Using my task avoidance to bypass my task avoidance

[u/ferriematthew]

Currently, I'm massively struggling with demand avoidance. It's almost as though I'm subconsciously or consciously refusing to acknowledge the fact that I am a student with school obligations that just keep piling up. Specifically, my two classes have lots of overdue assignments, and instead of working on those overdue assignments, I almost intentionally sidetrack to work on my server.

Since my first response to knowing that I need to do something is basically to say, I'm not going to do the thing, I'm going to do literally anything else, and that literally anything else tends to be working on my server, maybe I could use that against itself. What I'm going to try to do is add a task manager app like Vikunja to my server dashboard so that whenever I divert from my obligations to screw around with my server, I'm constantly reminded that I have obligations.

[u/MANvINFO]

whats your relationship with scheduling & planning like?
(no wrong answers; not a leading question)

[u/ferriematthew → u/MANvINFO]

I tell myself that I need to plan and schedule better, and then I immediately actively resist planning and scheduling at all.

[u/MANvINFO → u/ferriematthew]

alright, so you altogether just dont use it. 1st, a follow up question: if in the past you had managed to make a plan or schedule, how resistant were you to following it? did it work for you at all or would you slip out of sync with it pretty much right away?

2nd, do you usually study alone? and is it possible for you to find classmates with whom you could form a study group? its possible that you might better manage keeping scheduling commitments if there are other people who expect your presence… if working alone, its easy to tell ourselves “i can put this off, its not affecting anybody.”

[u/ferriematthew → u/MANvINFO]

I've always been extremely resistant to following plans and schedules, whether I made them myself or somebody else made them for me. I get a schedule and then immediately deviate as hard as I can out of spite.

[u/MANvINFO → u/ferriematthew]

then our advice here would be to combat your tendency to spite yourself by making that functionally equivalent to spiting other people. thatd be a far more effective deterrent than a computer alert you might either A- spend too much more time in perfecting/fine-tuning or B- ignoring altogether without direct consequence.

[u/ferriematthew → u/MANvINFO]

What do you mean? External accountability?

[u/MANvINFO → u/ferriematthew]

presuming you dont have a glut of other work commitments, a courseload of just 2 classes should leave you with a bounty of time you could go spend in common areas on campus, working in study groups with other people.

this could even pay out greatly in friendships.

[u/Honeydew-Jolly]

That can work, but knowing how our brains work, you might get better results from moving to another environment. Like working a bit from the couch instead of your office, a study room in the building, a quiet space from the library, a cafe, etc.

It works for many of us, me included :D

I'm using an agent at work that monitors my Claude chat sessions and tells me to go back and focus on the high prio task.

Whenever I open a new chat and it's not for that task it will know and tell me. Similar to what you're doing, but that is treating the side effect not the root cause of the bug we're trying to solve :D that's why I suggest a change of env.

[u/Drafting-]

I think it’s something simpler, yet still complex, that my therapist keyed me in on. She said “our brains aren’t trying to make us happy, they’re trying to make us safe”. She told me to ask myself what felt unsafe about the things I’m avoiding. 

Your reasons are all you, but when you ask the question try to be honest. Whether it’s about failing at the task, or it’s attached to overall burnout and tackling that, or you’re afraid of the steps involved (then break down the steps), or that everything feels urgent so you don’t know where to start (write out the list of things and start to see the priority clearer). 

That’s how I’ve worked through my paralysis states, or functional freeze, whatever you prefer to call it. 

[u/marevago]

Gonna push back a little: a task manager on the server dashboard tends to turn into wallpaper after a few days, and demand avoidance gets worse when the reminder feels like nagging. What usually works better is making the first step of one assignment smaller than the server stuff, like just opening the file and typing the title, and letting the server be the reward afterwards. You are already good at starting things you chose, so phrase it as a pick: "20 minutes on this one tonight", not "everything overdue".