> If you're depressed or socially anxious, you wouldn't just accept these as the way you are, would you?

Have you considered that you might have an anxiety problem?

You mention being crippled by fear. You mention a constant gnawing. You mention a daily rehearsal of a major anxiety, your always feeling behind, frequently feeling exhausted and terrified, an endless state of panic, and being endlessly haunted. That is a whole lot of anxiety, and there are other kinds of anxiety disorder besides social anxiety.

My tip for you: find a therapist you like and go regularly. You've got two problems here: you are trapped in a behavioral loop, struggling for context. And, being young, you don't have enough life experience to see as many patterns as somebody older, especially somebody who spends all day talking with people. Regularly seeing a good therapist will help with both of those. They can also help you consider whether your level of anxiety is unusual, and what your options are.

I should add that when I was your age, I was too arrogant to do that. I was sure that by dint of raw smarts I would figure it out on my own. Which was both true and dumb: reinventing psychology from scratch would in some sense be an achievement, but like most reinventing of the wheel, it's not an achievement that anybody cares about, not even me.

Anyhow, I have worked out an anxiety-related checklist over time. Now when I notice anxious feelings, the things I wonder:

* Am I getting enough exercise? 30-60 mins cardio 3-4x week is about right for me.

* Am I carrying a lot of stress in my body? Yoga, massage, and hot tubs are helpful.

* Are there environmental factors? E.g., noisy environment, messy living space.

* What am I eating? My mood is most stable on foods with low glycemic index, worst with junk food.

* Am I getting enough sleep? I do best with ~7.5 hours on a very regular schedule.

* What's my drug intake? More than 100mg caffeine or 2 drinks alcohol and my mood will be less stable the next day.

* Am I taking my vitamins? This could be placebo, but I take a B-100, a sublingual B12, and some fish oil. My doctor recommended them for reducing the effects of stress.

For me, my procrastination is directly driven by feelings of anxiety. The more chill I am, the more I get done.

Also: are you getting enough social interaction?

I live in Japan, most of the time holed up in my apartment and hardly interacting with anyone. On the rare occasions I get to enjoy a true fun interaction with someone, it really helps improve mood and reduce anxiety.

> find a therapist you like and go regularly.

In England the BACP are the registration body you should look for if you go private.

Short courses of CBT for anxiety should be available on the NHS - either see your GP (and you may need to push this) or self-refer. A web-search of your county and terms like "IAPT" (improved access to psychological therapies) or "talking therapies" should return your local number.

You might find good results after a short course - 8 to 14 weeks.

Here's the NICE guidance for anxiety disorders: http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs53

It's easy to think of anxiety as being a mild disorder, but it can become pretty severe. OCD is an anxiety disorder and that can hospitalise people.

I like your list of lifestyle interventions.

This sounds about right for me. I had the same problem as OP and still do, but I've come to realize that the points you've mentioned above are really important.

I actually never realized how anxious I was, I just never knew I had it. It was really crippling. I've been trying to elevate my anxiety and as a result I've been more productive. I use my github page as indicator, it was empty for 2 years until recently. Almost two months now of me working on new frameworks and my projects.

This. Happy to talk in private about my experience with anxiety and procrastination. "Find a therapist you like" is great advice: it may take a couple tries. Good luck!

This is a very good list. I see huge differences in anxiety and productivity (time in the zone) based on diet and sleep.

This is fantastic advice for anxiety.

You don't have an age problem or a distractibility problem, you have an anxiety and neurotic problem. Who cares what other people are doing, at what age? There's always someone better than you. And almost everyone would rather be lazy, that's not unique to you.

Just work on your project and be happy with your accomplishments. Find something to give meaning to your life like volunteering for a charity. It's vanishingly unlikely anyone will care about your (or the vast majority of peoples') legacies 100 years from now. Honestly, just enjoy your work, help others, and stop thinking it's a competition.

edit: I'm significantly older than you, so 1) I have some perspective on this and 2) sorry if this was less sensitive than what your generational peers might say or lacked trigger warnings.

