Interestingly enough I recently started taking St. John's Wort to help manage & regulate my mood and it's been surprisingly effective at helping deal with some of my procrastinate-y tendencies!
I can't break out of my pattern of (attempted) short term mood regulation anymore. I'm just trying to distract myself getting high and watching historical documentaries or netflix because I barely have motivation for anything more, yet something always triggers painful memories of my childhood and past years and I really can't cope. I hate being so alone but I couldn't stand acting like I'm okay anymore around people so I just end up not going to things and am even more alone. This has been going on for a few weeks now.
I've been there. The thing I fine that helps is just doing anything to disrupt the pattern. Go get your motorcycle license, join a gym, get a new wardrobe, paint your room, read a book, anything. If you can force yourself to do something other than what you're doing just once, it'll be easier to do something else the second, third, forth, etc. time.
I find the more disruptive that first change is, the easier the rest become.
Consistently getting high (weed) greatly increases dopamine baseline, leading to other things being “harder” to start doing. It also increases negative thoughts (anxiety). weed, alcohol and other substances can lead to negative loop where you consume to feel better and feel worse the day(s) after due to the consumption, leading to increased appetite.
There are many ways out, you just have to find one that works for you. Previous poster’s suggestion are good. A psychologist can help. Detox. A trip to a new place. Late night hobbies with friends. Exercise is great.
A really easy start would be to listen to Andrew Huberman's work on Dopamine. Realize that you're stuck in a rut-—accept it. Then start racking up tiny wins. I mean infinitesimally small wins. Then slowly you will work your way out.
Don't despair. Everyone goes through this from time-to-time.
You are self medicating and self isolating because you are suffering. Get help. You were meant to be apart of a community where you are loved and appreciated.
Over the years, even up to the present time, I have tried to do all the right things like getting properly assessed, undergoing therapy, seeking proper medication, millions attempts to better myself, etc..
I'm still doing trying to do everything I listed above, but I have made little to no progress over the last decade, and in some ways, I feel that I have actually regressed. I have started to accept that I might be fundamentally broken beyond repair.
I am not saying any of this to discourage anyone from getting proper help, I just think people should be aware that treatments are not a guarantee.
In my experience, self-medication is a symptom of the need of medication, in general. You just have to find the right medication. Avoid benzos if you can, though. They are extremely addictive.
Depression, dysthymia, ADD, ADHD, AED, for example, aren't things you can just will yourself out of.
People who have experienced profound sadness at some point in their lives tend to assume depression is the same. They will then advice (with good intentions) people who are depressed to do what they did, since it worked for them.
Just change this or that habit. But it's not how it works in reality.
Also, there's nothing wrong with being alone, and there's nothing wrong with feeling bad. Society pushes us to be at the top of our productivity at all times, which leads us to feel guilt when we need to rest. Mental health IS health, and it requires time, in the same way you'd need time in bed if you had a surgery or whatever.
Finally, there's no end goal in life. Life is meaningless. No matter what you do, if you're enjoying yourself, it's good. If you watch TV all day everyday for the rest of your life — that's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with it. It's YOUR life. Nobody can tell you how to live it.
I didn't mean benzos as self-medication, though. I went to see a psychiatrist once and he handed me benzos as if they were candies.
Years after, I found out, when taken for years, they do permanent damage to the brain's ability to form long-term memories. Among other things.
Fortunately, I didn't take them that long. But I had many friends in the same situation, taking benzos because their psychiatrist gave them to them just like that, without offering alternatives.
To properly reword my advice: be careful with psychologists and psychiatrists. Not all of them are good, and not all of them have your best interest in mind.
Thanks for sharing. A person close to me was in this exact same situation. Her doctor prescribed benzos for years, and it ruined her life. Not only this, but other doctors flat out denied that her symptoms were being caused by withdrawal. Professor Ashton, who founded the website benzo.org.uk, was one of the first to recognize and alert about these dangers. To this day, a lot of doctors are uneducated about the side effects of, and proper tapering techniques for benzos.
So you're saying that discipline is like a large, powerful, commanding force that demands action? Sounds awful. Like being a child being told to do their homework. Can't we do better?
Also can you explain what's going on in the second panel? Some strong underpants gnomes vibes. I mean, I like how easy it is, but I can't seem to find the switch in the mirror!
If you find a better way, let me know. This is the best one I found, and it doesn't depend on me having a good day and everything being hunky dory.
> I can't seem to find the switch in the mirror
Tidy your room. Start small. Grow from there. Plan, iterate, improve. Whatever you add to the routine, have it stick by sheer force of will and repetition.
Fuck your feelings. I mean that. Whatever your feelings tell you, tell them to fuck off. You have something to do and you're going to do it. Period.
Personally, I've been fortunate insofar as I haven't struggled with motivation. I'm happy you found a system that works for you, but truthfully it sounds harsh. Maybe some people simply need a dominant super ego that runs roughshod over their feelings to get things done... but the idealist in me hopes for something less authoritarian. Like, the whole dichotomy of "you" versus "feelings" strikes me as problematic. Your language, and the comic, seem rife with guilt and shame.
Who said self-discipline is bad? Why can't we have self-discipline without shame, guilt, or authoritarianism? We're not children who need parents to force us clean up our rooms.
Sure let's be stoic, but I don't agree that means "fuck your feeling" or looks anything like the comic you linked. There's a third way.
> We're not children who need parents to force us clean up our rooms
By parent you mean yourself? Because I don't think you're getting the point that sometimes your mind needs to stop and just do the damn job. And you need to be in charge of it, instead of letting it wander on endlessly.
Yes, by parent I mean the super ego or whatever metaphor suits you.
I believe I understand your point, and agree with you. You're saying "sometimes your mind needs to stop" and that "you need to be in charge of it." E.g. your mind might be very anxious and distracted by an upcoming work deadline and seek to soothe itself by reading Hacker News, but "you" should stop that from happening, say by installing a site-blocking plugin for your browser and instituting and adhering to "work hours" each morning. Assuming I'm not way off target, I agree with all that.
But it seems we're talking past each other, as I'm responding to your original comic strip which has more to say. The metaphors it uses, and that you have used in this discussion, depict compulsion. That's where I disagree with you. I believe force / shame / guilt work, but that we should aspire for a superior resolution to the problem. One not based on those principles.
> we should aspire for a superior resolution to the problem
The superior resolution is that your mind gets trained not to wander off by constant repetition.
Your brain will always seek immediate rewards, it's just innate to your monkey brain. You have to train it not to. Same as you train a muscle to grow by having it lift weights even though it would rather not because it's painful.
Not sure why you say "shame" or "guilt", those were never part of my initial argument nor the comic. Force, yes, in the same way you force your arms to do push-ups or lift weights.
I have a very strong suspicion of having ADHD and I can tell you that the brain hardware that can tell feelings to fuck off is malfunctioning in ADHD and is fixed by elevating the levels of norepinephrine.
It is literally impossible for me to apply the very concept of discipline otherwise.
Yes, this condition is as terrifying as you now imagine it to be.
I get that motivation is a fleeting feeling, but what about when discipline and willpower are too?
I have succumbed to the idea that I basically just each day of my life like a game of roulette. Am I going to be productive today? Better spin the wheel to find out.
Spent whatever minute amounts of motivation/discipline/willpower on building simple and effective "systems" that require no motivation/discipline/willpower.
For example, I want to get better at playing piano, but it's both hard to set aside time, and hard to get myself to sit down for a set amount of time and Do Piano. I tried putting the keyboard in a few places, including directly behind my computer desk (literally 2 feet away from me), but there was too much friction involved in moving my chair and changing the lighting etc--it really wasn't much, probably 15 seconds of effort, but it required deliberate intention.
I discovered, though, that if the keyboard is on the landing outside my office with a dedicated chair, then I'll see the setup on my way to/from the kitchen, and it will sometimes feel inviting--often a nice distraction while waiting 10 minutes for a meeting, or while procrastinating on something else I'm trying to get motivated on. And sometimes 10 minutes turns into 30 or who knows how long, and my taxes may be stalled out but I sure am making progress on the fugue I'm learning.
