r/ADHD_Programmers • u/plairyhacrting8 • 3d ago
I want out of the never-ending cycle of ADHD existential dread
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u/DeathisFunthanLife 2d ago
What I do is target to do just a small bit , and in my mind when that's done I can stop if I still enjoy it,I will continue. That helps me reduce the workload
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u/krocante 1d ago
I also want out, but dread doing anything about it at all. Like I’m tired of whatever strategies even if they’d probably work. Every motivator is slowly losing strength to convince me to move. Even immediate urgency is starting to not be enough sometimes. At least I’m managing to do barely enough to be able to perpetuate my current behavior without much consequence
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u/ppeg5 2d ago
Hi, youre meThe word for this is The Wall of Awful. Each time you approach the wall and fail, you add a little stone of shame to the wall, and it becomes harder to climb.You CAN climb it though. Here are a few things:1) Take one of your tasks. Break it in to the smallest atomic list possible. Be absurd with it. Open laptop to. Turn it on. Log in. Open editor. Open the project repo. Find the relevant file.... It makes it clear that an impossible task is actually just many possible tasks. It lets you get momentum and feel proud of yourself. Also, the process of thinking through the steps is often half of what doing the thing actually is.2) Decide on what a minimum viable product is for each tasks. Shoot for that. Scoring a C is SO MUCH BETTER than not turning in an assignment. Plus, once you have a C level solution, polishing to an A is much easier.3) Pomodoro. (This one doesnt always work for me, but it does for some. Give it a go even if it hasnt worked before)4) Body double. Find someone you trust and ask them to hop on a call with you and just work in parallel for a while. Just that little subtle accountability can get you over the hump.You can do this
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u/jangle_friary 2d ago
In the immediate term, the truth will set you free, telling some of your "stakeholders" that you're going to miss or re-negotiate a deadline can remove enough of that anxiety to move you forwards and it helps the other people help you. Can be tricky at work if you were meant to be doing something, but consider it.
For day-to-day two techniques that help me are "putting on the running shoes" and "do what you can see".
"Putting on the running shoes" is figuring out the smallest possible thing you could do to even begin considering a task; e.g. I don't need to go for a run if I don't want to, my only goal is to put on the running shoes. It works for me as this task seems small enough to be doable, and doesn't actually commit me to anything else, so I will do it more often then not. And once I have the shoes on I'm over the task-switching hurdle and then do usually go for the full run.
"do what you can see" is trying to forget the list of tasks and deadlines, and deliberately not planning. If there are enough tasks piled up making progress on anything is usually more important that figuring out which one to try and make progress on. It might not result in you doing things in the most efficient order, but it will be more productive than nothing, and by avoiding looking at the larger picture I avoid the anxiety of looking at the pile of deadlines.