If you're a real go-getter, though, you'd wake up at 6am and do some vibe coding for an hour on that side hustle.
Super simple.
It’s actually insulting to people who work hard that some people assume they have it easy somehow, like the “must be nice” comment upstream. Not everyone takes the view that you can’t control what happens to you, it’s pretty easy to see who does.
In my opinion the first step to taking responsibility is acknowledging reality. That reality can includes brains and bodies being different, sometimes extremely so. If someones brain or body is different but they deny it, stick their head in the sand, ignore it, then they are at a disadvantage when they try to take responsibility for something and may fail due to failing to acknowledging reality.
>that hardly applies to anyone on HN.
Sweet summer child.
I can do the exact same thing a hundred days in a row as long as the circumstances happen to be the same. And I can try to make them as similar as I possibly can. My lights come on at the same time. I eat the same food. My clothes are in the same place.
But the second something happens that I can't control, the night the wind howls all night, or a cough wakes me up, or for some damn reason, I wake up hungrier than normal, it doesn't matter how many times I've done it. None of it is automatic. It's all new now. All of it requires decisions. It's like it was never there. And that's why, frankly, I don't ever get to 100 identical days.
Your brain does something different with whatever you mean by "discipline and good habits" than my brain does. And that's really cool. It sounds awesome to have a brain that does that.
It also sounds way easier and like it's not something you actually deserve any credit for, in the same way that my learning how to speak before I was a year old or read before I was 3 is just "a cool thing about my brain" and not something I deserve credit for.
The difference is that because your cool thing about your brain is common, people who don't have it are considered "less than" by people who do, whereas my cool thing about my brain is uncommon, so people looked at me as "more than" other people. Both are baseless. You and I have no more control over having these advantages in our brains than we do over our height or the color of our eyes.
Thanks again
If you friends gets permit, cars, fully financed studies but you get thrown out to work straight out of high school what is the probability you would give to be able to accomplish the same things as your friends in a similar timeline. Sure you can work hard and you will get somewhere, but is that somewhere anywhere near what could be possible ? I would argue not.
The left often argues about unfair advantage from famillies having money. In my experience it's not the having money part that is important, its the parent willing to invest it in their children. I know some people who accomplished a lot with poor parents, but they got full support from both gov aids and parents, it generally explains a lot.
Without talking about the genetic lottery, life is unfair and hard work isn't really all that's needed. It can never hurt but at the same time you can work much harder than most and never get as much. Add politics in the mix and anything goes.
It can be possible to decide to do something in advance, and then... just do it. The more times you do it the easier it gets. My wife comments on this sometimes. I guess not everyone has this? Maybe it can be learned? I don't know.
Then there are the things I'd like to do.
Don't sell your house if you don't have a realistic place to live lined up. Don't divorce your wife if it's not worth the work.
I'm not saying everyone can or should be grindset hustle bro. Probably no one. I'm just saying that it is sometimes possible to decide what you're going to do in advance. If you already have too many obligations, that could include deciding which ones to fail. That's probably better than trying to do everything and just rolling the dice.
It's surprising how controversial this idea is, but it works for me. I hope you find something that works for you.
Some might say it's offset by all the luxuries so widely available. But I personally find it hard to enjoy minor luxuries when so much of life is swallowed by obligations. And I'm one of the luckiest members of my cohort. Most of my high school friends still live with parents or several roommates, have lower paying careers, and/or have to care for more family with serious medical issues. (Though on the latter I seem to be catching up quickly)
It's so cool that your brain has this "decision persistence" feature. And it does seem to be common enough that it's treated as "typical."
It's just not remotely universal. Not all of our brains have this.
- Alarm at 4:30. 5 mins of breathing exercises, 20 mins of meditation.
- Make coffee, have breakfast, out the door to work by ~5:30.
- Get to work's gym by 5:45, cardio for 60 mins.
- In my office by 7:00-7:15.
- 3:30, 25 mins of breathe work and meditation again. Tuesdays and Thursdays, this is 3:15 so I can fit in ~30 mins of strength training.
- Head on out, pick up my youngest from school, home by ~4:15-4:30-ish. Ballpark depending on traffic, actual gym times, etc.
- Cook dinner (kiddos often like to help), eat with family, hang out with and play with my kiddos until 7:00PM.
