So two pieces of advice. First, stop judging so much. Do what you love doing and don't feel the least bit guilty about it. Second, find things you love doing that generally make you a better person over time and do those things. This might require trying out new things every weekend for a while. Once again, don't judge yourself; instead find things you truly love that you feel are also good for you. There are plenty of these things for everybody, and each person has his own mix. Never feel like you have to have somebody else's.
A lot of commenters here are using the mountain metaphor. I'd like to say the same thing a different way. Stop being so goal focused and instead become habit focused. You don't want to accomplish some big goal, all you want to do is do fun stuff that makes you a better person. As a result of that, you'll probably accomplish some cool goals. But you'd never do that if you started from zero and tried to guilt yourself into striving towards some goal you couldn't care less about.
Habits are easy to change. The trick is to try new things and start with really, really small changes. Most of life is Zen anyway. You either enjoy doing things and die or you suffer and die. It's your choice.
I came up with a fundamentally "agile" solution: break the problems down into smaller tasks until the first task is too small to offer resistance.
E.g. rather than "write architecture specification", start with "outline the heads for architecture spec" and then maybe "draw rough sketch of architecture on paper" and then maybe "write introduction".
Almost everything in my to do list these days can be executed in under 10 minutes. As a bonus, it gives you the dopamine hit / satisfaction of watching a stead stream of items moving from 'todo' to 'done' state on a daily basis.
Stop trying to climb a mountain in a single step, and stop trying to climb the mountain flawlessly. Just getting to the top is an achievement these days. You probably don't want to attempt Everest or K2 right after deciding to climb a mountain. Maybe try a few smaller ones, or some hills first.
Even if you don't want to seek professional treatment, you could look up articles on solving problems and achieving goals written specifically for people with ADHD and see if those help.
If you realize that and manage to develop some empathy for yourself, you can overcome procrastination quite permanently. It is not a weakness to be fearful or have doubts (and in extension to be "lazy"), but a very human aspect of our nature and everybody. It is very very normal to be fearful of failing. But we have to do it anyway all the while telling us that it is ok to be a little anxious and that everybody else has the same feelings unless they are seasoned veterans in a specific topic. And it has been proven time and time again that the strongest and most successful human beings are the ones who accept this.
All other answer (i.e. "breaking down the problems") just combat the symptoms, not the problem itself.
* youtube/netflix
* social media
* news
* sugar
* video games
These are the things your brain goes towards automatically as an easier "win" than in facing the harder problem. Cutting them out will leave room for you to face harder challenges.
Check out Carol Dweck's research. Here's an early article: [https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/14/science/praise-children-f...]. Note that there are some criticisms of her work, and like many other studies in psychology, reproducibility is an issue. However, I found this quite useful in diagnosing my own thinking patterns towards effort.
For others, sometimes the best strategy is "embrace the suck": do it even though you're likely to fail. Keep repeating until you don't.
Having a good well rounded education or library of random facts helps you dig into problems because it gives you perspective. Learning should be a lifelong process.
Finally, physical health is very important. If you're not working out, start a regular, manageable, cardiovascular exercise routine. There's many benefits to this, better sleep, better focus, and confidence building.
After reading some of the response mentioning ADHD and the issues people have, I wanted to talk about my issues and see if it resonates with anyone else and if others relates to it. It's not something I ever really discussed with anyone and I do think it would be good for me to hear from others.
I have a mental barrier to doing certain tasks. For example anything related to paperwork or bureaucracy, I want to do those tasks, I know I must do them but whenever I start thinking of them I have a kind of barrier that stops me. It's extremely difficult to overcome that barrier. While I dearly wish those tasks were done, when it comes to starting, I cannot muster any of the motivation...
If I read a novel, I will either finish the novel within a few hours (or series of novels within a few days) and forget to eat or do anything else or, if I stop, I usually never come back to finish it.
It doesn't affect my work much because for work I do meet deadlines and I work from home but I'm still able to find the energy to do things. I do have one issue in that if I know exactly how to do a task, then the only for me to really complete it in time is for me to do it while watching tv or something that distracts my brain a bit. Otherwise, I quickly fall into looking at websites, spending time on hacker news or reading about anything new that piqued my interest.
I've never thought about seeing a therapist until now, but recently my girlfriend broke up with me mostly because of this and I still have a very hard time pushing myself to do what needs to be done (I really want to do it but whenever I start, I just hit a wall, it's like there's something pushing me to ignore it and do anything else... I sometimes even end up not wanting to do anything else but still can't muster the energy to start on those tasks)...
Apologies for the rambling...
Play video games that require intense focus for prolonged durations to perform well like Starcraft 2, CSGO, DOTA 2 helped me build mental endurance.
Reduce social media. I’ve found that this was the most productive. Social media was fragmenting my attention by making me anxious and addicted. After I reduced Reddit and Facebook usage, my mental discipline increased drastically.
Keep a journal. I’ve found verbalizing my thoughts in a simple and concise manner is hard and requires a lot of focused thinking.
Aerobic exercise helps; more circulation for your brain means it can work better
I’ve been dealing with the same problem too so I’ve been finding ways to engage myself.
One way to look at it is that it's a signal that you're working the wrong thing.