Yeah, but this scheme becomes a huge problem with a device like a PC that can do anything while physically being in the same space. The only way to brute force that is to buy separate computers for work, gaming, and creative pursuits. Which is kinda expensive.
There are tons of different tactics! Be creative. You could:
- multiboot: one OS install for work, another OS install for games/other
- get a PiHole or modify /etc/hosts to blackhole certain known terrible sites
- leave a minor compile error for yourself just before you leave work, so that in the morning you type 'make' and get suckered into fixing the small thing, which gets you into the flow of work the next day (this has worked for me too)
Don't give up before you've tried or of course you won't find something that works. You never know whatIt took months to find that the placement for my keyboard works for me. Treat yourself like you would a child that you love, and be patient and persistent as you try to figure out how to set up your/their environment to allow you/them to function better in this weird life you/they have been given.
> It is literally impossible for me to apply the very concept of discipline
That right there is why I don't like people that jump straight to medical conditions without analyzing other alternatives: unless you get reviewed by an actual physician, diagnosed, and treated, please don't assume and act on what you think might be the problem. Not saying you're 100% wrong, but it's most likely you are. And that might worsen the problem.
I suppose it depends on the person. In the past, I’ve tried to just be disciplined, stop procrastinating, and push through no matter what, and it lead to horrible burnout where I spent weeks/months being fairly ineffective. If you’re not sleeping at all at night and can’t think straight during the day, even for a couple minutes, you’re simply not going to be effective. You’re also liable to make really bad decisions that will drag on you even after you’ve recovered.
These days I try not to worry too much about procrastination, and get as much done as I can. I’ve found lots of little tricks to squeeze out more productivity here and there. If I’m in a situation where I just need to buckle down and push through, I will, but I’m not going to risk pushing myself over the edge when it’s not necessary.
I did, and still do, but that's another thing that got severely screwed up by burnout.
Routine is a good word. I have a flexible routine now, and it's effective enough. It's not the most disciplined, and there's procrastination, but I don't worry about it and just try to make sure that I'm moving in the right direction.
Wow. This one sentence really drives home how different human experiences can be. Being stuck in a destructive, painful, unproductive loop like this is awful and I'm sorry you're going through it, but wow, a few weeks!? It's jarring to consider the idea that it's not completely normal for this to be one's life for years and years on end.
I misread your message at first, I had thought you were astonished that someone's fallen off the productivity wagon, so to speak, for a few weeks. I've been dealing with similar stuff as the parent poster for probably half of my life, so decades. I feel like an unpatched human being, full of bugs. yes, I talk to a shrink, take the pills, stopped the addicting substance, and still struggle with self-destructive behavior, fleeting relationships, lack of romantic relationships for over 5 years, but other things have improved.
I found this one practically actionable and helpful
> Motivation, broadly speaking, operates on the erroneous assumption that a particular mental or emotional state is necessary to complete a task.
> That’s completely the wrong way around.
> Discipline, by contrast, separates outwards functioning from moods and feelings and thereby ironically circumvents the problem by consistently improving them.
I think motivation vs discipline is a false dichotomy. I’d argue that discipline is simply a form of motivation that emerges when the pain of avoidance can be adequately internalized. IOW, what we call discipline is just a conditioning that makes procrastination suck more than it sucks to do the task you “know” you ought to do.
I think that's just moving the definitions around. The traditional understanding of the word "motivation" is "the desire to do something". Discipline, in contrast, is doing something regardless of desire.
So you can move the definitions around, but at the end of the day; there are still situations where people succumb to doing or not doing something based on emotion, and the decision to do it regardless of desire is still discipline.
I am increasingly convinced that procrastination and lack of focus are rooted in character flaws and bad habits, and as a result, that they are amenable to reform.
If we look at, shall we say, the traditional definitions of perseverance, effeminacy, and delicacy[0], we find that someone who perseveres is someone who "does not forsake a good on account of long endurance of difficulties and toils". Effeminacy is the inability to undertake what is not pleasurable, whereas delicacy is the inability to endure displeasure ("properly speaking effeminacy regards lack of pleasures, while delicacy regards the cause that hinders pleasure, for instance toil or the like").
We "moderns" are certainly a soft people. We cannot help but indulge ourselves, we cannot bear what we do not like, and we refuse to embrace the yoke. We are slaves to our appetites and desires. FOMO, which is opportunism, and a culture of instant gratification, are the result and the encouragement of the inability to forsake lower goods for the sake of higher goods, and so we undergo dissipation. And what is dissipation but a lack of focus? And what is the procrastinator avoiding if not discomfort, if not displeasure?
Naturally, this becomes the default mode of operation when life is perceived to have no end. If there is no highest pleasure, no highest good, then all we have left are lower pleasures. Perhaps paradoxically, even the lower pleasures lose their proper flavor and become denatured in the absence of the highest. Thus despair is consummated.
> Effeminacy is the inability to undertake what is not pleasurable, whereas delicacy is the inability to endure displeasure
Wow. Not only is that whole site preachy an woo-tacular, that definition is sexist AF. There are not many experiences more displeasurable and uncomfortable than carrying a fetus for 9 months and going into labor. To say nothing of monthly hardship for decades on end.
There's also the brain fog and forgetfulness, and the fact that their bones are literally being eroded for calcium in order to develop new skeletal structures, making everything that much more painful over time.
Women put up with a lot of shit. A domestic violence victim will endure such treatment for years and may ultimately end up dead for it. The same sort of men behind that will open fire on random civilians in a crowded shopping mall just because their ego was threatened.
You’re saying that if you do something you otherwise don’t want to do because you have the discipline, then you are not doing what you ultimately desired. Then why are you doing it at all? The only thing that directs you to “be disciplined” is the desire for what the disciplined behavior will bring you.
You can call it moving definitions around, but at the end of the day if we don’t ultimately do what we ultimately desire, then what really is meant by the word desire?
> The only thing that directs you to “be disciplined” is the desire for what the disciplined behavior will bring you.
Which just proves that motivation is not enough. You need discipline. Is the word discipline the problem ? Would regularity feels better ?
> You can call it moving definitions around, but at the end of the day if we don’t ultimately do what we ultimately desire, then what really is meant by the word desire?
That's not a counter argument, that's now playing with the definition of desire.
Discipline merely describes the phenomenon of consistently making certain choices in the long-run to achieve a goal. We leverage habit-creation precisely because motivation is fickle and habits can facilitate discipline.
Feeling guilty or shameful is not what keeps people from procrastinating or making the wrong choices - that is a colossal failure in that regard, instead guilt just becomes the price of admission to do something other than maintaining discipline. Negative emotion is the price to pay to binge-eat, to avoid exercising, etc.
I think there may be an issue here where the two perceptions of the world are both right. For people with pain avoidance tendencies the part of their brain that creates reward may actually be damaged. So they can only avoid pain as there is no/diminished reward for them in completing a task. The feedback loop for people avoiding pain may be different than the feedback loop for people who are chasing a reward. This would be really hard to understand both ways if you had only ever experienced one or the other.
Why is this downvoted? Questioning the motivation vs discipline dichotomy is a very right thing. You may disagree with arguments, but then present the counterarguments.
From the point of view of SDT (Self-Determination Theory, the main theory in psychology on motivation), discipline is definitely is one of the forms of external motivation (integrated or introjected one, probably). So I do agree that talking about motivation and discipline as two fundamentally different things is wrong, and reframing in through the lens of science of motivation can yield better understanding and actionable conclusions.
It's being downvoted because it's moving the definition around under the premise of science while it's just semantic drifting.
Linguistic has a better track record to understand words and their definition than psychology.