- Kiddo bath and bed time, wife and I take turns doing this every night. Whether I'm "done" at 7 or 8, it only takes me ~30 mins to shower and prep my shit (clothes, lunch, etc.) for the next day.
- Leaves me with ~1-2 hours each night to hang out, read a book, and enjoy my wife's company before heading to bed at ~9:30.
It's busy, but I don't feel like I'm overstretched and I don't feel like it leaves me missing out on anything.
You fall asleep instantly every night or function on less than 7 hours of sleep long term. You have a 15 minute commute. You don’t seem to need any slack time to deal with any issues that pop up.
4 year old has a meltdown because the 6 year old ate the last fruit snack. One of the kids decides to wake up at 3am. Friends come over for dinner and throw off the routine. Oops forgot to buy an ingredient for dinner, now you have to load up all the kids and go to the store. Ugh piece of plastic is lodged in the garbage disposal better get the flashlight and chopsticks.
And that’s not even mentioning regular household maintenance. Laundry, dishes, cleaning, grocery trips etc…
I’d need at least 2 extra hours in every day to handle all of those unexpected and expected issues. Probably closer to 3.
>You fall asleep instantly every night...
Actually, yes! Two points there. First, when I'm out of my routine, not working out, drinking lots of coffee and eating like garbage, I sleep like ass. When I'm in my routine, eating well, and only having a cup of coffee with breakfast, I'm incredibly energized throughout the day and end up suddenly feeling tremendously tired right around 8:45/9:00.
The second part is that my father's side of the family is notorious for falling asleep anywhere, anytime. There's a litany of photos of us passed out on couches in the middle of packed parties.
> Meltdowns
They happen, but they don't really rock the schedule in my experience. Bedtime somehow always ends up being bedtime. Might shift by ~15 or so occasionally, but never in a way that nukes my bedtime or anything.
>One of the kids wakes up at 3am.
This is entirely YMMV, but we sleep trained. For whatever absolutely fucking weird reason, neither kid has ever got themselves out of bed in the morning, they always wake up and wait for us to come get them. Earliest I hear one of them is occasionally 6 on the weekends, usually closer to 7. I feel tremendously lucky here, and recognize how not normal this is.
>Forgot dinner ingredient and load kids up...
Nah. I do my best to buy ingredients on the weekend for the week. Definitely isn't foolproof, but usually we just pivot to a meal I'd planned for another night, or we always have easy to make shit like mac and cheese or grilled cheese and tomato soup lying around to fall back on. Life doesn't need to be perfect and I'm cool with pivoting and not sticking to plans.
>Friends coming over
For our own sanity wrt my wife and I's schedules, we hang with friends on the weekend. Weekends are a lot more freeform for us.
>Household maintenance
Naturally, whoever isn't playing with the kids just falls into keeping the laundry moving and cleaning the kitchen. I'll take the kiddos to the grocery store on Saturday. Dishes happen quickly, we all help there.
> neither kid has ever got themselves out of bed in the morning
My wife is a pediatrician. This is so incredibly not normal to have 2 kids that absolutely never get up early that you won the lottery. And not the regular jackpot. You won the powerball multi-state $500 million lottery.
> For our own sanity wrt my wife and I's schedules, we hang with friends on the weekend. Weekends are a lot more freeform for us.
I wish I knew what a weekend was. My wife works in the ER, as do many of our friends.
> Naturally, whoever isn't playing with the kids just falls into keeping the laundry moving and cleaning the kitchen.
There’s so much more daily maintenance work for our house than an hour a night for one person.
Just making my kids lunch for the next day takes me 15 minutes. It takes me 20-30 minutes to fold one load of laundry.
And the irregular things I mentioned were just a tiny part of it. The other day my 4 year old got a whole stack of puzzles down and the 2 year old immediately dumped out all the pieces. Took me 2 hours to sort that out. Last week the tankless hot water started randomly cutting out and I spent 2 hours dealing with that.
Yesterday we took 2 of our 3 kids for a well check to their pediatrician. For some reason it took 1.5 hours instead of the 30 minutes we had planned. A few months ago one of my many spoke alarms started randomly going off once a night for a few days until I could track down the problem. 3 months ago my 2 year old tripped on the very bottom stair and had a freak fracture. That took hours of time up front and then reverted to crawling for 9 days. And for 6 weeks he had to wear a boot that I had to remove and reapply multiple times a day.
