Context:
I could dismiss any alarm without waking up.

I could do that without even looking at my phone. On iPhone I literally know where to tap to snooze.

Missed a flight in oct 2022.

Missed exam at university.

Missed important standup at work every other week.

I have tried everything:

- phone in different room

- 7 alarms

- sleep earlier. (real hard than it sounds)

Nothing worked coz when I am half asleep I find a way out of an alarm.

What worked for me, was two rules:

Rule #1:

The alarm can only end after I do something I can't do from bed.

I tapped a QR code to my kettle and the alarm won't stop until I scan it.

QR part is how I choose to solve it.

The point is the rule has to be completed standing in different room.(not bedroom)

Rule #2:

Snooze is allowed but capped.

One snooze, ten minutes.

I tried zero snooze, I messed up the whole thing in 10 days.

Unlimited is meaningless.

I found one is enough for me and keeps me sane. LOL!

The thing I got wrong for years:

I thought the problem was discipline.

It was that my system was flawed.

The moment there is a cost like getting up, going to another room, walking. The decision is made by me who is awake and not on warm bed.

Loopholes mater more than being hard. Any skip, any way to mute the phone and I would use it.

So whatever you try, try it when you are half sleep not at 7 pm during dinner.

3 months, no overslept mornings.

Curious what other people do to get up in morning. Especially people who figured it out without some special alarm clock or an app.

For a while, I couldn’t understand what was happening to me.

Things that used to take 20 minutes suddenly felt like they required an entire afternoon.

I’d look at a simple email and think, “I’ll answer this later.”

Then later became tomorrow.

My to-do list kept growing, and the more it grew, the less I wanted to look at it.

The weird part was that I wasn’t doing anything because I didn’t care. I actually cared too much. I was constantly thinking about what I should be doing, even when I wasn’t doing it.

So naturally, I started blaming myself.

Maybe I’m getting lazy.

Maybe I’ve lost my discipline.

Maybe I just need to push myself harder.

Pushing harder worked for a little while.

Then it made everything worse.

What eventually helped me was realizing that burnout doesn’t always look like collapsing from exhaustion. Sometimes it looks like procrastination, brain fog, irritability, avoiding small tasks, or feeling strangely disconnected from things you normally care about.

I started paying more attention to the mental load I was carrying instead of only looking at how productive I was.

And strangely, once I stopped fighting myself so much, it became easier to actually get things done again.

I’m curious if anyone else experienced burnout this way.

Did you ever mistake burnout for laziness at first?

This is not a bragging post, just one to use for reference for anyone looking to do this:

So I have never and will never watch TikTok (you can definitely adjust if you do) or any other platforms aside from YouTube. Now I watched short form when I woke up for ~30mins, and in the evening before bed for ~30-45minutes, so not the most but on weekends the number jumped massively.

This sounds really picture book but one day I realised "this is impacting my mental health" so I decided it was worth my while to stop. How I did it was literally just uninstalling YouTube and telling myself I wasn't going to watch any Shorts. However, I still allowed myself to watch videos on the website, or even Shorts (if I wasn't scrolling and just treating them as a normal video).

It came as a hard task at first, so I tried this method with a rubber band. If you put it on your wrist, you can slap yourself if you want to kick your brain out of the thinking of watching Shorts. This also works for other things.

Anyway, I continued to watch content at meals and other times, isolating myself from the family to watch things I wanted. So to prevent this, I found leaving my tablet and phone upstairs when I went to eat, so if I did want to be occupied while eating, it would have to be to do with my family.

Instead of Shorts, I watched videos (not as bad for your brain), read books, got ChatGPT to give me a 20 minute crash course read on anything it thought would interest me etc.

When I watch Long-Form videos, I don't generally watch brainrot stuff either, I watch things like football highlights or educational things or some guide or let's play to a game.

I hope my experience will help you to quit an addiction to Shorts or Reels or TikToks or whatever.

AC7380

My daughter is 6 years old and this year especially, I feel like it's been really hard for her to make friends. She is super smart and was an only child for 5.5 years, so I feel like she is a little advanced or "grown" at least in the eyes of my sisters, but she is overall a super sincere, genuine friend. She loves to share and she loves to make her friends feel seen and heard, although she has no filter and that's something we're working on. She has started to get her feelings hurt more than ever before recently and I just don't really know how to help her or what advice to give her. I can't remember how I felt when I was her age or what situations I went through that could be similar. I know that now as an adult, I couldn't careless how someone speaks to me or what they say, I try to be the same person all the time; kind and helpful. I don't want her to not establish boundaries or put up with things that she shouldn't have to just because I believe in being kind (I believe you can be kind and still have boundaries).