Something that's worked for me is to think of the contexts where you feel like you are motivated or productive, and then try to put yourself into those contexts. For example, on my own I have a hard time getting started and I get paralyzed by indecision. But when I'm on a team I feel like I can't let the other people down, and somehow the paralysis just disappears.
Good luck, and don't be too hard on yourself. You're a normal human.
If it is the first (spacing out), that could be ADD/ADHD. If it is the second, then it could be fear of failure / depression. If it is neither, then you will need to find a way to re-train your mind, by forcing yourself to see hard problems through.
A professional may need to help you if it is the first two problems. But if it is the third one, the standard techniques is to do deliberate practice, starting off with mild problems and working yourself up through more difficult ones as time goes on (but going back to milder ones and spicing up your workflow with slightly more difficult than what your are used to). Kind of like interval training for physical exercise -- you don't just try to run slightly faster each time, you run at a sustainable pace and punctuate it with something above your abilities for short bursts.
Some people find that they can't do this without a personal trainer. For work type problems, you may need to team up with someone that can help coach you through.
Here's another analogy that I believe carries over. For much of my life, I didn't like tomatoes (except I liked ketchup, tomato soup, pasta sauce, etc). One day I got tired of picking tomatoes off my burgers, or out of a salad, and decided to eat them anyway. After doing this for a few months I got to where I could tolerate them, and eventually start liking them. Same thing with sour cream -- now I love it. And buttermilk. Got tired of throwing out buttermilk that I'd buy for making biscuits, so I taught myself to like it. Now I can't get enough of it.
- Remove your options. If possible, turn off your WiFi, router and phone. If I don't have an easy way to distract myself, it's easier for me to get "into the zone", and for my brain to really engage.
- Convince yourself to spend 5 minutes taking a stab at the problem. If you need to, set a timer. You can do anything for 5 minutes. And once you're 5 minutes in, the problem won't feel so massive
- Start writing down what needs to be done. Make a list, and then start making the list more granular by breaking the "big tasks" into "small tasks". Big tasks are frightening. Small tasks are easy to do one at a time.
- Put yourself in a new environment. If you procrastinate at home, take yourself out to a coffeeshop, or library where you can work. If you have a big enough house, have a "work room" and a "play room", and don't mix the two. Commit to not getting distracted in the work room.
- Surround yourself people you want to emulate -- here, productive people. If you're in uni, this is easy. If you're not, try to find discord channels, IRC channels, or whatever. It's always easier to be motivated when you're surrounded by other motivated people.
None of this is magic, and I don't want to pretend to be a paragon of efficiency (I'm on HN right now, after all). But the key is really to try SOMETHING new, if you aren't happy with your mental stamina -- and keep changing variables until you are.
I would seriously encourage you to consider an evaluation for ADHD, if you have not already. Easily giving up when confronted with challenges is a classic ADHD behavior, and it's often described and perceived as laziness. Having greater success under higher pressure is a classic trait as well.
I'm (obviously) not qualified to diagnose you, but I recognized something of myself in your description of the difficulties you're facing (so much so that the first thing I did before typing was find-in-page for ADHD just to see what had already been discussed).
It's possible the tendency to retreat from challenges is part of a feedback loop. You mention that your confidence suffers. This is more likely to discourage you from facing future challenges. Each challenge feels a little more out of reach, and each consequence increases the pressure.
One thing that a lot of undiagnosed adults don't know is that ADHD can present like as anxiety and depression. It can also look like fear and apathy. It's hard to spot, because we're accustomed to childhood symptoms, which are often a lot more disruptive.
If it helps encourage you to consult with your doctor (if you haven't already): a little over a year ago I was diagnosed. I've been adjusting treatment over that time, and it's still not perfect, but in that time I went from an anxious falling apart mess grateful to have a job at all, to taking on leadership of a team. (Obviously, a great deal of other things have improved along with that, but I'm trying to stay relevant to the question.) Side effects of my particular med (currently vyvanse) are non-existent, I'm just gradually working up to a dose that works for me. Even times of greater stress don't discourage me (though they can require more recovery time, but... that's normal?). There's been literally no downside.
Like I said, I'm in no way offering a diagnosis, but I would seriously encourage seeing someone who can. And if you're going that route, I'd also encourage doing some reading on how ADHD affects/presents in adults. The DSM is... well, entirely geared toward childhood diagnosis, and your doctor may rely on that.
This can be a common coping mechanism for people with "fixed mindset". For an overview of the "fixed" vs "growth" mindset research, see e.g https://fs.blog/2015/03/carol-dweck-mindset/
(This is some really fascinating research and I've talked to lots of people who grew up as "smart kids" that feel this describes at least part of their personality.)
Sorry, had to crack the joke.
On a serious note, my answer would be: take an individualized approach. Here are some examples:
- Was your motivation damaged by decades of forced boring school? You need time to relearn enjoyment of learning
- Are you a nihilist? Seek therapy and a real reason to live with passion.
- Are you depressed, PTSD, etc? Seek help.
- Are you unhealthy? Change it.
- Do you genuinely have ADD or something that neurologically explains it? Seek help.
- Are your friends unmotivated like you? Seek different friends.
- Do you sleep poorly? Improve that.