This hits it in the head for me.

The problem is not how to become "successful" it's how to stop caring about it.

I suffer from the same weakness as you. I always have. I also love my profession, programming, more than anything I've ever done in my life. Also, like you, when I get into the flow of something, I do it better than most people I know. I go hard for days/weeks, but when it's over I can spend endless amounts of time playing video games or clicking around on the internet. All the while reading what the "elite" developers in my field are churning out in a state of awe. How do they have time for all of this? Does David Nolan have some sort of time altering machine??

I'm a little older than you, so I'll give some advice about how to deal with our personality "flaw." Embrace it. Be aware of it, be OK with it, and learn how to make it a positive thing. A few years ago I stopped worrying about being better than some programming idol. You're probably a pretty creative, innovative type if you're anything like me. You can't teach that, in my opinion, and that's a big advantage. You have this skill, programming, and you enjoy it, mostly. You also enjoy some down time. Use your down time how you wish, but always be thinking about the next big idea be it a business, a technology, or a new library. When you find the right idea, it will give you a jolt. "Holy sh#t, no one else has done that yet?" These moments are the ones that catapult me back into that driven, ambitious mode that makes me so productive.

Just remember that no one expects more of you than you. Don't be so hard on yourself. Know yourself and learn how to take advantage of your natural traits.

I'm a 25 year old, not a hot shot by any means, but I try to be aware of my motivations and ambitions. The thing that people seem to be debating here is whether determining factors are innate traits and traits that are by choice or are the result of discipline or history or experience or a combination of these. For my own sake, I'm hoping it is the latter, as I think OP is.

To be honest, I do struggle with procrastination, and it hurts me to think that by now, I could have finished that miniproject that I've been working on or that other one, etc, and I use some of that as motivation to push me back into the act. I'm an introvert (which has it's own downsides), and I leverage that to spend my free time on my projects and learning. I do however try to minimize the "souless fun" time and maximize doing things that I find fun but I see as productive. The reason I even try is I believe I can overcome my procrastinating personality and become much more productive.

If I believe you, then I give up on that desire to better myself. should I? Perhaps it is different for different people?

EDIT: My final statement sounds challenging, but if you think it is healthier for me to not fight that part of me, then that's fine. I welcome your point of view; I want a discussion, not validation or an apology.

I'm definitely not going to advocate that someone not try to better themselves. If you feel like you want to try to overcome some part of your personality that you're not comfortable with then that's a positive thing. I do, however, think that after multiple failed attempts at overcoming that trait, it's best to reevaluate your perspective on it. Sometimes it's best to admit that something is just a part of who you are and that it is, in fact, a flaw. Of course, we are all flawed in some ways, but it's how we learn to live with those admissions that will determine your self-esteem. Sometimes, even, what we think are flaws from one point of view are actually advantages when viewed from another. For example, procrastination is generally seen as a flaw or a "bad thing", but if you learn to take advantage of that by fully thinking out the problem you're actually trying to solve when you finally DO start working, you might might find that you create brilliant, innovative solutions to difficult things. Solutions that the non-procrastinator didn't think of because he was too fast to the keyboard.

I appreciate your reply. I think one of the reasons I feel that it isn't an innate trait for me at least is that I didn't procrastinate as much as I do now until I started college. Perhaps I always had this tendency, but its intensity is something I hope to temper. It isn't until recent months that I've decided to do something about it, so hopefully, I'm not due for surrender yet.

I had a rather romantic and gifted English teacher in my first year of college who claimed that procrastination is a part of the creative process, likening it hatching an egg, she claimed that procrastinating helped mature ideas before you put pen to paper, similar to the idea to use procrastination time to fully develop a solution to a problem, as you said. Yes, there is a correlation of my hearing of her doctrine and my increased procrastination, but I can't blame her for it.

I've had the same issue in my career. I always thought of myself as lazy. I loved what I did, but my drive evaporated after 3-6 months on any given project (or any given hobby, for that matter). I always thought of people as falling along two spectrums: naturally talented and hard working. I saw that those young multi-millionaires generally had an overabundance of both. I've always seen that I have a whole lot of talent, but I simply couldn't find the motivation to work hard for extended periods.

