[koube]

I have a tangential question: How can I know which of these self help things are helpful and which are just snake oil? I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life. When I decide to take a shower on the weekend it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to actually get up and walk to the bathroom. Then it might be another 30 minutes of scrolling before I actually hop in the shower.

I'm desperate for something that works. I'll pay any amount of money for something that will make me sit down and do things. I've sat down and listened to literally every single Huberman Labs content I could find. I'm trying out brain.fm's free playlists on youtube. I downloaded EndeavorOTC just recently and it's wildly expensive but at this point nothing else is working. I know the problem is I'm just lazy and I don't want to make lifestyle changes. Great. Now with that agreed upon, what the hell do I do? I saw a doctor when I was young and he said I definitely don't have ADHD. Should I be seeking a Vyvanse prescription anyways?

I've read all of the books I could find looking for the one that will fix me. Will this one work? Do people find any of these actually helpful?

[from-nibly]

Fellow ADHD haver. You sound like you have ADHD and burnout. You need to tease those apart and deal with them one at a time. ADHD is going to be easier to get started on.

If you indeed get diagnosed with ADHD.

Do NOT try to do a bunch of weird stuff to "boost" your brain and fix your ADHD. Pills are good and I take them and if your doctor agrees you should then its a good idea to take pills.

But I see people with ADHD thinking that they need to make their brain more reliable. But the ADHD brain just isn't. It's like trying to say you only need 1 replica of this service if you can just get it to be reliable enough.

You don't need 1 reaaaaly reliable replica you need 3 replicas in HA and circuit breaking.

Make your environment; your job, your house, your finances, your routines, ADHD proof. Treat yourself like the chaos you are and make your life resilient to it.

Don't make it so you don't have ADHD (impossible) make it so it doesn't matter.

[127361]

This is how I fixed my focus problems (written very hastily as I am short on time):

Watch out for domestic abuse or bullying in your life, if you are a victim of it, the upset from it will knock out your executive functioning for a while and give you ADHD symptoms, due to the effect of the cortisol stress hormone. You might need a few weeks (or even months) of calm to get back to normal. To reiterate, check for stressors in your life and things that are making you upset. That can disrupt your focus.

Also, if you find yourself wanting to get up and walk about all the time it might be due to your mind subconsciously wanting to get away from the sources of distress.

If you find yourself fidgeting, it can be the mind's way of self-soothing yourself, to calm yourself down, so that you can work. Let yourself do it, without micromanaging or monitoring your focus, and you will naturally fall into the process of working, as long as you are paying some attention to the work... So as the days/weeks go by you will find yourself spending more and more time focusing, gradually bit by bit as a positive feedback loop is being built in your mind. You obviously want to work and focus, so let yourself do it, without excessive control or self-monitoring.

Also I found it good to frequently play some quick game on the computer in between the work - and eventually the work will take over and you won't find yourself needing to play the game anymore. Again I think it's a way of calming yourself down.

That is what worked for me. And how I broke out of it.

[LeafItAlone]

> Make your environment; your job, your house, your finances, your routines, ADHD proof. Treat yourself like the chaos you are and make your life resilient to it.

Can you expand on this? What suggestions do you have for accomplishing this?

[from-nibly]

This is going to sound like an empty promise (it might be), but I think this deserves a whole article, brb.

[to11mtm]

> Do NOT try to do a bunch of weird stuff to "boost" your brain and fix your ADHD. Pills are good and I take them and if your doctor agrees you should then its a good idea to take pills.

I'll be bold and go one step further; Even with nutritional supplements and the like, make sure you have some feedback signals (a doctor, friends, etc.) and -use them-. And even if you're on your own and you think it works, Talk to a professional. I have had friends -and- colleagues who either have crawled along with self-help or switched to self help and wound up losing years of personal progress.

> But I see people with ADHD thinking that they need to make their brain more reliable. But the ADHD brain just isn't. It's like trying to say you only need 1 replica of this service if you can just get it to be reliable enough.