- Do you have an addiction that messes your dopamine (or NE, 5-HT) levels (porn, cocaine, etc)? Get help.
The worst form of stimuli are endless feeds of unstructured, unrelated content. And the most successful sites on the Internet have them. They're really entertaining, but then, when you want to grab a book and read it, you will have problems staying focused and finishing a full chapter. At least with RSS you had the chance to mark items as read and move on.
What you describe could be ADHD. But sometimes it's just being sleep deprived, eating unhealthy, and being exposed to too much stuff. Sometimes it's anxiety.
So what can you do? just unplug. Go for a hike, run or camping. Sleep well. No music, no Internet browsing in your phone. Just pay attention to your surroundings, breathe, let any anxiety go away. Then, go back to your stuff, but always practicing attention hygiene: don't expose yourself to too much stimuli.
Then, track your tasks, and make sure you finish them. Don't cheat by making new lists, or dropping tasks for no reason. Just make sure you stay on track with your plans.
If it's too much, start small: simple tasks, simple outcomes. Once you get better at it, commit to more complex tasks.
Some GABA supplement before sleeping can be good too. But you should ask your doctor about that first.
The thing that came to mind immediately when I read your concern is the big 5 personality traits. The big 5 is possibly the most thoroughly researched and supported concept in psychology. There's tons of info about it online.
Your situation, when looked at through the prism of the big 5 might be a combination of any of the following: low openness, high neuroticism, or high disagreeableness. You'd have to read a bit about these personality traits and do some introspection into which of these applies to your situation. You'd then need to look at the specific techniques to train the partiality traits you want. Fair warning, it's not generally realistic to actually change your personality type. But you can learn to change your behavior. For example a high neuroticism person might always be extremely anxious about public speaking, but they can learn skills to help them perform when necessary.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22124489 ("Procrastination is about managing emotions, not time (bbc.com")
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22096571 ("Ask HN: I don't want to be a worker any more I want to be a professional")
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20930439 ("how do you keep your programming motivation up?")
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18903886 "Ask HN: How do you motivate yourself to keep working on a project? "
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19777976 "ask hn: how do you stay disciplined in the long run?"
For me it was all of those and probably more that I'm not even aware of yet.
What did I do to over come?
First, I haven't fully. I struggle every day, and know that it is okay. Even after I decided to tackle the problem 10 years ago, I work at it.
For myself, I knew a key symptom that I had is I don't like to finish anything... like anything... no matter how small. A lot of it was rooted in my fear of failing. That's probably linked to the idea that I was supposed to be smart. I'm an engineer, good at math, all the classic things that cause parents to say - oh child shouldn't fail.
This showed up in my every day life. I realized I would never even finish my rice... there's always like 20% left. I was always starting a project and then simply moving on to the next. Never taking it to a specific end-goal.
So to tackle my problem of not finishing something, I started with the smallest thing - my bowl of rice. I started requiring myself to finish it. That last 20% was a struggle. I'd sit there and struggle. It wasn't the amount either; I would get less food, which did help, but I still had a lot of trouble. I'd get up and leave then force myself to go back.
I didn't allow any other requirement to enter. No other projects, no other personal goals. I had to finish my bowl. It was, one meal then one day, backslide, two days in a row, and it took me about 3-4 months for it to become a habit. I let it be the goal for another month or so before I finally told myself I accomplished this goal.
For once in my life, I finished something. I set a goal and completed it. F'ing bowl of rice. But it was mine.
From there I scaled it to a very small Rails project I could complete in 1 weekend, an online language dictionary for myself. It was stupid easy so I knew I could do it. My goal was to deploy it on Heroku and use it myself for some small language learning. Took me 3-4 weekends to fully deploy & self-use. But I did it, my first side project completed. A clear goal, achievable and finished.
It took me 6-12 months to even begin to feel I started tackling my problem. From there I slowly scaled and I've personally learned I can only do 1-2 things at a time to completion.
Best of luck to you. I only hope the best for you.
Good luck finding a solution and if you do tell me how you did it!
It's hard to push through tough problems to achieve a goal that you don't care about achieving. The pressure you grew up in now needs to come from yourself, or more reasonably, the situations you put yourself in. For example: take the life's savings of every family member and friend you have, and go try to make more money with it. The pressure will surely arrive.
An alternative possibility: It may be that your career is not high on your priority list, and you'd rather make some money so that you can fund a passion, travel the world, raise a family, or do something else. If those are the things that you are passionate about, a promotion will not fill the hole where they are missing (for long)
I found that what works well for me is breaking the task iteratively into (sometimes, ridiculously) small steps, writing them down (that is important for the approach to work, at least for me) and forcing myself to just do one small step at a time.
Interestingly, this approach affected my skillset for software development too... for example, on my current team I have a reputation for being good at debugging difficult issues, even though I dislike debugging and I'd rather never do it. I dislike it so much I always narrow down and break down the problem into very small parts, which apparently is a great approach to debugging.
Btw, another thing that helps me is playing challenging videogames. There was this article I can't find now about CRPG and action games, where you are either often rewarded for just sitting there, or actually have to learn a physical skill. I found that forcing myself to suck and improve a little bit in RTS and action games, instead of playing (awesome) CRPGs all the time, is a nice low stress way to learn to make effort :)
Then take a break.
