> There is no question if I want to do it, it is set at that time and I have to do it, period.
Gosh it must be nice to have at least an ordinary amount of executive function skills. Is it really this easy for neurotypical people to build routines? That's really all it takes?
I don't see how this removes willpower at all. It just determines what time you have to use it.
All you need to do is go to sleep before 12 every single night and wake up at 7am without fail, hit the gym and crank out a few sets of squats, hit the pool and the sauna, read a chapter of that book, and then cook yourself an amazing breakfast, all before 9am.
If you're a real go-getter, though, you'd wake up at 6am and do some vibe coding for an hour on that side hustle.
This but unironically. I don't post on LinkedIn or anything. But sometimes it seems like all the agonizing people sometimes do over whether or not they should follow their plan (fitness, diet, productivity) makes it ten times worse.
It can be possible to decide to do something in advance, and then... just do it. The more times you do it the easier it gets. My wife comments on this sometimes. I guess not everyone has this? Maybe it can be learned? I don't know.
The list of things I must do is large and growing. Much of it outside my control. Yes, I could sell the house but rent is quite high. Yes, I could divorce the wife but that actually makes for more work. Yes, I could abandon the children but I've grown attached; and that's only legal after finding someone else willing to adopt them and a judge willing to approve it. Yes, I could deny any help with the elderly parents on both sides of the family but that seems extreme and carries a social cost. Yes, I could spend a few decades trying to cure the medical issues I've collected but that leaves little time for anything mentioned earlier.
I mean, yes. That's true for everyone. Different people have different life circumstances. It's equally important not to decide to do things that one can't realistically do, for whatever reasons there may be. I'm not sure what your point is.
Don't sell your house if you don't have a realistic place to live lined up. Don't divorce your wife if it's not worth the work.
I'm not saying everyone can or should be grindset hustle bro. Probably no one. I'm just saying that it is sometimes possible to decide what you're going to do in advance. If you already have too many obligations, that could include deciding which ones to fail. That's probably better than trying to do everything and just rolling the dice.
It's surprising how controversial this idea is, but it works for me. I hope you find something that works for you.
Sorry if my point was lost in the rant. IME the younger generations are facing an increasingly large burden of must-do's with less slack for them to make any other choices. Growing housing, healthcare, and societal expectations combined with fewer employment opportunities are leaving little room for them to chart their own course.
Some might say it's offset by all the luxuries so widely available. But I personally find it hard to enjoy minor luxuries when so much of life is swallowed by obligations. And I'm one of the luckiest members of my cohort. Most of my high school friends still live with parents or several roommates, have lower paying careers, and/or have to care for more family with serious medical issues. (Though on the latter I seem to be catching up quickly)
It sounds as if you are filing a complaint, but I'm afraid chargebacks are out of question. You have been scammed and given a non-perfect generation to live in.
I'd argue we shouldn't so quickly throw off the solutions of past generations, like protesting, unions, social safety nets, independent branches of government, and rejecting apathy and religion.
You're hitting on exactly what I meant, though. You're generalizing from "it works for me" in a way that implies it's equally possible for everyone, that everyone's brain has the ability to look at something they decided to do earlier, and then just do it, without sending them through a spiraling decision matrix that factors in all the other things that have reemerged as possibilities since whenever they made the first decision.
It's so cool that your brain has this "decision persistence" feature. And it does seem to be common enough that it's treated as "typical."
It's just not remotely universal. Not all of our brains have this.
People would rather blame external factors and not take responsibility.
It’s actually insulting to people who work hard that some people assume they have it easy somehow, like the “must be nice” comment upstream. Not everyone takes the view that you can’t control what happens to you, it’s pretty easy to see who does.
Your parents determine a lot of your trajectory. If they don't make the same investement in their kids as the average for the socioeconomic, you start with a heavy penalty. You can work hard, but you'll have to work twice as hard as everyone else.
If you friends gets permit, cars, fully financed studies but you get thrown out to work straight out of high school what is the probability you would give to be able to accomplish the same things as your friends in a similar timeline.
Sure you can work hard and you will get somewhere, but is that somewhere anywhere near what could be possible ? I would argue not.
The left often argues about unfair advantage from famillies having money. In my experience it's not the having money part that is important, its the parent willing to invest it in their children.
I know some people who accomplished a lot with poor parents, but they got full support from both gov aids and parents, it generally explains a lot.
Without talking about the genetic lottery, life is unfair and hard work isn't really all that's needed. It can never hurt but at the same time you can work much harder than most and never get as much. Add politics in the mix and anything goes.
Your prior comment makes it sound like you assume it’s generally just about willpower and that external factors aren’t generally an issue. Is that accurate?
No, is generally about discipline and building good habits. Willpower or lack thereof is largely irrelevant. I'm not convinced that willpower is even a real thing.