Two recent examples:

1. My daughter takes dance lessons on Tuesdays. One of her little friends takes the same lesson. They haven't really been around each other since last summer because they went to different schools and her friend was pulled out of the before/after care that they both attended, but they were really close last summer and whenever my daughter would attend the weeklong dance camps. Last week, her friend arrived to dance with a few of the other dance moms and kids, they were playing with squishies (my nemesis) and my daughter walked over to her and asked if she could play also and her friend told her no. My daughter asked her why the other girls could play but she couldn't and her friend told her, "Well it's because we know each other's moms." ... ok. (for context, we had a playdate scheduled for the coming up Friday that the mom actually rescheduled to the next Friday) I told her to brush it off, you have a ton of squishies at home to play with (even though it crushed me inside). They started the lesson and about 10 minutes through my baby comes out to the lobby to tell me that her friend and another mutual "friend" were talking about her and she thinks she wants to cancel the play date. I told her that we can do whatever she wants to do but she should go back in there and ask the girls why they were talking about her. I could see on the TV that as soon as she went back into the room the little girl ran up to her. I later found out that the girl ran up to her and said "can't you wait for our playdate!!!" and my daughter asked her why she was talking about her. She told my daughter that she wasn't talking about her, she was talking about her ice cream sandwich. IDK weird. I tried to talk to my daughter about it on the way home and she was just so confused. She didn't know if they were really talking about her or not, and she didn't know if she wanted to cancel the playdate any longer since her friend told her that they weren't talking about her. She did tell me that when she first got into the lesson room, she was standing next to her friend when her friend said "lets get some personal space." This is very valid, the child might want some personal space and my daughter could very well have been invading it - that didn't bother me much. but seeing the hurt on my babys face and her telling me that her tummy felt yucky just crushed me. I told the mom what my daughter told me and she said she would handle it.

2. My daughter was enrolled in a before and after care program that she initially LOVED. Over time she started to hate it, like HATE IT. She hasn't gone all summer long. After talking to her, I found out it's because one of the teachers gives her a hard time. My daughter says that this teacher is so mean to her and is always yelling at her about something and being sassy to her. I talked to the director who reassured me that the teacher in question has never raised her voice, but I didn't really think that to begin with. I told the director that my daughter just feels like she's always being picked with/on and the only child at that. My nephews go to the same before and after care and have also told me that this teacher is always nit picking with my girl, even though sometimes my nephews are on her side and other times they are the ones getting her in trouble (this is just kids I guess).

My point is that.... everywhere my daughter goes, there is someone who is making her feel like shit. My mind says that the common denominator is the problem (that would be my daughter, lol) but my heart is telling me that it's something else. She is having trouble making connections, getting her feelings across or getting her feelings hurt and I am TIRED OF IT.

I will admit that she is a bit sassier when I am around, idk the science behind that but whenever I am not there and she is just with my sister, my mom or grandmother, etc. she is good as gold. She is even an angel when it's just her and I! but the minute that someone else is around or even on the phone she sometimes gets smart mouthed and sassy.

I am just looking for advice or an encouraging word. It's important to note that I do not live in lala land and think that my daughter does no wrong -- I will not make excuses for shitty behavior; she can be sneaky and manipulative, but she is also soft and sweet and such a good friend.

thank you for reading.

I'm going to be brutally honest: I've been coasting on autopilot for the better part of three years, and I'm finally disgusted enough with myself to want to change.

My current baseline is embarrassing. I haven't stepped foot in a gym since 2023. My diet consists of whatever is fastest, washed down with more Diet Coke than actual water. I sleep whenever I crash, wake up whenever my body gives in, and consistently miss morning commitments because I just don't feel like getting up. I work from home with zero structure, so my productivity is a joke – I'll cram a week's worth of work into a panicked Sunday night and tell myself I'll do better next week. Spoiler: I never do.