Our 2 month old blew out her diaper a few days ago and I had to take all the padding off, wash it, then figure out how to put it back on. Big storm recently knocked most of our Christmas wreathes off and I had to deal with that.
My kid was recently “snack leader” for his preschool class, which means for a week I had to make healthy snacks for the whole class.
All of that is just the random stuff that has popped up over the last few months that I can think of.
The original post who mentioned this kind of thing isn’t feasible with kids was correct. 2-2.5 hours of exercise/meditation and a full workday isn’t something that most people with kids can pull off.
- fall asleep at 9:31 and function on 7 hours of sleep
- or fall asleep at 10:30 and function on 6 hours of sleep
If I'm not getting 8 hours, I feel like a zombie the next morning.
But yeah, I imagine I'll need more as time continues to pass and I get older.
/shrug
Edit: To say nothing of my mild fear of an inadequate amount of sleep in middle age possibly contributing to dementia, but I digress...
I hope my comment doesn't come off as dismissive but learning to meditate is practicing to "let it go". It isn't a switch. You're teaching your mind not to get "too attached" to anything you consider unwholesome.
I was trying to make the point that self- help easy fixes are not always successful. I spent decades actively learning to sleep. It works most of the time. It is good to learn. I use a mindfulness sleep meditation most nights. I also learnt from sleep hygiene that going to bed early is normally a big mistake for me, precluding much of the 'go to bed earlier, get up and exercise' advice.
I have also hit periods in my life where I simply couldn't mediate for weeks on end despite regular practice over a decade. I was mentally ill. No routine or hacks was going to get me to exercise. I needed therapy (EMDR) and rest, and when I got really self-destructive I needed sleep medication (useful only for a very short time). The 'hack' people just made me feel bad about myself for being unable to get a grip.
That is what I want people to see, exercise is only useful if you are well enough to do it. If you are not well enough to shave, then don't beat yourself up for not getting exercise. Put a pin in it, and do it later.
My latest illness was (psycho-somatically) interfering with my cortisol levels, and it made any exercise crippling. I couldn't recover. I didn't get the boost. I beat myself up about not being able, and it made me worse.
Exercise and therapy rather than exercise or therapy might be better advice.
Edit, typos
My body doesn't feel the passage of time consistently. So my mind is never prepared to switch activities when it needs to.
And there are times my brain stops working on a particular task and nothing can get it started again. It's like a leg going out, you just can't stand on it.
This isn't occasionally where habit could be picked back up. This has been a problem every day of my life.
In my experience, this has been the death of every bit advice I've gotten from a neurotypical person. A lot of them keep circling back to discipline or trying harder as a solution to a problem they can't make sense of. Lack of understanding isn't their fault, this is so far outside their frame of reference they can't make sense of it in a single conversation. Fortunately understanding isn't required, only the acceptance that other people have limits they don't have themselves.
What modern people usually lack is not time, but lack of energy. Usually this is thought as the energy to do stuff (like coding a side hussle in the evening). But often it manifests in a lack of energy:
1. to make a decision (to do something)
2. to slow down, to stop the current activity and to think with the rational mind.
So you need to recognize these things and do certain decisions beforehand to solve the problem. Stuff like:
1. Go to the gym in the morning, when you still have the decision energy.
2. Create a habit, linking a new habit with the old ones, in order to decrease the energy expenditure
3. Increase the stakes, like getting a gym buddy
4. Decide stuff beforehand. Pack the bag, set up the alarm clock (to go to gym, to go to sleep)
5. When you are tired, actually rest. Don't turn the tv on, don't scroll social media, stop touching yourself via phone. If you are tired, eat, go to gym or a walk, go to sleep or simply sit in your chair or lay on the sofa looking at the walls. I guarantee, watching at the wall for 30 minutes straight will give you great motivation to do something else more productive. Don't let the monkey in you convince you to do the unproductive things I mentioned. Stay strong and make a rational decision what to do instead of looking at the wall. Do the right thing, not the thing that may feel nice in the midst of it.
6. Take care of the nutrition/sleep in order to increase the energy reserves
I hope that helps.
