I have so much work to DOOOOOO aaaaaagh stop procrastinating
Aaaagh how do I get motivated?
ADHD time!
My favourite strategy is to set a timer for FIVE, that's right, 5 minutes, and do the task for that amount of time. Give it a go for just 5 minutes. If you don't know how, just prepare for the thing, like open the document or grab the broom for 5 minutes. And if it sucks, feel free to stop after 5. That's okay! But I often find that once I get started, I'm perfectly happy to keep going longer.
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(artist unknown)Others have already posted some really good ADHD coping strats, so I’ll post a weirder one: sometimes chewing gum helps me focus.
GET IN THERE AND DO THAT MATH
OR GET GOOD SLEEP IMMEDIATELY SO N THAT YOU CAN DO GOOD MATH TOMORROW
AND HAVE A NICE DAY AND BEVERAGE
Why aren't you doing what you need to do? Do you really need to do all of it? What's the one thing you need to do, will it be that difficult to start to do it?
I need to do all of it by the end of the week. It involves a learning a lot of shitty math and my brain is too tired
I'm going to try to at least knock a little bit of it out tonightI'm already too late to this but I'd skim the maths stuff to just get your brain to start processing it and acclimating to doing it but with a clear commitment to not expect anything from myself, just to give it a quick looking over.
You'll probably understand more than you realise at the time you're reading it, you'll likely be thinking about it between that point and the next time you pick up the work, and hopefully it won't feel as overwhelming because you have started to confront it and it's not as bad as you first thought (this is less effective for people who are a bit prone to catastrophising so ymmv).
I was in a similar situation a long time ago and ended up having a breakdown. My main advice is to focus on whatever is absolutely necessary and don't go in without an exit strategy; you surely don't absolutely need to do all of it, weigh the benefits against how stressful it is.
I wish I had a tip for how to actually go through with doing it and doing it more effectively, but that mostly lies on being in the right headspace to learn new concepts which is hard to do when under pressure.
Edit: oh yeah and also sleep well
Break the task down into smaller, more doable-looking pieces and focus on one piece at a time. Piece still seems too big? Break it down further little piecelets. Now that you have some momentum going, break the piecelets down further into picopiecelets. Now the picopiecelets are subatomic in scale, so the task has disappeared! Task? What task? There is clearly nothing here.
ADHD coping is just constantly trying to trick your brain into shit. The promise of reward later works for some people (but not me because apparently I think so little of myself that I never believe I deserve rewards). Getting a friend to be in the same space as you for a period of time works quite well too. Annoyingly, bit of intense exercise early in the day actually does help me
There's some validity in the argument that procrastination is a revolt against anxiety so, idk, do the whatever it is that lessens your anxiety.
On the other hand, I have ADHD and procrastination is often me suffering from a fundamental lack of urgency necessary to motivate me as well, so I'm basically a Goldilocks of motivation where I need to thread the needle which, on one side, is a lack of a feeling of urgency and, on the other, is suffering from paralysing anxiety over the pressure completely overwhelming me. ʰᵒᵒʳᵃʸ!
Aaaagh how do I get motivated?
me atomizing the dog I'm supposed to be watching