What do you think discipline is if not willpower? This might explain why we're talking past each other.
I can do the exact same thing a hundred days in a row as long as the circumstances happen to be the same. And I can try to make them as similar as I possibly can. My lights come on at the same time. I eat the same food. My clothes are in the same place.
But the second something happens that I can't control, the night the wind howls all night, or a cough wakes me up, or for some damn reason, I wake up hungrier than normal, it doesn't matter how many times I've done it. None of it is automatic. It's all new now. All of it requires decisions. It's like it was never there. And that's why, frankly, I don't ever get to 100 identical days.
Your brain does something different with whatever you mean by "discipline and good habits" than my brain does. And that's really cool. It sounds awesome to have a brain that does that.
It also sounds way easier and like it's not something you actually deserve any credit for, in the same way that my learning how to speak before I was a year old or read before I was 3 is just "a cool thing about my brain" and not something I deserve credit for.
The difference is that because your cool thing about your brain is common, people who don't have it are considered "less than" by people who do, whereas my cool thing about my brain is uncommon, so people looked at me as "more than" other people. Both are baseless. You and I have no more control over having these advantages in our brains than we do over our height or the color of our eyes.
This doesn't answer the question on any level. There is ALWAYS a choice. Where does the choice go when you remove it? What exists in its stead? How is there ever not a choice?
Dicipline and the ability to build good habits is out of the window for a lot of people due to different illnesses. You come across as trying to sell snake oil to people with a heart attack.
If you try hard enough you can always find a plausible sounding excuse for failure. Discipline and good habits are the most effective way to prevent heart attacks in the first place. While there are a tiny fraction of people with serious mental health conditions or developmental disabilities which prevent them from making progress, that hardly applies to anyone on HN.
I have to leave the house for work at 7am. I get back sometime between 6 and 8pm. When I get back I'm mentally and physically shot. I mean, yes I could get an easier job that pays less I suppose, lose the house etc.
Even better in my opinion and experience, exercise during lunch break, if possible. Being drained after work can feel like too high barrier to get started exercising.
> People would rather blame external factors and not take responsibility.
In my opinion the first step to taking responsibility is acknowledging reality. That reality can includes brains and bodies being different, sometimes extremely so. If someones brain or body is different but they deny it, stick their head in the sand, ignore it, then they are at a disadvantage when they try to take responsibility for something and may fail due to failing to acknowledging reality.
You can actually just choose to lock in.
And you don't need a perfect streak. Waking up early, working out and eating a nutritious breakfast is a perfect morning for probably 90% of people but our society is so broken that being healthy is associated with being either a grifter or a fascist.
Nah, you can do it with kids! I have two that are about to be 4 and 6, here are my weekdays:
- Alarm at 4:30. 5 mins of breathing exercises, 20 mins of meditation.
- Make coffee, have breakfast, out the door to work by ~5:30.
- Get to work's gym by 5:45, cardio for 60 mins.
- In my office by 7:00-7:15.
- 3:30, 25 mins of breathe work and meditation again. Tuesdays and Thursdays, this is 3:15 so I can fit in ~30 mins of strength training.
- Head on out, pick up my youngest from school, home by ~4:15-4:30-ish. Ballpark depending on traffic, actual gym times, etc.
- Cook dinner (kiddos often like to help), eat with family, hang out with and play with my kiddos until 7:00PM.
- Kiddo bath and bed time, wife and I take turns doing this every night. Whether I'm "done" at 7 or 8, it only takes me ~30 mins to shower and prep my shit (clothes, lunch, etc.) for the next day.
- Leaves me with ~1-2 hours each night to hang out, read a book, and enjoy my wife's company before heading to bed at ~9:30.
It's busy, but I don't feel like I'm overstretched and I don't feel like it leaves me missing out on anything.
There’s a few things required to make that work for you.
You fall asleep instantly every night or function on less than 7 hours of sleep long term. You have a 15 minute commute. You don’t seem to need any slack time to deal with any issues that pop up.
4 year old has a meltdown because the 6 year old ate the last fruit snack. One of the kids decides to wake up at 3am. Friends come over for dinner and throw off the routine. Oops forgot to buy an ingredient for dinner, now you have to load up all the kids and go to the store. Ugh piece of plastic is lodged in the garbage disposal better get the flashlight and chopsticks.
And that’s not even mentioning regular household maintenance. Laundry, dishes, cleaning, grocery trips etc…
I’d need at least 2 extra hours in every day to handle all of those unexpected and expected issues. Probably closer to 3.
So I made my original post knowing full well that my situation is my own and YMMV, but to speak to those concerns wrt my schedule/life...
>You fall asleep instantly every night...