I didn’t mention energy because energy has no relevance.
I’ve literally broken down crying because I really wanted to work but my brain refused to move. I was having such a great day and was really motivated. I spend hours and absolutely exhausted every bit of energy I had trying every advice that I’ve spent my entire life hearing. I could not get a single word out of my brain.
Nothing worked. I spent my entire childhood trying harder and got nowhere. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I get quite pissed off when people tell me to try hard harder.
This is backwards. In practice, it should be the exact opposite. ADHD people should be MORE vigilant regarding the correct behavior, rules, habits. It is neurotypical people who have some leeway to be lazy with what and how they do stuff, but ADHD have way smaller margin of error!
Sometimes there are things (noise in the room, other distractions, mess in tasks, etc.) that neurotypical can safely ignore, but that will make an ADHD person not able to work at all.
The fact that life is harder to organize and manage for ADHD people only means that they should pay EXTRA attention to doing right things the correct way.
Sure, ADHD people have their own peculiarities (as does any other neurotypical person), but in my experience this is a drop in a bucket of issues that are actually solvable with typical means without reinventing the wheel.
ADHD doesn't manifest the same way for everyone.
> pay EXTRA attention to doing right things the correct way
I do wrong things a different way all the time. I'm a maverick. I'm known to have creative solutions other people can't find. Not little ones either, 'we have been trying this for 20 years' ones. $multi-million strategic ones. I can't do the boring task list work you normies can do, but I have super powers you don't.
The breakthrough started and my recovery began when I stopped listening to people like you and focused on what I am good at.
But last night, I wanted to get to bed at 10pm, but I got some music stuck in my head. I had some music on to chill out, but something gripped me and I picked up my guitar. It felt like a moment of time but I look up and it is 1am. If I had gone to bed I would have lain awake all night. Meditation would have had this music dominating it and dragging me out of it. I'm in bed late on Saturday morning typing this, which will upset my whole weekend, but I wouldn't have slept, which would have been worse. So, I just went with it.
I envy people who can keep a routine, but I now pity people who don't have extraordinary moments of inspiration. I embrace my super powers and accept my life won't be normal. It will be exceptional.
Yes, but that doesn't make the ADHD fully go away.
>actually solvable with typical means without reinventing the wheel.
Yes, and they are defined by medical science, not your "think deeper".
>The fact that life is harder to organize and manage for ADHD people only means that they should pay EXTRA attention to doing right things the correct way.
Wow great insight, a bit hillarious with the part of asking adhd people pay extra attention. Should the guy with a neurological problem just pay extra attention to moving his leg, and he will soon run as fast as the rest?
Not an argument.
> Wow great insight, a bit hillarious with the part of asking adhd people pay extra attention. Should the guy with a neurological problem just pay extra attention to moving his leg, and he will soon run as fast as the rest?
Yes, if you have problems with inattentiveness, then you can't just eyeball the size of the fabric and cut. You actually need to measure. In worst case, you should measure and remeasure several times, as well as use the pen to draw a straight line with a ruler, instead of just keeping the finger and trusting that you can make the line straight during cutting.
If have no trouble concentrating, you can just work in a cafe or an open office. If you have problems, then take extra steps to get rid of distractions (quiet office, noise cancelling headphones, work-inducing music, etc).
If you have more difficulties getting into the zone, make extra effort organizing yourself: blocking working uninterrupted time on the calendar, disabling notifications, using airplane mode etc.
Have trouble concentrating and the mind wandering? Even more important to keep a proper task/idea/knowledge management system to offload the brain.
Keeping a knowledge management system is uttainable, I bet many with adhd have tried them all (and constantly try new ones instead of doing work)
you can only block so much. Some people suffer so much that days can get lost by doing virtuelly nothing. Its not like its so easy to sit around being unable to work, and still not check the web or whatever. Also even though you block, many people experience that they get contacted regardless, and loose the flow.
What you propose are great ideas for someone having a hard time concentrating, but that is something completely else from those suffering under a diagnosis.
Once again, this isn't the point. And I also didn't suggest it.
A normal adhd should be considered as a personal quirk, not an unescapable death sentence, like many seem to do.
