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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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.
Nice metaphor that I have not heard before !
Yeah exactly, the upside is, at least for some of us, that we still feel we overall can somehow keep up and can do pretty well, sometimes exceptionally so, even though everything feels like a chaotic struggle or failure.
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)
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!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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…
That’s a pretty succinct description of how I live my life lol