I’ve realized that I’m very mentally weak and it’s impacting my success.
I suspect I have ADHD and whenever I get an urge to distract myself, I rarely manage to resist it.
I think what I am missing is the residtance to discomfort that eg. allows sports people to carry on going even when their muscles are telling them to stop. Or the thing that allows people to defy themselves and step into an ice-cold shower.
Unfortunately I am not a person who enjoys sports and a cold shower is only something that makes sense once a day. Can you think of any exercises that I can do here and now in my room, and practice routinely that will strengthen my willpower so that I can better resist my urges in the future?
There is some good advice in this thread, but if you do have ADHD, then the advice is only as good as your ability to carry it out, and saying “just do the thing” will only end up demoralising you.
From my perspective (42, diagnosed with ADHD four years ago), it’s been damn near impossible for me to noticeably improve myself. It’s only when I reflect on my progress that I begin to notice positive changes.
Ultimately, it’s about training your perspective on a task. Are you failing to do things, or are you choosing to prioritise other tasks instead. Do those other tasks have positive outcomes (however tenuous they may be)? If this is the case, then you could work on choosing to prioritise the tasks that are expected of you.
In terms of my working day, my job is an issue for me, as it doesn’t really have a set form, and is almost entirely self-led. If I don’t do what’s expected of me, no one really notices, and that’s actually a problem for me, because left to my own devices I’ll gladly spend all day fucking about online, then feel like shit because I’ve not been productive*. So I’ve learned to tackle this by physically writing myself a To Do list first thing in the morning, that I then input into a daily timetable spreadsheet. Then I use an app called Cold Turkey to block access to websites of my choosing for a period of time. Only then am I able to focus on the tasks at hand.
In time, your brain will (hopefully) begin to mould itself around a different way of being, and while it will not likely become second nature to you, it will become easier to recognise when your distraction has taken control.
*of course, almost all of the problems we face are as a result of being forced to exist in a capitalist society, where we’re all trained to assign our personal worth to the worth of the work we produce. If we neurodivergents were able to live outside that paradigm, we’d be fine.
Thank you for posting this OP, and thank you for your reply to OP!
I literally just got back from my therapist (3rd visit) and he basically said the same stuff you’re saying about neurodivergence of this kind only becoming a problem when we’re forced to follow the rules of an artificial construct we call “modern civilization.” Thanks for your post. I’ve long suspected I could have ADHD (was diagnosed with ADD as a child) , but of course, ADD doesn’t really exist, and I suppose the research on things like this was more or less in its infancy, so I took prescrived children’s speed for a while, it made me worse. Yes, Ritalin is methamphetamine, and anyway. I started therapy to work on identifying my problems and I never mentioned ADHD, but he said all my complaints about my own behavior points towards it. My job is in the food service industry and it has been for many years, so the chaos of that could have masked some of the stronger “symptoms”, and I imagine if I had an open ended career I would be in trouble with my lack of focus and constant procrastination.
Do you mind giving me more details on how you do your to-do list and the table? I would like to try something like it because I think it might help.
Thanks again for your reply to OP. and thanks again to OP for the post and hang in there. Adaptability is humanities greatest strength…
Yeah, this is what I’ve found too unfortunately. Brute forcing yourself to do stuff only progresses you at a snails pace.
I’m waiting to get diagnosed but its still a few months off so I’m trying this for now…
I don’t think an app like cold turkey would work for me (don’t trust that I won’t disable it), but what I have managed to do in the past is dedicate a certain device to work tasks only, and also ban myself from using the internet in one certain room (I essentially tricked my brain to pretend that there was no WiFi there). I coukd focus way better in that room knowing that if I needed to use the internet, I’d first have to go all the way down the coridor.
Just a headsup - don’t focus too much on meds, it won’t really help that much if you’re also lacking willpower.
I have the same problem as you, but have started meds about half a year ago. It helps a little bit, but also made me realize that whenever I’m stressed or have to do something I’m uncertain of, the problems are back.
I thought it’s anxiety that’s stopping me, because right now I have to finish my thesis to hand in in a week, and I’ve been sitting home and staring at the screen unable to work, progressing at a snails pace for two weeks already, to the point I will not be able to make it.
Due to that, I’ve gotten a short term medication for anxiety, because I thought that’s what’s stopping me and I can’t get over it.
It didn’t help, and while I wasn’t feeling that awful, I still didn’t manage to force myself to work more, and even though I would’ve comfortably made it, I progressed so slow that now I probably won’t. But it made me realize that the problem wasn’t anxiety, but willpower, and that the focus on it was just an excuse to justify postponing work.
I’m not saying that meds will not help you, but make sure you don’t fall to the same trap as I did - I used waiting them as an excuse for too long, that I’ve learned to just be OK with procrastinating. And when I finally got them, it didn’t help much , because I never tried building the willpower and have gotten too used to the excuses that even when the “need to wait for meds, nothing I can do” excuse wasn’t true, I was still turning to procrastination by habit. Or you’ll just think “meds aren’t helping, I need stronger”.
If you start forcing yourself, even if at slow pace, to not be OK with procrastination, then the meds will be a miracle that will suddenly make it so you don’t have to struggle so much anymore. If you on the other hand learn to give up trying and accept the excuse that you need the meds and there’s no point, and that it will be easier once you have them - my experience is that it won’t, because then getting rid of the internalization of excuses only made it as hardy, or even harder, than it was without them.