For many people, "trying to bend their personality into the shape [they] want it to be" is fruitless, totally counterproductive.

The first thing I had to learn was that in order to change my behavior, I had to change my environment, not my attitudes. My attitudes are fine, indeed, perhaps excessively eager.

It's possible that other people could take something away from that, ADHD or not, it's better to accept and appreciate who you are and the value you bring to the world, and instead seek to make changes to where you are, what is around you, and how you relate through that to the rest of the world.

Having severe ADHD, coupled with a seemingly unalterable indifferent outlook on life due to manic depressive disorder and childhood trauma has given me a morbid sense of satisfaction in making time to squander my time here on Earth... And intense salf hatred. I just hope I can consolidate these two aspects of my personality in a reasonable timeframe. One half of my role models are all polyglots, men of science and patrons of the arts, and the other half are all dead from speedballing or suicide.

Ok, so there's time travel in the future. But why did you come back? Did our goals all fail? Was global warming that bad? What are you trying to alter in the timeline?

Use the code-phrase I'm logging in my private folder on Keybase and get in touch.

(But seriously, damn our lives sound similar. Any advice for dealing with the problem?)

I wish I had some smidgen of life advice, but we're even more fucked up in the future than we are now, I'm afraid.

Jokes aside, what I've been doing is finding fun ways to strengthen my discipline while picking up useful skills. I picked up the Rubik's cube about a year ago, I'm now under a minute and a half and won't stop until I'm under ten seconds. Then I will learn how to balance things on my fingers and other body parts. Then I will learn how to juggle.

No, I'm not training to become a circus clown. Just noticing my weaknesses (visualization, dexterity, coordination, etc) and finding fun ways to mitigate them. The discipline involved in my incremental daily progress will hopefully carry over to other aspects of my life.

I keep a pack of index cards and a pen within arms reach, and make tons of lists and notes and keep them around my monitor so I see them ten hours a day. I try to take care of at least 1-3 things on these lists a day. I condense my daily soul-crushing feelings of loneliness and desperation to between 3-4am.

I have a million and one great ideas and I write them all down, but I only allow myself to focus on 1-2 projects at a time. This creates a small sense of embarrassment, as I love to work through my ideas by discussing them with others even if I don't actually plan on implementing them any time soon, but I worry it comes across to others as me talking about doing all sorts of things that I will never do, simply because I don't bother communicating that I'm just talking through these ideas to find their flaws. But that's ok, eventually I will have things to show for it.

I'm not satisfied with the speed of my progress, but that's ok. If I was, it means I'm not aiming for lofty enough goals. I should never be satisfied with the person I am, because I should never settle for what I have.

Anyway, that's what works for me for now, hope some of it helps.

(I ask because I had same experience, except now that I am diagnosed I am struggling to find what I am supposed to do... I am kinda spinning in place without going anywhere)

https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Charge-Adult-Russell-Barkley-e...

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The biggest things, broadly, are:

Step 0: Get engaged medically - with diagnosis, collaboration, and medication. ADHD is not something you can manage on your own. It's literally "the disorder of not being able to fix the problems you can clearly see", so you need external feedback and assistance. Doctor(s), therapist, friends, family, co-workers, employer - gotta engage all of them.

Step 1: Figure out where the problems are. This means, before you make any changes, record when things go right / wrong and map out places that need change. (and I know, making ADHD people carefully analyze and wait it out is the most ridiculous thing ever but...)

Step 2: Change your environment and the way you live your life. Automate, externalize, or delegate all nonessential tasks and change your set/setting to accommodate you instead of struggling to behave. If it's not something you do without thought or effort, automate, externalize, or delegate it.

Step 3: Relax! You've made it, time to kick back and... Oh, no, sorry, continue to repeat steps 0-2 on a weekly/monthly/annual basis, largely for the rest of your life. It's a little bit like weight loss - getting there is only about 10% of the battle. Getting consistent about it is the other 90% and that's the part that clearly people with ADHD struggle with the most.

