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?
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!