> Its not like its so easy to sit around being unable to work, and still not check the web or whatever
Being still without distractions is hard for most people. Adhd people may have it harder, but fundamentally they don't differ from others.
That's the whole point of slowing down, concentrating on relaxing, not running away from the anxiety and to understand what your mind and body tell you.
> Some people suffer so much that days can get lost by doing virtuelly nothing.
"Virtually" - exactly my point. Most people have not been doing the actual nothing. If they were, they would actually see how much energy and motivation this type of rest gives.
I can obtain the same results as almost anybody at the vast majority of things. But if I am required to follow the same process, I simply cannot. I can't tell you how destructive the well-meaning people were who tried to tie me down to the way that works for their brain rather than saying, "OK, fine. Don't do it my way. Do it your way. Just get it done."
It's like saying to someone with dyslexia, "You just have to be MORE vigilant regarding looking at the letters, putting them together, and saying the words! There's no excuse for not following proper reading rules!"
It's just asinine. It's wonderful that you have figured out a set of "proper task-management rules" that work for your brain. I'm even happier for you if it was easier for you. That sounds nice.
But why on EARTH would the billions of living brains on this planet all function like yours? Does anything else in all those billions of bodies function exactly like yours? Of course not. And it would be ridiculous to expect them to.
Yes, literally everything in our bodies function exactly the wayvit function in other people. Never heard of anyone's heart working like another person's kidney.
If the organ is not working properly, it is considered a problem and stuff is done to fix it. The stuff that is from the same list as for any other person with a similar problem. Never heard of knee problems being fixed with dyalisis.
Nobody's talking about a heart functioning like a kidney. We're talking about the range of functions among people's hearts, or people's kidneys, or people's brains.
You're acting like everyone's heart is the exact same shape and has the same blood pressure and the same resting heart rate and the same outflow volumes, which is just stupid. There is a HUGE range of function among hearts. There is a HUGE range of "healthy enough to work" among hearts.
JUST LIKE THERE IS WITH BRAINS.
There's also a huge range of "not healthy enough to function under normal circumstances, but not bad enough to kill the person."
I don't believe anybody with the brainpower to create an email address, register for an HN account, and sign into it is actually somehow as ignorant of basic human biology as this, so stop trolling and go away.
I dont mean to say you implied it, but its easy to dig a larger hole when you believe you are special, or you have tried "all" the advice.
Every problem has a solution, and I beg you to search deeper to what you do even in task-paralysis states. That might be where your mission comes from.
It helped me to have a life goal that was bigger than life, ego, or energy. Maybe you havent found it yet. If you have, I apologize if I sound cocky!
I am brilliant at certain aspects of my job. I have read the books, had coaching etc. And yet today I still miss important meeting because I don't realise it is time to go...with a watch on my arm, outlook reminders popping up etc. I just hold attention so deep that I am never going to notice. It is what makes me great at my work. So now I am a manager I have developed some solutions. I hire people who compliment me, and I am open about my problem. It is normal for my team to walk in my office and say, 'are you coming to this meeting?'
Some people are special. The preferred term is neurodivergent. ;)
There are times you just can’t fix a broken brain by trying harder or finding an alternative.
It can be really difficult to understand if you’ve never experienced it yourself. For you there’s, always been a way to get something done.
What do you do when you try to throw something with your arm and your entire body doesn’t move? No matter what you try to do. You can’t get your body to move. I got some advice on how you should move your arm. :)
I know the feeling, and to assume I dont/have "always had a way" because I found a way out, iss a very victim way of living.
My advice still stands, look deeper. If you want to sit in a hole and repeat how there's no hope, you can, but it wont do anything.
You arent different or special. You have hope. I didnt have it easier, I fought harder
No you didn't. Try to build yourself up without putting others down, how is that challenge?
"Everybody wants to rule the world with tears for fare"
You are incredibly cocky, and naive and have very little insight on other peoples situation. You are reducing peoples various illnesses to something that can be solved if they just tried a bit harder not to be sick. If only it was so easy.
I've had severe mental illness and I suffer from it daily.
You still arent special. Im not lacking some unique viewpoint just because you are mentally ill. Try harder. Stop being weak.
