Learn to ride the waves. We have a different rhythm of existence. You can’t fight the cycle, but you can learn to work with it.
Some people are marathon runners, but we are sprinters. The trick is to break down marathons into many sprints, and take breaks by switching your marathons.
Just pick half a dozen things your meta-self wants to work on and stick with it. Instead of a bit of everything, we do a lot of everything, but one thing at a time.
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Brother… I’m slower than a tortoise when it comes to actually executing a pre-planned task. But I’m super fast when it comes to overthinking. Please enlighten me with your knowledge and insights! 🙏
I can’t do no more…
For overthinking, a CBT self help book actually helped me to analyze that mess that is my brain and see lots of pointless worries and anxiety and emotions. Been a horrible overthinker most of my life.
Thoughts, emotions and behaviors form a kind of feedback loop and overthinking is often fueled by anxiety, at least in my experience. Thinking of all the ways things can go wrong or you can mess up. I guess there’s some amount of this we can’t get rid of with ADHD, because of being forgetful and inattentive etc., but there’s lots of worries that are blown out of proportion, like what other people could think, and always elaborately thinking about the worst case etc. So that’s stuff one can try to realize.
What helped me was realizing all the stupid stuff I think about and look at myself from a distance and then kind of realize how ridiculous it is. Thinking too much about what happened and whether what I did or said was ok, or worrying about something that can happen in the future. Other people have their own lives an worries and do not think as much about us as we do, and there are many things outside of our control, also no point worrying too much about those, etc.
You can try to create a mind map of what things you believe about yourself and others and why and follow thought spirals, and then looking at this crazy mess of a map shows a lot of garbage. Just have to be critical of your own reasoning and feelings, there’s a saying “don’t believe everything you think”. Truly internalizing this really helped me getting out of it, I believe.
Concerning motivation… Well, I think getting meds was the most impactful thing, helps me a lot to do and complete stuff that I do not enjoy, and be more calm (less thoughts, less emotional swings). But changing the attitude to certain things does also help (like, I’m not doing chores just because, but e.g. because it makes my wife happy and reduces her work load, and I want to see my wife happy, etc.)
Nobody knows yourself better than you do, so nobody can cut through the bullshit or find tricks for your brain better.
Hope this helps a little bit.
Good luck on your own journey :)
Thank you.
And one other thing. Unaccomplishment and failure over a pre-planned task takes a heavy toll on my mental psyche. It makes me unable to move in real life for quite a long time( 10-12 hours ). Sleeping away the sadness doesn’t help either.
What do I do in that situation?
That sounds like a severe case of “ADHD paralysis”. I never experienced it so strongly, but I know the feeling when you want to do something but can’t force yourself to stand up and actually do it. If this is purely ADHD related, then it is what is called executive dysfunction, because of (most likely) a lack of dopamine available in the brain. That’s where the right medication can help. Never had this “paralysis” again since I got them.
But you’re also talking about sadness. I thought I had depressive episodes, but it turns out in my case it was all just secondary to living with ADHD. However some people develop serious depression and/or anxiety issues.
Did you get professionally evaluated and diagnosed? If not, you really, really should. It was the first step on my path of fixing these issues.
I said only you know yourself best, but depending on how bad it is, sometimes the best you can do for yourself is get some help to get you out of the “black hole” first. Your case does sound pretty serious, so you maybe should not try to fix it all on your own. At some point I accepted that I need some help, because I did not know what to do (and did not really know what was “broken” back then).
My diagnosis is now more than 2 years ago, I have been struggling in certain ways all my life, and some problems will never go away, but feeling inadequate, sad and paralyzed - I only remember this like a dim nightmare from the past. Don’t give up, there is hope - it can get better!
I’m just a random guy on the internet, but a doctor with experience in ADHD diagnosis and treatment can help you get access to the support you need.
I used to start projects, get overwhelmed then give up and start a new one (mostly home renovation stuff).
Since diagnosis I’ve learned to break things right down as you suggest and fully complete each task before moving on.