After a decade of roller-coaster productivity, I finally went to see a therapist to discuss these issues. That was the best decision of my professional life. I was able to talk through my issues, but after a few months of behavioral changes (light box therapy, exercise, mindfulness, etc.), the issue, while better, was not fixed. So I was referred to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed me with ADHD. I got a prescription for Adderall, which I've been on for the past 4-5 years now. It has turned my productivity and career around. I'm making twice what I was making 5 years ago and finally am seeing a lot of the potential that I and others saw in me finally being realized.

ADD (ADHD is the technical diagnosis, but I have no "HD" symptoms at all) isn't really about "having the attention span of a gnat"; it's about inability to sustain focused attention long term, about not being as excited by the last 20% of the project as you are about the first 80%, about not being able to get started--but once you did, it's usually interesting enough to keep your attention for the rest of the day. That definition certainly fit me.

The OP said a couple of comments above: "If you're depressed or socially anxious, you wouldn't just accept these as the way you are, would you?" Chances are that if you are depressed or socially anxious to a point that it affects your life in negative ways, you'd see a professional about the issue and may end up with medication to help with the issue. You don't just wish those conditions away; nor do you wish ADD symptoms away. I'd recommend considering talking to someone about your issues with productivity.

I'm not saying that it's for everybody, nor do I believe in overmedication, but from my experience, which sounds exactly like the OP's, it was the right choice for both me and my career.

I also agree with jeletonskelly here: to a certain extent, embrace your "laziness"... laziness leads to working smarter, not harder. Know your strengths and flaws and come up with a way to use both of them to your advantage.

First of all, it's not a race. Statistically speaking you aren't number 1, and that's OK. It doesn't mean you stop trying, but you can stop competing.

I'd say find out what is important to you. What is important to you is not what you'd rather do or even what you love. What do you think is important for the world, for your life? Do you want to raise a child? Do you want to help society communicate? Do you want to solve a problem? If you couldn't do any "thing" what idea is the most important to you?

Idleness isn't a weakness. It's a response. Idleness is what your mind craves when it is under too much stress. Stress is mostly internal, you can be idle and still be under a lot of stress because you hate the fact that you're idle, this can be paralyzing.

However, if you didn't feel that idleness was bad, you would not feel that stress, and you wouldn't be trapped in idleness. You'd still be idle, but it would be easier to take action.

You focus on what you haven't done. This is the worst. You aren't excited by the cool things that those programmers have done, you are disappointed that you didn't do them.

Instead you should focus on the things that you are doing. Don't "force yourself" to go and work on something, that only reinforces that feeling and will cause you to retreat from that stress as soon as you can.

One thing I do in this sort of circumstance is try to do nothing. Simply be idle, but don't go and distract myself with the Internet, just do absolutely nothing, get a tea and stare out the window, do this for a few hours. Any feeling of things I have to do, I just let them go away. Pretty soon, there will be things that I really want to do. When I'm at that point then I'll go to work.

TV and Internet are terrible though, you go to them because you're looking to be idle, but they're just stimulating enough to keep you from relaxing. But it's not idleness that's bad. The desire to be idle is a response, and it's healthy, just learn to do it efficiently. Don't do it in front of the Internet or the TV because they distract you from actually being idle.

I wouldn't say idleness is inherently a bad trait. Doing something all the time is a good way to burn out and miss out on actually living.

It's great that you have a passion for programming and you get into the flow of working on something you actually enjoy. I can promise you that most - if not all - devs go through such period of flow and not being in the flow. Sometimes you lock on to a project and spend days on it, other times you don't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole for days. I don't think that is bad unless it is harming some important end goal like a company deadline or life goals.

Are there other things you are interested in? If so, you can fill your so-called idle times with those. HN here, going outside and meeting people (if that's your thing), a hobby or two that you can naturally flow into as well.

