Skipped this week and generally feeling like it’s an icky task.
Refresh SSL certs every month — yes.
Update my “status of initiatives” page — yes.
Anki and Drops for learning Norwegian — yes, every day.
Update my “problems” page — yes.
Check if I have napkins whenever I go outside — still forget occasionally and still remember occasionally.
I think nowadays I remember more often than I forget?
Updating journals in WOC — ok.
Transferring stuff from my voice recorder — ok.
Learning to read sheet music — still doing the deck in Anki but sometimes skipping.
Carrying the Kindle with me and reading when I have nothing to do — sometimes I don’t want to read anything I have on the Kindle. Like the easy books are read and the hard books are hard.
Breakfast every day — no routine.
Cleaning email inbox — no routine.
Wanted to clean today but nope.
Check my other work every week — no routine. I’m scared.
Eating three times daily — no routine.
Gym — no routine.
Sit-ups every second day — started, but skipping often.
Grocery shopping every week — still skipping. Partly because I don’t have enough money, partly because I am tired of the same three things (omelette, gazpacho, whatever is the third one) and I don’t like cooking or especially finding new things to cook.
Refresh SSL certs every month two weeks — yes.
Update my “status of initiatives” page — yes.
Anki and Drops for learning Norwegian — yes, every day or almost every day.
Update my “problems” page — yes.
Check if I have napkins whenever I go outside — still forget occasionally and still remember occasionally.
Updating journals in WOC — ok.
Transferring stuff from my voice recorder — ok.
Learning to read sheet music — haven’t been doing the Anki deck recently.
Carrying the Kindle with me and reading when I have nothing to do — working well, I think.
Breakfast every day — no routine.
Cleaning email inbox — no routine, but cleaned a bit today as part of the general “cleaning up” effort.
Check my other work sometimes — no routine but should start doing now that it has actually led to consequences (I got locked out of my work account and had to suffer a bit of anxiety). Made a daily reminder.
Eating three times daily — no routine.
Gym — no routine.
Sit-ups every second day — started, but skipping often.
Anki and Drops for learning Norwegian — yes, every day or almost every day.
Update my “problems” page — yes.
Check if I have napkins whenever I go outside — still forget occasionally and still remember occasionally.
Updating journals in WOC — ok.
Transferring stuff from my voice recorder — ok.
Learning to read sheet music — restarted doing the Anki deck, will wait till promoting to yellow.
interesting how this whole red/yellow/green thread sorta mimics the Anki system a bit.
Carrying the Kindle with me and reading when I have nothing to do — ok.
Breakfast every day — no routine.
Cleaning email inbox — no specific routine, but it’s the 2nd time I did it as part of “general cleaning up activity”.
Check my other work sometimes — started checking daily, we’ll see in a couple weeks how it goes.
Eating three times daily — no routine.
Gym — no routine.
Sit-ups every second day — was forgetting for a while, made a reminder.
Gratitude journal — still inconsistent and worse than before. Only do it once a week now.
adhd meds status
I’m taking Strattera. I think it made [tasks] better. Like, routines might be a bit easier to do? Also I started working on a [project] again after delaying for months and months.
except this Sunday, b/c I spent most of it out of my apt.
Laundry on Wed and Sat — yes.
Write about routine statuses on Sun — yes.
Check if I have any early work tomorrow — yes.
Grocery shopping every week — still skipping.
Refresh SSL certs every two weeks — yes.
Update my “status of initiatives” page — yes.
Anki and Drops for learning Norwegian — yes, every day or almost every day.
gave up on Drops for now, but might resume or try Clozemaster. I don’t feel like I’m retaining anything from Drops, although I also think it’s still a good supplement to Anki perhaps
Update my “problems” page — yes.
Check if I have napkins whenever I go outside — still forget occasionally and still remember occasionally.
Updating journals in WOC — ok.
Transferring stuff from my voice recorder — ok.
except this Sunday
Learning to read sheet music — not going well, I still dislike it & skip it often.