Honestly sometimes it's like people treat 'ADHD Diagnosis' the way an impostor architect hears 'Cloud Application' and tries use the exact same pattern they always use for cloud apps, regardless of if it's the right fit for the specific problem.

[TINJ]

I've found that there is nothing in these books. I've read enough of them that I now have zero curiosity about what they have to say.

What works for me is to choose to suffer. You can replace all those books and all their pages with just those three words. There's no mindhack or some new scientific (or spiritual) method to no longer suffer when working. Just choose to suffer and get good at suffering.

[zubairq]

Well, there can be some tips in the books, so I would not discount them. After all, we are reading those books to try to learn better. But yes, I agree, often we just have to suffer our way to greatness when learning :)

[Grambles]

> I'll pay any amount of money that will make me sit down and do things.

That's almost exactly what I said to myself that prompted me to realize I needed to go to a doctor. Not because I planned on actually spending any amount of money, but because that level of sheer desperation is what finally convinced me I had something wrong with me.

Turns out I had undiagnosed and untreated ADHD the whole time. I'd seek a second opinion because I have no idea why your doctor would say you "definitely don't have ADHD" unless he is one of those doctors that just doesn't believe in ADHD, which is unfortunately common. If you weren't rigorously tested then that doctor's opinion doesn't mean anything, so try again.

[captaincaveman]

So once diagnosed what then, pills or is there anything else that can be done?

[Grambles]

Medication makes a huge difference, but doesn't cure you. I truly found myself getting on medication life-changing and it's what allowed me to get on a career track instead of bouncing between minimum wage jobs.

Now that I actually have an income, I'm also seeing a therapist who focuses in ADHD to help build strategies to mitigate the impact it has on my life. I'd say medication then therapy, in that order, have the biggest impact.

[gorfot]

Indeed 'self-help' information by itself won't do anything. Getting disciplined = (behavioural) lifestyle changes. It's like reading about different types of exercises. Postponing it, not doing it. Yet the bar is so low to do a SINGLE bodyweight squat (while brushing teeth, waiting for something in the kitchen etc). Do one everyday. When you do one, you will do multiple. And just like exercise; Doing almost anything is more important than doing the 'right' thing.

One element is to get into the habit of building smaller habbits. These are to overcome the smallest resistance, by combining, replacing, or removing activities / triggers;

* saying 'do it now' (out loud) to yourself anytime you realize your are postponing * 'just do it' and 'the obstacle is the way' are what i use to overcome my social angst for silly things. (including the embarrassmentfor this cheesyness :D) * 'weather is irrelevant'; ALWAYS go out for a walk in the morning, get coffee or bring it. This will have lasting effects for the rest of the day. * When going to bed leave your phone in the next room. (it's easier at this time then when you are on it) * Having internet free time (router off, phone in a different room); you can read something slower a (e)book, or listen to downloaded podcasts on a non connected device * find better interests / hobbies (higher value / exciting / soothing) * do some yoga / stretching while watching anything * take the stairs instead of an elevator, add some extra floors. * set just 5 mins for any task. you might end up doing more, but at least you started. * (video)call someone you like on a regular schedule, or do something together (Virtually or otherwise)

Bigger intervention ideas; - actually get into a different pattern for a week or longer; without internet, stay with someone else, or stay at home but clean the entire place. Go outside 3 times a day. Do light exercises. Eat different food. - talk to a psychologist, even if it's a one time thing.

You can't outsource YOUR passiveness, to someone else (a doctor or a product). Start small, with both the physical and mental.

Small changes may not overcome your bigger issues / fears, doing SOMETHING regularly is the first step. You might get to a slightly better state from where you can make new decisions.

Im sympathetic to your feelign that it might be ADHD - and you might need help for that. But I feel like you will need to make a start yourself anyway

[sublinear]

I'm just a random person, but for me motivation has always beaten the living snot out of any big ideas. I haven't found a magic technique. As long as I've feared an outcome and still been able to react to fear with effort, I've been fine even when it seemed hopeless. Negative emotions are vital in this way.

