinate, then orients your investigation into the underlying causes specific to you (or those not applicable to you). The book's second section offers self-directed cognitive behavioral therapies.
"Procrastination" is based on decades of the authors’ clinical experience. The 25th anniversary edition pulls in updated academic research from as far afield as behavioral economics (future discounting) that didn't exist when the book was first published.
[This comment is a reposted version of one of my own previous comments]
I've watched a ton of videos on procrastination, and read a lot about it, and this video is head and shoulders above everything else. Highly recommended.
He also has the iProcrastinate Podcast[2], which also has some useful and interesting episodes.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhFQA998WiA
[2] - http://iprocrastinate.libsyn.com/
To say it is ADHD is to suggest it is neurological e.g. some chemical imbalance in the brain, but if it’s really an emotional response then saying you have ADHD is more like pointing out the symptom rather than the cause here.
Most psychologists and psychiatrists worth their salt will tell you that ADHD and Anxiety are kissing-cousins; and will usually look for the other if someone has one of them. Guess what is a great emotional inhibitor to doing things... Anxiety.
More generally, a strong emotional response of any kind could be considered as a chemical imbalance by how you're categorizing ADHD. ADHD isn't as hard and fast assigned a "chemical imbalance" like Depression, and more closely related to Asperger/Autism as an executive function/communication disorder (via DSM 4r9 and all of DSM 5). The reason that some of us are given something like Welbutrin or Proponolol instead of a straight stimulant like Ritalin or Aderall is because ADHD can in many cases be clustered with Depression, Anxiety, or other mood disorders (which are in the "chemical imbalance" group, and knocking out one can help the other).
So, short story long, there's no contradiction; but like with most things, there can be multiple root causes for a single, broadly defined outcome like procrastination.
ADHD is a shortcoming of executive function, which manages near-term memory and keeps people "on task".
"I'm going to endure this unpleasantness for a better future" is a goal that requires executive function to hang on to – you have to continue grasping it with the part of your subconscious that ADHD undermines.
So you end up prone to a brand of nearsighted emotional hedonism because it's difficult to keep track of the "why"s that motivate long term management of emotions. It's basically time blindness.
In other words, keeping your cool, keeping your word, and keeping your car keys are all "keep doing X", and ADHD will kneecap all of those in equal measure.
A second component – and this is just anecdotal – is that ADHD makes the emotional component of procrastination worse. You drop tasks more often, and if you've got any self awareness at all, you'll notice that. Of course you feel a little bad about it. Now noticing dropped tasks makes you feel a bit worse. But your ADHD means dropping more threads, so you feel more badly more often. The pit of emotional misregulation surrounding procrastination gets steeper, faster, for someone with ADHD, because there's a compounding fit where you're twice as likely to take blows to your productivity, and half as able to recover.
I don't think this is inherently contradictory. ADHD isn't _just_ a neurochemical imbalance (and imbalance is weird because that 'balance' differs from person to person (and characterizing all neurological issues as chemical imbalances is a bit reductionistic) ). ADHD is also characterized by an under-developed prefrontal cortex, which is the region of the brain responsible for executive function.
More directly addressing your point, as far as I understand, emotions are largely just temporary changes in the availability of your neurotransmitters/your neurochemical balance. So yeah, sure, procrastination is an emotional thing, which is just minor changes in your neurology.
Ultimately, ADHD is kinda characterized by the Severity of these neurochemical changes and, more specifically how they affect behavior. It's a label for behavior, and also a number of traits that result in that behavior, but not a Thing in and of itself, if that makes sense.
In other words, saying it's both isn't inherently contradictory, cuz ADHD also has an "emotional" component to it. You could argue that the emotional part is a symptom or side effect.
Dare I say it: I don't like context switches and would prefer first come first serve, until completion. The real world, however, is unforgiving on which scheduler I can choose.
What worked for me: (1) getting more sleep - counterintuitive, as one gets less time to be productive, but I find that sleep deprivation affects my mood, attention, and executive function big time (2) writing it down and drawing up my day hour by hour. Even if I do not follow the plan to the tee - it helps me visualize the day and find large chunk of times that are best for getting into the zone (3) batching up small but mundane tasks and sticking them into the short available chunks of time that would not be good for deep work, then focus on this list of tasks and racing to compete as many of them as possible, using the short rush of pleasure of completing one task as a burst of energy for the next one and create momentum.