Actually, yes! Two points there. First, when I'm out of my routine, not working out, drinking lots of coffee and eating like garbage, I sleep like ass. When I'm in my routine, eating well, and only having a cup of coffee with breakfast, I'm incredibly energized throughout the day and end up suddenly feeling tremendously tired right around 8:45/9:00.
The second part is that my father's side of the family is notorious for falling asleep anywhere, anytime. There's a litany of photos of us passed out on couches in the middle of packed parties.
> Meltdowns
They happen, but they don't really rock the schedule in my experience. Bedtime somehow always ends up being bedtime. Might shift by ~15 or so occasionally, but never in a way that nukes my bedtime or anything.
>One of the kids wakes up at 3am.
This is entirely YMMV, but we sleep trained. For whatever absolutely fucking weird reason, neither kid has ever got themselves out of bed in the morning, they always wake up and wait for us to come get them. Earliest I hear one of them is occasionally 6 on the weekends, usually closer to 7. I feel tremendously lucky here, and recognize how not normal this is.
>Forgot dinner ingredient and load kids up...
Nah. I do my best to buy ingredients on the weekend for the week. Definitely isn't foolproof, but usually we just pivot to a meal I'd planned for another night, or we always have easy to make shit like mac and cheese or grilled cheese and tomato soup lying around to fall back on. Life doesn't need to be perfect and I'm cool with pivoting and not sticking to plans.
>Friends coming over
For our own sanity wrt my wife and I's schedules, we hang with friends on the weekend. Weekends are a lot more freeform for us.
>Household maintenance
Naturally, whoever isn't playing with the kids just falls into keeping the laundry moving and cleaning the kitchen. I'll take the kiddos to the grocery store on Saturday. Dishes happen quickly, we all help there.
I’m not doubting that your schedule works for you, I’m just saying that it’s at the extreme of what is feasible with young kids.
> neither kid has ever got themselves out of bed in the morning
My wife is a pediatrician. This is so incredibly not normal to have 2 kids that absolutely never get up early that you won the lottery. And not the regular jackpot. You won the powerball multi-state $500 million lottery.
> For our own sanity wrt my wife and I's schedules, we hang with friends on the weekend. Weekends are a lot more freeform for us.
I wish I knew what a weekend was. My wife works in the ER, as do many of our friends.
> Naturally, whoever isn't playing with the kids just falls into keeping the laundry moving and cleaning the kitchen.
There’s so much more daily maintenance work for our house than an hour a night for one person.
Just making my kids lunch for the next day takes me 15 minutes. It takes me 20-30 minutes to fold one load of laundry.
And the irregular things I mentioned were just a tiny part of it. The other day my 4 year old got a whole stack of puzzles down and the 2 year old immediately dumped out all the pieces. Took me 2 hours to sort that out. Last week the tankless hot water started randomly cutting out and I spent 2 hours dealing with that.
Yesterday we took 2 of our 3 kids for a well check to their pediatrician. For some reason it took 1.5 hours instead of the 30 minutes we had planned. A few months ago one of my many spoke alarms started randomly going off once a night for a few days until I could track down the problem. 3 months ago my 2 year old tripped on the very bottom stair and had a freak fracture. That took hours of time up front and then reverted to crawling for 9 days. And for 6 weeks he had to wear a boot that I had to remove and reapply multiple times a day.
Our 2 month old blew out her diaper a few days ago and I had to take all the padding off, wash it, then figure out how to put it back on. Big storm recently knocked most of our Christmas wreathes off and I had to deal with that.
My kid was recently “snack leader” for his preschool class, which means for a week I had to make healthy snacks for the whole class.
All of that is just the random stuff that has popped up over the last few months that I can think of.
The original post who mentioned this kind of thing isn’t feasible with kids was correct. 2-2.5 hours of exercise/meditation and a full workday isn’t something that most people with kids can pull off.
Sorry to confuse, it's 9:30 every night. Anything less than 7 and I'm wrecked. 7.5 is ideal, but I also feel great with 7. My non-scientific guess is that I spent so much of my teens and 20s getting less than 6 hours that my body is delighted by 7+ lol.
But yeah, I imagine I'll need more as time continues to pass and I get older.
/shrug
Edit: To say nothing of my mild fear of an inadequate amount of sleep in middle age possibly contributing to dementia, but I digress...
My neurodiverse mind often won't let me sleep that early. It just whirls with problem solving that keeps me up all night if I go to bed in a whirl. Yes I know how to meditate. Imagine spending years at it and finding yourself in a mental state that means you can't clear your mind any more. You can't 'let it go', it just comes straight back in a more aggressive way with flash backs and visions. What would you do now?
Not the person you're replying to but I am confused by your comment. What would you do? You'd try and meditate. If that doesn't work, you distract yourself with something else. The mind whirling keeping you up at night is rarely a productive thing, speaking from experience.
