I can relate. Often times I find myself staring at my screen looking at the code that has to be written, at refactorings that have to be done, at data that has to be collected, at bugs that have to be squashed, at presentations to be made, at understanding my brain has to develop, and I just glaze over.
Inevitably I spin around, open my phone, and browse hacker news articles, reddit, the news, or YouTube.
Honestly, I wasnt always like this. Homework in university was never really a big deal. But as of late sitting on my office chair just feels like it withers me into dust.
This withering effect has a huge negative feedback loop in that putting things off causes stress induced insomnia. I think about the work that needed to be finished and cannot sleep because of it. Sleeping poorly causes horrendus energy drain the following day.
I have to shake things up. God help me I'm going to sleep properly tonight. If you have this problem you should too.
I found for me that when I unpacked it, a surprising amount of it was actually fear / anxiety. I know this isn't a post seeking answers but it's a thing I've battled a lot of my life.
It's trite but I've gotten a lot of value out of LLMs for getting past the "blank page effect". It doesn't matter if it generates complete garbage, something in my brain goes "this is garbage!" and before I know it I'm working on the thing. The general technique is "just do the smallest possible thing".
Another one is narrowing focus to just 1 thing to reduce overwhelm. Ideally on the most important thing! Otherwise your background fear will actually go up while you are working on the "filler task".
Finally, trying my best to communicate well and greatly reduce expectations. For me an important piece of the puzzle was that I expected more from myself than anyone else actually did (or even needed). So I have been consistently trying to scope down every commitment and promise WAY less. I actually feel like my execution has improved a lot as a result.
Am I great? Not really. Am I able to keep functioning day to day and slog through a soul crushing corpo job? Yeah, for now at least.
Also certain teams / situations will trigger this more than others. Teams with great task tracking, clear expectations and a culture of discussion tend to reduce anxiety for me. While it's risky to recommend changing jobs or teams to "fix things", sometimes that's really all that's needed.
LLMs have introduced a lot of reading slop into the mix. But they definitely help when you don't feel like typing and can just describe the problem at hand.
I'm hoping better sleep helps with the activation energy / anxiety.
I suffer a lot from this too, what I usually do is set some target goals for the day and don't stop working until I finish them. When I finish them before the end of the day I can stop working early.
Now you are back to your homework mentality, as soon as you finish your homework you can get back to the nintendo 64.
One life tip - leave loose ends on tasks. When you come back, it's easier to start from a minor tweak to get into the right head space.
If you keep avoiding doing a thing, don't do the thing. Start a list of the tasks you need to do, in increasing detail. If it's studying for a test it might be "get my book out of my bag" then "review X Y Z", etc. Get as tediously detailed as you can until you get annoyed and just start doing things to get them off you list.
List-making is a super skill for ADHD since it codifies (and gamifies!) executive function.
The writer mentions "panic monster" which is something like deadline or fear or public embarrassment and it forces you to work. It's kind of strong external motivation.
I wonder if ADHD can be described in terms of motivation instead of in terms of attention. Like what if someone with ADHD can regulate his attention as well as somebody other but he's not motivated enough to do it. Could ADHD be described as a better than usual resistance to "panic monster"? In a class somebody might feel very stressed out about homework and about being in time (are those things "panic monsters" to him?) while somebody other feels uninterested. Somebody other is not even scared of getting reprimanded by teacher if he directs his attention to talking with friends during class. He's not scared of being late. He's not scared of getting bad grades. He's generally not easily stressed out and he does fun things while the other reads homework.
If both internal and external motivation are lacking for him he might have some troubles graduating from university. If he's expected to work without much direction or pressure(e.g. remote coder) he might have troubles getting good results in work.
This idea is surely simplistic but can you relate to this, that instead of ADHD person being more prone to divert his attention to fun things randomly he might be just feeling the external motivation in a weaker way?
I don't have ADHD even though the article made me think about it.