Anyway, it's really key to understand it as a process, a skill, and one that you can improve at over time. Don't let missing things or being unsuccessful get you down, just pick it back up and learn from where you made the problem. Don't blame yourself any more than you'd blame yourself for being colorblind or tall.

More about the changes in step 2:

a) I automate and delegate everything even more heavily than I did before. All bills go on autopayment, anything that can be set up to be routine is. Yard service, cleaning service, whatever it is, if it can take things off my plate, sold. Can't overstate how critical it is to not let your own execution problems trap you. Focus on strengths and accept your weaknesses.

b) Calendaring is absolutely essential. He recommends paper, I do it digitally, whatever works for you. I have things set to remind me, and I use it religiously. I have reminders for any recurring activity - daily, weekly, monthly, if it can't be automated, don't try to remember it, instead use reminders. It also must be with you 100% of the time. Literally chain it to your arm if you need to. Which sounds less ludicrous when you call it a 'smartwatch' but...

c) Externalize everything. Draw pictures, flowcharts, checklists, plans, or sketches; set timers, write notes, make boxes and organizers; put gold stars on a chart; whatever it takes, but you can't rely on your own brain to provide feedback. You need things to be concrete and outside of your own mind.

Most importantly, the things you need have to be at where you perform the task, not in the office. I have 3 whiteboards in my house and they are constantly full with relevant, localized info, plans, lists, schedules, etc. I use painter's tape and markers to label everything. Do not label the cats. They do not like it. I routinely go through ~3 rolls of tape a month.

d) You need your environment to fit you, not the other way around. If you can't focus at work, either make changes to where / how you work or find a new job. If your home/neighborhood/city is the wrong size, shape, or activity level, change it. It's that simple, and that serious. A significant undertaking and one that I'm definitely still working on.

I feel this is the "take out all the brown M&Ms" moment in your reply. I did laugh a lot though - the timing was unexpected.

It may be more critical for someone with ADHD, but, even so, it's an outline of habits common to effective people. And frankly much of it is a great expression of what it means to be human (change your environment, delegate your efforts, planning and scheming, etc.)

So my project wasn't just me being complete nuts.

My parents put my computers near them after I moved back with them.

I kept insisting I needed one where I wanted... After sevearal months arguing and not getting anything done, I managed to get help to build a desk (I didn't have money to buy one...) bought computer chassis (computer was without one) on a junkyard, and setup it where I wanted.

This was recent, so I didn't started to get things done with it yet, but at same time the whole undertaking was feeling like I was just wasting time for no reason, like if I was procastinating, that maybe I should just try to get things done anyway in my parents office and deal with the noise and interruptions...

edit: formatting

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01C3CKQYM/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=...

I got lucky and made some money in spite of my undiagnosed case. But my ignorance allowed me to make some bad life choices when it came to choosing the wrong spouse, and now we're divorced with 2 kids.

The role of environment is severely underrated. Not just in our failures, but in our successes as well.

Motivation runs dry, but environment can be set up to work in your favour.

For example, if you sold your couch and TV, you wouldn't watch TV first thing after getting home or on weekends.

This isn't to say that you'll magically become more productive, but to just illustrate how changing the environment can have a profound effect on your habits and therefore, your life.

If I want to check my phone I have to go get it and wait for it to turn on. If I want to check distracting sites on my computer, I'll have to log in first. They're small, but normally what happens is I will start to slip out of focus, by habit I will punch in the distracting site, realise I need to log in and go "Oh yeah, not now" and then get back to work. It's like a focus cue for when my brain goes on auto-pilot. I find I check far less often now because my brain knows there's no reward there.

Whenever I am in slouch mode, quick come up with the quickest home chore I haven't done. Vacuuming? Washing dishes? Cleaning dining table?

The quicker the chore could be done, the better. And as you about to finish it, come up with the 2nd one. After the 3rd time, your mind is awake and ready to do productive things, like a side project, etc.

It's like bicycle for your mind, the first couple strokes are always difficult.

What really changed for me was reading some Hindu philosophy. I'm Indian and Hindu by birth but have been agnostic pretty much all my life.

I looked into the philosophical component of Hinduism out of curiosity.