I hope my comment doesn't come off as dismissive but learning to meditate is practicing to "let it go". It isn't a switch. You're teaching your mind not to get "too attached" to anything you consider unwholesome.
No, your tone is fine, and thanks for that. A whirling mind is not often productive but it can make great leaps forward. It can also be paranoid, dangerous and self-destructive.
I was trying to make the point that self- help easy fixes are not always successful. I spent decades actively learning to sleep. It works most of the time. It is good to learn. I use a mindfulness sleep meditation most nights. I also learnt from sleep hygiene that going to bed early is normally a big mistake for me, precluding much of the 'go to bed earlier, get up and exercise' advice.
I have also hit periods in my life where I simply couldn't mediate for weeks on end despite regular practice over a decade. I was mentally ill. No routine or hacks was going to get me to exercise. I needed therapy (EMDR) and rest, and when I got really self-destructive I needed sleep medication (useful only for a very short time). The 'hack' people just made me feel bad about myself for being unable to get a grip.
That is what I want people to see, exercise is only useful if you are well enough to do it. If you are not well enough to shave, then don't beat yourself up for not getting exercise. Put a pin in it, and do it later.
My latest illness was (psycho-somatically) interfering with my cortisol levels, and it made any exercise crippling. I couldn't recover. I didn't get the boost. I beat myself up about not being able, and it made me worse.
Exercise and therapy rather than exercise or therapy might be better advice.
It still requires willpower, but to use a metaphor, it's much easier to travel down a well-trod path than it is to cut a new path through the jungle. Repetition and consistency establishes the path, so the willpower required to travel down it the next day is reduced over time. Establishing a pre-set time and committing to that time ahead of time removes the "will I or won't I" decision at "go time", when you're most likely to falter.
This method requires a significant amount of executive function.
My body doesn't feel the passage of time consistently. So my mind is never prepared to switch activities when it needs to.
And there are times my brain stops working on a particular task and nothing can get it started again. It's like a leg going out, you just can't stand on it.
This isn't occasionally where habit could be picked back up. This has been a problem every day of my life.
In my experience, this has been the death of every bit advice I've gotten from a neurotypical person. A lot of them keep circling back to discipline or trying harder as a solution to a problem they can't make sense of. Lack of understanding isn't their fault, this is so far outside their frame of reference they can't make sense of it in a single conversation. Fortunately understanding isn't required, only the acceptance that other people have limits they don't have themselves.
Do you ever feel unmotivated to go to the toilet despite needing to? Has this lack of motivation ever stopped you from getting from your chair?
What modern people usually lack is not time, but lack of energy. Usually this is thought as the energy to do stuff (like coding a side hussle in the evening). But often it manifests in a lack of energy:
1. to make a decision (to do something)
2. to slow down, to stop the current activity and to think with the rational mind.
So you need to recognize these things and do certain decisions beforehand to solve the problem. Stuff like:
1. Go to the gym in the morning, when you still have the decision energy.
2. Create a habit, linking a new habit with the old ones, in order to decrease the energy expenditure
3. Increase the stakes, like getting a gym buddy
4. Decide stuff beforehand. Pack the bag, set up the alarm clock (to go to gym, to go to sleep)
5. When you are tired, actually rest. Don't turn the tv on, don't scroll social media, stop touching yourself via phone. If you are tired, eat, go to gym or a walk, go to sleep or simply sit in your chair or lay on the sofa looking at the walls. I guarantee, watching at the wall for 30 minutes straight will give you great motivation to do something else more productive. Don't let the monkey in you convince you to do the unproductive things I mentioned. Stay strong and make a rational decision what to do instead of looking at the wall. Do the right thing, not the thing that may feel nice in the midst of it.
6. Take care of the nutrition/sleep in order to increase the energy reserves
I really don’t like being snarky here but this is an absolutely perfect example of what I was talking about in my last paragraph.
I didn’t mention energy because energy has no relevance.
I’ve literally broken down crying because I really wanted to work but my brain refused to move. I was having such a great day and was really motivated. I spend hours and absolutely exhausted every bit of energy I had trying every advice that I’ve spent my entire life hearing. I could not get a single word out of my brain.
Nothing worked. I spent my entire childhood trying harder and got nowhere. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I get quite pissed off when people tell me to try hard harder.
You arent the only human whos had a issue with not getting things done, its normal, and its hackable. Brains are hackable.
I dont mean to say you implied it, but its easy to dig a larger hole when you believe you are special, or you have tried "all" the advice.
Every problem has a solution, and I beg you to search deeper to what you do even in task-paralysis states. That might be where your mission comes from.
It helped me to have a life goal that was bigger than life, ego, or energy. Maybe you havent found it yet. If you have, I apologize if I sound cocky!