I can relate. Often times I find myself staring at my screen looking at the code that has to be written, at refactorings that have to be done, at data that has to be collected, at bugs that have to be squashed, at presentations to be made, at understanding my brain has to develop, and I just glaze over.
Inevitably I spin around, open my phone, and browse hacker news articles, reddit, the news, or YouTube.
Honestly, I wasnt always like this. Homework in university was never really a big deal. But as of late sitting on my office chair just feels like it withers me into dust.
This withering effect has a huge negative feedback loop in that putting things off causes stress induced insomnia. I think about the work that needed to be finished and cannot sleep because of it. Sleeping poorly causes horrendus energy drain the following day.
I have to shake things up. God help me I'm going to sleep properly tonight. If you have this problem you should too.
I found for me that when I unpacked it, a surprising amount of it was actually fear / anxiety. I know this isn't a post seeking answers but it's a thing I've battled a lot of my life.
It's trite but I've gotten a lot of value out of LLMs for getting past the "blank page effect". It doesn't matter if it generates complete garbage, something in my brain goes "this is garbage!" and before I know it I'm working on the thing. The general technique is "just do the smallest possible thing".
Another one is narrowing focus to just 1 thing to reduce overwhelm. Ideally on the most important thing! Otherwise your background fear will actually go up while you are working on the "filler task".
Finally, trying my best to communicate well and greatly reduce expectations. For me an important piece of the puzzle was that I expected more from myself than anyone else actually did (or even needed). So I have been consistently trying to scope down every commitment and promise WAY less. I actually feel like my execution has improved a lot as a result.
Am I great? Not really. Am I able to keep functioning day to day and slog through a soul crushing corpo job? Yeah, for now at least.
Also certain teams / situations will trigger this more than others. Teams with great task tracking, clear expectations and a culture of discussion tend to reduce anxiety for me. While it's risky to recommend changing jobs or teams to "fix things", sometimes that's really all that's needed.
LLMs have introduced a lot of reading slop into the mix. But they definitely help when you don't feel like typing and can just describe the problem at hand.
I'm hoping better sleep helps with the activation energy / anxiety.
I suffer a lot from this too, what I usually do is set some target goals for the day and don't stop working until I finish them. When I finish them before the end of the day I can stop working early.
Now you are back to your homework mentality, as soon as you finish your homework you can get back to the nintendo 64.
Sounded like ADHD annnnd it was ADHD.
One life tip - leave loose ends on tasks. When you come back, it's easier to start from a minor tweak to get into the right head space.
If you keep avoiding doing a thing, don't do the thing. Start a list of the tasks you need to do, in increasing detail. If it's studying for a test it might be "get my book out of my bag" then "review X Y Z", etc. Get as tediously detailed as you can until you get annoyed and just start doing things to get them off you list.
List-making is a super skill for ADHD since it codifies (and gamifies!) executive function.
The writer mentions "panic monster" which is something like deadline or fear or public embarrassment and it forces you to work. It's kind of strong external motivation.
I wonder if ADHD can be described in terms of motivation instead of in terms of attention. Like what if someone with ADHD can regulate his attention as well as somebody other but he's not motivated enough to do it. Could ADHD be described as a better than usual resistance to "panic monster"? In a class somebody might feel very stressed out about homework and about being in time (are those things "panic monsters" to him?) while somebody other feels uninterested. Somebody other is not even scared of getting reprimanded by teacher if he directs his attention to talking with friends during class. He's not scared of being late. He's not scared of getting bad grades. He's generally not easily stressed out and he does fun things while the other reads homework.
If both internal and external motivation are lacking for him he might have some troubles graduating from university. If he's expected to work without much direction or pressure(e.g. remote coder) he might have troubles getting good results in work.
This idea is surely simplistic but can you relate to this, that instead of ADHD person being more prone to divert his attention to fun things randomly he might be just feeling the external motivation in a weaker way?
I don't have ADHD even though the article made me think about it.
I’ll read it later.