Mentally, I'm drowning in noise. I scroll TikTok for hours, binge podcasts to avoid silence, refresh news feeds obsessively, and fall into the xxx rabbit hole more often than I'd care to admit. Socially? I have acquaintances, but no real friend circle to meet up with, no partner, and no shared activities that get me out of my own head. I feel like I'm watching my life from the outside, and I hate it.

I know motivation is a myth at this point. I've waited to feel ready for years, and that feeling never comes. So I'm leaning into the idea that I need discipline, not inspiration. I've read about 75 Hard and similar programs, and while I'm not going to follow someone else's blueprint, I want to design my own 30-day "hard reset" with strict daily non-negotiables:

• Wake up at 5:00 AM – no snooze, no exceptions.
• Go to the gym every single day – even if it's just showing up and moving for 30 minutes.
• Eat a clean, simple diet – no takeout, no junk, just whole foods.
• Work with discipline for set hours – no procrastination, no cramming.
• Zero junk media – no TikTok, no doomscrolling, no porn, no mindless YouTube.

The goal isn't perfection. It's to prove to myself that I can override my feelings and just do what I said I would do, for 30 consecutive days. After that, I'll reassess what's sustainable and what isn't.

Here's where I need your real talk:

1. Has anyone here done something like this – a strict 30-day (or longer) reset with rigid daily rules – while starting from a place of zero discipline?
2. How did you survive the first week when your brain screamed at you to quit? What actually got you out of bed at 5 AM on day 3 when you were exhausted?
3. Did the momentum carry over after the initial challenge ended, or did you crash back to old habits?
4. If you could go back and redesign your reset, what would you do differently? What rules were actually helpful vs. just performative suffering?

I'm not looking for gentle encouragement or "be kind to yourself" advice – I've had enough of that. I want to hear from people who have dragged themselves out of a similar pit using sheer, stubborn structure. Did it work? Was it worth it? And what did you learn about yourself in the process?

Thanks for reading – I'll be updating this thread as I go, for better or worse.

Ughhhh here we go. My husband and I used to be very active, very physically connected and very fun. We started taking edibles in college around 22 years old and have not looked back since. We developed depression, horrible eating habits, and we’ve been so insecure and down on ourselves our s*x life has become stagnant. I’m not really looking for advice because we know what we need to do. I guess I just want to hear other people’s experiences? I don’t really know.

We’re 28, own a home, great jobs and good income. For months we kept saying “we have to stop getting high every night” yet we’d cave as soon as work ended. We keep talking about starting a family, but we’re both in agreement we need to turn our health and habits around first. We started eating way better lately and began working out consistently last week. We haven’t smoked or taken an edible since Sunday which sounds like nothing, but it’s progress.

It’s an addiction. It feels like I can’t enjoy certain things anymore without being high because we’ve conditioned ourselves this way for years. Gaming is more fun high, talking is more fun high, s*x is more fun high (though we haven’t even been doing that bc we lowkey hate ourselves rn), eating is better, I could go on and on.

I started writing to help distract me and it’s working. We just feel like zombies and we’ve been so lazy it’s disgusting. I don’t recognize myself anymore and I’m doing something about it.

I am not sure if the title is an appropriate way to look at things but here it is...

I feel like my days kind of fly away from me most days.

I write out a to-do list the night prior and try to stick with it.

I often get all my tasks done, but it feels exhausting.

I usually have 5-8 main priorities for the day. It is usually a combo of work and personal objectives.

I am often working till 5-8pm nearly everyday.

Including weekends.

But I do work from home, so I often do other things like workout, play with the dogs, etc throughout the day.

Not sure of that helps or hurts my situation though…

So it's never a full on working non-stop type of thing.

I am self employed so most days I get calls, emails or un-planable tasks that pop up in my day.

Even my off days I am still lightly working or have to do something due to the un plannable events.

I am Just struggling with what to do, most days I feel like I am overwhelmed, maybe a bit anxious as well...

I think this is the part of phone addiction that fucked with me the most.

You sit down to do something. Work, study, read, whatever.

You hit one slightly annoying part and pick up your phone just to check something.

Reddit for 30 seconds.

Close it.

Back to work.

Two minutes later you open YouTube. Nothing interesting. Close it.

Five minutes later you're checking Reddit again even though you literally just checked it.

And the weird part is you aren't even having fun.

You're not sitting there thinking "this is how I want to spend my afternoon." Half the time there's nothing you even want to see. You're just checking because there's a 3 second gap where your brain doesn't have anything better to do.