So, discipline is not the same as motivation. Discipline is doing things even if you think you don't have enough energy or motivation at the moment.
discipline
dis· ci· pline ˈdi-sə-plən
1 a: control gained by enforcing obedience or order
b: orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior
c: self-control
2: punishment
3: training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character
[..]
motivation
noun [ C/U ]
us
/ˌmoʊ·t̬əˈveɪ·ʃən/
willingness to do something, or something that causes such willingness:
[ C ] One motivation for reducing the staff was the need to cut costs.
[ U ] You need a lot of motivation to succeed.
> So I do agree that talking about motivation and discipline as two fundamentally different things is wrong, and reframing in through the lens of science of motivation can yield better understanding and actionable conclusions.
And yet this conversation here doesn't provide any actionable conclusion, doesn't provide example of how motivation beats discipline and just jumps into a debate of abstract idea(ls).
Is the word discipline the problem ? Would regularity feel better ?
> You may disagree with arguments, but then present the counterarguments.
The original argument is here:
> Discipline, by contrast, separates outwards functioning from moods and feelings and thereby ironically circumvents the problem by consistently improving them.
Redefining words is not a counter argument.
It's always the same dynamic in this debate, it's like people don't want to hear the world discipline and want motivation to just be enough to act on ?
> Discipline is doing things even if you think you don't have enough energy or motivation at the moment.
Motivaion is anything that makes people do stuff. Gun at your head is also motivation - you'll be willing to do things even if you don't have energy or desire to do this. It's just external motivation and external regulation - it can be very powerful, but short-term (it'll stop working as soon as punishment or reward is removed).
So the theory I mentioned (Self-Determination Theory) is the central theory in psychology that studies motivation. It originated in clinical psychology, very mature (70+ years) and has shown high predictive power in thousands of studies. If you think about it, motivation (="energy that makes people do things") is what underpins everything - from parenting and relationships to education, sports and politics. So why not study it as deep as we can?
What you refer to "don't have motivation" would be better expressed as "don't have intrinsic motivation", which is just one of the types of motivation.
So, sure, if you only consider "intrinsic motivation" as being worthy called "motivation", then discipline vs motivation makes sense. But if you consider full spectrum of external motivations (integrated, identified, introjected and external), than it's very clear that discipline is just one of the forms of identified or introjected) external motivations. External motivations can be very powerful, but the further they're on the spectrum the more short lived they are.
As for the actionable items - again. SDT gives you tools and frameworks how to apply this on the per-case basis. Have you heard the phrase "you should read what you love to start love reading"? That's one of the things that makes perfect sense from the SDT perspective - instead of focusing on "discipline for the sake of discipline", i.e. forcing yourself to stick with this external type of motivation, you could use this as a tool to move your motivations (there could be few at the same time) into the side of intrinsic motivation as much as possible, if you want this behaviour to stick.
SDT is actually quite approachable and actionable itself. I think gamedev is quite familiar with it, and they use the tools to make computer games intrinsically motivated.
Atomic Habits is a great book on exactly this. I am really wary of the whole “productivity-boost” category, but this one book is solid from a scientific background and has good, actionable points.
The post you linked reads like they're trying to sell me something. I find it hard to believe someone is truly wise when they begin their argument with "the first, more popular and devastatingly wrong option is..." That style of writing strikes me as being both condescending and manipulative. "Hey reader, you aren't a putz are you? No, you're a free thinker on the hunt for wisdom! So you'd agree that..." Guess I shouldn't expect too much from a site with that tagline, though.
As for the argument about disclipline... That sounds appealing, but what is "discipline"? They say:
> How do you cultivate discipline? By building habits – starting as small as you can manage, even microscopic, and gathering momentum, reinvesting it in progressively bigger changes to your routine, and building a positive feedback loop.
OK so discipline is built out of habits, which are built out of small actions that gradually scale up. All well and good, but it feels like we're back to the original problem of motivation. That is, to cultivate discipline you must be sufficiently motivated. Seems circular.
I don’t think it’s correct to see procrastination as only a negative. At least for me it’s often a signal that whatever activity I’m trying to push myself to will not have the desired outcome. So as I see it procrastination is sort of the internal equivalent of a hesitant investor, asking “will this work really pay off?” That’s a very important question, and asking it has obvious survival benefits.
It does - if the signal turns into addressing the underlying issue.
So, if someone recognizes the tendency to procrastinate on studying on a test as a sign they need to study more, and then does it? Good.
Getting stuck, then in a fear loop where they wait until it’s too late to actually do well on the test, then hurt themselves trying to study at the last minute and do poorly (or just good enough)? Bad.
Most people consider the latter behavior procrastination, and the first one not.
I think you misunderstood me. I meant that I see procrastination as a signal e.g. that studying for the test will not have the intended result of doing well on the test, or that I may not actually want to do well on the test. So the hesitant investor is asking “Do I really want this? Is it worth the time and energy investment of studying?”
But if you actually believe it isn't worth the effort or that you don't actually want to do well on the test, then it's also unlikely to be a stressful or unpleasant experience, right? Procrastination is pretty universally unpleasant.
If it was really what you believed, you'd just not spend extra effort on it, and shrug when the expected result occurs, and you'd probably be right!
My experience has been that is just not giving a shit, which isn't procrastination, per-se, and often necessary and healthy in at least some parts of our lives.
Procrastination is the cycle of avoidance/anxiety/shame where one is trying to convince themselves of the above state, despite them not really believing it, as a way to attempt to regulate themselves. Reality almost always intervenes eventually though.
One of the more common types of stress (in my experience) is when ones actions don't match what they know they should do to produce the outcome they want or need.
And it's generally a dysfunction if it gets in the way of doing what they want, and can do, if they were better regulating. Anyone with ADHD is quite familiar with it and the analogy of 'the wall of awful'.
The big issue with true procrastination, in my experience, is that the worse it gets, the worse it gets, and if someone gets to a certain point, it can become life destroying (ex: Hoarders, folks who avoid Dental issues until their teeth fall out, avoid going to the Doctor for that twinge in their chest until they die of a heart attack, etc.).
Procrastination almost never happens when someone is confident in their ability to actually do something, and is in a place where they are actually healthy/feeling ok.
So procrastinating to the point someone gets super anxious even if they eventually succeed, or fails at something really important, builds up 'the wall of awful'. Success at something, or feeling good when something is accomplished, tears it down.
So for instance:
If an investor gets the twinge of 'Do I really want this, is this worth the time and energy investment';
- A good investor will generally notice and figure out - is this a self limiting belief on their side (and if so, can they resolve their personal issue healthily and then re-evaluate), or a legitimate red flag that it's not worth it.
If they are so attentive and able to see what is going on with them and self-regulate well enough, they'll tend to pick more successful options in general, and avoid scams more often. That leads to more confidence in those decisions and in my experience higher overall returns. They won't be bogged down in failures they (kind of) saw coming, and will be able to capitalize on good opportunities when they present themselves instead of avoiding them or saying No.
- A bad investor will not do so (and will resort to either dismissing the concern outright, or trusting it outright), and either force themselves to invest regardless (and hence be scammed more often), or not invest and miss out on good investments (and hence miss out on opportunities).
This leads to more self limiting beliefs and real problems and they often work themselves into a deeper hole, or go bankrupt.
As individuals, executive function is that same type of behavior but for our own actions.
It can be, and is, exhaustible for everyone. ADHD, for instance, is the name we give to folks who have a harder time keeping it and not exhausting it. But everyone is on a spectrum.
Anytime I read research like this, I think about how the opposite of the suggested positive changes can be applied (and how it would look like) in order to weaponize the emotional well-being of an opposing nation.
I've found that I can more easily get myself to get things done when I project myself into the future and remember the satisfaction of having done it. The projected nostalgia of a job well done turns out to be a powerful motivator for me.
Conversely, after I'm done with a mundane but supremely boring task like filing taxes, I fail to experience any reward. This makes it just as hard to complete the task the next time. I know it will provide me no satisfaction. It's better at work, where I'm lucky to have interesting problems to solve.