You sound like you are just repeating the same mistake in telling a nuerodiverse person to 'just do this brain hack, it worked for me.' It will never work for them. Never. It will just make them feel worse about themselves.
I am brilliant at certain aspects of my job. I have read the books, had coaching etc. And yet today I still miss important meeting because I don't realise it is time to go...with a watch on my arm, outlook reminders popping up etc. I just hold attention so deep that I am never going to notice. It is what makes me great at my work. So now I am a manager I have developed some solutions. I hire people who compliment me, and I am open about my problem. It is normal for my team to walk in my office and say, 'are you coming to this meeting?'
Your advice is the equivalent of telling someone who has dyslexia, "Reading isn't hard. You just look at the letters, and then you say the words out loud. Or if that doesn't work, you have to come up with some other way to make it so when you see the letters, you know what the words say, and then you say them out loud. Just hack it."
Some people really do just have to figure out a way to get through life missing a skill that "typical" brains have. It's not "hack it until you make your brain do the typical thing." It's "choose a field where you can get away with not doing the thing, or hire someone to do the thing, because you're not going to be able to do the thing, and all the advice in the world isn't going to change that."
Some people are special. The preferred term is neurodivergent. ;)
There are times you just can’t fix a broken brain by trying harder or finding an alternative.
It can be really difficult to understand if you’ve never experienced it yourself. For you there’s, always been a way to get something done.
What do you do when you try to throw something with your arm and your entire body doesn’t move? No matter what you try to do. You can’t get your body to move. I got some advice on how you should move your arm. :)
>t helped me to have a life goal that was bigger than life, ego, or energy. Maybe you havent found it yet. If you have, I apologize if I sound cocky!
You are incredibly cocky, and naive and have very little insight on other peoples situation. You are reducing peoples various illnesses to something that can be solved if they just tried a bit harder not to be sick. If only it was so easy.
They keep all their feelings inside, carrying the worries of the world, constantly sacrificing themselves at every opportunity without a hint of reciprocity, and then die of a heart attack in their 60s or earlier.
Way too many people treat ADHD as an excuse of not following proper task-management rules. They are so special that no rules could possible apply to them. To all hundreds of millions of them...
This is backwards. In practice, it should be the exact opposite. ADHD people should be MORE vigilant regarding the correct behavior, rules, habits. It is neurotypical people who have some leeway to be lazy with what and how they do stuff, but ADHD have way smaller margin of error!
Sometimes there are things (noise in the room, other distractions, mess in tasks, etc.) that neurotypical can safely ignore, but that will make an ADHD person not able to work at all.
The fact that life is harder to organize and manage for ADHD people only means that they should pay EXTRA attention to doing right things the correct way.
Sure, ADHD people have their own peculiarities (as does any other neurotypical person), but in my experience this is a drop in a bucket of issues that are actually solvable with typical means without reinventing the wheel.
>ADHD people should be MORE vigilant regarding the correct behavior, rules, habits.
Yes, but that doesn't make the ADHD fully go away.
>actually solvable with typical means without reinventing the wheel.
Yes, and they are defined by medical science, not your "think deeper".
>The fact that life is harder to organize and manage for ADHD people only means that they should pay EXTRA attention to doing right things the correct way.
Wow great insight, a bit hillarious with the part of asking adhd people pay extra attention. Should the guy with a neurological problem just pay extra attention to moving his leg, and he will soon run as fast as the rest?
> Yes, but that doesn't make the ADHD fully go away.
Not an argument.
> Wow great insight, a bit hillarious with the part of asking adhd people pay extra attention. Should the guy with a neurological problem just pay extra attention to moving his leg, and he will soon run as fast as the rest?
Yes, if you have problems with inattentiveness, then you can't just eyeball the size of the fabric and cut. You actually need to measure. In worst case, you should measure and remeasure several times, as well as use the pen to draw a straight line with a ruler, instead of just keeping the finger and trusting that you can make the line straight during cutting.
If have no trouble concentrating, you can just work in a cafe or an open office. If you have problems, then take extra steps to get rid of distractions (quiet office, noise cancelling headphones, work-inducing music, etc).
If you have more difficulties getting into the zone, make extra effort organizing yourself: blocking working uninterrupted time on the calendar, disabling notifications, using airplane mode etc.
Have trouble concentrating and the mind wandering? Even more important to keep a proper task/idea/knowledge management system to offload the brain.
This is still not enough to get rid of adhd symptoms for many.
Keeping a knowledge management system is uttainable, I bet many with adhd have tried them all (and constantly try new ones instead of doing work)
you can only block so much. Some people suffer so much that days can get lost by doing virtuelly nothing. Its not like its so easy to sit around being unable to work, and still not check the web or whatever. Also even though you block, many people experience that they get contacted regardless, and loose the flow.