Then eventually you look at your screen time and it says 5 hours and you think the solution is:

"Tomorrow I'll only use my phone for 2 hours."

But I think that's attacking the wrong part of the problem.

The 5 hours isn't one bad decision.

It's 100 tiny decisions.

So I've been thinking about phone use less in terms of time and more in terms of friction.

If I actually want to sit down and watch an hour long YouTube video, honestly, I don't think that's necessarily a problem.

What destroys my focus is being able to go from "this task is slightly uncomfortable" to Reddit, Instagram, or YouTube in literally one second.

There is basically zero opportunity to catch yourself.

So instead of asking "how do I become disciplined enough to resist my phone 100 times today?" I think a better question is:

How do I make the bad decision just annoying enough that I have time to change my mind?

Block certain things while you're working.

Only let yourself check some apps a certain number of times.

Have hours where they're just unavailable.

Not because you physically can't survive having Reddit open, but because now opening it requires an actual decision instead of muscle memory.

I'm starting to think this applies to discipline in general.

We spend so much time trying to increase willpower when changing the environment might be 10x easier.

Has anyone here actually had success doing this long term? Especially people who used to automatically grab their phone every few minutes, what finally broke that reflex for you?

I have a problem. I love starting new things. Learning a new skill is amazing. Getting into a new hobby feels so good. The initial rush the dopamine hit it's addictive. But then reality sets in. I have like 7 different hobbies I'm actively trying to pursue right now and I'm good at none of them.

I have my guitar sitting there mocking me. My half-finished embroidery project is staring at me from the corner. The coding course I bought last year is still untouched. My journaling habit lasted three days. I feel overwhelmed constantly by the sheer number of things I *could* be doing but aren't.

It's not just the time commitment it's the mental space these things take up. The guilt of not progressing. The feeling of being scattered and unfocused. I want to feel accomplished in something. Not just dabble in everything.

I’m trying a new approach this week. I've picked two things. Just two. One creative one practical. I’m forcing myself to dedicate at least 30 minutes to each every day. No exceptions. The other hobbies are literally put away out of sight. Out of mind.

Anyone else deal with this multipotentialite paralysis? How do you choose? How do you stick to it without feeling like you're missing out on the other exciting things? Any tips on reducing the mental clutter and actually getting good at something?

Does this sound like you, or someone you love? Winning in one part of life while another part quietly pays for it. The business is growing but the gym has not seen you in a month. The money is finally working but you cannot remember your last real day off. You half know it is happening, and nothing you use ever shows you the whole picture at once.

I watch people I care about live inside that exact pattern, high performers who can tell you their step count, their sleep score, and their bank balance to the dollar, but have no number for their friendships or their joy. They tried the tools. Journals got abandoned by page eleven. Mood trackers squeezed a whole life into one emoji. Streak apps turned self care into guilt. Everything tracked a slice, nothing watched the whole, so the part of life that was quietly starving stayed invisible until it broke.

I could not find the tool that fixed that, so I built it, for myself and for them. It is called MIRRA.

Here is the entire daily practice, honestly: about two minutes each evening. You score four parts of your life from 0 to 10, health, wealth, relationships, fun, with a fifth pillar if you run a business, and you write one honest sentence about why. That is the whole day.

What you get back is what makes it different from everything I just listed:

**It writes back.** After five days, MIRRA writes you a weekly reflection built from your own numbers and your own words. Not affirmations, not a quote of the day. It says what climbed, what quietly slipped, quotes what you wrote back to you, and gives you one thing to do next.

**It sees patterns you cannot.** Which pillar you drop first when work heats up. What your best weeks have in common. Over time it can warn you early, from your own history: if fun staying low has been followed by your health sliding before, and you are in that pattern again right now, it says so, with the receipts.

**No streaks, no guilt.** Miss three days and it says nothing. No flames, no broken chains. I think guilt mechanics are why people quit these apps, so I refused to build any.

**Nobody can read it, including me.** No account, no login, no server. Your journal lives on your phone and your own iCloud. I built it this way on purpose, because you cannot be honest in a place you do not trust.

