Hello friends, thank God I finally hit some months of productivity (nearly 29 now) after probably over a decade of trial and failure
I can split my successes against my adhd into 3 broad categories
Wherever and wherever I am, there my adhd is! It’s space-time invariant! I can’t escape it’s presence
The logical but unpleasant and hard to hear/accept reality is that I will never be able to enjoy past-times like other people can. I pay a higher cost for every dopamine hit that doesn’t align with my fundamental goals-most people don’t have this struggle but I ALWAYS WILL.
Every minute or 2 spent in something ultimately vain carries with it a dangerous probability that I mismanage my time and effort with it, e.g. watching news that doesnt affect me or scrolling twitter.
Those probabilities add up and multiply so they inevitably lead to screwed up efforts and failures.
So the brutal truth is this-because of my distinct nature(call it a disorder or divergence the underlying reality is the same), I will have to permanently sacrifice what will always be a dangerous burden on me.
I have had to use Cold Turkey to block out all distracting sites, I blocked also the cold turkey uninstall page and made the blocker airtight
I have had to switch from a smartphone to a flip phone because any phone internet=greater burden than benefit. I have a sunbeam which has MAPS and an e-keyboard as features.
Focusmate/Preply/friend to have the pressure of working with another person
finally beeminder which thank Allah then the founders, I have seen an exponential growth in quitting bad habits and establishing good ones.
Right now I am nervous about trying to dopamine hit myself with “MUH NEW PRODUCTIVITY SHYSHTEM” when these 3 have worked out incredibly well right now…I am eager to permanentize my current replacement/displacement of bad habits with good ones.
I do have some other ideas for optimization though.
Glad to hear it! Yeah, Loona is still working great for me. These days I beemind starting Loona by a certain time each evening. I then do an escape in the app, and after play one if its sleep stories while I finish getting ready for bed. I don’t really pay attention to the story, but it’s just stimulating enough that it prevents me from being too tempted to turn on a podcast instead.
I’ve found this one to be really useful. For me, it works almost like a “tax” since I don’t really enjoy meditating.
Usually, I just go “oh, I guess I don’t want to check twitter that bad”
But it’s never enough for me to turn off the app completely, since If I do want to check twitter that badly, like if I’ve got a screenshot to tweet out, then it’s fine.
Justification being that hopefully it’ll work more like my brain does and help me to have a better moment-to-moment view of where I’m at with my commitments.
I am going to try to block out more time in my week w/ focusmate so there are no gaps. As someone with ADHD (this phrasing sounds obnoxious LOL) its possible my neurodivergence makes me worried about everything being structured as if i will have no time for my mind to wander
but i imagine i can schedule times for my mind to wander and that it will be a loss of a little freedom for the addition of greater freedom.
I suspect the biggest thing we do for ourselves as those with this condition is replace or displace anything that is toxic or wasteful in our lives. Imagine things toxic as things that are disgusting fecal burdens on you, poisoning your life with junk and garbage. Imagine things ultimately wasteful as moments that eventually rot and degrade your life.
Obviously this is a matter of interpretation. e.g. i dont consider going to the movies with family to be a waste of time as there is a higher purpose to it.
But I think the cycle of boredom, excitement, frustration and so on that we go through all needs to be contained within paramaters we set. If I am going to experience all of those I want to experience them in tasks and goals of value, not allowing any bad or wasteful distractions in. I may procrastinate on my second language flashcards by doing the dishes but watching comedy shorts on youtube should not be an option. I may let my mind wander but it should wander in thoughts that are conducive to my goals like my job or connecting with family or helping others. I don’t know if this will feel too suffocating but life is a matter of tradeoffs.
I’m still working with my doctor to try to find the right dosage for my medication. For quite a while now afternoons have been challenging, as the effects of the medication have been wearing off in the morning. I’m hoping we’ll get it figured out soon. In the meantime, I’ve been working to compensate by better aligning my Beeminder goals with my responsibilities.