What you propose are great ideas for someone having a hard time concentrating, but that is something completely else from those suffering under a diagnosis.
> This is still not enough to get rid of adhd symptoms for many.
Once again, this isn't the point. And I also didn't suggest it.
A normal adhd should be considered as a personal quirk, not an unescapable death sentence, like many seem to do.
> Its not like its so easy to sit around being unable to work, and still not check the web or whatever
Being still without distractions is hard for most people. Adhd people may have it harder, but fundamentally they don't differ from others.
That's the whole point of slowing down, concentrating on relaxing, not running away from the anxiety and to understand what your mind and body tell you.
> Some people suffer so much that days can get lost by doing virtuelly nothing.
"Virtually" - exactly my point. Most people have not been doing the actual nothing. If they were, they would actually see how much energy and motivation this type of rest gives.
I keep being told this stuff by normies who couldn't do my job.
ADHD doesn't manifest the same way for everyone.
> pay EXTRA attention to doing right things the correct way
I do wrong things a different way all the time. I'm a maverick. I'm known to have creative solutions other people can't find. Not little ones either, 'we have been trying this for 20 years' ones. $multi-million strategic ones. I can't do the boring task list work you normies can do, but I have super powers you don't.
The breakthrough started and my recovery began when I stopped listening to people like you and focused on what I am good at.
But last night, I wanted to get to bed at 10pm, but I got some music stuck in my head. I had some music on to chill out, but something gripped me and I picked up my guitar. It felt like a moment of time but I look up and it is 1am. If I had gone to bed I would have lain awake all night. Meditation would have had this music dominating it and dragging me out of it. I'm in bed late on Saturday morning typing this, which will upset my whole weekend, but I wouldn't have slept, which would have been worse. So, I just went with it.
I envy people who can keep a routine, but I now pity people who don't have extraordinary moments of inspiration. I embrace my super powers and accept my life won't be normal. It will be exceptional.
The assumption that there is one set of rules for "correct behavior, rules, habits" that somehow applies equally to all brains is so spectacularly ignorant it's staggering.
I can obtain the same results as almost anybody at the vast majority of things. But if I am required to follow the same process, I simply cannot. I can't tell you how destructive the well-meaning people were who tried to tie me down to the way that works for their brain rather than saying, "OK, fine. Don't do it my way. Do it your way. Just get it done."
It's like saying to someone with dyslexia, "You just have to be MORE vigilant regarding looking at the letters, putting them together, and saying the words! There's no excuse for not following proper reading rules!"
It's just asinine. It's wonderful that you have figured out a set of "proper task-management rules" that work for your brain. I'm even happier for you if it was easier for you. That sounds nice.
But why on EARTH would the billions of living brains on this planet all function like yours? Does anything else in all those billions of bodies function exactly like yours? Of course not. And it would be ridiculous to expect them to.
> But why on EARTH would the billions of living brains on this planet all function like yours? Does anything else in all those billions of bodies function exactly like yours?
Yes, literally everything in our bodies function exactly the wayvit function in other people. Never heard of anyone's heart working like another person's kidney.
If the organ is not working properly, it is considered a problem and stuff is done to fix it. The stuff that is from the same list as for any other person with a similar problem. Never heard of knee problems being fixed with dyalisis.
It's impossible to me that you're dumb enough to be saying these things in good faith, so maybe I'm guilty of the same assumption, that anyone who can form sentences must have a brain at least as much like mine that they can connect two thoughts.
Nobody's talking about a heart functioning like a kidney. We're talking about the range of functions among people's hearts, or people's kidneys, or people's brains.
You're acting like everyone's heart is the exact same shape and has the same blood pressure and the same resting heart rate and the same outflow volumes, which is just stupid. There is a HUGE range of function among hearts. There is a HUGE range of "healthy enough to work" among hearts.
JUST LIKE THERE IS WITH BRAINS.
There's also a huge range of "not healthy enough to function under normal circumstances, but not bad enough to kill the person."
I don't believe anybody with the brainpower to create an email address, register for an HN account, and sign into it is actually somehow as ignorant of basic human biology as this, so stop trolling and go away.
You read, but did not actually listen to my explanation of energy. I gave it for a damn good reason; because most people misunderstand it and my explanations light the bulbs in people's heads.
You also totally missed the point of suggestions entirely. I assume that happened because you were out of brain/willpower energy.
My suggestions were not to try harder. They were the exact opposite, they were about:
1. constraining your energy output
2. being careful where and how you spend your energy
3. do a better targeting with your energy
4. hacks to do the same (or more) with less energy
5. restoring energy
Please reread my previous message after you sleep and with a good mood. Assume that I actually know what I am talking about (because I truly do) and my goodwill. Assume that I did not spend my time writing a long comment in order to anger or troll you, but because I wanted to help; I saw clear indicators of certain problems, to which I am able to provide solutions that work in practice.
