I've been spiraling downward in a tailspin of "unproductivity" - to coin a state of being - for a while now, leaving a trail of half started startups and projects in my wake. I've got freelance deadlines that I've missed this week, but I'm sitting here with 30+ HN tabs open in my browser, and probably 10,000 more bookmarked that I'll never read.
I've been working on the "final 10%" of several projects at a snail's pace, for way longer than the first 90% took, and I constantly vacillate between thinking they're the next big thing or a complete waste of time, but I can't - or won't - finish them. More importantly, I'm incapable of doing the smart thing and just choosing one to focus on.
If I'm honest with myself, I haven't been nearly as aggressive as I should have been in researching cognitive behavioral therapy techniques and other non-pharmaceutical coping techniques, or even pursuing some sort of therapy.
Am I kidding myself thinking I can somehow get past this without medication? Is there any other REAL path forward?
Get into the hyper-focus at all cost (it's actually just 'really caring about something,') then learn to stay there longer and longer (also known as 'finding your passion.')
You'll have to break through some boundaries to get there, but that's OK. Once you're passionate about something most of the time, you'll be fine.
P.S. This is intentionally written from the one-sided perspective that does considers ADD to be caused by external factors and not a mental illness or chemical imbalance. Those perspectives are equally valuable; pick the one(s) that works for you.
P.P.S. Remember that if your hyperfocus is valuable enough to other people, you'll be able to pay people to do anything you can't bring yourself to.
Basic things like regular exercise can help, but meds are still a mainstay for treatment. Although studies have shown therapy to be as effective as meds for depression, there isn't great evidence for therapy for ADD. Meds are effective for most folks, have practically no side effects (at least the stimulants, Strattera can have side effects though it has other advantages), and have been safely used for decades without safety issues. The effects of the stimulants also disappear within hours so if you don't like being on a med you can simply stop. It won't change who you are. And if one med doesn't work well, sometimes another works better.
If you want to get out of this hole, you've got to get off HN now, (I use noprocrast). After that, do 1 project per night at a time. Yes. You will need to work in the dead of night, all notifications off. 1 project at a time, only. It is also incredibly important that your projects are broken down into microtasks so you can cross them off one at a time. I find often the easiest way to become late is to not understand how much work was left. Break it down. Think about 1 task at a time, ONLY. Don't think about B while you're doing A. Not even a tiny bit!
When you've made considerable progress on each project, submit the latest work, say what you've done, and then gather specific requirements and make it clear, that after you finish these next things that the project is "done" and by that I mean, you are at the end of your first iteration of development.
If you can't get those final requirements, and establish an agreed upon state that is "done" the client will drag out the project as far as you're willing to go. Hope it's not fixed price! That's just what people do. You need to put your foot down about what constitutes complete, have a mutual understanding of it, and execute those objectives.
If your client keeps asking for new stuff, put it on a separate list and tell him not until XYZ is done and we're agreed on this.
You can get out of this, but it's important to realize, you won't get out of this using the same time or project management strategies that got you into it.
"Just do X"! If only it were so easy, the world would be a much different place.
Maybe. But this is something that you really need to talk to a therapist or doctor about.
Unfortunately this usually requires you to be in an empty room, which isn't always possible. And this is more of a micro thing, not a macro one.
The best thing in the world I ever did was go see a psychiatrist to get tested to see if I was ADD. After the test came back positive, he prescribed meds, and after finding one that worked for me, I was simply blown away.
I never knew that you could actually think about one thing at a time before. I never really understood what it was to have a conversation and not be thinking about a billion things. I never, ever, knew what it meant to focus on something. It's entirely changed my world.
Wish you well my friend. At least go get tested. If you decide to take meds or follow some other avenue, it's better to know what you're working with.
Unfortunately the stuff that worked for me (Adderall) is basically just meth, and I can't get a hold of it in Japan on account of it being illegal. I think it's not even very possible to get a hold of ADD-related meds outside of the US (France classifies it as a children's disorder, so after 18 tough luck).