Unless its schizophrenia/bipolar, then take ur meds
Some people really do just have to figure out a way to get through life missing a skill that "typical" brains have. It's not "hack it until you make your brain do the typical thing." It's "choose a field where you can get away with not doing the thing, or hire someone to do the thing, because you're not going to be able to do the thing, and all the advice in the world isn't going to change that."
You also totally missed the point of suggestions entirely. I assume that happened because you were out of brain/willpower energy.
My suggestions were not to try harder. They were the exact opposite, they were about:
1. constraining your energy output
2. being careful where and how you spend your energy
3. do a better targeting with your energy
4. hacks to do the same (or more) with less energy
5. restoring energy
Please reread my previous message after you sleep and with a good mood. Assume that I actually know what I am talking about (because I truly do) and my goodwill. Assume that I did not spend my time writing a long comment in order to anger or troll you, but because I wanted to help; I saw clear indicators of certain problems, to which I am able to provide solutions that work in practice.
I really do understand. These are all really great things, I'm bipolar and already use all of them. I have to. But they don't apply here.
I'm discussing a problem that willpower cannot fix.
Here's an analogy:
- Think of willpower as fuel you put into a train.
- You control how far the train goes by changing the throttle or amount of fuel.
- You have a bunch of freight cars behind you and you're ready to get out of the yard.
- Your engine doesn't have any wheels. Someone removed them last night. (This is an analogy, you can't get a different engine.)
- How much fuel do you need to get to your destination?
Bonus Round:
- Your boss starts asking why you haven't moved yet and won't believe you if you say the wheels were removed. Stop being lazy and get to work.
You are not allowed to disagree with this analogy. :) This is exactly what my life is like.
Please watch this fundamental video: https://youtu.be/bcKthx5LTbI
On a surface it is about dieting, but the lessons can be applied to the rest of the life.
Cheers! :-)
I try to do something and I have the physical sensation of hitting a wall that shouldn't be there. Thoughts never stop at that part of the brain.
I'm talking about a fundamentally different mechanism than thinking something is too hard. It's a hardware interruption that I have no control over.
I've spent my entire life working around this and it's difficult. Especially when everyone thinks I'm just being lazy or I just need to do this one thing. I'm still trying to figure out how to explain it better.
What will happen if you just rest? Sleep, eat, exercise/go on a walk, lay down. No phone, no social media, no doom scrolling, no tv, no netflix, no gaming. Just 100% effort of resting and recovering, without any distractions.
Would you not get bored at some point and will decide that it's better to complete the task rather than continue this boredom while fully rested
You say that like the distractions are exclusively outside. I'm not the person you're replying to, but if I close all my blackout curtains, turn off all the lights, and turn off all but the white noise, but I'm not sleepy, my mind will go in a thousand directions at once.
How do I or anyone else explain that to you? The challenge is in the brain. It's not an outside force. There is no boredom.
Yeah, and it is fine that the mind goes somewhere. This is called meditation and it is good for you. You get valuable insights, figure out important issues, get energy and motivation.
Take away the external reminders and my reality fragments into thousands of tiny pieces, all of which are just as real to me as the rest, just as pressing, just as important, or just as unimportant, because they all get lost in each other.
We are not describing the same thing. It's confusing that this is somehow not obvious from your side, because it's SCREAMING obvious from this side.
Can you give me research which shows that true multithinking is possible.
So no, I'm not going to follow you down a tangent that isn't actually related to what I'm saying.
Stop thinking about how to fix the problem. You might find this interesting if you look at it scientifically.
When it comes to things like ADHD and bipolar, executive function is compromised at the biological level. Put it simply, the baseline is broken.
You're talking about are inputs to this baseline. To use an analogy, explaining how to make macOS apps to someone who's making a Windows application. There are a lot of principles in common, but the implementations are very different.
The default state for this brain is restless, looking for things to focus on. The recovery methods you're talking about are sensory depth deprivation, the worst possible solution. For myself, the best thing I can do is feed the bastard carefully until it calms down. Think of using calm words to get a screaming toddler who just woke up to stop running around and go back to bed. That's not happening.
Sometimes I can't wrestle this thing into control and focus on what I want to. And you want me to relax? That's a bit optimistic. :)
With ADHD, there are a lot of individuals who are able to find a way to work with this and some use it to their advantage, masking the real cause. For those who have it worse, the underlying problem becomes visible, and they get asked why they can't be like other ADHD people who manage. It's like asking why a two year old can't act like a six year old.