I wasn't suggesting using willpower to power through the problems. I was suggesting setting up a system, that would fit you and would enable you to live a better and more efficient life. Willpower is useful in setting up the system, to learn it. Not to operate it.
Let me try again. I shouldn't have mentioned willpower. Let me restate the problem.
I try to do something and I have the physical sensation of hitting a wall that shouldn't be there. Thoughts never stop at that part of the brain.
I'm talking about a fundamentally different mechanism than thinking something is too hard. It's a hardware interruption that I have no control over.
I've spent my entire life working around this and it's difficult. Especially when everyone thinks I'm just being lazy or I just need to do this one thing. I'm still trying to figure out how to explain it better.
Let't imagine that you have a task, that you started doing, but then hit the hardware wall. How physically/emotionally/intellectually tired are you at that point?
What will happen if you just rest? Sleep, eat, exercise/go on a walk, lay down. No phone, no social media, no doom scrolling, no tv, no netflix, no gaming. Just 100% effort of resting and recovering, without any distractions.
Would you not get bored at some point and will decide that it's better to complete the task rather than continue this boredom while fully rested
I truly believe you're sincere but I can't get my point across. :/ Please read carefully.
Stop thinking about how to fix the problem. You might find this interesting if you look at it scientifically.
When it comes to things like ADHD and bipolar, executive function is compromised at the biological level. Put it simply, the baseline is broken.
You're talking about are inputs to this baseline. To use an analogy, explaining how to make macOS apps to someone who's making a Windows application. There are a lot of principles in common, but the implementations are very different.
The default state for this brain is restless, looking for things to focus on. The recovery methods you're talking about are sensory depth deprivation, the worst possible solution. For myself, the best thing I can do is feed the bastard carefully until it calms down. Think of using calm words to get a screaming toddler who just woke up to stop running around and go back to bed. That's not happening.
Sometimes I can't wrestle this thing into control and focus on what I want to. And you want me to relax? That's a bit optimistic. :)
With ADHD, there are a lot of individuals who are able to find a way to work with this and some use it to their advantage, masking the real cause. For those who have it worse, the underlying problem becomes visible, and they get asked why they can't be like other ADHD people who manage. It's like asking why a two year old can't act like a six year old.
> Just 100% effort of resting and recovering, without any distractions.
You say that like the distractions are exclusively outside. I'm not the person you're replying to, but if I close all my blackout curtains, turn off all the lights, and turn off all but the white noise, but I'm not sleepy, my mind will go in a thousand directions at once.
How do I or anyone else explain that to you? The challenge is in the brain. It's not an outside force. There is no boredom.
You are saying it as if that't uncommon (for non-adhd people) or a bad thing.
Yeah, and it is fine that the mind goes somewhere. This is called meditation and it is good for you. You get valuable insights, figure out important issues, get energy and motivation.
No no. Not "somewhere." A thousand places. At once. Not in sequence. Not from one to another. At the exact same time. And then they each fractal off in their own directions.
Take away the external reminders and my reality fragments into thousands of tiny pieces, all of which are just as real to me as the rest, just as pressing, just as important, or just as unimportant, because they all get lost in each other.
We are not describing the same thing. It's confusing that this is somehow not obvious from your side, because it's SCREAMING obvious from this side.
It's confusing because true multitasking in thinking does not exist. Sure, you can walk, eat and think at the same time, but you can't think several thoughts at the same time, only sequentially (with rapid change).
Can you give me research which shows that true multithinking is possible.
"Thinking" is directed and intentional. That may very well not be something people can do. I don't know. That's not what I'm talking about. And it very well might be practically impossible to find enough people whose brains can go multiple directions at the same time that it could be studied.
So no, I'm not going to follow you down a tangent that isn't actually related to what I'm saying.
We were talking about healthy people with adhd, not about bipolar people (who need serious medical help) or people with 60iq. No amount of running technique is going to help a legless person.
100%: There's no way you could ever understand me if I were trying to say something complicated. I'm much too intelligent. I have way more mental firepower than you do. I'm a very complex thinker, and you just can't keep up. Proving it to you would be a waste of time. It's just hopeless anyway.
--
If communication isn't working, sure, it might be a comprehension error. But...it's rarely only a comprehension error.
>Do you ever feel unmotivated to go to the toilet despite needing to? Has this lack of motivation ever stopped you from getting from your chair?
A lot of people with depression and adhd will nod "yes" here. Sorry but you have no idea. Great it works for you.
When I am healthy I can work out 4-5 times a week (l<fting weights, climbing, running up to half marathon distances in training) have a full job and be a dad.
When I am ill all I can is to try my best to be a dad. You have no idea.