Speaking from personal experience I tried every trick, strategy, and everything else under the sun and it never worked which led to a lot of personal shame and anxiety that over time became so tiring and demoralizing it led to short term the occasional bought of depression. Talk therapy helped but wasn't enough. Saw a doctor in my early 30s, got diagnosed with adhd, and started adderall which gave me the ability to focus and get my life in order enough I had the space and energy to do the long term compounding things like exercise, getting my diet in order (I'm on a paleo-ish diet now), have time to meditate/journal etc. etc. The hyper focus on short term mood before I recognize now was really an attempt to get in the right head space to get work done but that process is exhausting and leaves little energy to do the long term right things. Maybe if I had the wealth to step away from work for months and purely focus on that I could have gotten to the place without medication to let the long term things compound but I don't think thats a realistic option for 99% of people at least in the US and especially with families to support. We can argue about the structure of society and if thats right or not but for my own life frustration at the general state of the world does little to improve my life.
Stimulant meds are not a silver bullet but for some % of folks no amount of strategizing is going to help without medication and/or therapy. I use both and it's been enough of a push to see dramatic improvement. My biggest piece of advice if you're struggling with this generally is drop the shame. The shame that you struggle with it, the shame that you might need medication, etc. Then when the shame is gone you can be objective to do get what you need and stack the long term habits that make things easier.
Well so for what its worth and I guess I wasn't explicit about is that at this point (just shy of 1 year medicated) my days I am not medicated (I take medication 4 days a week) are much easier to get things done now because of the other work I've been doing. As they continue to compound I'm hoping that in another year I can largely discontinue meds or switch to a less often as needed basis. So there is long term hope but for me and folks like me medication can break the short term cycle to get there. That said plenty of folks can't function with medication and there is no shame in that either.
As someone who's also in their first year on Adderall after being diagnosed as an adult, this is really encouraging to read. I currently take it weekdays and take weekends off, and really don't want to take it forever because I don't like the idea of being dependent on it or building a tolerance. It's not so much shame as it is fear—I'm scared that I'll screw up my brain if I take it for too long, y'know?
Anyhow, thanks for posting your perspective, it's nice to know there are other people in similar situations to my own. Have a nice day!
I similarly have that fear hence why I take 3 days a week in a row off and twice now I've taken 3 week+ breaks when I know that I can. Also there's a whole rabbit hole of supplements that can help supposedly and I've found some to be useful but the biggest thing is just intense cardiovascular exercise (and specifically cardio versus resistance training). That said yes a year on I take a longer term break and I feel exactly like I used to pre medication by day 5 so not worried at this point. Most of the long term dependence issue I've seen from folks is many multi year users 5+ so doing what I can to avoid that situation. Keep dose as low as possible, take holidays, and long term I'm working to use it less and less so its infrequent or only during stressful work / life times in the future.
> I currently take it weekdays and take weekends off
I am not a medical professional, but my unsolicited advice is that this a good idea.
I have been on various ADHD treatments for 8 years, and I honestly I am experiencing everything you mentioned and more -- tolerance, dependence, etc.. The medication barely works anymore (not taking it makes me literally useless, so taking it alter makes me normal), but basically every symptom I have tried to treat has slowly worked its way back into my life.
I am in the process of taking trying to take more days off, and all I have to say is: even therapeutic dosages can cause a nasty withdrawal if taken consistently over long periods of time.
I'm even considering taking a non-stimulant, but I need more convincing that said medications are actually effective.
> I'm even considering taking a non-stimulant, but I need more convincing that said medications are actually effective.
There is no way to convince you that it will be effective for you because no one knows that. You will know when you try it, it works for some but not for others.
> The hyper focus on short term mood before I recognize now was really an attempt to get in the right head space to get work done but that process is exhausting and leaves little energy to do the long term right things
Apologies, but I can't quite parse this statement. Can you explain what you mean bc there's something about it that resonates with me but I'm not exactly sure what or why.
If you're feeling like your emotions and physical state aren't well regulated you can't do meaningful deep dive work. Large swaths of your energy is spent simply trying to feel balanced enough to then get the things you want to get done accomplished. Many of these tactics are short term fixes that end up making things worse off later on. Think like drinking too much coffee to try and focus but you end up getting anxiety from said caffeine. You can barely keep up with the things you need to do today and you don't have the energy to do the things that will long term help. It creates a negative feedback loop where you're stuck in a purely short term mindset.
I reject the premise! Procrastination is a valid strategy in many situations, setting a task to a start of "as-late-as-possible" can be optimal in dynamic environments, both in projects as well as personal life. Much time and effort is wasted when we start something too soon.
The key is not to feel bad about procrastinating, the key is to become better at estimating and planning for completing tasks.
Sources are on my other device but I read this morning that people who score higher on the procrastination scale earn significantly less ($15,000 per "procrastination point", out of 10 I guess?) , and have significantly worse mental health.
I'm procrastinating while writing this and I personally feel much better when I'm facing all my difficulties head on than when avoiding them. I'm just so tired lately...
I think procrastination should imply that there's likely no benefit in delaying the task at hand. But I agree that the "start as-late-as-possible" strategy can be beneficial in a wide array of situations. When I was getting my degree I learned that starting projects ASAP was foolish because the professor often changed the scope or made important clarifications about a week before it was due.
That has worked well for me too. I am a chronic procrastinator. When faced with a new task, I "trick" myself by saying I will just endure the tiny bit of pain to get started in some stupid, basic way (e.g. create a blank document or write a list of the real work I have to do). Most times, after 5 minutes of pain, I will be over the hump and just keep working because I want to see it through.
ADHD is commonly thought of as a disorder of attention, but it also has a nexus of dysfunction in mood regulation. I am
simplifying, but people with ADHD don’t generate enough dopamine to stimulate the circuits that regulate emotion. Most people with ADHD therefore experience heightened emotional responses to negative stimuli. This leads to all sorts of problems with relationships and work.
Procrastination is the art of avoiding the emotional pain that happens when you think about working on something you find distasteful or boring. ADHD presents two problems in relation to procrastination: first, ADHD gives you a lifetime of training in the pain of focusing on difficult or boring work. And second, when you experience the feeling that something will be difficult or boring, you don’t properly regulate that feeling. It becomes overwhelming.
> but people with ADHD don’t generate enough dopamine to stimulate the circuits that regulate emotion. Most people with ADHD therefore experience heightened emotional responses to negative stimuli. This leads to all sorts of problems with relationships and work.
103. A study of over 8600 youths from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey found that those with ADHD were four times as likely to have a high level of emotional and conduct problems and three times as likely to have a high level of peer problems. It also found that they were eight to ten times as likely to manifest a high level of impairment with home life, friendships, classroom learning, and leisure activities (Strine et al., 2006).
104. A meta-analysis of 22 studies with over 21,000 participants found that youths with ADHD were strongly impaired in the ability to modulate their reactivity to novel or stressful events (Graziano and Garcia, 2016). Another meta-analysis, combining twelve studies with over 1900 participants, found that adults with ADHD had very elevated levels of emotional dysregulation compared with normally developing controls (Beheshti et al., 2020).
105. A meta-analysis found that children with ADHD had medium-to-large impairments in socializing with peers as measured by rejection/likability, popularity, and friendships (61 studies, over 24,000 children). They also had moderate impairments in social skills such as sharing, cooperating, turn-taking, reciprocity (68 studies, over 148,000 children), and social-information processing, such as recognizing social cues, identifying problems, generating solutions, and avoiding biases (23 studies, over 3750 children) (Ros and Graziano, 2018).
106. A study of over 53,000 U.S. children from the National Survey of Children’s Health found that those with ADHD were 2.4 times as likely to engage in bullying (Montes and Halterman, 2007). A more recent study of some 64,000 children using the same database confirmed this finding, reporting that those with ADHD were 2.8 times more likely to engage in bullying (Benedict et al., 2015).