I also found that too many layers of abstraction (aka "overthinking") can work against discipline. It's too easy to want to defer to a system. That's where we may be comfortable, but it's important to remember it might as well be a board of bureaucrats in your head you appointed whether by hook or crook. Give up and just work. It's highly unlikely anything you're facing is new to you or that exacting precision and order is required.

[harshreality]

Have you watched or read anything by people who actually have ADHD? Like the Youtube channel "How To ADHD"? She also has a book coming out soon. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51pOP8-wURk ... an alternative is Rosier's book "Your Brain's Not Broken" (2021), have you tried that one?

If it is ADHD, and you don't want to, or aren't, going to get on medication (which will probably help, but also changes the way you think and your personality), don't try to "fix" yourself and stop with the "I'm lazy", and treat it as a challenge to hack your environment so that your environment works with your ADHD to help you get things done.

Timers. Timers (placed away from you so you can't just shut them off without stopping what you're doing) to tell you when to do things, timers (pomodoro) to tell you went to stop doing things.

Procrastinate by coming up with new schemes to hack your workspace, not by scrolling. Delete or web-block your social media apps, especially infinite scroll ones, or put your phone in a drawer or another room.

One factor in willingness to switch tasks is getting rid of the friction of feeling afraid that you won't be able to restart from where you are. Think about and work on how you can save state (mental stack) by jotting down your current train of thought, so that you're confident you'll be able to return to it later.

Gamify everything (during hours when you want to be productive). How much can you get done before an alarm goes off? How quickly can you find a problem/bug/contradiction/inefficiency/solution in whatever you're working on? How can you solve a problem or finish a task in an unusual but equally workable way?

Don't overthink through all the steps of a task when you're starting one (e.g. when an alarm goes off or you set an alarm for a pomodoro-ish block of time). That'll be demotivating. Identify the first step, and do that, and then you're in the task and it's easier to keep going.

[2cynykyl]

You kinda answered your own question: "another 30 minutes of scrolling". Sorry to be so cliche, but we all gotta stop staring at our phones. Side story: I have been taking the subway to work for the past 7 months and Every.Single.Person is staring at their phone the whole time. It's like dystopic sci-fi stuff. So, back to the cliche's, treat the disease (phone addiction) not the symptoms (distraction).

[sigilis]

People in the subway are just people waiting to get somewhere, being on your phone in that situation is no more dystopian than reading a book which may be what’s on some of those screens.

Not saying phone use isn’t a distraction, but sometimes distractions are okay.

[joshmanders]

Yeah I'm frankly getting sick of this whole "The problem is phones". No it's not.

Something happened somewhere and now everyone believes that any type of mental stimulation is bad if that stimulation comes from a device with a screen and doesn't matter one bit what they're doing. Screen === bad!

No instead you should be reading a book! What if they are reading a book? On their phone? NO! Not like that.

How many times I've had something making me not want to be productive and I just sit on my phone scrolling and someone who thinks they know everything is like "Your problem is you're always on your phone" No it's not, my overall average screentime for the past 6 months has been LESS than an hour a day. And it's only that high because of those few days where I do spend 4-5 hours just scrolling randomly throughout the day.

[soupfordummies]

I'm frankly getting sick of this whole "staring at phones isn't much different than reading a book" argument. Yes it is.

There's a difference between "seeking entertainment/novelty/relief of boredom" and the methods/mediums to attain those feelings.

Our collective brains have been seemingly re-wired by these things. I'm not suggesting that we gotta get rid of smartphones or something, I just think it's a little ignorant to be stuck in denial about it.

EDIT: Just reread my comment and it came across much more snarky and confrontational than I intended. I'm sorry for that.

[joshmanders]

How so? I'm sure thousands of years ago when paper was introduced SOMEONE was "the problem with you is that you're reading on paper and not stone!"

If your argument is that staring a screen is bad for your eyes, I'd agree with you there, but that has NOTHING to do with the mental stimulation of reading. You are still reading, stimulating your brain. How those words are presented to you does not change that.

The "rewires your brain" argument is in regards to short form videos and other stuff that is to stimulate low attention spans.

If I read a book be it physical or on a kindle or the kindle app on my phone does not change anything.