The heart of Hindu philosophy is in the Gita. The core idea of Gita is to "do your duty regardless of the results"

This is a belief I've now come to embrace wholeheartedly.

I've stopped bothering with the results. I've stopped bothering with what others are doing.

I only focus on what I CAN do - my duty - and forget about the rest.

Relinquishing control has been a great thing

The way I "quit" TV, and sugar, for that matter was to get them out of my day-to-day habit. For me that meant getting them out of the house. Sell the TV and dump cable if it is standing between you and your goals. Personally did that after a long period of travel after finding I did not miss it once.

With sugar, I stopped buying anything at the grocery with significant carbs. If I need a treat I turn to premium dark chocolate.

I still might partake a bit of either while out on the weekend but that is it. Now trying to push alcohol and caffeine to the same category but finding them more difficult.

I think accepting that you enjoy watching TV or other passive means of entertainment is more important than beating yourself up over not doing something more productive.

If working hard made a difference by itself, tons of minimum wage workers will be rich by now...

>In retrospect, being lazy isn't too bad.

Money isn't everything, especially "success" in the BS way the US rat race defines it. You don't need millions, heck not even one million. 99% of the world, and most of the US live their liveσ without ever having one in the bank anyway.

Find something you love, whether it's work related or something you find fun, and enjoy it. And/or enjoy the company of people, family, etc.

Having a pension is not in any way, shape, or form an excuse to not have private retirement savings. Other people can and do routinely decide to render pensions worthless, and there's nothing you can do about it.

If you aren't the sole signer on the account where it's held, the money isn't yours. If anyone has the ability to pilfer it for their own purposes, they will, and you should act accordingly.

Accepting a pension in lieu of additional income is a staggeringly bad idea that no one should ever under any circumstances dream of considering. You wouldn't accept salary in a way that can be retroactively withdrawn, you shouldn't accept retirement savings that way either. As long as we live in a world where Republicans are allowed to exist, trusting a government to pay you is phenomenally stupid.

It's extremely good news that the US has mostly discarded the idea of giving out pensions.

I pay council tax of 120/month. 400 a month is far too high for 2 people - according to the ons [0] the average for a family of 4 is 56.80 (which seems a little on the low side to me, but is definitely enough for 2 people) - we spend a little less than that on breakfast/lunch/ 7 days, and dinner 6 nights for 2, and that includes our non food shopping expenses (e.g. toiletries, cleaning products).

Not to mention, if you're feeding two people, then the second person in the house presumably has an income. Presuming a pension, that now means your income is 1280/month. Remember that you get free travel, discount on heating (which reduces your £100/month bills)

Based on your comments in this thread, I can only assume that you like to indulge, and part of that indulgence is in price (seriously, 400 quid a month is exorbitant for 2 people), and that's perfectly fine. What's not ok is projecting your inability to live without sirloin steak, fresh fish, imported cheese on to everyone. You come across like an elitist snob.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...

Sure, but if you want to have real influence, you need lots of money. We are talking about things like owning media conglomerates and shaping the way the world thinks and behaves.

That to me is a lot more interesting than having your own tiny slice of the pie and going through the motions until you die.

Real influence for what? Power over people?

You can change the lives of people around you without "real influence" that comes from money. Not even need to do volunteer in some organization or whatever. Can start by being around for relatives and friends in need. Or some neighbor that has some problem -- perhaps they're old and nobody ever visits them, or can't afford even a basic medical procedure. Even political influence, if that's what was talked about, can be attained with almost no money at all -- just sticking to your ideas, telling people about them, organizing others to help, etc.

>We are talking about things like owning media conglomerates and shaping the way the world thinks and behaves.

Are we? Who the duck cares about "owning media conglomerates" -- if it wasn't for the money it implicitly also means that is?

TFA's author talks about feeling behind in his work/life progress, and the parent comment in this thread as well. How did that escalate to "owning media conglomerates"?