Then try for 2 minutes.
Then take a break.
Repeat until you can focus for a long time :)
Also grew up on a high pressure environment, as in: "If you fight at school and lose, you'll get a second beating at home"
- If you can afford, seek professional help. Yeah, a therapist. It will help you to learn how you operate.
- Accountability mirror, from "Can't hurt me" book. Some of stuff in the book is meathead advice, but you're a smart guy, you'll be able to filter it out and adapt. The audiobook is great. Look it up.
- 3sec rule: If you want to do something, don't give yourself time to come up with an excuse not to, because you will convince yourself.
- Commit: Publicly say you'll do it, to the point you'll lose face if you don't. There you go, not doing the thing will hurt more than doing it and then you can trick yourself into not procrastinating.
For instance, I was offered a lead role many times, but refused. Until a day I said: "Fuck it, I'll take it". No time to convince myself otherwise. Now, If I back off or do a poor job, I'll lose face. And it turns out, once you start doing those apparently big things, you learn they are not really a big deal. Then you start feeling more confident.
Finally, be kind to yourself.
Cheers
First thing I will mention is that my understanding is that your brain has a finite amount of energy/processing power available over the day or within a certain period. So if you can reduce some mental or physical energy expenditure from other things (for example, commuting takes a lot out of me personally) you may have more energy available for hard problems.
Another thing is that there are specific skills/strategies that are useful for solving hard problems. The biggest one is decomposing problems into smaller tasks. And I guess that OOP is now still unpopular these days with various groups, but object-oriented design has been a big help for me in terms of breaking larger problems down into subproblems and organizing information. That is a skill that you can practice and get better at.
The most basic way to decompose things is just to start typing a list of everything you need to do at a high level. Anywhere you can think of a smaller substep, fill that in.
Then when you are having trouble getting motivated, try to find one of the subtasks that you know how to do from your outline, tackle that, and hopefully that will give you momentum for a more challenging subtask.
Another strategy is just to make sure you are taking advantage of Google and all of the existing solutions out there.
And another thing, as far as the brain's available powers, having fuel is important. So things like skipping breakfast seem very questionable if you need to do heavy mental work in the morning. Coffee can help you get started a bit sometimes.
Luckily I found a mechanism to cope with that very early on; I build a ‘story’ around the task/project/thing that I want to do but also ‘prove to my brain’ I am ‘all that’ (so I don’t simply don’t do it as is the first instinct); basically to narrate that this is only the first step and it will probably be crap, but it will become that shiny perfection that was promised later on through iteration.
I do this with everything; cooking, software dev (where it is actually the normal way things work), hardware, management, sports, etc. Some things go ‘perfect’ the first time, most obviously do not, but they either become irrelevant or get better (and even perfect for some definition).
That way, I am mentally shielded from not doing them in the first place because of my mental block. This used to be (in my teens) an actual narrative with myself where I told myself a story how something would go; starting really badly and insignificant as possible and then building out that narrative up to castles in the sky. Coming back down I would then be able to start the journey at the bottom while genuinely believing I would get to the top ‘in some time’ (it really does not matter if you do; the starting and iterating matters the most imho). Now the process is automatic, but it still has that same feeling to start with; I will never get over it but I managed to cope.
Imagine you have a wire on your hand and you want to plug it to an electrical outlet that's on the wall right in front of you. You technically have all it takes to plug it. What if there's so much garbage between you and the wall that you can't reach to the electrical outlet? You can't plug the thing no matter how hard you try. Not that you're lacking something, but rather that some stuff gets in your way.
Emotions do get in the way. Some you may understand, some you may suspect, some you may not even be aware of. This is very common and you can work on these issues.. but probably not by yourself. If you decide that you're okay with discovering what's going on that you're not aware of yet (there always is some things we're not aware of), then a trained psychologist can help you a lot.
Oftentimes people suggest technics, tricks and whatnot to get around the symptoms. Maybe it's best to face the problem, understand it and fix it not with guilt but with kindness.
Good luck on your journey.
Just Do It.
Put your head down and do the work and stop not doing it.
I spoke to my counselor once about going to the gym and I was expecting to hear him talk about emotional issues that might be preventing me going etc and he said: “there are some things in life that you simply have to take action on. Going to the gym is one.”
Nothing more fancy to it that that.
Do the work. Take action.
What I think could help you the most is reading about schema therapy[1]. It's a therapeutic method which says we all carry certain lifetraps which we acquired during childhood.
Some lifetraps: - abandoment: you are afraid of being abandoned by a loved one - worthlessness: because of the way your parents treated, you feel that you don't have any value. You can't understand why anyone would love you, for example. - failure: you believe you can't accomplish anything in life
There are a few more.
I found this book very helpful in understanding Schema Therapy and the lifetraps that apply to me: https://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Your-Life-breakthrough-be...
First, how good you are a choosing to wait to receive a reward later has a strong bearing on how difficult of a problem you can solve, because working on a problem is what feels rewarding, solving the problem is. To that end there are certain habits you can pick up that greatly help with modifying your behavior, and provide a sense of success before the overall problem is solved.