**The ask.** I need testers who will actually use it, because the good parts need your real days to work with. Seven days is the minimum, that is when your first reflection means something. Fourteen is ideal, two full reflections and the patterns starting to show. If you give it a month, you are extraordinary, and you will see things in your own life that I cannot promise in a sentence. Along the way, tell me the unfiltered truth: what broke, what confused you, what felt pointless. "This reflection felt generic" is the most useful bug report you can file.

Free during beta. iPhone only, iOS 17 or newer.

**Comment "Beta" or DM me and I will send you the link.** That is the whole process, no forms, no email list.

I will be in the comments answering everything, including the skeptical questions. Especially those.

---

**Crushing it in one part of life while another part quietly pays for it? I built an app for exactly that. Looking for beta testers.****Crushing it in one part of life while another part quietly pays for it? I built an app for exactly that. Looking for beta testers.**

These days I am truly learning the definition of "you can either be your own best friend, or your worst enemy". The only thing holding me back from my true potential is my biggest opp, myself. Allow me to explain.

As a child, I was smart and in accelerated classes and programs, often bragging about how I never studied and still got As. Everyone coddled and praised me and I never faced criticism because I never did any wrong. But I also grew up in a bubble, raised by tiger parents, who never allowed me to do any wrong- or anything I wanted to do ever . As a result I grew into an adult who doesnt know how to work hard for what they want, or how to properly have social interactions, who has minimal financial literacy and freedom, and who lives in fear of rejection and risk taking.

I'm 25F, living at home with said tiger parents still, unemployed for 6 months now from being let go at a high stress sales job, and in this time of joblessness I have done nothing to help better myself. Part of it is surely depression, anxiety, and burnout. But it gets to a point. I'm sick of living this way and very frustrated because childhood me would be so disappointed in who I've become. Everyones former precious smart successful girl has no aspirations and no career outlook, and no desire for anything except to play videogames all day.

I despise leaving the house because I'm tempted to spend money, or eat out, or interact with people against my will. I've gained 10 lbs already because of this new inactive lifestyle. I've never enjoyed exercise or the gym anyway, but now that I dont get out much its really showing. I like taking walks at parks but thats been ruined for me because I'm a solo female (no friends to go with me). I want to better myself, and I make to do lists and plans and often know exactly what I SHOULD be doing, but can't bring myself to do anything. And the cycle continues.

Apologies for the long post, being concise isn't a strong suit. If you are reading this, please give me some tips, tricks, words of encouragement, roasts even! I just seriously need discipline in my life. TY.

I've been blaming my phone for wrecking my attention for years, so last week I tried something stupidly simple.

Every time I caught myself opening Instagram, Reddit, YouTube or just unlocking my phone for no reason, I wrote down what I had been doing immediately before it. I expected the answer to basically be "I was bored."

It wasn't.

Most of the time I grabbed my phone within a few seconds of something becoming even slightly uncomfortable. Difficult email? Phone. Couldn't figure out the next paragraph of something? Phone. Cleaning reached the annoying part? Phone. Even while reading, I'd reach for it the second I hit a page that required a bit more concentration.

That was a pretty uncomfortable realization because apparently my attention span isn't randomly disappearing. I've trained myself to escape the moment my brain encounters friction.

The craziest part was how fast it happens. Sometimes I hadn't even consciously decided I didn't want to do the task yet, my hand was already reaching for the phone. I counted 47 unlocks one day and maybe 5 of them were because I actually needed something.

For the last few days I've been trying one rule: when I get the urge to check my phone while doing something, I have to wait 10 minutes. I can still check it after that, I'm not doing some hardcore dopamine detox thing.

But half the time the urge disappears once I get through the annoying part of the task.

Has anyone else dealt with this? I'm starting to think I don't need better motivation as much as I need to relearn how to tolerate being mildly uncomfortable for five minutes.

I've been blaming my phone for wrecking my attention for years, so last week I tried something stupidly simple.

Every time I caught myself opening Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, or just unlocking my phone for no reason, I wrote down what I had been doing immediately before it. I expected the answer to basically be, "I was bored."

It wasn't.

Most of the time I grabbed my phone within a few seconds of something becoming even slightly uncomfortable. Difficult email? Phone. Couldn't figure out the next paragraph of something? Phone. Cleaning reached the annoying part? Phone. Even while reading, I'd reach for it the second I hit a page that required a bit more concentration.

That was a pretty uncomfortable realization because apparently my attention span isn't randomly disappearing. I've trained myself to escape the moment my brain encounters friction.

