annie_muss

The thought of having kids brings up really complex feelings for me. I feel like the biological clock is ticking louder and louder and yet I barely have a career to speak of. I live with the constant burden of ADHD and have always struggled to hold down a job. The optimist in me thinks that maybe things will improve in the future and I should just take the plunge and figure things out. The pessimist worries that I'm already at capacity just waking up, cooking, cleaning for myself and kids would push me over the edge.

Not great. I've been trying to get into a real "career" track software job for the best part of a decade. I study, work on side projects, got to events regularly. And now the job market is even worse. I'm starting to feel like I've missed the boat. I wonder what would've happened if I had managed to get a job with chances to progress, learn and improve 10 years ago. I dream of earning 6 figures, people make it sound like it is so easy. I'll pick up any tech stack, go into any industry, move around the world, whatever it takes.

There's a lot of advice here about using technical means to block youtube. If that works for you and solves your problem then fantastic. I am genuinely happy for you.

However, I suspect it won't. It never worked for me.

Firstly, any blocker you setup yourself you can take down yourself. You might find that it works for a day or two but then you feel really awful and binge youtube even more than normal.

Secondly, blocking tools are a tacit acknowledgment that you have given up and can't control yourself. "My willpower is just too bad. There's no way I can control myself. I need a tool to do it for me." This is the opposite of the feeling your want to cultivate. You want to feel more in control of yourself and your actions and be able to direct your attention accordingly.

Unfortunately, there are no silver bullets. There is no one little trick that will solve everything for you. That said, there are things you can do that will help a lot.

Get in touch with your emotions. Find out what triggers send you to youtube. Here's an example for me:

Think about important essay that is due soon --> worry and dread about academic performance --> watch youtube to forget about it.

This is probably happening in a blink of an eye. Probably so quickly that you don't even notice. If you can start noticing and naming your emotions you can deal with them more constructively.

Positive emotions can be triggers too.

I'm so excited about this new hobby I'm into --> I'm going to research it on youtube --> 3 hours watching videos about painting but not doing any painting.

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with this. But if you can notice the emotions you can start to redirect them and work with them.

This article really makes sense.

I think back on my past and all the evil actions I have taken have all been fed by very low self-worth and insecurity.

When you think of yourself as below everyone else, trying to bring them down to your level with malicious acts can feel like quite reasonable. You're "punching up" so you can feel a sense of righteous justification.

It's only looking back that I realize I wasn't nearly as weak as I thought.

I have spoken to a few therapists. I usually felt pretty good after speaking to them, maybe for a week or so but slip back into my old habits. Unfortunately, where I live therapy is not covered by health insurance so it's hard to afford.

I think this is a helpful reframing, and I have spent time in my life trying to eliminate any possible issues: Improving nutrition, exercise, socialization etc. But my ability stay focused and work on tasks seems essentially random.

I was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago as an adult. I take medication for it and try my best to apply strategies but it is hard going. I wrote down some simple todos at 9am this morning but it's the end of the day now and I've done maybe 30 minutes of focused work and the rest browsing the internet.

The confusing thing is sometimes I have days when I do manage to do work, but I can never see what I do differently on those days to other days.

The problem is I know that I am completely addicted, but I cannot stop. I feel like I'm the alcoholic drinking a bottle of vodka a day. I have tried to give up many times but I just can't crack it. Every time I have a good day the next day just slides right back into addiction. I probably average around 5-10 hours of pointless screen time a day (scrolling random youtube clips. Researching items I will never buy. Fantasizing about jobs I can never get. )

I have tried all kinds of blocking software and strategies. Blocking software, however elaborate, never seems to make a different. You find one way or another to get around the block and then after a while turning off the block just becomes part of your muscle memory. The most extreme thing I tried was cutting off the internet to my house and going back to a dumbphone for 6 months. For sure, I probably had less screen time. But I also spent many hours sitting in the station using the public wifi or watching hours and hours of pointless television.

This is a really tough nut to crack. I think there is probably no technological solution to it.

My worry about any new system, todolist, app etc is that when the initial busy of energy wears off I'll be back to square one. The novelty and energy that I have at the start is impossible to maintain, but I need novelty to engage with tasks

When I see stories like this I always wonder "How did you get and keep jobs at meta and Pinterest if you have a procrastination problem?"