If programming is your only passion, then you can fill a good chunk of idle time with other programming-related problems you find interesting. Random library you want to write? Go for it. If charity is your thing, find some group for social good that can benefit from your dev skills - make their website better, write an app for them, improve their inventory system, etc.

That said, it takes conscious effort to not be swallowed by the stuff that makes the news. Forget about those who seem to be starting $90000 billion businesses at 23. They've found something they like and it worked out well for them, great! Find your own interests and work on cultivating and growing those instead.

You need to read The War of Art.

> “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

> “Every sun casts a shadow, and genius's shadow is Resistance. As powerful as is our soul's call to realization, so potent are the forces of Resistance arrayed against it. Resistance is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, harder to kick than crack cocaine. We're not alone if we've been mowed down by Resistance; millions of good men and women have bitten the dust before us. And here's the biggest bitch: We don't even know what hit us. I never did. From age twenty-four to thirty-two, Resistance kicked my ass from East Coast to West and back again thirteen times and I never even knew it existed. I looked everywhere for the enemy and failed to see it right in front of my face.”

That book is a treasure trove in how to change your thinking and defeat this. But it does require changing your thinking and a great deal of discipline.

And Nancy Sinatra in "You Only Live Twice":

  You only live twice
  Or so it seems
  One life for yourself
  And one for your dreams

Its use in the last episode of Mad Men -- where Don is watching a fired colleague contemplate the life not lived -- was brilliant.

In a similar vein I think these lines from T.S.Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men" beautifully expresses one's struggles with the self:

  Between the idea
  And the reality 
  Between the motion 
  And the act
  Falls the shadow

  Between the conception 
  And the creation 
  Between the emotion 
  And the response 
  Falls the shadow

  Between the desire
  And the spasm 
  Between the potency
  And the existence
  Between the essence
  And the descent
  Falls the Shadow

OP, ignore my speech if it's a bit too much. I suppose you just have to find a balance and take some natural breaks.

Please don't do this : "for days and work on my projects with hardly a break for food and sleep"...At least, question yourself : how much of driving oneself is excessive? Generally, we don't pause to think about these things, and that's why, when you take a break, you crash. The pendulum swings to the other extreme, tortoise and hare, yada yada... you get it. With a handle like "tastyface", I know you get it :-))

(I'm just kidding with you. Please don't take this as an offensive statement)

It sounds like you have two problems: one long-term and one short-term.

Long-term problem: Comparing yourself to others. When done in modest amounts this can be a huge source of inspiration. But taken too far and it becomes a sure path to anxiety. Beyond that threshold the only person you should be comparing yourself to is the "you" from yesterday.

Short-term problem: Sounds like you have an addiction to distraction. I suffer from this also and just started reading this[0]. Too early into it to tell if it will help but so far it looks promising. I've also found the Pomodoro technique helpful.

[0]http://www.amazon.com/The-Distraction-Addiction-Information-...

I have just one question. Do you (day)dream about code? If so, you're golden... This might sound flippant, but I have my best ideas and revelations while I'm being "idle" (showering, walking the dog, watching mindless TV). Desk-time is overrated in my book. Stuff needs to "percolate".

Yeah, pretty much. If I hit a sweet spot in my project, I take a lot of pleasure in just thinking about the architectural decisions and data structures while going for a walk or something. :)

Here's some of the science for why we come up with the best ideas when our brains are turned "off" -- it allows the brain to make other connections that we aren't overly controlling it to make. If it works for you, meditation could also be a useful tool for harnessing these moments: http://lifehacker.com/why-great-ideas-always-come-in-the-sho...

I have come to accept that my way of working is in bursts. Whether this is at a 9-5 admin job (work intensely 9-10:30, slow down until 12, work intensely 1-2:30, take it easy the rest of the day unless something comes up), or working on projects (do nothing for a week or two, or a month, then push out a months work in a week).

While studying, I used to beat myself up about the fact that I could not get into the habit of reading every night, and studying a few hours every day.

