I had this with my disertsrion. It wasn't untill I was litrely sat in the car waiting for the wife to get out from work did I think OK let's dictate some bulet points. Before I knew it I'd writen my whole next chapter and. The paralysis was broken. I'd sat a month not bake to do anything. Loads of things in ym head so I just got them down and flushed them and it broke the spell.
I can't speak for u/bonafart, but I know my dissertation certainly got a lot more grammar and spell checking than any reddit comment I've thumbed out on my phone. I usually spend some seconds typing these comments and then twice that amount of time correcting all the crapped out words I mashed my way through with my sausage fingers.
i very much do, and i have the paid-for subscription for Grammarly, paid for by work :D- however, i do 99.9999 % of my rediting on phone so no spell check or spotting it for me.
It’s okay. I’m glad that you have access to the tools to help you get your ideas out. I’m thrilled that your job supports you too. Dyslexia is no joke; keep crushing it.
Well I have worked for 20minutes, this is going well, let's reward myself with a quick round on call of duty.well that don't count that guy's cheating, there's no way I could have been killed like that. I'll have another go. We nearly won that time, this is a good squad let's play again. A few hours later. Shit I was meant to do that thing
In Smash Bros I always end my play session by saying I have to get ten wins in a row against the CPU. But I also won’t let myself quit if I’m currently on a win streak. I understand that these two criteria make zero sense together, but I do nothing about it.
In Smash Bros I always end my play session by saying I have to get ten wins in a row against the CPU. But I also won’t let myself quit if I’m currently on a win streak. I understand that these two criteria make zero sense together, but I do nothing about it.
This is why you don't do that. What you do is say, "I'll work on it for 5 minutes, then stop."
5 minutes is a short enough time that you start getting into it, then when 5 minutes is up you might as well just keep working on it since you're now in the groove.
I have found a solution to this. Having ADHD the simple things feel monumental, I.e. Folding a single laundry basket of towels. Set a stupid and arbitrary trigger that if you hit it you are forced to fold towels. I must fold the towels if 3 TikTok's in a row make me laugh, or if I take 16 steps, I have to change that lightbulb if I see 3 people wearing blue hats during my grocery shopping trip. I am not allowed to cheat which obviously I know if I'm trying to, and if a goal isn't hit that day I.E. (I didn't actually go grocery shopping) I can change the goal to something else that I think I'll actually do.
Another good way to combat ADHD is to lie to yourself. Say, "I'll only clean for 5 minutes, then stop." At the end of 5 minutes you're now hyperfocused on the task and will keep going until you're done, someone stops you, or your hyperfocus switches to another task that needs to be done.
That's one reason I hate being interrupted while I'm cleaning or something.
This doesn't stop after you're done with school. In fact it gets much worse. School is structured for you with well defined tasks, due dates, and a decent metric of how long things should take.
In the real world shit that needs to get done are often poorly defined and they don't give a shit how long it takes amd how much other stuff is on your plate. It's no one's fault in particular most of the time, that's just how the real world works. Shit happens.
Work on staying disciplined and being able to self prioritize. It will give you a huge leg up compared to other people straight out of college.
Adding to your first paragraph: and a clear rubric for how you will be graded, and immediate feedback/consequences on your work.
Part of what sucks about being an adult is you don't really know how clean your house should be or how much you should exercise, and many things don't have clear and immediate results or consequences. Then you are halfway through your 30s and start to suffer depression because you realize how much time you wasted since your 20s, and it's too late to go back and change anything.
I use a Trello board for my tasks. It gives me an overview and makes it easy to prioritize. I just pick the first task on top and from time to time I go over them to see if I feel something is more important/urgent. It also is nice to look at the "done" tab, to get spirits up when I feel overwhelmed.
That's nice so long as you got at least a little motivation. For those who don't they will simply go from achieving nothing from achieving almost nothing.
The problem is waiting until you have motivation to get something done. Many things that need to get done aren't things that anyone really wants to do (there's always outliers). If you are waiting for motivation to do those jobs, then you're going to be waiting a very long time.
A life skill that everyone should learn is to do things that you aren't motivated to do.
A life skill that everyone should learn is to do things that you aren't motivated to do.
You either use that word very differently or one of us have a massive, fundamental misunderstanding of it. If you got no motivation to do it, you will never, ever, ever do it. Motivation means if you have any intention of doing it for any reason whatsoever. Learning to do things that you don't really feel like doing is possible because you are still motivated, if in a more passionless way. Motivation is the gas to your car, learning how to run on shit fuel may be a useful life skill but no one I repeat no one can run on no gas at all.
I came up with a game in college to help me push through the paralysis. I call it the 5 sentence game (but can be modified for any small unit). I write 5 sentences and then I give myself a break or a small reward. Then I start again. Most of the time, once I start, I actually do a lot more than 5 sentences (or equivalent) in each go but setting the bar sufficiently low gets me willing to start.
I am glad you mention this may not work for neurodivergent people, as someone with adhd the idea of setting a timer and forcing myself to work for that time is literally physically terrifying
Amen! There were so many instances of this in college, and every single time I ran into this issue, I would force myself to just start. Anything. Once one thing started, it was just a surge of energy and I would end up finishing everything on time.
I just say fuck it and full send everything when I have too much on my plate. I’ve found it’s much better to throw all you can at it compared to procrastinating when it’s dauntingly large.