See, this is the piece some people have a problem with. That requires you to actually start those tasks.
My feeling is that anyone w/o an A average going into college should have a first term class in time/study strategies, and register for no more than 4 classes (outside Loafers 101). Many people much brighter than I crashed and burned early in college and our vaunted centers of learning had nothing for them.
I suspect also that you may have an outdated view of ADHD. It's more about a lack of executive function than 'hyperactivity'. In fact one of the ADHD types is 'inattentive'. Did you read the whole article? The author discusses some of this.
RE reading the article, that's where I'm getting it.
"My mind flutters from the window to reading the little scribbles people left on the desk to my imagination and then back out again" = I am observant of my environment and probably the first one to be aware of new opportunities or threats arising from that environment. And I dream.
"I'm really prone to letting my thoughts get off on the worst tangents..." = I pay attention to tangential (i.e. "touching," related) things and take action on them, investigate them. She looks them up on Wikipedia, learns all about them, and suffers no loss of attentiveness when the topic is meaningful to her and chosen by her. Given that new knowledge tends to come most readily from tangents, and not from out of the blue, and not from some well-intentioned-but-flawed, "legible" (i.e. bureaucratic/"makes logical sense"/industrialized) lesson plan, this is not a bad approach to learning. The problem only comes when you need to get through school, where those lesson plans are de rigueur and the pertinent skill is actually overruling/ignoring what you are interested in and not taking action on it. Huge waste BTW, whether ADHD or not.
"Executive function" - well I would simply open the question of whether the "executive" (slight pun) who is in charge, inside us, is always the one who we think it is. Our parents'/teachers' voices, or our own? Something is always being executed, even when we're not executing on our plan to do homework. The "fitting in, getting by" part of you made a plan to do homework, but the (I would argue) real part of you already realizes it's all silly bullshit & doesn't matter. The former is the one we reward with good grades & good jobs, but the latter is the one who's right.
As for the rest, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's like you're building a superpower out of failure to be able to focus when it's necessary to focus. Like if someone couldn't stand still, and you said something like "I bet it's really useful, because you never get stiff, and you burn more calories", but ignoring that it's fucking terrible, because you can't ever sit still even when it would be advantageous to sit still.
Note that executive control is also about planning. Of course it can be useful to rush of without planning, like when being chased by a panther. But it's not a good idea to have a significant deficit in the ability to plan. "Silly bullshit [that] doesn't matter" can mean not having the ability to pay for food, and it can mean having terrible stress over accomplishing trivial tasks (like filing out tax paperwork!).
Anyway. You're welcome to continue to not-buy ADHD, but recognize that people who live with, and who study it, think it's a thing.
It might've sounded like I was accusing you of something - I wasn't, sorry, just pointing out that rushing to a conclusion is part of why Twitter sucks. Nobody can just talk about an idea or let's say, one particular side of an idea, without it being construed as carrying a flag for that idea to take over the world and exterminate all other ideas. I'm only mentioning one thing, that doesn't mean all other things are false. But I'm focusing on this one side of it partly because nobody really needs me to enumerate the BAD aspects of having ADHD, I mean that's the side everyone has already heard!
To some degree, you are right. Many illnesses are defined by "suffers from ___ to a degree that it interferes with their ability to function effectively". The latter half of that means that mental illness really is affected by our surrounding culture and institutions.
You need food to live and in our world you need a job to buy food. In a world where all the jobs require effective social interaction, even mild autism could be debilitating. But in a world where there are jobs that mostly involve working with machines or animals, it could simply be within the realm of healthy mental variation. So is being on the autism spectrum a disorder or just a difference? Depends on what's on the classified page today.
But it's also important to realize that for ADHD, ASD, and other mental conditions, many people are far enough along their respective spectra that these are unequivocally real diseases that cause them profound suffering in ways that can't be blamed on "society".
Watching someone with untreated ADHD fail to hold down a mind-numbing meaninless dystopian capitalist hellhole job is one thing. Watching them struggle to reach their own personal goals ("just one more YouTube video and then I'll work on that novel"), take care of their physical health ("I'll start exercising tomorrow"), and build healthy long-term personal relationships is another ("I'm so sorry I forgot to call you back, again").
ADHD fundamentally interferes with a person's ability to enact long-term planning over time. This is a fundamental human need independent of the effects of industrial civilization.