There's definitely a decent body of evidence to suggest ADHD is associated with emotional dysregulation, but I'd be surprised if that explanation turned out to correct.
ADHD isn't simply a lack of dopamine, but a dysfunction in dopamine (and noradrenaline) regulation. It can involve too much dopamine (like with hyperfocus), and not enough dopamine in different loci. This isn't even mentioning the non-dopamine/noradrenaline understandings of the pathophysiology that are still arising with further study.
> Procrastination is the art of avoiding the emotional pain that happens when you think about working on something you find distasteful or boring
There's a whole other class of procrastination that sits in the ADHD spectrum, which is because the "Hyperfocus time" is just a massive bump in your abilities and you want to use that time to do the most important things in your life.
I've got my tax documents right in front of me behind this screen. I'm just waiting for that dip into hyperfocus flow to pick it up and just do it in one go, instead of accidentally ending up wasting that focus on something mundane. You literally save up your TODO list, because you know there'll be a clearing of the fog and you can go a million miles an hour through your tasks.
I don't know if you experience procrastination the same way, but the version I experience is best called "defeatist perfectionist", a bit of it is the upbringing of "don't start if you can't finish it" from food on a plate to art.
Picking up a jigsaw puzzle is weighing my energies to get through it, before I even start.
Daily life feels like that swim scene from Gattaca.
I've not got enough of a problem to go get diagnosed or medicated, but I've had to find my own way to program in my productivity triggers and they work for me in almost all scenarios. And the only real struggle I have to deal with is people in my life telling me "That's not the way to do it" for something which works for me, to just accept the feedback and not react to it personally.
I didn't think my impairments were significant, to the point that it took me 20 years to go talk to a psych about it. My siblings were already diagnosed and nothing like me (in terms of symptoms) so I thought I was 'fine'.
After talking to a psych I got diagnosed ADHD. After starting medication, and increasing multiple times, it was discovered my ADHD is on the severe end.
I've finally found the dose which works for me, which was over the recommended prescribed amount (as directed by my psych) and it's absolutely changed my life. It doesn't remove the impairments, but has reduced severity enough that I can actually deal with them now. My mental health has improved so fucking much, I feel like I have agency now
I strongly recommend you discuss it with a psych, if even to get a negative diagnosis.
> ergo if you don’t think they are, you don’t have ADHD
It's quite possible to be significantly impaired by something, and not realise that you are. This sounds like saying, "if you don't think you're an alcoholic, you aren't".
For what it's worth, I had similar issues and eventually realised that "not enough of a problem" was a pattern of thinking that held me back. Even the DSM5 now uses this language: "the symptoms interfere with, or reduce the quality of, social, academic, or occupational functioning" – hardly a high bar
I think I was unfairly biasing myself against action by needing problems to be bad enough before I would deal with them. Not just in terms of medication or treatment, but also accepting help from others. I think this is partly a pride/shame thing, but also another manifestation of ADHD: crises are far more stimulating than preventative maintenance.
I now try to think of it more like "would this make things better for me? If so, why wouldn't I do it?" To that end, I found that medication helped me immensely with that feeling of helpless inconsistency. I don't always find it easy to get started, but I no longer feel like I'm waiting for the productivity fairy to visit.
I've always compared it to a sports car without a steering wheel. Yes it'll go fast, but you kinda have to wait for it to accidentally point in the right direction and then floor it. Meanwhile everyone on the outside is going "what the heck is this guy waiting for? he's got a fast car, the engine is running, just go."
I have another hypothesis that one of the issues with ADHD and mood regulation is that the "clock" in our brains are broken. This leaves us with an inability to understand that "episodes" have beginning, middles, and ends. While the episode is happening we tend to believe that it will never end. We can't see the end. This is part of what keeps us frozen. Why would we want to enter a task that will continue to feel overwhelming indefinitely. This is why pomodoro and other strategies that clearly define the end are so effective. It allows us to offboard the clock management part of it that is so difficult. It's clear when the end is.
I think this is actually a skill that we can learn on our own. I haven't fully fleshed this part out yet.
ADHD is an issue with underdeveloped executive functions. They can lead to time blindness, emotional disregulation and low functional memory.
Basically, you start something without actually planning or having a good grasp of how long it would take, then start doing and get distracted by even the tiniest of distractions and forgetting where you were before the distraction. Rinse and repeat, every single day you develop other coping mechanisms to avoid the repeated failure.
When thinking about problems I have to constantly tell myself, don't worry, it isn't infinite... you can get through it and get it done. I also have a tendency to get mired in the details and need to frequently zoom out to remind myself of the big picture and goals I'm working towards.
Lots of people are here saying ADHD meds helped them a lot. I have also seen people say ADHD meds led them to a psychotic breakdown. I have also seen people say that ADHD meds helped for a few months and then became their "baseline" again, and they were stuck taking them for the rest of their lives with no benefit. It seems like such a huge gamble to even start.
Even if I did decide ADHD meds would help me, good fucking luck trying to get them! It would mean spending thousands of dollars talking to different psychologists, most of whom would do absolutely nothing for me. I'm not anti-psychology as a discipline, but the way it's practiced in the U.S. is shameful. 30-minute phone sessions where they barely remember who you are since the last time they talked to you; you tell them about your life and they go "wow, that sounds really hard" ad nauseum until the call is over, and pretend like that has done a goddamn thing to help you. I'd have better luck talking to fucking ChatGPT than a psychologist. They never do a goddamn thing. That's the general attitude of every healthcare professional I've ever seen in my life. If it's not a standard procedure like a vaccination, then it's "what the fuck do you expect me to do about it?" The U.S. medical system is completely fucked, especially for chronic issues, and especially for mental issues. So all you people saying ADHD meds helped you, either you don't live in the U.S., you bought them illegally, you are rich enough to have "a guy" for it, or you got extremely fucking lucky.
- No psychiatrist has asked me to unpack my life and feelings. They don't have time for that. They treat symptoms and had off the therapy to someone else.
- Primary care doctors in the US can and do prescribe ADHD medication. (It helps if you have some history with them before you ask.)
- While ADHD medication can trigger psychosis, it's rare. The marijuana people self-medicate with has a much higher risk of psychosis. Undiagnosed bipolar or schizophrenia increases the risk.
- First-line ADHD medications the safest and easiest psych medication available. It works quickly and can be stopped just as quickly. They aren't addictive short-term.
- ADHD meds aren't known to be addictive long-term. Ritalin has been in use for just about 70 years. If it was extremely addictive or did serious long-term damage (beyond the obvious stress on the circulatory system), we'd know.
- A lot of the initial effects of stimulants fade as you build tolerance, but they still provide increased ability to focus over baseline. They are an effective long-term treatment.
115 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadSt Johns Wort interacts dangerously with a number of other drugs.
There is evidence for a higher-than-placebo effect on mild to medium depression, but not enough evidence for claims made against ADHD.
I find the more disruptive that first change is, the easier the rest become.
Hope this helps.
There are many ways out, you just have to find one that works for you. Previous poster’s suggestion are good. A psychologist can help. Detox. A trip to a new place. Late night hobbies with friends. Exercise is great.
Don't despair. Everyone goes through this from time-to-time.
Over the years, even up to the present time, I have tried to do all the right things like getting properly assessed, undergoing therapy, seeking proper medication, millions attempts to better myself, etc..
I'm still doing trying to do everything I listed above, but I have made little to no progress over the last decade, and in some ways, I feel that I have actually regressed. I have started to accept that I might be fundamentally broken beyond repair.
I am not saying any of this to discourage anyone from getting proper help, I just think people should be aware that treatments are not a guarantee.
Depression, dysthymia, ADD, ADHD, AED, for example, aren't things you can just will yourself out of.
People who have experienced profound sadness at some point in their lives tend to assume depression is the same. They will then advice (with good intentions) people who are depressed to do what they did, since it worked for them.
Just change this or that habit. But it's not how it works in reality.