No, you are pretty bad at communicating. You should try a bit harder, because this is obviously at 10% tops.
100%: There's no way you could ever understand me if I were trying to say something complicated. I'm much too intelligent. I have way more mental firepower than you do. I'm a very complex thinker, and you just can't keep up. Proving it to you would be a waste of time. It's just hopeless anyway. -- If communication isn't working, sure, it might be a comprehension error. But...it's rarely only a comprehension error.
A lot of people with depression and adhd will nod "yes" here. Sorry but you have no idea. Great it works for you.
When I am healthy I can work out 4-5 times a week (l<fting weights, climbing, running up to half marathon distances in training) have a full job and be a dad.
When I am ill all I can is to try my best to be a dad. You have no idea.
Has your lack of motivation ever stopped you from getting from your chair, and go to the toilet; instead you decided to pee and crap in your pants? How has it worked for you? Well enough that you have been repeating the behavior?
Is it really impossible for you to believe that someone else's brain might be this different from yours? Presumably you have no trouble believing someone's eyes might be completely different from yours (i.e., might exist but not see a damn thing), or their legs might be completely different from yours. Why should brains be any different? What possible reason could there be for that?
Why, when there are full-blown medical specialties dealing with these sorts of differences, do you maintain the sort of willful ignorance that denies other people's brains might be completely different from yours in a way that makes things that work for your brain not work at all for their brains?
Most neurodivergent people I’ve met accept my limitations and don’t expect what works for them to work for me. It might take a little explanation but they didn’t seem to get upset about it.
The few that have expected me to be like them, expected other people to be like them as well. So it wasn’t specific to me.
In this regard neurotypical advice _did_ actually help me I suppose. However, when applied to a habit not immediately linked to your existence, it is quite alienating to receive.
Those don’t bother me because they don’t fundamentally misunderstand the problem.
I have ADHD, and hate the feeling of being a victim. "I have this, so I can't do that. It's just the way it is." No! Not for this. Not when there are so many treatment options.
I accept that things may be harder for me than a typical person, that I may have to put in more work than other people to get the same results, that this is something that's very real that I have to deal with and manage at all times. That there will be times when I will fail and my stupid monkey brain will win the moment. But I won't let it define me, I won't let it dictate who I am and what I can and cannot do.
EDIT: Also, I mean to agree with you here: there's a point where no amount of discipline will work, and the advice to "just try harder" sounds like an alien telling you to just grow wings and fly. If you find yourself at that point, medicine can and will help. It also helps you be able to get in a routine of actually doing exercise, which in turn helps even more, and it becomes a sweet positive feedback loop.
If you don't have that, the skill needed to develop it is the skill to get someone to prescribe you amphetamines.
You seem to have a kind of "decision persistence" that I don't have, where having decided it once makes it still true in the actual moment of taking the action. It doesn't matter how many times I choose things in advance, in the hypothetical, for the future--and the future is always in the hypothetical. I still have to choose every moment, day in and day out, what I'm doing. Even now, it's not quite a foregone conclusion that I'm going to finish typing this and click the "reply" button. Probably will, but I won't know that for SURE until I've done it. I might decide it isn't worth it after all.
My brain simply does not consider past decisions binding on present activity. I might still decide to do the same thing I thought I would do at this time when I thought about this earlier, but I have to decide it again, because it hasn't happened yet. Every moment is a "deciding again," which means every moment needs willpower. Putting on one shoe doesn't guarantee the other shoe comes next. After a shit, pulling up my underpants doesn't guarantee the pants come next. Maybe I step out of the pants and am halfway through lunch before I realize I never pulled my pants up after the toilet and have been walking around my house without pants for 45 minutes.
"It just is" is not an experience I have. They're not excuses. The next thing just goes, right out of my head. I don't talk myself out of doing what I previously decided to do next or into something else. But there is no mechanism that makes something happen just because I decided it should earlier.