ADHD is a "disorder", but it's root cause is intrinsic, genetic.
Different people are different. ADHD isn't about "being human", it's about being a certain type of human. Everyone is somewhat maladapted to the inhumane world that has been created, but people with personalities at certain extremes adapt much worse.
I "have ADHD". Most of my relatives have ADHD. I view the modern world as an act of aggression, as an attack. If I want to survive, and I want my descendants to survive, then the modern world must be destroyed.
You use bold text well before and after these sections, when you're only bolding a few words at most at a time. Once you start bolding whole phrases your paragraphs start looking like striped lines. It was very distracting to try to follow your sentences when my attention is getting drawn to all the bolded text around me. It almost felt wrong at times to read the plain formatted text.
Your content was very engaging and I relate to it quite a bit. The illustrations are fantastic thanks for posting.
I’ve found myself thinking those exact thoughts ever since I suspected I suffered from ADHD, and I plan to quote them at my doctors when I seek my own ADHD diagnosis.
I say all this as someone who has had severe problems with laziness and I empathize with the author of the article a lot, so I'm not trying to make light of the problem. I'm just suggesting an alternative perspective that may be useful.
I'll sign myself up for a therapist now. Thanks.
I procrastinate a lot. I am also extremely successful by most measures. I have a lot of education and an advanced degree. I have started companies and sold them. I have worked for VCs. I consult. I make a lot more money than almost anyone else in the world by percentage.
I did ALL of those things while fighting with and tackling procrastination. And sometimes, I lose. I lose really hard. I procrastinate for weeks on important things that could take minutes.
I am glad you don't have these social anxieties and disorders. But they are quite real and take real work to get past. Successful people are not those who don't procrastinate. Successful people are those who take challenges and find ways to work around them.
Anyway, related to your actual post – you said:
> Buckle up and get it done, it's that simple.
Would you tell a depressed person
> Cheer up and go outside, it's that simple.
If so, what evidence do you have that this is an effective treatment?
If not, what makes the two situations (w/r/r "culpability" for ones cognitive abilities) different?
> Would you tell a depressed person
Yes I would absolutely tell that to a depressed person. And I have said it. I was depressed for a decade. And yet people spoke to me this way, because that's life. I was on antidepressants. I took care of my problem(s) and I still got my job done while struggling, medicating, and going to therapy. A big part of therapy was learning to separate "them" from "me" in my internal dialog.
You know what? I'm glad someone spoke to me that way. It got me up and motivated to work on myself. I can't imagine how poorly I would have turned out if I was coddled and allowed to stay in bed and read about all of these new pop-psych diseases I could blame. But that's just me. Maybe I can reach someone the way I was reached.
However, you are conflating two completely unrelated things. I am not responsible for your internal mental state, nor is anyone responsible for mine. This is a crucial skill that I believe is sorely lacking.
I think that is the problem. Maybe it is just you. The language you use, coddling, and how you speak of mental diseases as if it's some made up thing suggest maybe you weren't going through what others are going through.
> Maybe I can reach someone the way I was reached.
I doubt it. I read your first comment and then the edit, and thought maybe you'd come to your senses, but no. You do lack empathy and understanding. You sound very like your not trying to reach some one, instead, you're trying to tell them how it is from your point of view. No empathy. People actually suffering don't need that from you.
I am interested where your viewpoint comes form, can you elaborate? Maybe you are trolling? Or in your experience of life, people and your own mind can you bootstrap your way out of anything going on in your mind?
Yesterday was decent, I started off a bit sluggish but okay, but by mid afternoon I really got going and got a bunch of good things done. I was actually on a productivity high!
Today I came in with that same good energy, and then an alert came in: "user suchNsuch has been blocked due to high volume of suspicious emails sent!" Damn! Total derail. I've been able to do the basics to mitigate that situation, but lost all of my enthusiasm for other projects.
Maybe getting out of the office for a second lunch will help! If I feel like reading these articles after, I will know some progress has been made.
I definitely agree with the other procrastination post today that its mostly to do with emotional state. Part of the issue at work is that I hesitate to get into big projects when I know I will just be interrupted by trivial shit again. Beyond that it's just mustering up the discipline to make myself start. It's not really that hard, but it still feels like it is.
I found that 10mg of desipramine once a night obliterated most of the procrastination.
Unlike every other investment where you give up your time, your health, your optimism and you get nothing.