It’s all an overcomplication of something that should be super simple. I remember when tasks became gamefied on this website that some of my friends tried out. I got into bullet journalling during that time and I remember some friends downloading a bunch of reminder apps that became more disruptive than helpful. I tried one, that set off an alarm every 20 minutes to remind you to drink water and it fucked up my flow completely.
Disclaimer: I don’t have an official diagnosis, just a lot of ADHD symptoms that are somewhat managable if I simplify my life as much as possible.
All these super duper cool apps and journals and websites and blah blah blah, became a chore to keep up with for myself and everybody else because they demand a level of organization skills that people who struggle with such can’t fucking do!
My biggest problem isn’t so much the ability to focus on tasks, I am relatively good at snapping into workmode if I successfully manipulate myself into believing it’s the most fun shit in the world to do.
Instead, my biggest problem often is that I don’t know how to prioritize anything. Every task that needs to be done has equal importance in my head. I literally cannot tell which one matters more. You can hold up two tasks and go “this one is due tomorrow and this one is due in two days” and my brain will still go: they are equally important.
That’s partially why bullet journalling crashed and burned for me, because I would add in absolutely everyting and fill up my days to the point that I’d have like ten to twenty tasks a day. I even tried to gameify my journal at some points by giving myself points for every task I did and the goal was to reach a 100 points every month. Didn’t work.
I never dabbled in these ADHD focus apps when they became popular, because I literally already went through it with both physical and digital planners and they always went well the first couple of weeks or months when it was new and fun and then at the latest, after three months I would stop doing it after a longer period of deteriation.
The only thing that works for me is that I have ONE goal everyday. ONE. Currently, I have a very specific assignment at work that I can do in increments over a period of time. I do the allotted increments every day - nothing more, nothing less. I avoid the things that tend to distract me too severely when I’m at work (other people. I’m a chatter. I can literally talk with you about anything for hours and never get tired) and I close myself off to the outside world further by listening to podcasts and only allowing myself to browse places like lemmy when I’m taking a lunch break.
It works for me, may not work for other people, though. But the more I can cut myself off from things I know for a fact will snap me out of the zone, the better I am at getting shit done.
Hearing about these apps does the same to my brain as social media. When I was still on facebook and instagram and still followed the news, it all became noise and distractions. It’s so much healthier to go to work and be like “okay, today my goal is to do X.”
Doesn’t mean that extra assignments can’t pop in from nowhere and need immediate attention, but in my head, it’s nothing because my goal is still to do X thing before the day is over, and all these other little extra sidequests are quickly done before I can go back to X. Again, it probably doesn’t work like that for everybody and some people don’t have the type of job where they get to only have one thing at the time and some may not even thrive in such an environment. All I can say is that it works for me to eliminate “noise” around me and simplify my life as much as possible.
It’s all an overcomplication of something that should be super simple. I remember when tasks became gamefied on this website that some of my friends tried out. I got into bullet journalling during that time and I remember some friends downloading a bunch of reminder apps that became more disruptive than helpful. I tried one, that set off an alarm every 20 minutes to remind you to drink water and it fucked up my flow completely.
Disclaimer: I don’t have an official diagnosis, just a lot of ADHD symptoms that are somewhat managable if I simplify my life as much as possible.
All these super duper cool apps and journals and websites and blah blah blah, became a chore to keep up with for myself and everybody else because they demand a level of organization skills that people who struggle with such can’t fucking do!
My biggest problem isn’t so much the ability to focus on tasks, I am relatively good at snapping into workmode if I successfully manipulate myself into believing it’s the most fun shit in the world to do.
Instead, my biggest problem often is that I don’t know how to prioritize anything. Every task that needs to be done has equal importance in my head. I literally cannot tell which one matters more. You can hold up two tasks and go “this one is due tomorrow and this one is due in two days” and my brain will still go: they are equally important.
That’s partially why bullet journalling crashed and burned for me, because I would add in absolutely everyting and fill up my days to the point that I’d have like ten to twenty tasks a day. I even tried to gameify my journal at some points by giving myself points for every task I did and the goal was to reach a 100 points every month. Didn’t work.
I never dabbled in these ADHD focus apps when they became popular, because I literally already went through it with both physical and digital planners and they always went well the first couple of weeks or months when it was new and fun and then at the latest, after three months I would stop doing it after a longer period of deteriation.
The only thing that works for me is that I have ONE goal everyday. ONE. Currently, I have a very specific assignment at work that I can do in increments over a period of time. I do the allotted increments every day - nothing more, nothing less. I avoid the things that tend to distract me too severely when I’m at work (other people. I’m a chatter. I can literally talk with you about anything for hours and never get tired) and I close myself off to the outside world further by listening to podcasts and only allowing myself to browse places like lemmy when I’m taking a lunch break.
It works for me, may not work for other people, though. But the more I can cut myself off from things I know for a fact will snap me out of the zone, the better I am at getting shit done.
Hearing about these apps does the same to my brain as social media. When I was still on facebook and instagram and still followed the news, it all became noise and distractions. It’s so much healthier to go to work and be like “okay, today my goal is to do X.” Doesn’t mean that extra assignments can’t pop in from nowhere and need immediate attention, but in my head, it’s nothing because my goal is still to do X thing before the day is over, and all these other little extra sidequests are quickly done before I can go back to X. Again, it probably doesn’t work like that for everybody and some people don’t have the type of job where they get to only have one thing at the time and some may not even thrive in such an environment. All I can say is that it works for me to eliminate “noise” around me and simplify my life as much as possible.