The first thing I recommend is to make your own lists of short tasks that need to be completed. This in itself can be satisfying because writing the list is effectively your first finished task.
Next, after completing a few tasks you need to reward yourself with something you enjoy. It shouldn't take much time to do, but it should be something you won't get easily board of. Continue rewarding yourself after a set number of tasks. Generally, you should be getting a reward about once an hour to start out, not more. After a few days, maybe a week, increase the number of tasks you must complete for a reward. Continue increasing the number of tasks per reward every few days. If you find yourself losing motivation, then decrease the number of tasks required.
Just a few tips, the reward should be something that you can do quickly and that you can resist doing while you're still working. The reward should be mildly habit forming, but not addictive. Also, if it's food related you might want to make it small enough that it won't make you fat. A favorite candy can be a good choice so long as you can make the rewards small but still satisfying. It also shouldn't be something complicated or distracting to other people. If it's too complicated that can kill your own productivity. It also helps if you take a short break like 5 minutes per reward or at least take short breaks a few times a day even without a reward.
Also, I book in an hour a day for "productivity" -- and literally I just try and knock out as many short-tasks I can think of in that time. Anything under 3 minutes, time to do it. Take out the trash, send an email, fold clothes, whatever... I just try and smash out as many things in that hour as I can.
I used to struggle with procrastination. I was the kid would start his homework at 8 PM on Sunday. The thing about that is more often than not you're fucked if something takes longer than you expected.
And now... I rarely get caught off guard with tasks, I know pretty soon if something is going to take more time than I'm expecting it to take.
Don't worry about how talk the mountain is, just take a few steps and see where you get.
Go for a walk. Don't face the problem head on specifically, just absorb the gist of the problem and then go for a walk and let your sub conscious deal with it, then about half way through your walk, start talking out loud about it. This works well for me when I'm stuck on something.
Learn what real problem solving is. Look up the Wikipedia article on Troubleshooting, it's fantastic and has some great insights.
The main thing about problem solving is not to be overwhelmed by the entire problem. Break it down into its most basic forms, and then solve a part of it, then work toward the solution. Don't try to build all of the solution at once. Iterate toward it. It works.
HTH YMMV.
* write down the smallest next possible step towards this goal. It should be something you're very close to knowing how to do already. It doesn't matter if it leaves you still a long away from the ultimate goal.
* set a short timer (e.g. 20 minutes) and work on it until the timer goes off.
* reward yourself with something fun.
* repeat.
The trick is that you should accept failure as part of the process, a necessity.
Most people will get catch a cold or flue during the year, and so is with mental health. Don't expect not get down at some points.
But you should always treat yourself as someone you want to help. To that end, take a meta view of yourself.
Here are some tips:
1) Look into personality types, and figure out which one you score high at. Use it as guide. Nothing is definitive, but could provide you some insight into why you behave the way you do.
2) Fresh air and exercise is important. Spend at least an hour outside every day, walk or whatever. How long you can walk, is actually a very good indicator of your health, and life expectancy.
3) Try Yoga, the really good programs, combine movement with breath, and even a bit of meditation. It will improve mental clarity, and help with flexibility. Like this one. http://katepotteryoga.ca/namaste-tv-show/
4) Good dental hygiene. Bad Gums can cause serious inflammation, and health issues. Make sure you fix any teeth problems quickly. And don't smoke.
5) Good sleep hygiene. Black out windows a night, and make sure you are get fresh air into the room. C02 levels can build up in your room during the night. And make sure if you snore, to get medical help with it.
6) Realize that you soon will be dead. And many greater, smarter people than us, have lived this life before. Read or Listen to books they wrote. It will often contain their best insights summarized.
Like for example some stoic philosophy, which is great at helping visualize the worse case scenario, and accept it. Marcus Aurelius is great. This is a fun series.
"The philosopher's guide to happiness" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVA8jX9KQcE&list=PL785793324...
7) Make Future plans, and daily to do lists. The process of writing things down, focuses you on what you need to get done. It really does help. Seize the day!
8) 25 minute timer, 5 minute breaks.
Edited: googling I found someone recommended the book the slight edge, and a review is here that contains the main ideas: https://www.amazon.es/Slight-Edge-Jeff-Olson/dp/1626340463#c..., look for Daisy's review.
A: Do the thing you feel you're suppose to do, and not the thing that you're currently doing.
It really is that simple. While you have spent the time writing about how not to be mentally lazy and reading comments on possible answers, you've could've - knocked out a chapter or two in a certification book - built that module you've pushed aside - pursue working on a weakness that you feel is holding you back
Fortunately/unfortunately, the onus falls on you to reach your goals (whatever it may be). So, just do it!
When you have vague idea of a problem, keep thinking about. This is time when thinking while walking somewhere is more beneficial then just sitting at desk. Your mind is less "restricted".
Also, it is normal to feel frustrated or depressed or ineffective while solving hard problem. Managing these emotions is part of the task, having them does not make you lesser. But when they are getting too much, take a break.
If you keep doing the same things, you'll keep getting the same results. Meditation can rewire you for mindfulness - and that doesn't always mean sitting and meditating - but everyone should have a practice. Get out into nature, ride a bike, learn how to play guitar. Work on something completely different than APIs/IDEs/OSes/hacking.