The idea that "owning media conglomerates" is really an actual important goal to achieve in life lest you just "run through the motions", is incredibly dismissive not billions of loving, caring, happy, heroic, etc people living totally normal lives. And even if it was valid, that just leaves around 100-200 positions in the world. Heck, 10,000 if you like. The rest 7 billion - 10,000 just go "through the motions", really?

Besides, the kind of people that do own "media conglomerates" were either already the scum of the earth to begin with, making their way up by being in bed with power etc, or become that in the process.

Ah, but you see, those people have Good and Neutral alignments. Lawful Evil requires a butt-ton of work.

But then those same empathetic people will speculate, "I can tell <famous person> is totally unhappy -- idiot!"

Personally I think these types of people are abnormal and their "success" isn't something I aspire to.

Lazy is a very loaded term - I'm hesitant to subscribe to the notion that keeping up with Game of Thrones is any less an investment of time. As examples of the value of such an investment, you can then discuss it with your friends and coworkers, facilitating social cohesion and acceptance. You can use it a tool to encourage you to take a step back, and look at other things you are doing from a different perspective.

Sleep is another investment, the value of which has been much-discussed here and elsewhere. I'd encourage you to invest in it.

Perhaps your investments have been commercially focused - this is no bad thing. You will have learned directly about the work you have been doing, people's behaviour around you and yourself. You have learned some of what you are capable of - working so hard in impressive in itself, this is a capability you can understand and rely on later! You will have gained a reputation with some of the people you have been working with. If you are still on good terms with any of them, you can use this to better understand yourself, and you can seek recommendations from them.

That said, not all investments work out. I'm sorry your investment has not brought you what you expected.

Please try to focus on what you have learned and gained, and keep actively choosing your investments. You're almost certainly doing fine, and if not, please ask for help.

This, critically. The extrapolation of "most successful people have a long string of failures behind them" is that, from any point in time before your success, it looks like you're wasting your time.

The important thing then is to try and evaluate whether you're actually wasting your time or early but on the right path.

Many things are useful here. Evaluating incremental micro-goals: what are the things that will help you attain your larger goals and are your current actions checking these off? Soliciting feedback from trusted peers: recognizing that success usually looks a little crazy (otherwise, someone else would be doing it), do they believe you're on a plausibly successful path or have any feedback in changes you could make? Attending more meetings where people like you are sharing their successes and failures: thereby avoiding comparing yourself to the 100 one-in-a-millions we read about here on HN?

In short, worry about whether your current trajectory has the highest likelihood of success you can achieve. Not whether you're already successful.

(And allow for a variety of end states that are successful. To some, a loving family is the highest success. And that's a valid choice.)

Think of your life as a sand castle. Sure, others have nicer ones (or worse ones), but in the end they will all be swept away by the tide. The existence of other castles in no way diminishes the value of your own. All that matters is that you are happy with the castle are building, because that's the only person you are building the castle for. Life is a game, but it does not have a high score screen at the end.

(Or, to sound more down-to-earth: no use crying over spilled milk.)

  We do what we must because we can.
  For the good of all of us
  Except the ones who are dead.

  But there's no sense crying over every mistake.
  You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.
  And the science gets done and you make a neat gun.
  For the people who are still alive.

The point being, it shouldn't be about comparing castles, it should be about making everyone's castles ever better (until eventually, at some point, we discover concrete and the castles will no longer get swept away by the tide).

(And for those not knowing the context, the "gun" in the song is a tool, not a weapon.)

In addition, with 100 billion+ people existing throughout the entirety of the human race, it's unlikely I was the first to think of anything I've ever thought.

  "Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them,
  I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

  And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, 
  and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

  And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, 
  shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:

  And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, 
  and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it."

  Matthew 7:24-27 KJV

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/jimihendrix/castlesmadeofsan...

The great thing about living frugally is you can actually have a great lifestyle while doing it. For example, I could re-create a fancy $10 breakfast sandwich from a local coffee shop in 10 minutes and for less than $1 per sandwich. You can eat like a king for a fraction of what eating out costs, and you'll probably get better quality.

If you're in the bay area, you should probably get out unless you're being paid enough to make it worth it (most aren't).