There always has to be another choice, in each moment, about what to do, and whether to keep doing it. Every one of these choices requires willpower, and there's only so much in the jar. But it's not like the jar fills up once, overnight, and I just draw from the jar until it's empty and then it's gone for the day. The jar arbitrarily loses and gains willpower ad hoc throughout the day. So I can always reach into the jar, and sometimes there's some willpower in there and I can do the thing that Planning Smeej thought would be a good idea yesterday, but sometimes there's not, and nobody knows what's going to happen until maybe there is again later.
I don't know if I've made that make any sense. I just know that you're describing a reality fundamentally different than the one I experience.
I think it can be generalized as:
Find the thing to do that doesn't require much effort but puts you in the context of doing the effortful thing. Do that thing. See if you "want" to do the effortful thing. Otherwise go home.
Cleaning? Put the vacuum in your hands and see if something happens.
At least I think that's how it works for me.
The points when it's hardest to make it work is when there's lots of distractions. Like when you try to get into a routine of doing work at a computer.
It’s not easy for anyone to develop these style of habits and routines. It’s just hard mode and takes much more effort for folks with executive dysfunction.
The first rule is choose one thing and stick to it. With realistic goals. Mine was: I am going to walk at least 6,000 steps a day. No matter what. Zero excuses.
Since schedules are insanely difficult for me I set none. If I remembered I still needed to walk and I could do it in the moment I simply prioritized it. It’s surprisingly easy to fit in 10 minutes of walk in throughout your day, even when working a desk job. It could simply mean pacing while on conference calls.
Another rule was “if I fail to achieve it one day, I must achieve it the next” to avoid the “all or nothing” mental trap.
This was to the level of getting into bed, checking step counter, and if I was under target literally getting out of bed, putting clothes back on, and walking until I hit it. I had all sorts of technical widgets to enforce this and help remind me.
It totally sucked for the first couple months. Then it started to just become a thing. Then I ramped it up to 12k/day until I hit a weight goal.
It’s the best thing I ever did for my mental health since it started a snowball in other areas of my life. I was able to swap out a few days of steps for an hour workout (beginning with a personal trainer to force me to show up 2 days a week minimum). I was and still am constantly 10 minutes late to my session but no matter what I show up to them.
The weeks I miss them due to schedule conflicts or travel I feel much worse mentally. And it’s easy to give into the anxiety and panic over not having enough time in the day to fit it in after procrastinating on other items. You also start to realize that those other items are probably not as important as you thought.
I find routine and habits over schedule and calendaring are hyper-important for my dysfunction and have leaned into that. It’s more of a “this thing before that thing” sort of deal vs “at 3pm I do the thing” since the latter would go off the rails immediately.
It’s possible. Just the hardest thing I’ve maybe ever accomplished in life so far.
Gonna be different for everyone and you probably need that one moment of clarity to get the initial motivation. The motivation will go away, but the habits and discipline will probably stick around.
Been using this same method to build habits and routine into other areas of my life now as well.
I find the same. To keep myself honest, I built a simple habit tracking sheet (grid paper; 1 page/month; x axis list items; y axis list days). Keep it simple to reduce friction, no more than a handful of items, and try to stack habits and routines. Focus on anchor points of the day like sleep/work/exercise/nutrition/meal prep/tidy house. I’ll also track non-action items like coffee/alcohol/anxiety/video games/book reading, etc. Include the process as part of end of day wind down and reflection.
There are better examples in my opinion than just doing something at 18:00 every day. There's a technique called habit stacking where you identify all the habits you already have at a given time (like when you first wake up), and then you add one more at the end. It's easier to introduce a new habit this way, and it becomes ingrained more quickly, resulting in less need to use executive function.
There are still more techniques. An example from my personal life: in my whole adult life, I've never gone to the gym... unless I sign up for a gym that's right across the street from my workplace. Then it happens like clockwork. If all I need to do is walk across the street, I end up in the gym, and inevitably, I work out. If I need to drive 20 minutes though, well my willpower just ain't that great, so it basically never happens.
The best book I've read on this topic is Atomic Habits by James Clear. He goes deep down the rabbit hole of these techniques you can employ and touches on the research it's all based on. The brain's not a computer so I mean it's not all just going to come together automatically, but in my experience this stuff does work.
Gosh it must be nice to have at least an ordinary amount of executive function skills. Is it really this easy for neurotypical people to build routines? That's really all it takes?
I don't see how this removes willpower at all. It just determines what time you have to use it.