Carrying the Kindle with me and reading when I have nothing to do — ok.
Breakfast every day — no routine.
Cleaning email inbox — no established routine.
wanted to do today as part of cleaning, but.
Check my other work sometimes — checking almost every day now
Eating three times daily — no routine.
Gym — no routine.
Sit-ups every second day — the reminder is doing going well.
Gratitude journal — still only once a week. But I actually liked it today.
adhd meds status
Will switch from Strattera 18mg/d to 36mg/d in a week, but the target dose is still 80mg/d so it’ll take a while for it to have a proper effect. Maybe. I also want to ask my psychiatrist “hey, why so slow”.
Doing tasks became easier, *but it still feels unpleasant*. I don’t like it. And I still try to distract myself often, with YouTube or news or… mostly YouTube. I also don’t like it. I want to feel good, not just “grudgingly do things instead of being scared to start doing things”.
Perhaps anxiety (social anxiety?) is a part of it — a bunch of things I don’t want to do are somehow connected with people — and anxiety meds will help. We’ll see.
NB: I’m still struggling with a) sleepiness in the evening, b) not knowing what to do in the evening, and c) avoiding scary tasks. Increasing Strattera dose might help; anti-anxiety meds might help as well; or perhaps it’s just a property of weekends.
Routines broke down recently and still aren’t fixed. Today I did like half? or a third? of what I usually do on a Sunday.
Laundry on Wed and Sat — yes.
Write about routine statuses on Sun — yes.
Check if I have any early work tomorrow — yes.
Grocery shopping every week — still skipping.
Refresh SSL certs every two weeks — failing.
Been neglecting for two weeks already.
Update my “status of initiatives” page — yes.
Anki for learning Norwegian — almost every day, except in the past week.
Update my “problems” page — yes.
Check if I have napkins whenever I go outside — still forget occasionally and still remember occasionally.
But remember more often now?
Updating journals in WOC — ok.
Transferring stuff from my voice recorder — skipping.
Learning to read sheet music — gave up for now
Carrying the Kindle with me and reading when I have nothing to do — ok-ish. Doesn’t happen that often because YouTube is a better distraction. But I do carry it with me.
Breakfast every day — no routine.
Cleaning email inbox — skipping.
Check my other work sometimes — checking almost every day now
Eating three times daily — no routine.
Gym — no routine.
Sit-ups every second day — the reminder is still going well, except in the last week.
Gratitude journal — will promote to green if I keep doing it every sunday for at least a few sundays. For now still yellow.
Winter
I feel sleepy all the time after work now. My psychiatrist said it might just be winter. If yes, it would be good to not pile up things on myself.
It’s possible that I’m generally low-energy during winters, but my memory is not good enough to figure it out. Hence writing it down.
Strattera
Tried 80mg/day, but I feel like my mood is worse now and I’m more low-energy. Starting from tomorrow, I’ll switch to 40mg morning / 20mg afternoon.
Anxiety
Did a tiny bit of an anxiety workbook but if I return to it, it’ll probably be later.
Anki is one of the things that I use a Beeminder meta goal for; the ‘maintained progress’ plugin only works on the desktop app (not the phone, where I actually use the Anki app) so I’ve got a connected ‘meta’ goal that forces me to sync with the desktop app regularly.
Also, I’m a big fan of ‘useless’ knowledge. Arguably I got a client once because I knew the capital of Moldova, and that mentoring work paid the rent through the pandemic.
Today I didn’t do almost any cleaning, except the dishes and emails. So it’s been three Sundays in a row already. My excuse this Sunday is that my sister came to visit; also Christmas.
Grocery shopping every week — still skipping.
Refresh SSL certs every two weeks — was failing.
Did this time & also getting close to possibly making it automatic.
Update my “status of initiatives” page — yes.
Anki for learning Norwegian — almost every day.
It’s somewhat shaky, but let’s say it’s back to green. I’m ok with occasional failures as long as I feel confident I’ll get back to it.