Sure, sometimes if I just go and start doing the task I need to do, then it starts to flow, but mostly if my head is not in the right place to do it, then what you get is lackluster output.

Some people are the "Work steadily on a regular basis" on a project, others are the "18h days for 5 days and then done with the whole thing".

The concerning part of your post is that you feel you would sit in front of the TV depressed. Have you checked with your doctor if you are actually depressed?

Beyond that, it took me until my early 30s to realise that I should not beat myself up for not operating the way I assumed everyone else does. Ironically, people are under the impression that I work non-stop all the time or that I studied every night, because that is how they perceive that I must be doing things. Once I found this out from talking to people that I was in awe of, only to find they thought I was doing fairly well and must be working my butt off, I realised that even though I have a tendency to beat myself up about my work patterns, I should perhaps give myself a little more leeway and look at the results.

Perhaps it comes down to pressure as well, some people work very badly under deadline pressure, others are unable to be productive until they have the deadline pressure, but have had all the details in their minds for the rest of the project.

Here's two thoughts to keep in mind that might help. 1. Look up the ages of the most famous professional athletes on your favorite team. Odds are you are older than most of them. For a sec it might feel like you feel reading about younger programmers, but after a moment you'll have easy perspective that you are not them and nothing is comparable and that's ok. It's hard to regret that you never became a pro athlete.

2. Yes, yesterday is gone...but think about all the other people you are ahead of...half the planet isn't even on the internet yet. Probably less than a fraction of 1% of the world is a junior dev. You are literally ahead of 99% of the world. Don't lose your dominance and fall behind more people...youll never be ahead of everyone...but you can stay ahead of almost everyone!

Is that tendency toward idleness punctuated with productive spurts actually a weakness? I would hold that it is actually the appropriate situation in many respects, and that our society simply hasn't adapted to account for it yet. One of the only physical characteristics that humans have going for them compared to other animals is their physical endurance. We're built for long stretches of physical work. We are not, however, built for long stretches of intellectual work. Economically speaking it also makes sense. While a worker performing physical tasks establishes a level of productivity and remains mostly constant, an intellectual worker multiplies the productivity of others tremendously. They change the nature of the work being done. Economically, at least in a capitalist system, this is supposed to result in those intellectual workers seeing their compensation rise tremendously as well - providing them with the resources to take long breaks allowing them time for contemplation, improvement of their skills, etc. Were it not for the illegal actions of major tech companies early in the growth of the software field, we might see compensation related to the value intellectual workers produce. As it is, they set the standards for what such workers should be paid and divorced it completely from the value of the work being performed.

This has happened before, back during the Industrial Revolution. Factories and mechanical automation enabled workers to leap in productivity over their craftsmen predecessors, and factory owners divorced their compensation from the value of the work. Eventually, whole families had to work extremely long hours 6 or 7 days a week just to be able to afford to eat. Society let this happen because they saw the workers as not deserving of a share of the value they were creating because 'a machine was really doing the work and the owner paid for the machine'. Things eventually reached a breaking point and society forced factory owners to pay a single person enough to raise an entire family on for 40 hours of work in a week. This was a monumental change. Whereas previously about 3 incomes with each working 60+ hours a week was necessary to raise a family, 1 income from 40 hours reaching the same amount was not a minor adjustment.

Social change takes time. Mental workers being a large group is really quite new, and society hasn't yet figured out how to handle them best. They're trying to just treat them the same as physical workers, which will inevitably fail simply because the human brain is not built for decades of constant mental work.

Reading the OP and this comment I can't help but think "hmm, sounds like me when I'm unmedicated."

I'm a very ambitious and motivated person. I love stupid hard, nitty gritty problems. I've been writing code since I was 8. I landed my first coding job when I was 16 (working for the USAF Research Laboratory, no less). I'm now 29.

Growing up I was always driven by my interests. If I wasn't interested, I wasn't going to do it. If I was interested there was no stopping me from doing it. I was smart enough that I coasted through high school, but when I hit college I very nearly flunked out.

