I have a problem that i cant focus on my tasks for a long time. I cant do my work for long time per day, neither do it periodically every day.
I know that to develop habits of doing certain work every day, i need twenty one days, but i lose interest to doing my work and just becoming bored of it in two weeks maximum, which is not enough time to develop habits.
Another thing that my lazyness does to me, is that i cant keep my focus on one big task for long time, like several hours. I can keep working on this task for half of hour or a one hour at most, until i just get bored of it, and dont want to do it until next day.
This problem apllies to any tasks i need or want to do, like doing sports, home work, programming and other work, and this is what keeps me from getting a job, because i just cant work full work day every day, especially if i cant even develop a small program for home work for more than two hours.
Which advise can you recommend to get rid of the lazyness, and actually keep focus on the work and develop new habits?
hi friend, it’s not laziness - it’s executive dysfunction. And it’s quite difficult, thought not impossible, to work against.
Step one is realising that executive dysfunction isn’t a choice - laziness is a choice, and it’s supposed to feel good - if you feel guilty the entire time you’re being “lazy” then that’s not being lazy.
Step two is creating systems not habits to work against it. Us adhd folks either have a very hard time creating habits, or are incapable of creating them at all.
What do i mean when i say systems, not habits? i mean reflections & procedures that help you realise you’re falling down an executive dysfunction hole, and then help you get out of it. The best metric i’ve found to understand how deep into that hole you are is figuing out how much guilt surrounds you - messy home, messy documents, unfinished projects, undone work etc. all those generate guilt, and the more guilty you feel the more overwhelemed you get.
Then you engage the systems that help you get out of it. Find your sources of energy that’ll get you through cleaning and organising. For me exercise works best, even if it’s just some stretching or light cardio (jumping jacks are the only thing that wakes me up when i’m tired for example lol). Address things one by one - first clean up your home, a passive source of guilt coming from your surroundings is going to be constantly dragging you down.
Once that’s out the way get to work on your projects. Realise that you can’t start at working 7h non-stop, but you can slowly work up your stamina for consecutive work. Push yourself to do a bit more every time, but not too hard or you’ll start getting the burn out meter going up.
What helps a lot is doing things for another person or having a body-double there to keep yourself feeling accountable. Even as little as being in a discord call with another person working can get your in a mindset to do things.
And speaking of mindsets to do things - another tactic is to create task specific environments and or outfits that you associate with doing something. Going to a library to study, putting on an outfit to clean etc. You can do that digitally as well - perhaps have a seperate system account for programming and working, that’ll help you keep the distractions just enough out of reach that on good days you’ll easily choose continuing to work instead of video games or watching youtube.
Things i wrote above work for me, they might not work for you though. You’ll need to discover and figure out what makes you tick. It might seem hard, and it can be, but it’s very much worth it
Here’s something I needed to read