[soupfordummies]

Next time you're getting groceries, sitting at a redlight, waiting in line, etc, and you see everyone around you looking at their phone, do you really think they're all reading Kindle? I'd say the vast majority are probably scrolling some sort of short form feed.

[2cynykyl]

This is exactly what a phone addict would say.

Besides I was obviously referring to the type of content consumption enabled by phones, not the phones themselves. Unless by scrolling you mean reading Hemingway on your Kindle app, then I stand corrected.

[soupfordummies]

Yeah, and next time you're driving or in a car, take a look around in a traffic jam or at a red light. It's downright scary when you consider how many people are staring into their phones while operating several ton metal death machines.

[tgittos]

Sibling comments are mentioning undiagnosed ADD (or ADHD), I'd like to float the possibility of undiagnosed depression. The "I can't get disciplined and I'm desperate. It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life." comment drives it home for me.

Has it always been this way for you? Do you also have problems focusing on things you enjoy?

I've experienced many of the symptoms you list for almost my entire life. I started seeing a therapist about 5 years ago and I've come to realize much of my "laziness" was actually depression. It's hard to be motivated to do the responsible things you need to do to live a life if you can't even be motivated to do fun things you actually enjoy.

You can't "fix" this alone - you're too close to the problem (and there is one, it's affecting your work and home life) to see what's wrong.

[koube]

It has always been this way. Actually most of my teachers through elementary and middle school have asked that I be evaluated for ADD (before the H was added), although we didn't really see a point to it since I would just be going back to the same doctor who had already ruled out ADD.

I can play video games for 12 hours straight and forget to eat, so I guess I don't have problems focusing on things I enjoy, at the same time I feel like I hear about depressed people playing video games 12 hours a day.

I also start learning a new programming language or framework every month it seems, without retaining anything about the previous month's language/framework, but for the first couple of weeks it really holds my attention.

Seeing a therapist has been on my todo list for a while (but have been having trouble actually getting to it). I'll try to get that in soon.

[tgittos]

I have been unofficially diagnosed with ADD (specifically without the H). My psych and I decided not to diagnose because I have coping skills and habits that prevent it from interfering too much with my life, and the long term implications of an official diagnosis in the US outweighed the improvement in my symptoms if I were medicated. I have also been officially diagnosed with MDD or whatever they call it today. Depression can display similar symptoms to ADD, and it is possible to have both which is fun for diagnosis.

I probably should have been more specific about "things you enjoy". Video games are a special case where the depressed use them as an escape, for a sense of control over their lives, and a sense of growth where there is no growth. I consider that different from hobbies - things that improve you, things that take work that you enjoy. It'd be different if you were skipping meals to finish building a model plane, but with video games you're skipping meals to prevent yourself from returning to your life.

The ADD on learning stuff resonates with me. I experienced the same thing and for myself it turned out to be a coping mechanism for depression. The jolt of dopamine I got whilst learning was compensating for a general feeling of ennui. Since being diagnosed and medicated for depression, I've found my ability to focus and stick with things long term has vastly improved, despite also having ADD.

I'd highly recommend a therapist even though the experience will most likely be frustrating to start with. Aside from the difficulty in finding one that's available, you also need to find one that you like and whose style and techniques work for you. Don't give up on the concept of therapy if your first few experiences don't feel like they work.

I've been seeing my therapist for about 4 years now and while I don't believe you're ever done with therapy, I do believe that I'm working on the fundamentals of what made me feel bad enough to seek out a therapist in the first place and that I've "debugged" most of my issues.

[irjustin]

> It's hurting my job, it's hurting my home life. When I decide to take a shower on the weekend it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to actually get up and walk to the bathroom. Then it might be another 30 minutes of scrolling before I actually hop in the shower.

Have you tried counseling? This sounds like burnout.

[astrange]

It sounds like undiagnosed adult ADHD to me. The key is that is happens in all parts of your life, not just work.

[WhitneyLand]

Lack discipline in what way? You mean stuff comes up that’s important but you’re not doing it?