The problem was that my interests ran hot and cold. One day/minute/hour I'd be deeply interested in some subject, and the next I couldn't care less. This would happen with topics which I knew were captivating to me in a general sense. Sometimes I'd get so interested in some project I'd skip other classes for a week or more because I couldn't stop thinking about it.

However most of the time I'd find that without exercising hurculean amounts of discipline there was no way I was going to be able to stay on track well enough to study and finish homework/projects.

I'd sit down for a lecture with all kinds of ambition to focus and absorb the material. 20 minutes in my brain was somewhere else and the margins of my notebook were filled with mindless doodles.

When my grades dropped low enough my school's intervention programs kicked in. It was suggested that I go get checked out for learning disabilities. Since I felt somewhat compelled to show I was making an effort, I did.

I figured I didnt have any kind of disorder - especially ADHD. I wasn't hyper, and when I was "in the zone" it was nearly impossible for me to shake my focus.

It turns out that having ADHD doesn't necessarily mean that you are never focused. It just means you have a very difficult time choosing to be focused. In fact, hyperfocusing (marked by losing track of time, forgetting to eat, etc) is a common symptom.

Occasionally I go mine my old college notes for some obscure detail. With a single glance you can easily tell if a page was written pre-medication or if it was written post-medication.

If you think this story echos your own experiences and struggles, do yourself a favor and go have a chat with a psychiatrist or neurologist. It may just change your life in a huge, incredible way.

Finally, do try to stop comparing yourself to others in such a destructive way. Success stories are a bit like airbrushed models in lingerie ads. They don't give you the whole story. They're there to capture your eyeballs with hopes that they can be monetized, marketed to, or both.

Try to focus on incremental goals, instead. Scope these goals with a focus on finishing rather than perfection, and don't beat yourself up for not being superhuman. Specifically, try your best to fight the thought that success is predicated upon the kind of hard work that produces exhaustion. Success comes from routinely focusing on well-scoped, iterative goals.

So, you think inability to focus is the cause of your interests running "hot and cold"?

On medication (assuming some kind of CNS stimulant?) do you find that you're less prone to get excited about new things, and spend more time on things you're already invested in?

For me, it's really easy to get excited about new things. I throw a lot of stuff at the wall. Some of it sticks, most of it doesn't. But the more things that manage to find their way into my interests, the less time I have to focus on any single one of them.

I've been able to work around this to a certain extent with some pretty strict scheduling, but no matter what I'm working on, there's always a piece of me that REALLY wants to be focusing on something else.

> So, you think inability to focus is the cause of your interests running "hot and cold"?

Absolutely, but this may be unique to me. I find complex things interesting. If I can't maintain focus long enough to get a certain level of complexity all loaded into the forefront of my consciousness, I find that I don't become interested when I otherwise would.

> do you find that you're less prone to get excited about new things, and spend more time on things you're already invested in?

No, and yes, respectively.

I am still subject to distraction while medicated, especially from new and interesting things. I'd guess that new things are as likely to pique my interest whether or not I'm medicated.

The difference is that medication makes it easier for me to decide on a scope for my current activities and makes it so that a conscious decision is required in order to react to a stimulus or tangent which would take me out of that intended scope. Without medication I don't usually have direct control over this choice, and I'm very infrequently conscious of it.

> there's always a piece of me that REALLY wants to be focusing on something else

I experience this whether or not I'm medicated, but medication makes that voice in my head shut up once I get moving on an unrelated task.

This sounds very much like me. I beat it by finding a routine that works for me, a routine that helped me become more disciplined... and it took a while to beat, so don't expect immediate results. Also, while this worked for me, it may not work for you, everyone [despite those telling you that you're not a unique snowflake] is different and different things work for each of us so take what is helpful from my routine and ignore the rest, YMMV.

First step: Finding your zone. This is a matter of conditioning and conditioning doesn't come easily. Find something that puts you in a zone of focus. It doesn't matter what the focus is on, it doesn't matter what that zone is - the key is finding focus and maintaining it for longer and longer periods until you can easily maintain focus for a number of hours at a time [I'm told there are drugs that do this very effectively, but I personally try to avoid drugs wherever possible]. Whatever it is should be something that doesn't allow you to lose your focus or give up, even when the going gets tough and every instinct in you is telling you to throw in the towel.