For example I’m decorating my dining room and won’t move onto the next wall until the previous one is finished. In fact one wall has a couple of alcoves which are a bit fiddly, so for that one I’ve broken it down even smaller to finish one alcove before moving onto the next.
I’m half way through one of them (no progress/motivation since Christmas) and currently more interested in garden related things, but in the mean time the room is still functional with just one iffy looking bit instead of it looking like a building site!
I used to beat myself up for not being able to finish things, so it’s nice to finally be able to relax and ride those waves!
Yeah can relate, it’s always nice if I can reach some milestone when switching the project hyperfocus again. Celebrating any tangible progress helps staying motivated. Small steps are nice, and each big step is a gift.
I wanted to review all rooms and get rid of stuff that I don’t need (like gadgets or old clothes or random household things). Well, I did a room and the basement. Some more to go. I planned this for this year, so I just wait for the motivation to come back to do the next room. Because reviewing a whole room and possibly rearranging half of the things and sorting stuff out takes at least half a day and is pretty exhausting.
Ah yes, I forgot about the exhaustion! When I’m motivated I’m on fire and can go all day but when I’m in a lull just getting some tools out of the cupboard feels like too much.
It’s funny what the barriers can be as well, like getting the tools could feel like a massive pain, but once I’ve got them the enthusiasm comes back and I’m on my way again. Sometimes I have to sit and try to work out what the blocker is and make that one small task the priority.
Sorting stuff out is a big job, it’ll feel so good when it’s all done!
I’m not sure if I have ADHD or not, but a lot of what ADHD sufferers say resonates with me. I’ve found that doing some small thing towards one of the projects that’s not currently motivating me is super helpful too. Enough to keep the skills a little fresh.
Sounds like you’re describing Agile Project Management to some degree (breaking marathons into sprints, accepting that change of direction/focus happens).
Good thinking - one never wants to fight their base nature, it’s a losing proposition. Instead, understanding it so it can be utilized, managed, directed is a much more effective approach.
Haha nice observation, I’m pretty good with sorting the tickets for the weekly sprints at work, but I never connected the dots or consciously applied similar techniques in private life.
I guess I do kind of agile prints that are not measured in a fixed unit of time, but in natural hyperfocus waves…
It’s probably no coincidence that a large amount of technical people are some form of neurodiverse, I’ve run into a lot of others with ADHD working as a SWE, definitely suspected some as well when I worked as a Mech Eng (wasn’t diagnosed then), and there’s definitely people with autism as well.
Lots of our processes are flavours of continuous improvement, agile is amazing when it’s done correctly, as I get older I’ve started pushing more for that.
Hehe, software developer here… there are several of us at my work place!
That’s a pretty succinct description of how I live my life lol
But I’m so fn TIRED!!!
I feel you. Do you have access to meds? At least for me, they do help a LOT to actually put that whole “strategy” into action, more or less, and not feel completely drained… Without meds the inner emotional resistance is pretty high so I can see how this my suggestion can sound like useless “theory” :/
Yeah, very similar here. It used to frustrate me to not be able to stick with a hobby or project or whatever for the long term.
Now I think of it more like dipping into hobby A for a while, doing something, then when the urge hits moving on to hobby B. But I know I’ll come back to hobby A at some point so it’s not as much of an ego blow if I remember to just accept that the focus has moved on for now, but will come back later.
“Learn to accept what you cannot change and do not waste emotional energy on it”
The CBT self-help book I once randomly bought turned out to be pretty useful, even though I just quickly binge-read it and did almost none of the exercises.
Personal development and growth (ADHD edition, with new exciting difficulty levels and challenges)
No. I will try to perma-sprint anyway.
Sometimes my ADHD feels like trying to run a marathon with my shoes untied. I’m so worried about tripping I struggle to focus on what I’m doing, but as soon as I stop being careful about tripping I’ll face plant. But I also realized that’s just part of the deal. As long as I keep getting up and shuffling along I’ll still make it further than most people, even if I’m way behind the marathoners. Basically, when the plan fails, just roll with it and don’t let it keep you from getting back up.
Picking any kind of method of approach requires learning, iteration, and will come with failures. Keep tinkering until you find the rhythm that works for you.