I also recommend THC. Weed candy in particular, when I take about 10mg, I get a constant flow of interesting ideas and correlations for hours afterwards.
When you attain that mindfulness it's easier to guide your mind where you want it (in this case, solving technical problems). Good luck.
2. Separate the thoughtful from the mechanical - some tasks need you to shut down your thinking and just wing it. Like installing a new computer or a development environment or boilerplate code and all that. You solve these with time: put in an hour and it will be done. Just tell yourself that as time passes, so will this issue.
On the other side are problems which require thinking rather than doing. You solve these by concentrating and shutting out noise.
Mixing the two types of actions is devastating.
There's nothing else as important in your life as fixing this. It's going to be difficult. Probably the hardest thing you've ever done in your life.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/raising-your-...
Don't waste your life chasing success. Success is completely random.
The journey to learning this terrible fact will teach you a lot of things, none of which will make your life any better. It's far better to be a lazy idiot. Stupidity and laziness are very useful tools for succeeding in our modern economy. Lazy people don't get burned out.
Same, and university and career too... I wrestle with the same problems.
Basically, I think it's reasonable to give up if you don't enjoy working on the problem or can't find satisfaction in it.
If externally motivated it's harder. Here you'll want to focus on techniques to force yourself to do things.
Otherwise check in with yourself regularly about what you want and why you're doing things. If you get alignment with your work then things come easy.
Talk to a therapist. You should find out which experiences from the past trigger your “laziness”. The past high pressure situations trigger a pattern in you. Discover the pattern, you’ll be able to understand why certain tasks cause the anxiety. Once you know where it comes from and why it happens, you can overcome that. Sometimes just a simple talk with a therapist can help, no need for pills.
In that case maybe your are more suited to chaotic endeavor where you can thrive in the unexpected while other drown into it.
Let's say you get a new job, are you at your best at the beginning where everything is new or have you better energy when things are settled and in theirs place ?
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
I hope it helps. Feel free to reach out if you want to chat since this is a topic very close to home.
Watch a master tackle a hard problem. Copy their resilience and enthusiasm. I've done this for a few years and it taught me to be patient and focused. Also, leading requires responsibility. To gain a sense for leadership, try teaching and helping others. Show them how you solve problems.
1. Timely sleep
2. Exercise (cardio or weights)
Note: Exercise takes 2-3 days before it shows results but after that I threw away the Bacopa (high BP was scary).
Works for me. Things get unstuck.
have a chat with a colleague and try to discuss the problem with him/her. maybe they already solved the issue, or have an interesting insight to move forward into the solution.
and be ready to have a working solution instead of a perfect solution.
There are countless forums, help lines, government/private programs for addiction and it still exists.
The power is within and wholly dependent on you. A microdose of LSD occasionally with a focus on changing this aspect of yourself might help.
0. Rexamine physical health. In the past two years, I have been diagnosed with sleep apnea and low testosterone (I'm a guy). Having those two treated has been almost miraculous. The ADHD is still very real, but I find I can fight the inattentiveness if I've had a good night's sleep. (And, I guess not coincidentally, a good night's sleep for me is between 6 and 7 hours on a CPAP. I can rarely make it to 8 hours. Again, the ADHD is real.) I've also been examining my diet, my weight, my activity level and other physical changes I can make.
1. Be constructively self-critical and responsible for your actions, but not self-destructive. I shouldn't accept failure from myself due to lack of attentiveness/motivation, but that's not a license to tell myself that I'm an intrinsically, irredeemably bad person. This may be a cliche in SV, but with ADHD or the feelings you're describing, every failure really is a learning opportunity. Your feelings of lack of motivation are not anyone else's fault, but they're not yours either. However, only you can take the initiative to make the situation better.
2. Think through the activities you do where you actually do have quite a bit of clarity and focus. I'm guessing there's something you do that just makes time seem to melt away. See if there's a way to harness what interests you in that activity, and see if you can apply it in a constructive way. I have two: playing RTS games and driving or doing some other fairly monotonous activity that nonetheless requires attention and focus. Playing RTS games has actually helped me develop strategies to remember to do things, and driving long distances suggested to me that if I constrain my environment in certain ways, I can actually be quite productive and attentive.
3. Use some strategies/invent your own.
- I find that writing down checklists is a huge help. It makes the big problems crumble into small manageable bricks. (For checklists, I've started literally putting notes in VS Code in a markdown file, and then using the Markdown Preview Enhanced extension, which shows an interactive, two-way bound rendering on the right pane of my screen.)
- Bootstrap the right mindset every day. I put a few post-it notes around my monitor, bathroom mirror or other places that I'll see to remind me how to deal with life. I put enough up that they'll help me without making me feel overwhelmed. This strategy is also useful for any self-control issues you may have, which usually goes hand-in-hand with a lack of motivation/feeling overwhelmed by big problems. When I make a good decision based on a reminder from the past, it's a fun feeling. These good feelings can form a sort of virtuous cycle where you find yourself being a bit more disciplined than you have been.
- Quit social media. I've entirely cut out Twitter and I only use Facebook Messenger. I don't miss any of it. I visit HN more now, and use the "attentiveness" features in my profile. This may seem drastic, but it's helpful.
