I was diagnosed at a young age and this isn’t new, but I have become more and more frustrated with it: getting to do something often happens slow. In the gym my exercises are often interrupted by many minutes of getting stuck in my head, being distracted.
People talk about how it’s okay to take breaks but I sometimes lose HOURS at home because I just don’t do anything and it isn’t resting either because my head keeps churning without a goal. I call it a limbo between activity and resting. Sometimes my phone or another means of distraction is to blame, but other times it’s just anxiety to do something because “is this the best use of my time?” (in general I often have time anxiety)
It drives me crazy because I will have a plan of things to do that’s totally reasonable and achievable, but then I only achieve a small part of it because I keep wasting so much time, I then procrastinate on the rest. This mainly affects activities/plans I’ve set myself, those set by others let me just obey and not have to overthink as much.
Does anyone else relate and can they share means of dealing with it?
No one talks about how many tasks make up something like “clean the kitchen” and it can be overwhelming for us neurodivergents, especially since most of the stuff that needs cleaned up is left out might not even have a home, and so you might have to do that as well.
Here are a few things that have helped me out
Work timers, even if they’re only for 10-20 minutes, allow you to get in, do at least a little bit of work, and then have a break period. But set a break timer, too for 5-15 minutes. If there’s nothing to interrupt your break, you’ve more likely to procrastinate and get distracted.
This can work well with the timer. Ask yourself what tasks you can get done in 10-20 minutes. Maybe it’s just laundry, the dishes, or sweeping, or maybe it’s all three. But start small and build on more afyerwards until your break.
Having a friend, family member, or significant other do the tasks with you can help you feel motivated by using something called Body Doubling. Essentially, if you see someone else doing chores, you are more likely to also do chores.
If you don’t have someone available, listening to YouTube, audio books, or podcasts can also help, as most of the time we don’t want to do regular activities because they’re not interesting. By listening to something in the background, you’re stimulating your brain with information while also getting something done.
What strategies have other Lemmings come up with?
Make a promise to my future self that I’m gonna give em one small thing to feel better about.
Put my subconscious internal dialogue into words, out loud or written. As soon as I talk about it, it seems more manageable.
I stole this from another Bear:
I have never really tried work timers yet, maybe I should genuinely try it tomorrow.
I joined a study group at my university for people with procrastination problems, with the same rationale as you put forward. But they all study something different, so it isn’t super effective. I do want to avoid working at home in my room, it seems to emit an anti-work aura. So far I’ve found my local library to be the most pleasant work environment.
Perhaps I could listen to music more often, but audio books or podcasts are no-go’s: I can’t multitask anyway and I also have a harder time than average understanding spoken words (I always turn on subtitles for Youtube videos).
adding to this: when i’m severely overwhelmed, i skip goalsetting entirely. instead of ‘i will/can do X in these N minutes’, it’s ‘i will work on X for these N minutes’, and whether i finish or not is irrelevant. hell, i might not even care if i make any progress, just that i spent the time alotted focusing only on doing something related to the task, even if it’s just to stare at it. i might break it into smaller steps first. i like using goblin.tools if i’m stuck — just mash out a 700 word unformatted misspelt rant and get a list of stuff, then have the magic todo break it down further, and discard whatever doesn’t make sense. i used this method to shorten showering down from 20 minutes of forgetting what i’m doing, to a hyperoptimised 8 minute routine.
sometimes i realise it’s easier/faster than it sounded in my head, and so i’m more motivated and focused for a second round at it. other times it’s just as hard as i imagined, or there’s steps i didn’t consider, but i’ve tried it and i now have concrete data to build a plan for the second go. all the while, i try to focus only on the next smallest step toward completion, one step at a time.
This is part of the reason why I had work timer as the first tool: it’s the easiest, lowest bar to entry, and 15 minutes of half-assed chore is better than procrastinating.
Using goblin tools is a great idea, I’ll have to try that myself, thank you!