Also, there's nothing wrong with being alone, and there's nothing wrong with feeling bad. Society pushes us to be at the top of our productivity at all times, which leads us to feel guilt when we need to rest. Mental health IS health, and it requires time, in the same way you'd need time in bed if you had a surgery or whatever.
Finally, there's no end goal in life. Life is meaningless. No matter what you do, if you're enjoying yourself, it's good. If you watch TV all day everyday for the rest of your life — that's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with it. It's YOUR life. Nobody can tell you how to live it.
https://www.benzo.org.uk/
https://www.asprescribedfilm.com/
Years after, I found out, when taken for years, they do permanent damage to the brain's ability to form long-term memories. Among other things.
Fortunately, I didn't take them that long. But I had many friends in the same situation, taking benzos because their psychiatrist gave them to them just like that, without offering alternatives.
To properly reword my advice: be careful with psychologists and psychiatrists. Not all of them are good, and not all of them have your best interest in mind.
Discipline is what you want. And you can build that no matter what. Just start small and go from there. [0]
[0]https://i.pinimg.com/originals/55/34/a9/5534a9d2ac48a66cd341...
Also can you explain what's going on in the second panel? Some strong underpants gnomes vibes. I mean, I like how easy it is, but I can't seem to find the switch in the mirror!
If you find a better way, let me know. This is the best one I found, and it doesn't depend on me having a good day and everything being hunky dory.
> I can't seem to find the switch in the mirror
Tidy your room. Start small. Grow from there. Plan, iterate, improve. Whatever you add to the routine, have it stick by sheer force of will and repetition.
Fuck your feelings. I mean that. Whatever your feelings tell you, tell them to fuck off. You have something to do and you're going to do it. Period.
I think we need to go back to the stoics, and forget about all this touchy-feely that being all soft is ok. Sometimes it's not ok.
When did self-discipline become a bad word for so many people?
Sure let's be stoic, but I don't agree that means "fuck your feeling" or looks anything like the comic you linked. There's a third way.
By parent you mean yourself? Because I don't think you're getting the point that sometimes your mind needs to stop and just do the damn job. And you need to be in charge of it, instead of letting it wander on endlessly.
I believe I understand your point, and agree with you. You're saying "sometimes your mind needs to stop" and that "you need to be in charge of it." E.g. your mind might be very anxious and distracted by an upcoming work deadline and seek to soothe itself by reading Hacker News, but "you" should stop that from happening, say by installing a site-blocking plugin for your browser and instituting and adhering to "work hours" each morning. Assuming I'm not way off target, I agree with all that.
But it seems we're talking past each other, as I'm responding to your original comic strip which has more to say. The metaphors it uses, and that you have used in this discussion, depict compulsion. That's where I disagree with you. I believe force / shame / guilt work, but that we should aspire for a superior resolution to the problem. One not based on those principles.
The superior resolution is that your mind gets trained not to wander off by constant repetition.
Your brain will always seek immediate rewards, it's just innate to your monkey brain. You have to train it not to. Same as you train a muscle to grow by having it lift weights even though it would rather not because it's painful.
Not sure why you say "shame" or "guilt", those were never part of my initial argument nor the comic. Force, yes, in the same way you force your arms to do push-ups or lift weights.
I get that motivation is a fleeting feeling, but what about when discipline and willpower are too?
I have succumbed to the idea that I basically just each day of my life like a game of roulette. Am I going to be productive today? Better spin the wheel to find out.
For example, I want to get better at playing piano, but it's both hard to set aside time, and hard to get myself to sit down for a set amount of time and Do Piano. I tried putting the keyboard in a few places, including directly behind my computer desk (literally 2 feet away from me), but there was too much friction involved in moving my chair and changing the lighting etc--it really wasn't much, probably 15 seconds of effort, but it required deliberate intention.
I discovered, though, that if the keyboard is on the landing outside my office with a dedicated chair, then I'll see the setup on my way to/from the kitchen, and it will sometimes feel inviting--often a nice distraction while waiting 10 minutes for a meeting, or while procrastinating on something else I'm trying to get motivated on. And sometimes 10 minutes turns into 30 or who knows how long, and my taxes may be stalled out but I sure am making progress on the fugue I'm learning.
Source: diagnosed ADD for 20+ years.
- multiboot: one OS install for work, another OS install for games/other
- get a PiHole or modify /etc/hosts to blackhole certain known terrible sites
- leave a minor compile error for yourself just before you leave work, so that in the morning you type 'make' and get suckered into fixing the small thing, which gets you into the flow of work the next day (this has worked for me too)
Don't give up before you've tried or of course you won't find something that works. You never know whatIt took months to find that the placement for my keyboard works for me. Treat yourself like you would a child that you love, and be patient and persistent as you try to figure out how to set up your/their environment to allow you/them to function better in this weird life you/they have been given.
That right there is why I don't like people that jump straight to medical conditions without analyzing other alternatives: unless you get reviewed by an actual physician, diagnosed, and treated, please don't assume and act on what you think might be the problem. Not saying you're 100% wrong, but it's most likely you are. And that might worsen the problem.
These days I try not to worry too much about procrastination, and get as much done as I can. I’ve found lots of little tricks to squeeze out more productivity here and there. If I’m in a situation where I just need to buckle down and push through, I will, but I’m not going to risk pushing myself over the edge when it’s not necessary.
If you lack exercise, sunlight, or proper nutrition, lack of focus is the last of your problems to solve and more of an obvious consequence.
I find it weird how all those things are usually overlooked and everyone jumps to ADHD or something like that.
Routine is a good word. I have a flexible routine now, and it's effective enough. It's not the most disciplined, and there's procrastination, but I don't worry about it and just try to make sure that I'm moving in the right direction.
I’ll do it with you.
https://youtu.be/IeRdy6LrOAI
Wow. This one sentence really drives home how different human experiences can be. Being stuck in a destructive, painful, unproductive loop like this is awful and I'm sorry you're going through it, but wow, a few weeks!? It's jarring to consider the idea that it's not completely normal for this to be one's life for years and years on end.
There are ways to quit. Quitting will help. For starters I know there is a reddit /leaves/ group for this purpose.
I’m not sure if it works, but I’ll be trying it soon!
https://www.reddit.com/r/selfimprovement/comments/c42i6f/pro...
> Motivation, broadly speaking, operates on the erroneous assumption that a particular mental or emotional state is necessary to complete a task.
> That’s completely the wrong way around.
> Discipline, by contrast, separates outwards functioning from moods and feelings and thereby ironically circumvents the problem by consistently improving them.
https://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motivation-what-you-need...
So you can move the definitions around, but at the end of the day; there are still situations where people succumb to doing or not doing something based on emotion, and the decision to do it regardless of desire is still discipline.
If we look at, shall we say, the traditional definitions of perseverance, effeminacy, and delicacy[0], we find that someone who perseveres is someone who "does not forsake a good on account of long endurance of difficulties and toils". Effeminacy is the inability to undertake what is not pleasurable, whereas delicacy is the inability to endure displeasure ("properly speaking effeminacy regards lack of pleasures, while delicacy regards the cause that hinders pleasure, for instance toil or the like").
We "moderns" are certainly a soft people. We cannot help but indulge ourselves, we cannot bear what we do not like, and we refuse to embrace the yoke. We are slaves to our appetites and desires. FOMO, which is opportunism, and a culture of instant gratification, are the result and the encouragement of the inability to forsake lower goods for the sake of higher goods, and so we undergo dissipation. And what is dissipation but a lack of focus? And what is the procrastinator avoiding if not discomfort, if not displeasure?
Naturally, this becomes the default mode of operation when life is perceived to have no end. If there is no highest pleasure, no highest good, then all we have left are lower pleasures. Perhaps paradoxically, even the lower pleasures lose their proper flavor and become denatured in the absence of the highest. Thus despair is consummated.
[0] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3138.htm
Wow. Not only is that whole site preachy an woo-tacular, that definition is sexist AF. There are not many experiences more displeasurable and uncomfortable than carrying a fetus for 9 months and going into labor. To say nothing of monthly hardship for decades on end.