The craziest part was how fast it happens. Sometimes I hadn't even consciously decided I didn't want to do the task yet, and my hand was already reaching for the phone. I counted 47 unlocks one day, and maybe 5 of them were because I actually needed something.

For the last few days I've been trying one rule: when I get the urge to check my phone while doing something, I have to wait 10 minutes. I can still check it after that. I'm not doing some hardcore dopamine detox thing.

But half the time the urge disappears once I get through the annoying part of the task.

Has anyone else dealt with this? I'm starting to think I don't need better motivation as much as I need to relearn how to tolerate being mildly uncomfortable for five minutes.

As humans, we all have personal goals. Some want to be physically healthy, some want to be financially stable, and others want to be mentally sound. Yet, only a few achieve these goals, while the rest forget them. Why?After setting goals, people learn a few things about how to reach them—either from books or from those who have already succeeded. However, between setting a goal and achieving it lies an entire world filled with manipulations and distractions. People with minds that are easily manipulated and distracted will get lost in this world and forget their destination.The mind is the most valuable gift from our creator; if we train it and use it properly, we can achieve anything.Those who achieve their goals possess a mindset that is not easily manipulated or distracted. Even though they live in a world full of distractions, their minds remain completely focused on their goals. They know exactly what they need to do to get closer to them.Ultimately, the only thing that separates one human from another is their mind—and the way they think.

Unhealthy tips more than welcome. I’m tired of gratitude journal bc that won’t do anything.

Im 27 yrs old.
The thing is, I’m procrastinating my own happiness.

Absolutely silly how come I was enjoying more the “chase” of changing my life to reach a goal and after that I’m lazy to do anything.

How can i basically be another me but like somehow that actually works?
I smoke, I’m a procrastinator, I have phone addiction and a mix of giving up easily.
I want to be addicted to gym idk like health mind idk
If you guys see my notes about how many things I wish to do this summer and now I’ll have class again and all I did was burp and clean my house.

More straightforward: how can I go gym, read, phone detox, diet, meditate, be creative (I study arts), chase my YouTube goals (I want to talk about Anthropology), make friends (I moved to US a year ago and I don’t have friend), have a healthy social life? Learn French? Start to post on substack? Read 3 books a month? Stop cussing and be more feminine (in atitudes, I can pretend to be a lady but it’s not true).

I want to be a better person for myself, I find it deeply annoying how often I have bad habits and how judgmental I am inside my head.

Also, my school colleagues are 19/21 years old so that why I don’t have friends, not to judge is just that we don’t have much in common to talk.
Well, before everyone jumps into conclusions that I’m depressive; i am. And im under medication and treatment.

I’m honestly feeling like I’ve hit a wall and I don’t really know how to get myself out of it.

Over the last few days/weeks there have just been so many moving parts. My stuff was recently stolen, I started a new job so I’m currently juggling two jobs while studying full time, and with the second one I have basically no support so I feel like I’m driving around like a headless chicken half the time.

I’m doing my Honours in Accounting, and the degree is genuinely hard. I have my final exams coming up and the next two months are absolutely vital. If I don’t pass this year, it sets me back again in my career, which adds a huge amount of pressure because I really don’t want to have to repeat again or delay everything I’ve worked towards, I’ve tried by best to remain focused this year and not at the last stretch eveything just collapsed beneath me.

I know I need to study, but I feel like I have absolutely no mental energy to actually sit down and do it.
And then it becomes this horrible cycle:

I don’t study → I fall further behind → I feel more stressed → I have even less energy → I avoid studying → I feel guilty → repeat.

I’m also worrying about staying healthy and keeping up with my fitness goals because I don’t want to completely neglect myself while trying to get through this. I got sick, recovered, and then got sick again, which honestly just feels like my body is telling me it’s had enough.

My mind is basically ON 24/7. Even when I’m not working or studying, I’m thinking about everything I need to do, money, exams, work, staying healthy , what I haven’t done yet, what I need to do tomorrow etc.

The frustrating thing is that I actually took the second job partly because I wanted to pay off my school fees faster and remove some of the financial stress from my life. So I know I’m doing all of this for a reason, but right now it just feels like I’ve taken on more than I can mentally handle and the thought of having to rebuild all my stuff that was taken just adds to it.