What does it feel like? Procrastination or wanting to avoid things? Lack of interest, lack of energy, fear of failure, apathy, other?

There can be more than one thing involved, Check each box that applies and we’ll start to get a picture.

[koube]

As in I sit down in the morning ready to work, I write down everything I've accomplished each day, and many times at the end of the day I find that I've only written down one or two minor things that I've finished for that day. I know things are important, I want to get them done, and it gives me terrible anxiety as the clock ticks down to the end of the day and my list of finished tasks is so short.

I have terrible task initiation, for example after any meeting, no matter what it is, I can't get started on anything for 20-30 minutes. Once I get started, sometimes I will be productive but sometimes I will suddenly realize I've been on my phone for another 30 minutes. At the same time, someone else's homework is great fun and I have in the past used other people's homework to procrastinate on my own work.

On the executive function skills listed in Smart but Scattered Guide to Success, I think I'm probably worst at Task Initiation and Sustained Attention.

[WhitneyLand]

I don’t yet know all the answers to these things, but I understand how important they are and that the solution is not as simple as “just do it” or similar advice.

If you ever want to talk to a fellow HN’er my email is [e-mail]

[oh_sigh]

How about you just go to a professional, get your (presumed) ADHD diagnosed, and get on a known effective treatment for it? You don't need to do it all on your own - there are people who devoted their lives to treating situations like your own.

[debtor66]

I can't even describe how much I relate to this :( Especially the Podcast part. I've literally read and listened to every single thing I could on increasing focus / concentration and nothing helped me yet.

[noonething]

Nothing can 'make' you do anything. Moral Purpose overcomes itself. Don't make lifestyle changes because of something external. Find your inner energy. Seek nothing outside yourself.

[astrange]

> Nothing can 'make' you do anything.

Sounds like someone who's never taken modafinil.

[noonething]

Modafinil does not overcome your moral purpose.

[astrange]

That's making you do something immoral, not making you do anything.

[noonething]

Your moral purpose is what makes you do things, not modafinil or anything else outside yourself.

[astrange]

I claim your frontal cortex makes you do things, which is why stimulating it makes you do more things.

[HeartStrings]

Same issue. Build timy habits I guess. It’s actually a really hard problem to solve.

[TomaszZielinski]

Obviously I have no idea what you situation is, and multiple issues can have similar symptoms. And also I'm not a professional. Last but not least, I might be reading too much from your comment, and write useless or over the top stuff.

Having said that:

- Consider not saying to yourself that you're lazy. It works the same way as saying to another person that they are lazy--usually nothing good comes out of that. In CBT it's called labelling, here's a random article about it: https://cogbtherapy.com/cbt-blog/cognitive-distortions-label... - an important thing here is that it's not just about avoiding certain words. It's more about reframing your thinking so that those label words are not your first or even second choices.

- Apart from labelling yourself as lazy, I think you might be "should-ing" yourself in the foot by effectively saying to yourself: "I should/must not be lazy"--note this is already 2-in-1, should + labelling. A simple way to escape "shoulding" is to soften the language. Instead of "I should/must do X", say sth like: "it would be cool if I did X, but realistically I'm only able to do X/2, and it's still better than nothing". Another random article: https://www.therapynowsf.com/blog/should-statements-reframe-...

- You could consider trying ADHD diagnosis again. From what I recall diagnosis in adults differs from diagnosis in children or adolescents, so this time it might as well turn out the other way.

- ADHD or not, you could check https://www.adhdrewired.com/rethinking-adult-adhd-with-dr-ru... --dr Ramsay is a CBT practitioner that focuses on ADHD, but I bet the techniques would work for anyone to some extent. So even if you don't have ADHD, but only ADHD-like symptoms caused by something else, maybe you would find something there for yourself. He has a lot of free materials on: https://www.cbt4adhd.com/media/

EDIT: By the way, the other answer (very good, btw) mentions burnout, and the answer to it mentions anxiety. Those could also give ADHD-like symptoms. So you could research that angle as well. If you don't know where to start, you can check my comment history--I posted some comments on anxiety and depression recently, with some recommendations from my own experience.