The Arc browser just released a new feature in 0.90.0 that makes my Beeminder panel so much nicer. Basically it now automatically opens external links in a modal for any websites that are “favorited.” I’m in love:
Unfortunately I think the Beeminder auth flow, which involves a couple of redirects, may exit you out of the favorited context in Arc, so we’ll see how practical this really is for this particular project.
Yesterday I attended a painting class at my local library. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Most all my time I’m on screens, so this was a way to try something new that doesn’t require staring at a screen. Plus it’s designated time with other people, which can help avoid issues with procrastination. It seems like they may only do these things monthly at the most, but I think that’s alright.
Today I was again surprised by just how effective body doubling can be for me. I had about 1.5 hours more work I needed to do to get all my Beeminder goals happy, and my brain was already shutting down. I went and asked my mom to come and do her work in the same room where I was for a while. I was able to then complete everything with almost no trouble.
It definitely doesn’t work that well all the time–I’ve had Focusmate sessions where I dragged myself through and barely got anything done. But when it does work it can be quite striking.
I’ve been continuing to work on my custom Beeminder dashboard. I’m still aware that it’s part procrastination, but I also think it’s been quite beneficial for me over the other ways I’ve used Beeminder in the past.
I’m looking into different bill negotiation services to see if I can find a way to outsource that indefinitely.
I also need to think about how to do better with my dental hygiene. I’m pretty consistent with brushing, but don’t floss. I also haven’t gotten in with a dentist here in Michigan. I’m hoping once I have a dentist then it’ll be relatively simple to keep up with scheduling cleanings since I assume they’ll want to schedule the next appointment after I finish the last appointment. That’s how things work with my primary care physician and my therapist, and I have appointments with both of them regularly without difficulty.
I’m trying out a new way to beemind mindfulness–literally logging breaths. In the past I’ve tried beeminding the amount of time, say, away from electronics focusing on my surroundings. This inevitably became annoying enough that I would archive the goal, and it never seemed particularly helpful, anyway. This time I created a goal based on breath count. So I focus on my breathing, count my breaths, and when I feel like stopping I enter that number into my goal. I’m also autodialing the goal. I’m hopeful this will be more effective and less annoying than previous approaches.
I just discovered that it’s very easy with Edge on Windows to install a website (or at least all the ones I’ve tried so far) as a desktop app. And it doesn’t require Edge to be open to open the app! Unlike Chrome, where when I would try to open an app installed using Chrome it would also open chrome if it wasn’t already launched.
This is pretty important to me because one of the big benefits for me to being able to do this is that it keeps me out of the browser if I can just open a single-purpose app for something, which makes it less likely I’ll get distracted or forget what I’m trying to do. (Which is one of the biggest reasons I like the Arc browser–it’s a browser that is as little browser as possible, especially since I disable the sidebar)
I’m wondering if Edge works the same on the Mac. Also hoping that at some point that the Arc browser adds similar functionality.
Just tried on my Mac and unfortunately it does seem that opening an app installed through Edge results in the Edge browser launching. Would be nice to figure out a way to prevent that.
Beeminding my breaths is working really great so far. It feels really rewarding in a way that previous attempts haven’t.
Also I was recently able to move my office out of my bedroom into a separate room in the house. I was surprised to see how immediate and large the effect was on how it felt to be off work. My bedroom feels completely different, and I feel like I have permission to relax in a way I didn’t feel previously. I wasn’t expecting that.
I’ve had some ongoing anxiety about knowing whether or not I’m at the right dose for my medication, especially since for me it can be difficult to remember accurately how my workdays have been going. So today I created a new Beeminder goal with the express purpose of making sure I log how well my workday went at the end of each workday so I have a history saved.
I’ll be storing the rating in the value of the datapoint plus any optional notes in the comment. I converted the goal to custom and am using nonzero aggday to make that work with a single goal.
Good innovation