Women put up with a lot of shit. A domestic violence victim will endure such treatment for years and may ultimately end up dead for it. The same sort of men behind that will open fire on random civilians in a crowded shopping mall just because their ego was threatened.
You can call it moving definitions around, but at the end of the day if we don’t ultimately do what we ultimately desire, then what really is meant by the word desire?
Which just proves that motivation is not enough. You need discipline. Is the word discipline the problem ? Would regularity feels better ?
> You can call it moving definitions around, but at the end of the day if we don’t ultimately do what we ultimately desire, then what really is meant by the word desire?
That's not a counter argument, that's now playing with the definition of desire.
Feeling guilty or shameful is not what keeps people from procrastinating or making the wrong choices - that is a colossal failure in that regard, instead guilt just becomes the price of admission to do something other than maintaining discipline. Negative emotion is the price to pay to binge-eat, to avoid exercising, etc.
From the point of view of SDT (Self-Determination Theory, the main theory in psychology on motivation), discipline is definitely is one of the forms of external motivation (integrated or introjected one, probably). So I do agree that talking about motivation and discipline as two fundamentally different things is wrong, and reframing in through the lens of science of motivation can yield better understanding and actionable conclusions.
Linguistic has a better track record to understand words and their definition than psychology.
So, discipline is not the same as motivation. Discipline is doing things even if you think you don't have enough energy or motivation at the moment.
> So I do agree that talking about motivation and discipline as two fundamentally different things is wrong, and reframing in through the lens of science of motivation can yield better understanding and actionable conclusions.And yet this conversation here doesn't provide any actionable conclusion, doesn't provide example of how motivation beats discipline and just jumps into a debate of abstract idea(ls).
Is the word discipline the problem ? Would regularity feel better ?
> You may disagree with arguments, but then present the counterarguments.
The original argument is here:
> Discipline, by contrast, separates outwards functioning from moods and feelings and thereby ironically circumvents the problem by consistently improving them.
Redefining words is not a counter argument.
It's always the same dynamic in this debate, it's like people don't want to hear the world discipline and want motivation to just be enough to act on ?
Motivaion is anything that makes people do stuff. Gun at your head is also motivation - you'll be willing to do things even if you don't have energy or desire to do this. It's just external motivation and external regulation - it can be very powerful, but short-term (it'll stop working as soon as punishment or reward is removed).
So the theory I mentioned (Self-Determination Theory) is the central theory in psychology that studies motivation. It originated in clinical psychology, very mature (70+ years) and has shown high predictive power in thousands of studies. If you think about it, motivation (="energy that makes people do things") is what underpins everything - from parenting and relationships to education, sports and politics. So why not study it as deep as we can?
What you refer to "don't have motivation" would be better expressed as "don't have intrinsic motivation", which is just one of the types of motivation.
So, sure, if you only consider "intrinsic motivation" as being worthy called "motivation", then discipline vs motivation makes sense. But if you consider full spectrum of external motivations (integrated, identified, introjected and external), than it's very clear that discipline is just one of the forms of identified or introjected) external motivations. External motivations can be very powerful, but the further they're on the spectrum the more short lived they are.
As for the actionable items - again. SDT gives you tools and frameworks how to apply this on the per-case basis. Have you heard the phrase "you should read what you love to start love reading"? That's one of the things that makes perfect sense from the SDT perspective - instead of focusing on "discipline for the sake of discipline", i.e. forcing yourself to stick with this external type of motivation, you could use this as a tool to move your motivations (there could be few at the same time) into the side of intrinsic motivation as much as possible, if you want this behaviour to stick.
SDT is actually quite approachable and actionable itself. I think gamedev is quite familiar with it, and they use the tools to make computer games intrinsically motivated.
I think what you're describing is similar to this: https://www.physio-pedia.com/Fear_Avoidance_Model and is likely related to this: https://elifesciences.org/articles/74149. Our brains lose the ability accurately understand the level of pain the task is going to create. The feedback loop is broken.
As for the argument about disclipline... That sounds appealing, but what is "discipline"? They say:
> How do you cultivate discipline? By building habits – starting as small as you can manage, even microscopic, and gathering momentum, reinvesting it in progressively bigger changes to your routine, and building a positive feedback loop.
OK so discipline is built out of habits, which are built out of small actions that gradually scale up. All well and good, but it feels like we're back to the original problem of motivation. That is, to cultivate discipline you must be sufficiently motivated. Seems circular.
So, if someone recognizes the tendency to procrastinate on studying on a test as a sign they need to study more, and then does it? Good.
Getting stuck, then in a fear loop where they wait until it’s too late to actually do well on the test, then hurt themselves trying to study at the last minute and do poorly (or just good enough)? Bad.
Most people consider the latter behavior procrastination, and the first one not.
But if you actually believe it isn't worth the effort or that you don't actually want to do well on the test, then it's also unlikely to be a stressful or unpleasant experience, right? Procrastination is pretty universally unpleasant.
If it was really what you believed, you'd just not spend extra effort on it, and shrug when the expected result occurs, and you'd probably be right!
My experience has been that is just not giving a shit, which isn't procrastination, per-se, and often necessary and healthy in at least some parts of our lives.
Procrastination is the cycle of avoidance/anxiety/shame where one is trying to convince themselves of the above state, despite them not really believing it, as a way to attempt to regulate themselves. Reality almost always intervenes eventually though.
One of the more common types of stress (in my experience) is when ones actions don't match what they know they should do to produce the outcome they want or need.
And it's generally a dysfunction if it gets in the way of doing what they want, and can do, if they were better regulating. Anyone with ADHD is quite familiar with it and the analogy of 'the wall of awful'.
The big issue with true procrastination, in my experience, is that the worse it gets, the worse it gets, and if someone gets to a certain point, it can become life destroying (ex: Hoarders, folks who avoid Dental issues until their teeth fall out, avoid going to the Doctor for that twinge in their chest until they die of a heart attack, etc.).
Procrastination almost never happens when someone is confident in their ability to actually do something, and is in a place where they are actually healthy/feeling ok.
So procrastinating to the point someone gets super anxious even if they eventually succeed, or fails at something really important, builds up 'the wall of awful'. Success at something, or feeling good when something is accomplished, tears it down.
So for instance:
If an investor gets the twinge of 'Do I really want this, is this worth the time and energy investment';
- A good investor will generally notice and figure out - is this a self limiting belief on their side (and if so, can they resolve their personal issue healthily and then re-evaluate), or a legitimate red flag that it's not worth it.
If they are so attentive and able to see what is going on with them and self-regulate well enough, they'll tend to pick more successful options in general, and avoid scams more often. That leads to more confidence in those decisions and in my experience higher overall returns. They won't be bogged down in failures they (kind of) saw coming, and will be able to capitalize on good opportunities when they present themselves instead of avoiding them or saying No.
- A bad investor will not do so (and will resort to either dismissing the concern outright, or trusting it outright), and either force themselves to invest regardless (and hence be scammed more often), or not invest and miss out on good investments (and hence miss out on opportunities). This leads to more self limiting beliefs and real problems and they often work themselves into a deeper hole, or go bankrupt.
As individuals, executive function is that same type of behavior but for our own actions.
It can be, and is, exhaustible for everyone. ADHD, for instance, is the name we give to folks who have a harder time keeping it and not exhausting it. But everyone is on a spectrum.
Stimulant meds are not a silver bullet but for some % of folks no amount of strategizing is going to help without medication and/or therapy. I use both and it's been enough of a push to see dramatic improvement. My biggest piece of advice if you're struggling with this generally is drop the shame. The shame that you struggle with it, the shame that you might need medication, etc. Then when the shame is gone you can be objective to do get what you need and stack the long term habits that make things easier.
Anyhow, thanks for posting your perspective, it's nice to know there are other people in similar situations to my own. Have a nice day!