- If you can't quit something (YouTube, for instance), use some sort of blocker that will keep you locked out for a time. I edit my /etc/hosts file, although there are more automated tools that can do this kind of thing.
- Read up on tactics people use for things like speed reading or note-taking or other organizational and personal management skills. Then put them into practice. I've started using a RocketBook for note-taking, and it's wonderful. I use a specific note-taking method called the Cornell Method [1], and I find my focus and comprehension when learning big new topics is much higher. Find what works for you, and implement it.
- Trap yourself into pro-productivity habits, not anti-productivity ones. Eliminate any distractions or interactions when you're doing productive work; maximize the number of distractions when you're doing unproductive things (like getting so far into YouTube's recommendation algorithm that you watch a Japanese guy make hard objects out of bread or fingernails - this may or may not have happened to me). I set timers for that stuff and otherwise try to harass myself as much as possible. When I'm working, I set Do Not Disturb mode on anything supporting it, I turn off other notifications (within reason - I'd recommend you still respond to your boss/client, for instance). Look into things like the pomodoro method, where you work for 25 mins and take a 5 minute break, and see if you can increase the productive time.
4. Find something you think you can't do, and then try to do it and don't give up. Steve Jobs once said, "Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use." [2] My experience has shown this is quite true. We make our own luck. I've learned that with enough effort, that feeling feeling in the pit of my stomach that coincides with the thought "I don't know how I can tackle this problem" has almost always given way to the feeling of victory when I actually do solve the problem. I haven't had 100% success, of course, but I always frame the lack of success as TODOs to revisit later. I have my current job because I did this, and it's the best job I've ever had with the best team I have ever worked with. Once you do a single thing you thought you couldn't do, your perspective on life does change somewhat.
5. Make change gradually. I didn't take a magic pill and have all problems in my life solved. In fact, I can't do this - I'll be dooming myself to failure. If I try a new exercise regimen or trying to form habits or something like that, I do them one at a time. I find it hard to cope otherwise. My wife is the opposite - she gets motivation from shocking herself into a new routine, but I just can't handle that approach. I set major goals on the order of years, milestones on the order of months, and then individual strategies and tactics on weeks or days.
6. Find the positives of your situation. Unlike most people who have a basic intuition about how to accomplish complex tasks, I have devote my own brainpower to it. However, this has resulted in me developing an almost scientific process for improvement, which most normally motivated/attentive people don't have. There were people I graduated college with who had no issues with ADHD and were far ahead of me in terms of organizational skills and the ability to self-manage. However, through continual work over the years I've surpassed many of them in accomplishments. Career accomplishments are not a measure of a fulfilled life, of course, but making genuine contributions to fellow humans (even if those are fairly small but real) is a good feeling that is hard to overstate.
7. Try to control your emotions without suppressing them or letting them run wild. I find that a lot of the source of my "mental laziness" actually doesn't involve the mind at all, but my emotions. I have to engage the mind to counteract the emotions I experience, and when I do, the strong emotions holding me back (e.g. fear, anger, boredom, despair) are actually not that severe. Putting emotional experiences into words is a simple strategy that can be helpful. Our brains have a sophisticated neocortex which can handle complex reasoning, including linguistic reasoning. Our emotions are thought to be processed and generated by our limbic systems, which are present in most vertebrates and is pre-linguistic (though is very much involved in vocalization of emotional tone, even in non-humans). I've found that the higher functions of our brains can actually put the lower functions in their place when warranted.
8. Use therapy and other resources to help you. Therapists can absolutely help. You will find there are probably treatments that you can do that will help, and many of them do not involve medication. A therapist can be especially helpful at determining the causes of why you feel the way you feel, and may be helpful in developing strategies to overcome these issues. A therapist can also be a shortcut to some of the experimentation I mentioned above. They are often aware of explicit strategies that work for many people, and those might directly help you or might be a good seed that grows into something unique for you. And it's sometimes helpful to be forced to put your thoughts and attitude into words for another human being, who can synthesize it and review it with you.
This list has ballooned from a few planned points, but I hope it helps. You can vanquish this problem. I think you would be surprised at how much you can accomplish by putting forth just a little bit of intentional effort in the right ways.
[1] http://lsc.cornell.edu/study-skills/cornell-note-taking-syst... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNvmF0Bqw&t=38s
But here’s a quick general model to get started:
1. Consider 4 drivers of behavior: Need Levels (serotonin/oxytocin), Activation Level (norepinephrine/stress vs relaxation rest), Energy Level (glucose/glycogen vs insulin spikes and energy conservation), Drive/Learned Behavior (dopamine/learned reward behavior vs helplessness).
2. If you have big needs, ie you are needy because of say chronically low serotonin levels, you will be more desperate to seek pleasure, even if that runs counter to your stated goals (stay up late binging, even though it will lower your ability to perform at work).
3. You need energy to mentally process, so to be a high performer at work, you need to pattern your life to have max energy at work. So exercise and eat well to be energetic between 9-5. This might mean addressing general neediness, otherwise you will keep doing destructive behavior outside work, that will harm your performance. You won’t go to the gym, won’t eat the healthy food because you are too busy addressing desperate pleasure.