For me it was cycling - totally unrelated to programming. It was better for me than being in a gym because if I decide to stop pedaling, I stop going anywhere. In a gym, this means just getting off the bike and I'm no further behind. If you're 10 miles from home and stop pedaling, you're 10 miles from home and the only way back home is to get back on your bike and start pedaling again. Sitting on the side of the road procrastinating isn't going to help, nor is it going to be in any way enticing to sit there. After 40 miles, you could be exhausted and realizing you still have a 5 mile climb ahead of you before you can put your bike down; there's no way around it, you just have to get on and do it.

I've set up a playlist on my phone of music that runs around 130-140 bpm [that's approximately the speed of club music that makes you wanna dance] and will run without looping for the duration of my ride. I listen to the same playlist every ride. You might get sick of it, but you listen anyway. After a few weeks of agony and wanting to throw in the towel but doing it anyway you start to find peace in the pain and it becomes a meditation, you don't even hear the music consciously any more but the beat drives you forward, you find the zone and it's just you, the pain and the road and before you know it the circuit is over. For me this process took a number of weeks, but now, if I put that playlist on, even if I'm not on my bike, my brain snaps into that zone. It's been conditioned to focus when that playlist comes on, just like Pavlov's dog salivating when the bell rings. [This requires ongoing maintenance]

Step 2: Remove necessary distractions. When I say necessary, I mean unavoidable things that will need doing and will break your focus when they are required to be done because you didn't take the preemptive strike of killing them off first. Things like important phone calls to your accountant or the bank. If you can't focus while you have a messy desk, clean your desk, get your coffee, eat your breakfast, do all of these unavoidable things first.

Step 3: Understand the problem intimately, ensure that you can recite it inside outside, upside down and backwards. You don't want to have to keep going back to ensure you understand the problem, this will break your focus. If you need to pester someone to help you understand the problem, pester them until you have fully digested every nuance of what it is you're trying to achieve.

Step 4: Understand the solution to that problem intimately. Ensure that you understand every single step that will take you from where are right now to where you need to be. Any pieces you don't understand, go back and reread step 4. If you keep having to come back and figure stuff out, this will break your focus. Again, pester whoever you need to in order to completely understand the path to the solution.

Steps 3 and 4 are my biggest triggers for procrastination. If I don't understand the problem or the solution to that problem well enough, I can't maintain focus. It might take me days to get down to it if I let myself skip either of these steps - so I don't.

Step 5: Everything else can wait: No Facebook, no Hacker News, no Blinkfeed, no Quora, no email, no phone calls, no text messages, no whatever else it is you like to waste time with. Put them all aside and have the discipline to stay away from them until you're finished this step. Now, do whatever it was from Step 1 that puts you into your focused zone. Get on with completing the steps you've laid out in Step 4.

Step 6: You're done, go reward yourself with all those other distractions that you put aside to complete Step 5. Congratulations.

Wow, this is eerily close to describing me. Even the bit about your first coding job being at a young age at a research laboratory (though mine was a university).

> When my grades dropped low enough my school's intervention programs kicked in. It was suggested that I go get checked out for learning disabilities. Since I felt somewhat compelled to show I was making an effort, I did.

This is where the stories diverge though. My college's intervention program was basically them calling me lazy and forcing me to sign a paper agreeing that I would improve. I knew I couldn't accomplish that, so I didn't re-enroll the next semester.

I had always accepted that I was very lazy and learned to work around/with it. But over the past few years I feel like it has been getting much worse. My passions are starting to feel like chores. I used to practice the guitar for several hours each day, but now it's closer to an hour each month. Even sitting down to watch a whole movie on Netflix can be tough. I'm not sure if I've watched even a single movie in it's entirety at all this year.

