I’d love to hear more about your experience, particularly with the point on hyperfocus - this is something I struggle to find a healthy relationship with.
Ultimately I have burned out and I am struggling to put myself back together; I can no longer direct or control my focus at all, I forget tasks and I tire after relatively short periods. It’s non-functional.
Do anything you can do to not get to this point, because at times I have wanted my life to just stop. I am recovering and it’s better than it was but I have no picture of my future because I feel so unlike myself, and I have to plan for a life for this new guy I appear to be, who forgets stuff and doesn’t feel like the person his friends knew so he just stays in. I spent three days not answering messages over the weekend, hiding from my two most constant friends, because it’s more than I can do.
What I have learned about myself now, post-burnout, is that I get more done if I treat that internal emotional hyperfocus “pull” to carry on with something fascinating as a sign that I should put the work down. It’s better on average to assume that in fact the urge to carry on (because it has become really fun) kicks in when you have already done enough for one day or whatever. If I stop there, things are better. Because the stupidity cycle doesn’t start. I sleep better, I eat better (and earlier in the evening), it’s easier to restart tasks in the morning because I am more likely to have left something enjoyable or well-defined to do!
Hyperfocus isn’t a superpower. It’s more like a drug; a destructive pattern I must try not to seek out.
I almost certainly have ADHD, obviously.
When I think things are going really great, when I am buzzing, I am already neglecting something else important; housework, paying overdue bills, laundry, none of it is in the zone with me. But everyone else at work thinks I am productive so they love it; they don’t see the damage being done. Pretty soon everything will get out of control, and then some tiny uncertainty will block my focus, derail me and there it all is; I am an incompetent person living in chaos and I can’t get started on any of it.
One day you will have a series of terrible overlapping deadlines, and you won’t be able to find that hyperfocus lock-in. On that day you instead begin to rely on the extreme stress to make you function, and you are now subsidising work by drawing down on your future health.
Do anything you can do to not get to this point, because at times I have wanted my life to just stop. I am recovering and it’s better than it was but I have no picture of my future because I feel so unlike myself, and I have to plan for a life for this new guy I appear to be, who forgets stuff and doesn’t feel like the person his friends knew so he just stays in. I spent three days not answering messages over the weekend, hiding from my two most constant friends, because it’s more than I can do.
What I have learned about myself now, post-burnout, is that I get more done if I treat that internal emotional hyperfocus “pull” to carry on with something fascinating as a sign that I should put the work down. It’s better on average to assume that in fact the urge to carry on (because it has become really fun) kicks in when you have already done enough for one day or whatever. If I stop there, things are better. Because the stupidity cycle doesn’t start. I sleep better, I eat better (and earlier in the evening), it’s easier to restart tasks in the morning because I am more likely to have left something enjoyable or well-defined to do!
Hyperfocus isn’t a superpower. It’s more like a drug; a destructive pattern I must try not to seek out.
I almost certainly have ADHD, obviously.
When I think things are going really great, when I am buzzing, I am already neglecting something else important; housework, paying overdue bills, laundry, none of it is in the zone with me. But everyone else at work thinks I am productive so they love it; they don’t see the damage being done. Pretty soon everything will get out of control, and then some tiny uncertainty will block my focus, derail me and there it all is; I am an incompetent person living in chaos and I can’t get started on any of it.
One day you will have a series of terrible overlapping deadlines, and you won’t be able to find that hyperfocus lock-in. On that day you instead begin to rely on the extreme stress to make you function, and you are now subsidising work by drawing down on your future health.