Different molecules, different delivery systems, different dosages, different therapeutic goals (euphoria not being one of them).
I definitely agree that you should see a specialist. Please don't be reluctant about it.
The tests that are done to determine whether someone has these disorders are non-trivial and are accurate.
At your age, you decide what kind of treatment is best. You can definitely start with diet and move on to medication.
Understand that this does not mean there is anything wrong with who you are. You could decide to find other strengths or focus on other studies. You could also find an expert who can diagnosis whether you have ADD and help you consider treatment options. The cool thing about ADD is that there is medication that can make a dramatic difference. It's like flipping a switch and becoming that person who suddenly can finish those projects and achieve what you know you are already capable of.
You should find an expert to talk to, and you should look for resources at your university. You could check whether there is a student/academic assistance center. Even though your grades are good (you're by no means failing), there should be folks there with experience diagnosing issues such as ADD.
You could also simply check at the student health center - they should be able to refer you to a psychiatrist. Don't be hesitant to go just because it's a psychiatrist. ADD is nothing like more serious mental issues that we associate with psych. In fact you could say that ADD is just a variation of normal - but the first variation of normal that we have discovered how to hack with meds. Nevertheless, treatment can make a real difference in the quality of your studies, your relationships, and your future success. So it's worth exploring.
And as for your parents, don't let them talk you out of getting the resources you feel you need. It's always possible that one/both of them have it too without realizing it. Most adults these days are diagnosed as a result of their child(ren) being diagnosed first.
Good luck, and hope that wasn't too long and boring to read. :)
Advice: go talk to a counselor at your university. At the very least, they should be able to point you in the right direction studies-wise.
Edit: Oh, and yoga's good too. You can train the mind to be more focused. Everything takes practice to get good at it ... focus isn't any different - though with computers and multi-tasking, we sometimes think we're "focused" because we're working, but really we're not focused on any one thing.
I guess I've sort-of known this, though it's nice to hear someone else confirm it... I know that my procrastination and perfectionism are quite interrelated, as whenever I try and work on a project, my mind manages to find zillions of problems with it, I don't get any real stimulation out it, and I return to distracting habits that give more immediate pleasure (damn you HN!).
Perfectionism, in turn, has its roots in childhood stress (at least it does for me). Not getting enough positive feedback for so many years, not believing in myself, etc. It seems so simple in retrospect, but I didn't realize how much emotional stress I had built up my whole life until maybe a year or so ago. Incidentally, I noticed this when I was reading about the causes of RSI, which turned out to be caused by psychosomatic effects (TMS, again, at least for me). So these stresses, left unresolved, can turn into real physical pain.
The human brain is fucking weird.
Whether you actually have it or not, I think it's great that you are noticing these traits of yours. Now you can start looking for solutions! Find ways to motivate yourself (HN community is great), get organized, and if still needed then find the right medicine that fits with the rest of your life.
In my experience, adderall is extremely helpful. And in fact, I feel more like my normal self when I take it (after the first few days of feeling like I was on speed). A healthy diet and exercise is critical too, as is a balanced life in general.
Your brain is biological, just like the rest of your body. It can have various types and degrees of deviations from "normal", and I'm not sure there even is a "normal". So, definitely listen to people you love and respect, but always keep in mind that only you know what it's like to be you (to the extent you understand yourself). It's equally important to take responsibility for what you can, and to avoid blaming yourself for things incorrectly. You will be able to tell the difference more and more as you spend time observing and trying to truly understand yourself, without judgement or pretense.
There are challenges that cannot be overcome with sheer power of will, especially if the will is the very thing that is compromised. Sometimes brute force works, but sometimes a little creative hacking is necessary. ;)
Also, random things in my case which probably don't apply to you, but just in case, some factors to consider: allergies, proper glasses prescription, nasal obstruction (deviated septum). All those were things which I think exacerbated the condition, so it's helpful to rule those out. Or in the case of allergies, minimize the damage and identify the effects of various allergen seasons.