Check if I have napkins whenever I go outside — still forget occasionally and still remember occasionally.
Updating journals in WOC — ok.
Transferring stuff from my voice recorder — was skipping but did yesterday.
Learning to read sheet music — gave up for now.
Breakfast every day — no routine.
Cleaning email inbox — was skipping but did today.
Check my other work sometimes — set up notifications so it’s possible this doesn’t even have to be a “routine” now.
Eating three times daily — no routine.
Gym — no routine.
Sit-ups every second day — the reminder is still going well, except in the last couple weeks. But been better now.
Gratitude journal on Sunday — did at least four Sundays in a row so I’m promoting this to green.
🟢 Long-term greens
Laundry on Wed and Sat — yes.
Update my “problems” page — yes.
Write about routine statuses on Sun — yes.
Check if I have any early work tomorrow — yes.
Carrying the Kindle with me and reading when I have nothing to do — ok-ish.
Winter
Still feeling sleepy.
Strattera
Went back to 40mg/day, it’s good enough for me now.
Anxiety
I think anxiety is getting better thanks to
self-care,
taking photos of anxiety-inducing chats,
and thinking about anxiety as an actual problem that I have.
I also realized that “I’m bored” or “I don’t want to sleep” doesn’t necessarily mean that. It can also mean that I’m upset and want to get distracted. Possibly because I don’t/can’t deal with the source of upset. Also something therapy could be good for. I’m not necessarily good at dealing with everything on my own.
Over the past few days, I was very sleepy and very low-energy. I’ve had a wisdom tooth removed and probably due to that ended up eating even less than usual (which wasn’t much to begin with). Also, always sleepy at 6pm.
Many of the routines above broke, although not all. I can’t provide a list right now because I’m posting from my phone.
It seems like Strattera isn’t working well anymore. I’m opening/closing news, Reddit, etc all the time. Yesterday I started taking caffeine again and it brings me into a nice thought-less state, but at the same time it’s likely not a long-term solution either.
Unfortunately, when I’m looking at a screen (phone or computer), I forget what I was going to write and also start thinking about unhelpful things like “everything would just be better if I had more people around me” or “everything would be better if I had more money”.
Which makes it somewhat tricky to write here at the moment, although I think it wasn’t always exactly like this. It also suggests that a therapist is a good idea.
NB: I’m in a dentist’s waiting room right now and I tried to just sit and wait for five minutes, without using my phone.
The experience is… actively mildly unpleasant. I have very quiet thoughts all the time and none of them are good. I can’t even / don’t want to recall them, they come and pass — and they’re not exactly vocalized so it’s hard to hold on to them. But no wonder I want to distract myself.
In addition to a gratitude journal every Sunday, it might be a good idea to do a “doesn’t matter” journal.
Doesn’t matter if I die, doesn’t matter if I don’t achieve [whatever], doesn’t matter that someone else is stuck with a bad life, doesn’t matter that I don’t have things I want to have, doesn’t matter that the universe will end. Stuff like that.
I feel like it’s hard to stop negative self-talk because it’s about things that I care about, so learning not to care about things might be good.
Sitting still and finding it uncomfortable is perhaps one of the most common experiences when you start to do things like sitting meditation! Even 10 minutes a day, if you repeat it, over time you’ll get used to that flow of thoughts, and get more comfortable being there with them.
(Non-meditators sometimes think that the thoughts mean you’re doing meditation wrong, whereas actually you noticing the thoughts, and being aware of them, means you’re doing meditation right!)
So you still have thoughts, but… you aren’t affected by them as much?
That’s the general direction, yes! The becoming less affected takes time, and comes from two different things developing:
The ability to notice more quickly that you are being carried away by a line of thought. This might not happen for several minutes initially, but over time it’ll happen more rapidly, until it’s happening within a few seconds of the thoughts occurring. It’s like building a muscle, and this definitely takes time (and hundreds of repetitions - as with weight training) to occur.