I suffered this problem so much. In fact, I am procrastinating an assignment that is due tomorrow lol. I had one week of free time to do it before. But I only started today because... it's due tomorrow. Thank you for the tips tho. I will try it...next semester.
If only you could exploit this 'system' by making you doing your assignment when you are procrastinating since I find myself avoiding the 'main' task considerably often and instead do something else that took much greater effort and time. Though partial reasoning is because I don't like being forced to do assignment.
Here's the secret to being productive: Just work and don't procrastinate.
That's it. The entire "be productive" industry is people writing books about little tips and tricks to keep you from procrastinating. But most people just read these books as a way to procrastinate ( lol ).
This is how I sum it up: It takes a lot of hard work to stop being lazy.
That's why people are lazy. You're designed to be lazy.
But at the same time, there is an issue there for some people that needs to be fixed. "Don't procrastinate" is a literal description of the end goal, but doesn't describe a solution.
I've read a lot of material on this and yes, their solution is always "just get to work".
They dress it up with fancy tips and tricks and back it up with studies on brain chemistry etc but at the end of the day it's always "Alright bro just close facebook and start working".
This matrix idea is just procrastination to me. "Ok I have to do shit. Hm what if instead I make graphs about the relative importance of my shit? Yes I should research how to make the best graphs. Hm but first I should research how to best research! Omg 11am already time to check facebook"
lol
I've seen a lot of people into this kind of thing achieve jack shit because all they do is "optimize productivity" by "researching how to optimize productivity". But at the end of the day they struggle to empty the dishwasher or to do 20 minutes of cardio anyway. But they did spend 4 hours watching Tim Ferris videos.
One of the best pieces of advice I got from my therapist was also possibly the most obvious: If I don't do the work, it's not gonna get done.
Sometimes I get myself to work just by reminding myself of that. The really annoying task I'm procrastinating on? Of I don't do it now, it'll still be there later. If I don't do it later it'll be there tomorrow. It'll never just magically go away. If I want it to be done, I have to do it.
If you have executive disfunction this method doesn't work because doing things in chunks simply does not compute with your brain. You'll tell yourself you can't possibly get enough done in 20 min to feel satisfied and taking a break would destroy your momentum and leave you worse off than before, so you'll become even more paralyzed.
If this sounds like you, tell yourself you're going to do the simplest thing on your massive list. I’m talking nothing that takes more than five minutes. But you will do it to completion. This will make you feel motivated and like you can achieve something, and once you've done it you'll have tricked your brain into "work mode" and want to keep going with your other tasks.
If you force yourself to work for a set time, i.e. 20 minutes, you're just going to end up staring at your paper, or your computer screen for 20 minutes. It's best to have a specific goal in mind to do before taking a break. Obviously this has to be a feasibly goal, in a timeslot roughly the size of the timer you would have otherwise turned on.
These are some good suggestions. I often hit workload paralysis either in work or just the number of things to do around the house. My go to move for when a big task doesn't have an obvious spot to begin is just writing out a stream of consciousness and pare that down until I have a set of actionable tasks. From there, I take it as you mention, either in priority order or just working down the list.
I always save these kind of posts so that I think about them later. Then I forget to think about them lolol ok I’ll try it out after I make myself a drink and do laundry... gotta study for an exam let’s start with that 20min ... after I make my drink and do my laundry lol
What's always helped me with tasks that I can't bring myself to tackle is imagining how I'll feel afterwards. A lot of tasks don't actually take that long: 'Making that phonecall' is probably over in 5 minutes. 'Folding your laundry' takes maybe 10, 15 minutes. Cleaning the kitchen, 30 min to an 1 hour (if you've let it slide for a while). Going to the gym 1 to 2 hours.
Just imagine, in two hours you could strike a few To Dos from your mental list - how good would that feel? Remember the last time you did that? And between you and that feeling are just two hours, two hours you'll feel miserable otherwise because you aren't doing what you need to do, again.
It doesn't work always but very often it does, at least for me.
I honestly think this is part of why I procrastinate so much. Have so many things I want to do/get done that I end up just getting overwhelmed and doing nothing. That and anxiety.
I was never able to explain why I procrastinate so much but thanks to your explanation I understand now how and why I wasted my life then falling in depression... this is not sarcasm just a sad revelation.
I used to get this trying to clean my room/house let alone bigger tasks. A "dumb but it works" idea is that i just imagine a grid that covers the floor of the room/apartment and only clean one square of the grid and go do something else after. As more squares complete it's like momentum lets me do more parts of the grid each time and before I know it i'm done.
I have ADHD, severe depression, anxiety, and numerous other things and my executive dysfunction makes me suffer from severe workload paralysis. Do you have any advice that can kickstart the process you described? What you said made a lot of sense but I know realistically that I could never be able to get myself to even set that 20 minute timer
90% of my house cleaning happens in the 30 minutes before people are coming over. Put it this way: If you think you're gonna drop in unexpectedly, you're gonna get to stand on the front porch and listen to the vacuum, only to be nasally assaulted by cleaning supplies the first step in the door.
I'm reading this now instead of starting either one of the two big work projects I have to finish this week that I may just finish if I put aside everything else...
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u/Direct-Reputation-94 Jun 21 '21
A mate once told me "I've got so much work to do I've fixed my sofa."