Good luck! You obviously have initiative, so I'm sure you will do just fine.
To refute this, one would have to start by identifying someone who died of a mental illness. Such things don't happen.
Also, the causative agents for real illnesses can be viewed in a microscope, which means they are present or absent as a matter of empirical fact. Mental illness diagnoses are dispensed through the opinions of psychologists, and psychologists are famous for not agreeing about anything.
The only people who benefit from the stigma of a "mental illness" are psychologists, who pretend to be doctors (which they aren't) able to offer meaningful treatments (which they can't) for the mental illnesses they have created by voting rather than research. All the new mental illnesses going into the new DSM (about to be published) were included there by secret votes, not evidence.
Imagine if real scientists behaved like psychologists: "Is there life on Mars? Rockets are expensive — let's vote!"
When I talk to psychologists, they invariably say the problem is with psychiatrists. When I talk to psychiatrists, they invariably say the problem is with psychologists. But if human psychology were a science, this lame dodge would not exist, because both psychology and psychiatry would be united by a single theoretical framework, like the one that unites cosmology and particle physics (i.e. the Standard Model).
Particle physicists attend cosmology conferences, and cosmologists attend particle physics conferences, for the reason that both fields have the same theoretical framework and because discoveries in either field affect the other. And because physics is a science.
Psychiatrists don't attend clinical psychology conferences, and clinical psychologists don't attend psychiatry conferences, for the reason that there is no theoretical framework that unites psychiatry and psychology, and that, in turn, is because psychology is not a science.
> (and a psychiatrist actually is a medical doctor)
Yes, but a psychiatrist's medical degree is in general medicine, not psychiatry. There is no mental doctor, there are only physical doctors. The existence of a medical degree program in advance of psychiatric training is just a way to confer an unearned status to psychiatry.
When you call a psychiatrist "doctor", you are acknowledging his medical training, not his psychiatric training. If psychiatry were a science, of course, this would all be different.
Any questions?
A therapist almost diagnosed me a couple years ago but I was biased against the idea of accepting that I had ADD. Of course, now I realize how much wasted time, money, and effort I might have saved if I had been willing to seek treatment the first time a psychologist suggested it to me. Counseling and medication have all been very helpful.
It's tough because it isn't well understood and the public has many wrong and negative impressions of ADD/ADHD. One of the toughest is of course that many people don't think it is real. However, personally, after a year of treatment looking at my life before and after being treated for ADD, it is clear that treatment worked for me. That really dispels that notion for me. If it walks like a duck and quacks like duck... My university also had a lot of great resources to help learn about ADD so check in with them as well.
My advice is to talk to more than one mental health professional. Try to keep an open mind about the different methods and combinations of methods used to treat ADD. Whatever you decide, do not wait to address the issue.
Edit: Another thought: Computer Science is boring as hell. Even the tiniest bit of ADD makes it impossible. Even a person without ADD will probably show some symptoms of it. Rather than figuring out ways to just "get through it", I think avoiding this situation altogether is a better solution.
1) If you're away from home and don't have a primary care doctor, get one. Like, right now. Depending on where you live, wait times for accepting new patients can vary between 1-3 months. They'll typically set up an introductory physical. Once you're there, explain to them that you think you have ADHD and want to discuss treatment options.
From there, the meeting can go one of two ways. The way you want it to go is for the doc/NP to start you on a trial medication.
On the other hand (and this happened to me), you may find that your primary care physician is either 1) entirely against ADHD medications and/or 2) won't prescribe them, instead requiring you to go to a psychiatrist. If this is the case, then you must start the 1-3 month waiting period all over again trying to get in with a psychiatrist. A shortcut here might just be to go directly to the psychiatrist, but depending on your insurance, that may not be possible.
