Ask HN: Have OCD, suffering from extreme procrastination, please help?
May be I also have ADHD, since sometime I get really excited about things and do things energetically, but sometime I get pretty down. I also prefer work on only things I care about or interested in. My mind get flooded with thoughts most of the time.
After finishing college I was working on projects, but I was not able to finish any of my projects. I sometime gather courage to work for a while but fall of the wagon after a week or so. In recent months I have not done anything useful keep procrastinating on things. Over the years my obsessive thoughts have evolved with the age, these days I mostly battle with ethical, legal obsessive thoughts, while I can control the response to these thoughts with meds. I seem to have complex obsessive thought which revolves around perfectionism, where I plan things and work for week then procrastinate, replan then work for while then procrastinate and so on. But last recent days I have lost the energy and have not done useful work, keep procrastinating.
Note : As the procrastinating I do household work, work in the garden, help family members and relations, check email Reddit, HN, watch TV where any of the things are not urgent. (I also seem to have addiction to information since I regularly check HN, Reddit, PH, RSS reader.)
My mother have Parkinson, her condition also deteriorating slowly. Father also have health issues. I am the eldest son of the family, my mother constantly worries about me and my brothers future. We recently showed my mother to psychiatrist where he said my mom is depressed, this probably due since she worries about me and my brother, since she have strong bond towards us due to past unfortunate events with my elder brothers. (My brother does not have any psychological disorder) Even with enough stress I keep procrastinating. I have to get this projects done and make my parents happy before it is too late.
So please any advice would be highly appreciated?
By the way I am from South Asian country where doctors (in my case psychiatrists) are expensive when you made a private booking, they just ask some questions give some meds and take the money without taking things seriously, sometimes does not even take ten minutes which was my experience. Even in the public hospital they pay less attention to me. There are good doctors who are caring but they are really rare which I had at the very beginning after my diagnosis of the OCD, when I was suffering from depression.
48 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadThis “go find professional help” dismissal is unhelpful. Obviously he’s aware because he mentions it. If you can’t help, don’t say anything since this is idiotic advice.
>> they just ask some questions give some meds and take the money without taking things seriously, sometimes does not even take ten minutes which was my experience. Even in the public hospital they pay less attention to me. There are good doctors who are caring but they are really rare
> None of us here are qualified in Psychiatry and Psychology.
Unless you have a list of all the posters, and their qualifications, you can not make that claim
> Please seek medical attention.
Which is what was already done as explained by the poster.
> Please take care of yourself and seek professional help
The only person who has a lot of skin in the game and perfectly aligned interest when it comes to your health is... yourself.
You can hope to find good and caring professionals, and it may even be a good heuristic to try that as a first line approach, but nobody has the personal and financial incentives to invest in your health as much as yourself - except possibly your spouse and parents.
No qualified psychiatrist or psychologist in their right mind would give medical advice to some anonymous person over the internet so this point is moot.
I hope you find a way to break out of that rut, I'm thankfully in a position that procrastination doesn't affect my life that badly (I still do my job just fine, it's other areas that are suffering).
Then you can work with other modalities if needed, but fix the hardware first.
Dr. K a Harvard psych on gaming addiction and online communities has a youtube channel explaining how coaching. This isn't a replacement for therapy however his explanations of the science and walking through these ideas as a coach on how to apply these yourself. From my exp has very healthy approaches for just feeling less judgmental towards yourself, so you can get out of your own way and just get things done
Of course a psych will be better however this in my opinion is like fun workshops for myself to understand myself and others. So this might be a great starting point before putting money into a psych/therapist, like starting calory counting and walking more before getting a personal trainer.
Julie Yau has a "trauma workbook" with many exercises you can do on your own. She is also a very compassionate woman with deep knowledge about the nervous system, though her book is practical, not theory.
If you really want more theory about nervous system to "trust" the above advice, look into "Nurturing Resilience" by Kathy kain
All the best to you.
My advice when you are feeling that way is to tell yourself "I will work on this for just 10 or 15 minutes and then if I feel like it, I will stop." That way you aren't under any pressure.
I find this works because it's harder to get motivated when you are putting a lot of pressure on yourself to spend hours working on something. Instead just commit to a little bit - if you enjoy it, then keep going. If not, no big deal - at least you did did a little bit. Maybe tomorrow you'll want to do more.
First time on my life I was able to stay on task for sometime that wasn’t super interesting.
I can’t tolerate the meds, but I do a lot better since I lost the mental pain of being bored.
But also be aware that with respect to evolution this kind of sedentary work is completely unnatural. Also assuming most work from your country (as most of this industry has become) will be remote, it might be hard to ground it in your life, which is OK. The problem here is that we don't live in a world with basic human rights guaranteed.
This book isn't specifically about OCD but Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts could be helpful as well. It talks about how to observe and accept thoughts, even if they're unwanted, repetitive or disturbing, instead of trying to suppress or fight against them.
Also lift weights and eat healthy
0. Remind myself that work is a cruel mistress and a crummy source of self-worth. Find some hopeful, bedrock truth to fall back on when life doesn't seem worth living. (God, in my case. YMMV.)
1. Focus on the good things happening in my life and in the world. Along those lines, I cut out all news and any social media or entertainment that leaves me feeling worse afterward. Even HN can be a source of emotional drain -- some days my brain translates every headline into "that person makes $10K per week without even trying; what's your problem?"
2. Find a partner to work with closely on a day-to-day basis both to share the load and to build momentum.
3. Iterate (and fail!) faster to establish a fast feedback loop. Even weekly is too long. For my most successful projects (not saying much), I found a way to "ship" my project at least daily, even if "shipping" is just showing it to a friend. One time I modded a video game for a 4-year-old, the two of us taking 5-minute turns at the computer.
HN doesn't appear to have a DM feature but reply if you want to connect on Discord or something.
You are cruising along in your new project, making good progress, then you get stuck on a difficult problem. You understand the solution and it's tedious. You stop and take a break. You try and think of a better way that isn't tedious, but you never do. You keep coming back to the tedious solution.
The break never ends, and now you are procrastinating. You know the solution but don't want to do it. Too tedious. The project slowly loses your interest and before you know it, the new shiny has popped up and you have a new project.
If you don't want this to happen then you need 'suck it up' and do the tedious work. Get over your emotions. It's always less tedious than you imagine it.
It ostensibly focuses on procrastination among grad students, but the analysis and strategies discussed there are applicable to all sorts of procrastination.
I've watched a lot of videos and read a lot of books on procrastination, and this is by far the best.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhFQA998WiA