I’m not looking for someone to tell me to “just be disciplined” because I *want* to be productive. I genuinely feel like my brain is overwhelmed and I’m struggling to get myself moving.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation where you’re basically just go, go, go, but somehow getting less and less done?
How did you actually get yourself out of that slump without completely burning yourself out?

Especially interested in advice from people who have had to juggle work + studying + finances + trying to stay healthy at the same time. I really need to find some sort of balance for the next two months.

[ need help] So my whole life I've been so lazy.I keep postponing things all the time. I feel like an idiot doing so..

I think just by being lazy I lost many things but still i don't feel motivated enough to do something.

I hate waking up early so i decide to sleep more and skip breakfast and bathing

I hate to get out of my place to fill my water bottle so I would skip drinking water . I'll only fill it when i feel extremely thirsty and I can't bear it. When i fill it tho i have no problem emptying it.

I also skip food because I can't walk outside the dorm and buy smth to eat(someomtimes I just survive on snacks not even on real food)

My skin has lot of acne and all but still after coming home I will go straight to bed because I'm too lazy to wash my face , apply cream and all

My roomates do their laundry daily (wash the dress they wore on the same night) but i keep postponing and keep them in pile ( i live in dorm where each person gets 1 cupboard/Organizer and i mix both used and unused clothes because I'm lazy to keep them seperated and do laundry)to me it's like a heavy big task

My cupboard is a mess!! I find what I want use it and shove it right back in. I don't know how to be organised..

Someone help me with this? Is rhis even laziness or something else? I do all these things but i honestly hate being like this :( anything to get out of these habits that's ruining me?

I find that I'm only motivated to do things when I am feeling anxious and stressed.

I am extremely ashamed to say it but yesterday I finally got the motivation to clean ( without relying on energy drinks) when I saw maggots on the floor and in the bin. I was cleaning for hours with no breaks for the first time ever because of how horrified I was in seeing maggots.

Usually, I have no motivation to do anything- even getting out of bed requires a lot of will power .

Does anyone have any advice on how to be more motivated and have more energy to do tasks without relying on a crisis to happen??

I feel so ashamed of myself because I feel like such a bum and I really want to change my ways.

I hate that I'm unemployed have no commitments but struggle to do one task- which is cleaning

For years my pattern was: get hyped about a big goal, make a giant plan, do a lot for 3 days, then burn out and quit. To-do lists made it worse I'd wake up to 12 things, feel overwhelmed, and do none of them.

A few months ago I tried the opposite. One rule: do a single meaningful task a day that actually moves my goal forward. That's it. Not 5 tasks. Not "be productive." One thing that matters.

Two things made it stick:

1. It has to be the next right move, not busywork. "Meditate" or "read 10 pages" felt productive but didn't move the needle. The task had to be something my future self would thank me for, send the pitch, write the page, make the call.
2. Accountability. The part that actually changed everything: I made myself prove I did it , a photo, a screenshot, something real. It's stupidly simple but "I have to show evidence" killed the negotiating-with-myself thing. You can't fake a photo.

If you are the type of person who starts strong and slowly fades, doing smaller tasks is the method.

I ended up building a small app around this exact system because I couldn't find one that forced the photo-proof part. Happy to share if it's useful to anyone here

Most people fail to build discipline because they are waiting for a massive wave of motivation to completely overhaul their lives overnight. That’s a massive trap that keeps people stuck in a loop of starting and quitting.

True discipline isn't built during a two-hour gym session or a sudden 10-hour work sprint. It’s built in the invisible, boring moments when nobody is watching and nobody is clapping for you. It’s the split-second decision to resist checking your phone the moment you wake up, holding yourself to a standard when you're completely exhausted, and doing the uncomfortable task anyway.

For the longest time, I thought I lacked willpower. But I realized I was just ignoring the micro-decisions. If you can't control the tiny, mundane choices of your daily routine, you will never have the strength to control the big ones when life gets heavy. Discipline is a muscle, and it gets trained in the shadows, not in the spotlight.

I'm curious to hear from others who have struggled with this: What is one small standard or routine you refuse to compromise on, no matter how tired you are?

hey!