Tips:
Don't bother getting help through your university. They get too many kids coming through there looking for easy Adderall and Vicodin, to the point where they treat everyone like drug addicts. Getting that kind of treatment from others can be really off-putting and make you feel bad about having ADHD. That's the last thing you need.
If you can't get meds through your primary care, make sure you see a psychiatrist, not a psychologist. If you call a mental health center that has a mix of psychiatrists, psychologists, and counsellors, make sure you know you're getting set up with a psychiatrist. You can still get diagnosed with ADHD by a psychologist, but they don't prescribe medication, so you'll have to wait another 1-3 months to meet with someone who can after you get diagnosed.
The psychiatrist gave me some stunning advice: Ritalin or medication will not do your work for you. In my last month of university I was enabled with the ability to start working on projects well before the 48-hour cram period that I had come to know.
I had spent most of my schooling as a child to be made out as an idiot. As I result I'm now awfully quick to recognise when someone is not giving me their respect.
ADD is supposed to be picked up through your younger years. However when I grew up, it was the naughty children that had ADD/ADHD... they were the ones that caught their teachers attention.
Someone like me would never be correctly diagnosed, I has happy internalizing whatever it was that I was thinking about.
It's a not a minor thing by any means, but it is at least a relatively common thing. You're not the first person to encounter this.
Unless you're a literature scholar, no one will look down on you for not having read War and Peace cover-to-cover.
You don't have to figure it all out right away. You have the rest of your life to figure out how to operate your head. Thinking about thinking is fun, but too much at once can be like eating too much candy.
Keep up your expectations for self-discipline, it's valuable and has gotten you this far. That's enough for most people, but you're different. So let yourself off the hook a bit judgmentally.
A lot of folks end up having fun with it.
I didn't actually make it through the exams that would allow me to study Computer Science, after studying hard I just couldn't concentrate when it came to the exam, I had plenty of time and knew it was important however couldn't focus. (I was like this throughout most of my education, good in class - failed the exams)
Perhaps this is just more excuses in a modern world full of distractions, either way I think I'll seek some professional advice.
- exercise
- no sugar/low carb/paleo diet
- meditation
- ambient music / white noise
- small goals
- adderall
- modafinal
- cannabis
- seinfeld's "don't break the chain" method
- dont fight it, monetize it
good luck bro
I quit a while back and have surprisingly had little urge to do it any more. While I greatly value the difference in perspective it can offer, I was just using it way too often for too long, without even really enjoying it a lot of the time.
Thanks so much
What is diagnosis like - is it rather hit and miss or are there clear physical signs? Off to read I guess.
From my experience, they asked me about past behaviour, current behaviour, and some questions to probe my ability to keep track of the conversation. It was the questions about my past and current that really shocked me. They were asking if I did specific things that I just thought was "me being weird' but are actually /extremely/ typical of people forming coping mechanisms for different symptoms.
TL;DR at bottom
Lots of the usual helpful advice has been given to you already (meditation, medication, exercise, diet, lifestyle), and I don't want to discount it by any means as it's all extremely helpful to try to achieve some kind of life balance through pursuit of better habits which can definitely help you become more focused. Instead I'm going to tell you what I've learned, as I was in a similar situation 9 years ago, though whether my lot has been improved much through experience is probably open to debate.
I was diagnosed with ADD when I was 8, though I've come to feel that the broad range of symptoms that the label is applied is less of a binary trait and more of a spectrum of behavioral characteristics that everyone can relate to, some more than others. If you feel like you have it, you probably do, though getting the official seal of "ADD" is probably only useful in that it gives you a venue to legally obtain medication to help mitigate it, as I did; working my way through the pharmacopoeia until I eventually settled into a grudging partnership with Adderall, which I took throughout high school. And it WAS very useful for extended periods of focus and crunching before tests and exams.
The one catch: I absolutely hated it. It made me feel disconnected, gave me a serious case of cottonmouth, gave me some serious bad breath, and made it nearly impossible to maintain a healthy sleep habit and diet. It's not something I would recommend except as an absolute last resort.