I am not a medical professional, but my unsolicited advice is that this a good idea.
I have been on various ADHD treatments for 8 years, and I honestly I am experiencing everything you mentioned and more -- tolerance, dependence, etc.. The medication barely works anymore (not taking it makes me literally useless, so taking it alter makes me normal), but basically every symptom I have tried to treat has slowly worked its way back into my life.
I am in the process of taking trying to take more days off, and all I have to say is: even therapeutic dosages can cause a nasty withdrawal if taken consistently over long periods of time.
I'm even considering taking a non-stimulant, but I need more convincing that said medications are actually effective.
There is no way to convince you that it will be effective for you because no one knows that. You will know when you try it, it works for some but not for others.
Apologies, but I can't quite parse this statement. Can you explain what you mean bc there's something about it that resonates with me but I'm not exactly sure what or why.
The key is not to feel bad about procrastinating, the key is to become better at estimating and planning for completing tasks.
I'm procrastinating while writing this and I personally feel much better when I'm facing all my difficulties head on than when avoiding them. I'm just so tired lately...
About ten years ago I realized the truth that works for me:
Mood follows motion.
You can’t wait until you feel good to do the thing. It’s the doing of the thing that makes you feel good.
If I tried and failed, I'm not the problem, my disability is.
Procrastination is the art of avoiding the emotional pain that happens when you think about working on something you find distasteful or boring. ADHD presents two problems in relation to procrastination: first, ADHD gives you a lifetime of training in the pain of focusing on difficult or boring work. And second, when you experience the feeling that something will be difficult or boring, you don’t properly regulate that feeling. It becomes overwhelming.
Would you have a citation for this?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-shrink-tank/2020...
103. A study of over 8600 youths from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey found that those with ADHD were four times as likely to have a high level of emotional and conduct problems and three times as likely to have a high level of peer problems. It also found that they were eight to ten times as likely to manifest a high level of impairment with home life, friendships, classroom learning, and leisure activities (Strine et al., 2006).
104. A meta-analysis of 22 studies with over 21,000 participants found that youths with ADHD were strongly impaired in the ability to modulate their reactivity to novel or stressful events (Graziano and Garcia, 2016). Another meta-analysis, combining twelve studies with over 1900 participants, found that adults with ADHD had very elevated levels of emotional dysregulation compared with normally developing controls (Beheshti et al., 2020).
105. A meta-analysis found that children with ADHD had medium-to-large impairments in socializing with peers as measured by rejection/likability, popularity, and friendships (61 studies, over 24,000 children). They also had moderate impairments in social skills such as sharing, cooperating, turn-taking, reciprocity (68 studies, over 148,000 children), and social-information processing, such as recognizing social cues, identifying problems, generating solutions, and avoiding biases (23 studies, over 3750 children) (Ros and Graziano, 2018).
106. A study of over 53,000 U.S. children from the National Survey of Children’s Health found that those with ADHD were 2.4 times as likely to engage in bullying (Montes and Halterman, 2007). A more recent study of some 64,000 children using the same database confirmed this finding, reporting that those with ADHD were 2.8 times more likely to engage in bullying (Benedict et al., 2015).
ADHD isn't simply a lack of dopamine, but a dysfunction in dopamine (and noradrenaline) regulation. It can involve too much dopamine (like with hyperfocus), and not enough dopamine in different loci. This isn't even mentioning the non-dopamine/noradrenaline understandings of the pathophysiology that are still arising with further study.
There's a whole other class of procrastination that sits in the ADHD spectrum, which is because the "Hyperfocus time" is just a massive bump in your abilities and you want to use that time to do the most important things in your life.
I've got my tax documents right in front of me behind this screen. I'm just waiting for that dip into hyperfocus flow to pick it up and just do it in one go, instead of accidentally ending up wasting that focus on something mundane. You literally save up your TODO list, because you know there'll be a clearing of the fog and you can go a million miles an hour through your tasks.
I don't know if you experience procrastination the same way, but the version I experience is best called "defeatist perfectionist", a bit of it is the upbringing of "don't start if you can't finish it" from food on a plate to art.
Picking up a jigsaw puzzle is weighing my energies to get through it, before I even start.
Daily life feels like that swim scene from Gattaca.
I've not got enough of a problem to go get diagnosed or medicated, but I've had to find my own way to program in my productivity triggers and they work for me in almost all scenarios. And the only real struggle I have to deal with is people in my life telling me "That's not the way to do it" for something which works for me, to just accept the feedback and not react to it personally.
> I've not got enough of a problem to go get diagnosed or medicated.
Hmm...
After talking to a psych I got diagnosed ADHD. After starting medication, and increasing multiple times, it was discovered my ADHD is on the severe end.
I've finally found the dose which works for me, which was over the recommended prescribed amount (as directed by my psych) and it's absolutely changed my life. It doesn't remove the impairments, but has reduced severity enough that I can actually deal with them now. My mental health has improved so fucking much, I feel like I have agency now
I strongly recommend you discuss it with a psych, if even to get a negative diagnosis.
It's quite possible to be significantly impaired by something, and not realise that you are. This sounds like saying, "if you don't think you're an alcoholic, you aren't".
I think I was unfairly biasing myself against action by needing problems to be bad enough before I would deal with them. Not just in terms of medication or treatment, but also accepting help from others. I think this is partly a pride/shame thing, but also another manifestation of ADHD: crises are far more stimulating than preventative maintenance.
I now try to think of it more like "would this make things better for me? If so, why wouldn't I do it?" To that end, I found that medication helped me immensely with that feeling of helpless inconsistency. I don't always find it easy to get started, but I no longer feel like I'm waiting for the productivity fairy to visit.
I think this is actually a skill that we can learn on our own. I haven't fully fleshed this part out yet.
Basically, you start something without actually planning or having a good grasp of how long it would take, then start doing and get distracted by even the tiniest of distractions and forgetting where you were before the distraction. Rinse and repeat, every single day you develop other coping mechanisms to avoid the repeated failure.
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12402-018-0271-z
https://www.deprocrastination.co/blog/one-thing-you-should-l...
Even if I did decide ADHD meds would help me, good fucking luck trying to get them! It would mean spending thousands of dollars talking to different psychologists, most of whom would do absolutely nothing for me. I'm not anti-psychology as a discipline, but the way it's practiced in the U.S. is shameful. 30-minute phone sessions where they barely remember who you are since the last time they talked to you; you tell them about your life and they go "wow, that sounds really hard" ad nauseum until the call is over, and pretend like that has done a goddamn thing to help you. I'd have better luck talking to fucking ChatGPT than a psychologist. They never do a goddamn thing. That's the general attitude of every healthcare professional I've ever seen in my life. If it's not a standard procedure like a vaccination, then it's "what the fuck do you expect me to do about it?" The U.S. medical system is completely fucked, especially for chronic issues, and especially for mental issues. So all you people saying ADHD meds helped you, either you don't live in the U.S., you bought them illegally, you are rich enough to have "a guy" for it, or you got extremely fucking lucky.
- Psychologists do not prescribe medication.
- No psychiatrist has asked me to unpack my life and feelings. They don't have time for that. They treat symptoms and had off the therapy to someone else.
- Primary care doctors in the US can and do prescribe ADHD medication. (It helps if you have some history with them before you ask.)
- While ADHD medication can trigger psychosis, it's rare. The marijuana people self-medicate with has a much higher risk of psychosis. Undiagnosed bipolar or schizophrenia increases the risk.
- First-line ADHD medications the safest and easiest psych medication available. It works quickly and can be stopped just as quickly. They aren't addictive short-term.
- ADHD meds aren't known to be addictive long-term. Ritalin has been in use for just about 70 years. If it was extremely addictive or did serious long-term damage (beyond the obvious stress on the circulatory system), we'd know.
- A lot of the initial effects of stimulants fade as you build tolerance, but they still provide increased ability to focus over baseline. They are an effective long-term treatment.