I procrastinated so badly I could never apply for jobs. And the jobs I did get I lost quickly due to the same procrastination.

Perhaps it's not a success story, but I have a definite improvement story.

I find accepting and making peace with my problems (paradoxically) helps improve the problem.

I am going through a particularly low dip right now. I haven't done any work in the last 4 days. I tried a 4 minute pomodoro timer yesterday and 2 minutes in I was already completely off task.

In the past I would panic, worry, think "Why me and my terrible executive function?" or "What if I can never do anything again ever". Instead I am accepting that this is the issue I have and keeping a curious, open mind to possible solutions. I'm trying out taking longer breaks, changing up my workspace, body doubling, nutrition, timers, not trying to do anything etc.

I'm sure it will swing back the other way in its own time.

Of course I would love to be able to be consistently able to work, but that is not a reality for me. In the same way I would love to be able to run 100m in 9.6 seconds but that is also just not realistic.

Other comments here are good too: eat well, sleep enough, exercise regularly. This is a good baseline to have but these things alone never fixed my issues.

It's a constant battle and there are no silver bullets. Here are a few things that have helped me:

* Eat, sleep and exercise. Have you ever snapped at someone you love because you were really really tired? You have less ability to control your emotions if you aren't on top of these things. When task planning it's easy to think only about the task at hand, but scheduling time to rest, go for a walk or have a snack can be helpful.

* Putting some 'distance' between myself and the task, however small or artificial. Often, I start writing an important email in a text editor instead of an email client. It just feels less 'real' and that reduces my anxiety and resistance. I wonder if doing a practice version of a task could help?

* Adding some kind of physical motion to a task. For example, if I'm sitting at my desk and I need to fill in a form, it always seems easier if I've come from just tidying up rather than another stationary task. Making tasks more physical seems to help.

* Naming the reason why I'm not doing a task can sometimes help but other times not. Saying "I'm feeling overwhelmed with this task" is 50/50 on whether it'll help or make me feel even worse.

* Usually when I'm feeling really stuck I know exactly what I need to do. I know that I haven't opened that email in my inbox. I could easily spend a week thinking about it hundreds of times but never actually doing it. I don't think a reminder or a nudge would help me, because I'm already constantly reminding myself. The times I find reminders and nudges helpful are when I can complete the task right then and there with little resistance. For example: If I put a drink in the freezer to cool it down quickly, I always set a timer. When the time off the task of removing the drink has no stress or anxiety, so I always do it. If I don't set the timer I am very likely to forget the drink. I have tried setting reminders and timers for tasks that I procrastinate on but it never really works. If a task is overwhelming you now and you delay it by 1 hour or 1 day, it's probably still going to overwhelm you later.

I don't want an ADHD todo list app. I want something that to help manage my emotions while completing tasks.

For me there are three major emotions that get in the way of task completion: excitement, boredom and anxiety.

Excitement is usually for some other task. I'm working on my tax return and I think about upgrading my washer/drying. Suddenly I'm researching all the different types, the best deal on one, the history of the washer/dryer. It might be a task on my to do list somewhere, but I was driven to do it by the excitement.

Anxiety is a tricky one. If I'm writing something like an email anxiety often gets the better of me. What if this isn't the right way to do it? What if it comes off as rude. This ties in to perfectionism too.

Boredom is usually overtaken by one of the other emotions, but sometimes it appears on its own. I've got to input these numbers into some old, janky piece of software. It's probably not that hard or long of a task, but it feels so pointless. I'm just wasting so much time doing this task when I could be doing something more efficient and more meaningful.

If you can solve these emotional issues then pretty much any todo list app (or just a notebook) will be fine.

I took a properly administered IQ test as part of my ADHD diagnosis. It was eye opening.

All through the test I felt like I was crushing it. Spacial reasoning, pattern recognition, memory tasks. When the results came back I got 135 on spatial reasoning but 89 on processing speed and working memory.

Looking back on my life I realize I had always made up for limited working memory with systems, mnemonics and other techniques. When you've lived your whole life with a limitation you can have a huge blind spot. You've never known what it's like to have "normal" working memory.