But of course, I won't even notice myself spending 4 hours aimlessly browsing the web without leaving my chair until I realize that I've wasted my night...

It's gotten so bad that I have considered it might not just be laziness and comments like yours are really encouraging. But I don't know where I'd begin. And, frankly, the idea of seeing a specialist for help or medication really scares me.

Do I just google for psychiatrists near me and give one a call? Would I need to find one that specializes in ADHD? Are there any websites that can help direct me?

I really appreciate you taking the time to write this comment by the way.

> the idea of seeing a specialist for help or medication really scares me.

Don't let it. You're seeking help voluntarily. Assuming something is actually wrong with your brain, it's worth it to address it head-on. Worst case, you wind up with a bad doctor and you have to go find a new one. Best case, you gain some tools to help you gain a much higher degree of control over your life.

> Do I just google for psychiatrists near me and give one a call? Would I need to find one that specializes in ADHD? Are there any websites that can help direct me?

What country are you in? If you're in the states, I'd start with your insurance company. Most insurance companies have directories of in-network specialists. If your insurance is shit and doesn't cover specialist visits, then yeah - I'd just Google around. Absent recommendations, look for somebody board-certified [1]. I happened to luck into a doctor who had both psychiatric and neurological specialities.

In New Zealand you must start off by asking your GP for a referral to a psychiatrist (you may need to do this in the USA if your insurance requires a referral). Explain your concerns with concentration, and that you'd like to be screened for ADHD and other related conditions. At this point if they're well-informed they'll likely ask you a few questions about it and offer some advice, but since you're asking to see a specialist they should be willing to make a referral. If they're not well-informed, they'll either skip the questions & counsel or tell you to piss off. If you get the referral, you'll go see a psychiatrist. I have no idea what the diagnosis process is like here, however - I was diagnosed in the states. However, when you are diagnosed your psych will receive a special authority number. Eventually this number will be transferred over to your GP once your treatment regimen is stabilized.

Aside: In the states it's not likely that your GP will tell you to piss off when asking for a psych/neuro referral. Also in the states GPs may offer to treat you directly w/o a specialist. This is illegal in New Zealand, as general physicians aren't typically qualified in this area. Really - go see a specialist.

The diagnosis process is nothing to be worried about, though it could take a bit of time. The process can take a few hours, or a few 1-2 hour sessions. If I recall correctly, they did an ADHD questionnaire, the MMPI [2], an IQ test, an "IQ achievement test," a few very brief visual/spatial tests which supposedly look for neurological symptoms schizophrenia, and a session or two of discussion with a psychologist about what my goals for improvement were, where I felt I was failing, etc. I think my range of testing was a bit more in depth than usual, as they were looking for a bunch of different learning disorders. After all this they discussed the results of each of the tests with me, explained my diagnosis, and set me up with the psychiatrist to begin a treatment regimen.

1: http://www.abms.org/board-certification/ 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personali...

This sounds A LOT like myself. I've never really considered going to a psychiatrist or neurologist, I thought my experience was somewhat normal. Do you mind elaborating some about what sort of medication/condition are you talking about?

I've been editing to fill in some more details. I'd rather not discuss my experiences with medications specifically here, but feel free to shoot me an e-mail (see profile) and I'll be happy to answer any questions I can.

If you want a possibly contrasting experience, feel free to email me (see profile), I was diagnosed with ADHD-C within the past year after many years of "this is just how I work, there's nothing that can be done".

I always look for behavioral solutions first, because they are often easier to execute than quasi-philosophical changes of outlook, and IMO are often underestimated in their effectiveness.

Have you tried waking up early? I find that I will similarly veg out from 5pm onward. For the past few months I've been faithfully getting out of bed at 5:45 every morning (with the help of a clock radio). The peace hours between 6 and 9 are my favorite part of the day now.

I have 3 hours to myself to work on projects, work on a MOOC, do a self-check and orient myself to deal with the day.

I've had roughly the same issues as your main post. If you are interested in a personal conversation, send me an email (profile).

Get rid of your TV. Problem solved.