The other aspect is that you begin to notice thoughts for what they are: they are just thoughts. They might be interesting, or curious, or irrelevant, but much like any other bodily sensation, they are just occurrences, not necessarily a True Thing in the world. (Much of our self-talk changes its points of view about something every few minutes - which can’t all be true!) Thoughts, like the other five body senses, are just things happening in consciousness. That buzzing feeling on my left thigh? Probably doesn’t mean anything, even if it’s distracting in the moment.
Again, all this takes time, like any other form of exercise. But - like physical exercise - the benefits can be substantial.
I’ve started reading What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Anxiety Disorders and it makes a similar point but in a different way (“do meditation” no, but “they are just thoughts” yes in a way). So I’m more convinced re/ the general direction now.
I feel tired of maintaining routines recently. It’s not a new thing – I think I’ve always had some kind of “phases” going on, more energy / less energy, more social / less social, etc.
Things might get better now that I’m doing more about my anxiety. And also now that the days are getting longer.
Anki stats for 2023 and 2024:
As we can see, I went from “nearly every day” to “skipping a lot” rather abruptly at the beginning of December.
Also, a girl stopped hanging out with me at the beginning of December (and then dumped me), which might be contributing to the overall dejection. Historically, I think I tend to take break-ups rather badly, as in “still feeling hurt and randomly sad years later”, so feeling dejected for a couple months is nothing unexpected.
At the same time, it could be anything else, or a combination of things. Strattera, winter, different tasks at work, stopped going to the office daily, idk what else.
Sunday routine status
Sunday is the cleaning day — failing.
Hosting couchsurfers again. Also just no energy in general.
I did throw out the xmas tree today, but not as part of the cleaning routine, rather “just felt like it”.
Grocery shopping every week — not even trying.
Update my “problems” page — failing.
Lately I haven’t been excited about maintaining it.
At the same time, updating it isn’t much of a chore. I just stopped doing chores recently.
Refresh SSL certs every two weeks — idk.
The last time I had to spend a bunch of time fixing the script.
Have to wait till the next time now.
Update my “status of initiatives” page — failing.
Same thing about not doing chores recently.
Anki for learning Norwegian — failing.
I do it only occasionally.
Check if I have napkins whenever I go outside — still forget sometimes.
Updating journals in WOC — failing.
Transferring stuff from my voice recorder — resumed doing it, although I’m not anymore trying to always have a smaller inbox count than the week ago.
Learning to read sheet music — gave up for now.
Breakfast every day — no routine.
Cleaning email inbox — failing.
Check my other work sometimes — yeah, all good, notifications are working. This is resolved and I’ll move it into “long-term greens” the next time.
Eating three times daily — no routine.
In fact, recently I’ve been eating as little as once daily for several days in a row.
Gym — no routine.
Sit-ups every second day — failing.
Gratitude journal on Sunday — failing again.
I could go and do it right now, but with so many other things failing, I feel like “what’s the point” a bit.
🟢 Long-term greens
Laundry on Wed and Sat — yes.
Write about routine statuses on Sun — yes.
Check if I have any early work tomorrow — yes.
Carrying the Kindle with me and reading when I have nothing to do — ok-ish.
No status update for now. I’m starting to feel weary of doing them.
I’m still reading What Every Therapist Needs to Know About Anxiety Disorders. Almost finished. So far it seems like my behavior — in life — might be more defined by anxiety than by ADHD.
For example, things like “how come I lose contact with most people after I’m not physically around them” (because I feel anxiety about contacting them).
My ADHD is a mix of “can’t do things I want to do”, and “have to distract myself all the time”. But I just as well might want to distract myself from anxiety. And I can’t do things I want to do, because they are associated with anxiety.
The book suggests that exposure therapy is good, and I can do some kind of exposure therapy by myself. Having a good therapist would still be great, though.
Sunday is the cleaning day — ok
Grocery shopping every week — definitely at risk
Breakfast every day — no routine.
Learning to read sheet music — gave up for now