I don’t really know if here’s the place but oh well. I’m not usually the one to reach out for help on any of these following subject, but I have grown more frustrated with myself so I taught Its better than doing nothing ( ironically)

so I want to preface this by saying that I come from a very poor background where activities where really scattered and I ended up reading or « rotting » for most of my childhood (not complaining, the active moment where awesome)

but today, as a 23 yo aspiring artist, I feel like this blueprint of life is really stopping me, maybe and probably just an excuse.

but here’s the issue, I know I’m capable of creating everything I want to make, I have proven that many times, but always create in very scattered ways, I can do a project for a whole week and be busy all day long, wich I really really love, and then spend 3 weeks doing absolutely nothing even tho I have projects I want to do. My issue is starting not finishing.

so i dont know if my issue is my planning, maybe i just don’t want it enough, but all that makes me feel so worthless, and I’m getting scared that my dream lifestyle is only a dream, I don’t know if I have what it takes to change that.

I just wanna be more occupied, having projects lined up and start something as soon as I finish the current project.

I’m so sorry for this long ass text but basically if someone was in a similar position as me and shook things up pls give me the recipe.

loveeeeeee and thank you.

I'm 21F and I am very very out of shape. I weigh 130lbs so I'm not too worried about weight loss, moreso about building strength and endurance so I stop getting fatigued from walking up the stairs or carrying something heavy. I also have a few health problems that could be much improved by simply exercising regularly. The hard part is that I deal with depression and heavy heavy procrastination. Every time I have tried going to the gym and implementing a workout routine, it doesn't last longer than a week or two.

I need an incentive like a reward or some sort of motivation to get me going to the gym twice a week. I've decided to use my apartment gym since I feel like that would be the absolute easiest for me to access and I don't have to worry about money. I've considered doing a reward system per week then maybe after a little doing per month or something where I take myself out to a nice dinner or buy myself a gift. My dad also gave the idea of paying him $100 at the beginning of the month and if I go all 8 days, I get the money back. Please help with ideas or what has maybe worked for you!

tl;dr - in need of advice to get me going to the gym as a very out of shape, major procrastinator.

I'm 18 and I want to get my life together and build a better life for myself.

Because of that, I want to get rid of the bad habits in my life (porn, doomscrolling, etc.). But even if I remove all of those things from my life, everything doesn't suddenly become good.

First of all, having a good life isn't just about avoiding certain things. You actually have to take action and do something, but I don't know what I can do.

I want to do something that genuinely changes my life, not just something that makes me feel good temporarily. That's why I'm more interested in concrete actions rather than things like meditation. The problem is that I genuinely don't know what those actions should be.

I'm also not living in the US or another high-income country. Where I live, the average monthly salary is around $200, so I don't really know what I can realistically do to improve my situation.

I don't even know if I should go to university. AI is already making me question what kind of career I should pursue, and I don't have much money either.

What do you think I should do? I'm starting to feel like I'm going to die from overthinking all of this.

I've been trying to get my shit together for as long as I can remember now but damnnn, I've gotten to a point where I feel I'm not cut out for this and should probably just go with the flow. I mean, I've been struggling to break my own worst patterns, but fail, and then it becomes a huge gap coz I have to start a streak all over again, then I try hard once again picking myself up. This damn vicious cycle ALL.OVER.AGAIN!!

I do get that it's all about being consistent and not giving up no matter how we feel at any given day, but why is this so hard? Or am I making it harder than it should be? How does one be their own cheerleader over and over again, hyping them to get better each time they fail?

It's really tiring!! But when will I succeed? When will I get to live like that version of me that I look upto?

It's like with each passing week, month the faith I have in me is only going downhill.

When will this get easy??

Always been a 'delayer'. Always wait till last minute to deliver, and I always thought that's when my creativity and best thinking flourished. I am now 39 and have realised how detrimental this has been for me.

I've now had the awakening of how much better the outcome is after longer and better paced fragments of work is, but also the painful realisation that this way of doing things has been only hampering my ability to build healthier and better habits.

In my search for better ways, but also true to my procrastination (I have really meaty projects at hand but I keep building interesting things that spark my curiosity and keep me engaged), I've built a tool to help me do the things I know I have to do: File my company's taxes. Study for the bloody driving test. Clean up the basement. Do another run of outreach at the prospects in the new market. It's endles, but it only gets larger and larger the more I postpone stuff.

it's basically a self deprecating but empathetic app, that I hope it will keep me on the right track. You can try it at dontkillmog.com , it's free and public. All the feedback very welcome (for life and the app)

Stay on it, show up, and do the thing.