College can be a cruel first test of one's ability to balance their commitments. Personally I found the barrage of new things I had to deal with on my own for the first time overwhelming, and didn't last long at my first institution (UIUC). At the same time, I can say that many of my obstacles were things I chose. Making friends, going to parties, getting involved with student groups, and social activities were all things that I chose over applying myself towards my coursework. And here's the thing: I learned a lot! But not about the things I was being tested on.
I don't want to ramble on with obsessive detail, but I will say that I finally graduated 9 1/2 years after enrolling in 2003, though much of that time was spent not in school. Here's what would have saved my parents and I a lot of money: As soon as my interest waned, I should have taken time off. I didn't because of family pressure. There's a poignant quote somewhere about not playing if your head's not in the game, I'm sure, and I wish I had taken heed.
The thing is, all the time spent partying, travelling, working crappy minimum wage jobs, and living outside of the the very small world that concerns itself with minute improvements to the travelling salesman problem, and whether P = NP, gave me a perspective that has finally motivated me to pursue a self-driven education on computer-science-related topics that I never had until my very last semester of college (which was Fall 2012). Do I regret it? Sure, there are loads of things I'd do differently, but through the whole process I've developed extracurricular skills I value and am generally much happier and fulfilled person than I would have been if I had graduated in 2008.
So what I'm getting at in what I've realized is an extremely roundabout way, is that if you don't feel like you're really ready to dive into what you're learning headfirst, if you don't feel COMPELLED to... then don't. Take some time off and do something else that you want. Consider another major or career path. Learn to play an instrument. Heck, join a circus troupe. If you think your CS curriculum is tough now, just wait until your junior and senior years. That's when the difficulty really starts to adopt a tune that has the palatability of nails-on-a-chalkboard.
Because of pressure from my parents mainly, I kept going back when I knew with all the fabric of my essence that I wasn't ready and trying to half-ass my way through my classes. And I kept getting chewed up and spat out so to speak by the difficulty of the material. Seriously, I ended up failing core computer science classes repeatedly because my head wasn't in the game, because I didn't understand why the concepts I was learning were important, or applicable to anything I was interested in doing at the time, and because I truly just wasn't ready. It's like trying to bike up a steep hill without enough forward momentum. You need to be in high gear and ready to bring it.
So what finally got me interested in learning the material? I've always been fairly certain that I want to build things with code. I considered everything from music to writing to psychology in throes of self-doubt, but what it came down to in the end was that nothing excites me the way computer technology does, which fortuitously enough happened to be my intended major from the get-go. But I had to learn a lot about everything else the other academic disciplines, and life in general, had to offer before I was comfortable making that decision.
TL;DR, as promised:
-Unless you want to medicate yourself (which may be unhealthy in the long run), you may have to put higher ed on hold until you're feeling it (I should have).
-The degree isn't as important as the knowledge. Motivate yourself to learn things that you're interested in for now. As your base of knowledge grows, you may find that more and more of your interests overlap with a computer science curriculum. In that case, go for the degree again. If not, consider majoring in or studying something else.
-Consider taking some time off from any kind of classical academic learning and instead use this time for other personal and emotional growth and self-discovery. Work and support yourself, if you're not already. Go on an enormous road trip. Spend some time volunteering for a cause that resonates with you.
-If you do decide to continue with school full-time, then do whatever you can to make it your only commitment. Tell the band they have to find a new drummer. Tell your best friend to find a new wingman. Move in with your parents if possible or get whatever financial aid you can so that you don't have to work while you're in school. Seriously, with this last one. It sounds lame, but if it may be the only thing that can get you through your junior and senior years of CS.
I have professors now that e-mail the class at 1:30am on a Friday creating new assignments due the following Monday. They all say the same thing: this is the world we live in now, get used to it. Crises happen at work around the clock, and the expectation now for pretty much everyone in the working world is that you have at least some way to be reached 24/7.