In ten years you can have far more security, money, and free time than the average person can even think of. And its really not that hard. For a techie, living paycheck to paycheck is very much a choice.

Retirement isn't good enough. By the time you retire you are in your 60s, which is too late for me.

The default outcome for startup founders is not "filthy rich" but rather "older and poorer".

If you try to break out and get thrown in solitary then sure, I guess you're worse off, but either way you're still trapped. What's really funny is that when your attempt fails it's the other prisoners who want to cut you down for trying & want to see you punished the most.

nxc18 offered pretty good advice, I'm not sure what your alternative is?

I like work because it has me doing stuff that's similar to what I want to do in my free time, but provides the necessary incentives to actually do it each day.

My job isn't perfect, but it has me doing productive, rewarding, mostly-interesting stuff with a bunch of smart people whom I like and can learn from.

It's worse than my dream life for my dream self, but it's better than my dream life for my actual self. I may not be behind, but I still like to feel like I'm moving forward, and work does that for me.

On the other hand, I did quite enjoy my ~1 month of working four-hour days a few years back, so there's probably a better balance than I have right now.

Meaningful work and a sense of accomplishment doesn't seem like it's caused by a culture of shame. I can get that from a hobby (painting, writing, programming, carpentry), or I can get it from a job (painting, writing, programming, carpentry). In either case, it seems normal beyond the boundaries of culture to derive satisfaction from this.

It might be a lot harder to derive satisfaction from hobbies with no "productive" output (my long bike ride, hiking in the woods) due to a culture insisting on productivity, but I don't think it's true that the productive ones would be valued less than non-productive ones if not for enculturation.

What I don't like is the routine, having to be at work at 8:00 AM M-F or otherwise losing my livelihood.

It's the requirement and forced interaction that bothers me.

Agreed.

The number of twenty (or even thirty) -somethings I've met who have been trying to make it in the bay area for years and still don't have more than a few month's worth of expenses saved up worries me. Y'all are in an incredibly vulnerable position, and it's not going to get easier to make wages the older you get.

I think a balance is important. It makes logical sense to cut down on fun and emotions to get more work done, but the human brain needs social relationships and fun to produce peak output. At least that is how my brain works

May be being a bit more lazy will help you be more creative and make the stars line up better for you. I am not being snarky here, be a bit more lazy, the brain needs fun and emotions.

Through, putting enough time away for sleep or needed rest/socialization is not being lazy. People are more effective when they sleep enough, meetings are shorter when people coming in don't feel lonely and so on and so forth. I mean, being lazy is bad, but spending some time watching a show, reading book or keeping friends does not make you lazy.

And I mean, I am pretty sure you learned something from the experience. If you try another project/business, your chances of success go up due to what you learned. If you would watched tv whole time, you would learned precisely zero.

I'm sure a lot of garage computer engineers in the '80s have a few boxes of boards that could well have been the Next Big Thing, if only X/Y/Z.

If you do try really hard, its maybe a 20% chance.

The question you have to ask is that 20% chance worth not being able to do other things with my time.

Nevertheless for all you know the knowledge you've gained so far will help you achieve the success you desire in the future.

Was this because individual projects or endeavors were not successful, or the companies you invested time in were not?

Also, the results of the last 10 years can help determine the approach of the next 10. Until you are too old or sick to move, there is always time for R&R.

(Disclaimer: I'm approaching 50 and always feel behind)

All the startups I joined sounded promising but the tech environment in Australia was really tough back then (still is, I think).

I did manage to get a small number of shares in a startup which appears to be doing relatively well now but no exit yet (it's also the startup which I worked for the longest; 2 years)... All the other ones just failed. I really understand first-hand what it means when people say that 9 out of 10 startups fail. When I think that my experience of success/failure is probably 'normal' it really freaks me out how bad the odds are (versus what the media makes them look like).

The lesson I learned is that it appears to be completely random. It's just about being in the right place at the right time; the best you can do is just change companies a lot until you join one that's obviously going up like a rocket and try to get some shares.

I've met a few founders who got very lucky and they don't have the slightest clue how weird/unlikely their success is; they live in a different, much simpler world than me.