4. If you don’t improve your general energy level, you will tend to overuse stress elevators, like caffeine and harsh self-talk, but over the long run that will impair your health, make you physically weaker, while also impairing accurate self-awareness (because it becomes too necessary for you to believe good things about yourself even if false).
5. Your learned approaches to solving problems, aka getting rewards, have to be trained by you. Dopaminergenic systems that deliver ‘drive’ when you are confident the outcome will result in success. You need to learn how to approach challenges at work to get immediate rewards of serotonin and oxytocin. For example, how to approach your work to get approval from colleagues, or how to approach your work to receive intrinsic reward like problem simplification (which rewards by lowering the mental burden of the problem), or aesthetic beauty creation etc...
You might see in your life several problem behaviors through this model, but one that stands out to me is related to #5, you don’t have effective strategies to get more immediate reward out of hard problems. That’s typical, especially in people with high standards. When training people to be more effective, I teach them to break up hard problems into steps, but also to appreciate the process of working on problems from different angles. Because then they start to see short term rewards that they can achieve in the process of working toward their goals... What is your process for analyzing the problem? What is your process for collaborating on the problem with others? What tools do you use? This way you will find that a hard problem, that initially looks like a barren forest with a single reward after a 100 miles of journey, is transformed into many pockets of orchards where you can look for trees with low hanging fruits of short term pleasure... Each day you get up and look for fruit, you can sustain yourself on a single hard problem for years like this, speaking from personal experience.
Don’t let your brain try to trick you out of it.
Try to block "thinking". Every time you catch yourself "thinking about" instead of doing, stop thinking and do something related to the task. Remove all distractions. Put your phone in another room, close your e-mail and do the smallest thing you can do to move your task forward, don't "think about", just do it, as if tou were a robot. Once you get tired, be satisfied with your progress and relax (release your thinking from prison, Now it is allowed to come in). Practice "I must do this" in other areas of your life as well, without thinking, until you develop grip.
The key is to exercise those proper faculties of mind -- a few simple exercises are cold showers, long-distance running, and meditation.
Cold showers have taught me how to overcome the initial difficulties; to continuously put oneself into a position of discomfort, then use powers of consciousness to develop acceptance is a powerful practice. There are various methods to implement this habit -- at the end of my shower, I set a timer for 5 minutes and progressively drop the temperature whenever I acclimate to the current state. The game I play is to spend the longest amount of time in the coldest water by dropping progressively quicker during those 5 mins. Challenging yourself is a reward within itself.
Where cold showers build mental strength in the domain of environmental changes, long-distance running builds endurance. As a side-effect, there is a strong correlation between mental health and cardio exercise, aerobic exercise generates BDNF which acts as a precursor for neurogenesis. Depressed people often have smaller hippocampi, and BDNF literally grows neurons in the hippocampus, where we store memory. There are many other evidence-based positive side effects. For implementation, I would suggest the Maffetone method, which teaches users to never push to hard, as it leads to burnout; but instead to progressively build up endurance by exercising at a comfortable rate. The only tool necessary is a heart-rate monitor, and any type of cardio activity can be substituted. His method is used successfully by ironmen and triathlete winners. It's a method to learn patience.
Samadhi is a state characterized as intense one-pointed concentration established through meditation. It is impossible to practice meditation without practicing those steps which lead towards a meditative mind. The yoga sutras of patangili provide a programmatic method towards this state. What is practiced by most popular western yoga is the practice of asana, or preparing the body for meditation. Following asana is pranayama, which is the regulation of breath through various practices. It is thought that breath control is the vector which enables us to manage the rest of our autonomic system, which enables our own internal state to control how we react to events -- the fundamental basis for freedom. It is difficult to discover teachers for these practices. Practically, I would suggest searching for Wim Hof's breathing method as a good introduction or entertaining exercise. Michaël Bijker is for those more serious.
Overall, implementing any one exercise should help you towards your goal, together they provide a strong basis. I've found scheduling to be effective for consistency. I would be lying if I did not mention I received help from a pharmaceutical as well. Having developed non-productive habits in the past, the pharmaceutical helped as a motivational catalyst, although medicine in relation to mental health is not magic, it requires effort and consistency to develop healthy habits.
0. ADD. (lack of motivation to execute, lots of plans, many unfinished projects)
1. Inability to buckle-down, focus, and complete mentally-exhausting, complex work.
2. Analysis paralysis. (Fear of failure, criticism, or choosing the wrong approach, so not progressing to avoid the previous.)
3. Fear of responsibility/loss of respect. (Leading is responsibility; owning problems, results, and team support. It's not being always right or doing 100% of the thinking.)
4. Imposter syndrome. (Having the skills but still afraid of being unqualified.)
5. Fear of being a novice. (Fear of new skills, roles, and/or things.)
Before offering unsolicited advice, I think it's better to dig into what are the brutally-honest underlying concerns.
Interestingly, some of the most successful people I've encountered seemed to be operating out of expectation from various people - family, peers etc. I guess different people react differently. And there's also the question of happiness. I knew a shit hot young lawyer who, having worked extremely hard non-stop from her early teens to her late twenties decided all she really wanted to do was live in the home counties and have children, rather than sacrifice pretty much every waking hour in exchange for >£100k pa.