Has your lack of motivation ever stopped you from getting from your chair, and go to the toilet; instead you decided to pee and crap in your pants? How has it worked for you? Well enough that you have been repeating the behavior?
No, you don't understand. On about a weekly basis, my need to go to the bathroom does not make itself pressing enough to get me there without leakage. It is not more than 15 steps from my desk chair to the toilet. Sometimes I roll the chair over because if I stand up, I won't make it.
Is it really impossible for you to believe that someone else's brain might be this different from yours? Presumably you have no trouble believing someone's eyes might be completely different from yours (i.e., might exist but not see a damn thing), or their legs might be completely different from yours. Why should brains be any different? What possible reason could there be for that?
Why, when there are full-blown medical specialties dealing with these sorts of differences, do you maintain the sort of willful ignorance that denies other people's brains might be completely different from yours in a way that makes things that work for your brain not work at all for their brains?
I struggle daily to urge myself to eat after years of habitual starvation. The process of storing and making food through-out the week is extremely difficult for me to say the least... I also don't have room in my finances to out-source this completely. To combat this, I have been successfully meal prepping on the weekends; however, I still often struggle with the basic task of eating the food, prepped and served. It is a common experience for me to get part-way into eating a dish, move on to another task, and neglect the food until it's spoiled only to realize so when I pack up for the day. Sometimes I will even notice the food, deep into a task, but the thought to address it is hardly formed.
In this regard neurotypical advice _did_ actually help me I suppose. However, when applied to a habit not immediately linked to your existence, it is quite alienating to receive.
I would imagine you'd get this advice from other non-neurotypical people too. My son is neurodivergant, and strict routine like what is being described is about the only thing that keeps him able to handle most daily life tasks regularly. But plenty of other advice he constantly gets frustrates him similarly to the frustration you seem to be describing. We call it "you've just never had it cooked right" advice. So I feel your exasperation.
I call it the “loadbearing just”. :) “if you’ve just did this”
Most neurodivergent people I’ve met accept my limitations and don’t expect what works for them to work for me. It might take a little explanation but they didn’t seem to get upset about it.
The few that have expected me to be like them, expected other people to be like them as well. So it wasn’t specific to me.
Just a shout out here for medication. ADHD meds are rated effective in the 70-90% range, which is just incredibly good compared to medication effectiveness for just about anything else.
I have ADHD, and hate the feeling of being a victim. "I have this, so I can't do that. It's just the way it is." No! Not for this. Not when there are so many treatment options.
I accept that things may be harder for me than a typical person, that I may have to put in more work than other people to get the same results, that this is something that's very real that I have to deal with and manage at all times. That there will be times when I will fail and my stupid monkey brain will win the moment. But I won't let it define me, I won't let it dictate who I am and what I can and cannot do.
EDIT: Also, I mean to agree with you here: there's a point where no amount of discipline will work, and the advice to "just try harder" sounds like an alien telling you to just grow wings and fly. If you find yourself at that point, medicine can and will help. It also helps you be able to get in a routine of actually doing exercise, which in turn helps even more, and it becomes a sweet positive feedback loop.
What makes this “neurotypical?” I don’t necessarily consider myself as such, but I’ve made it a point to have some routine in my life. In fact, I think being highly regimented and sticking to a routine can be very neuroatypical. I would never go so far as to say I’m autistic, but there are markers on that spectrum, like becoming upset when a routine is disrupted. I certainly am perturbed when I’ve set some routine for myself and something interrupts it.
I'm not claiming this works for everyone but what sometimes work for me to form a routine is to do the thing but without committing effort to it. I.e. go to the gym but you only promise yourself to go there, not actually spend effort there. Any actual exercise you then do is a bonus, not a "payment on your promise".
I think it can be generalized as:
Find the thing to do that doesn't require much effort but puts you in the context of doing the effortful thing. Do that thing. See if you "want" to do the effortful thing. Otherwise go home.
Cleaning? Put the vacuum in your hands and see if something happens.
At least I think that's how it works for me.
The points when it's hardest to make it work is when there's lots of distractions. Like when you try to get into a routine of doing work at a computer.
The parent comment's point is that you can reduce the amount of executive function required to do the correct thing. Doing something at the same time every day will indeed make it more automatic, requiring less willpower to do it again tomorrow. This effect applies whether you're neurotypical or not and is grounded in behavioral research.
There are better examples in my opinion than just doing something at 18:00 every day. There's a technique called habit stacking where you identify all the habits you already have at a given time (like when you first wake up), and then you add one more at the end. It's easier to introduce a new habit this way, and it becomes ingrained more quickly, resulting in less need to use executive function.
There are still more techniques. An example from my personal life: in my whole adult life, I've never gone to the gym... unless I sign up for a gym that's right across the street from my workplace. Then it happens like clockwork. If all I need to do is walk across the street, I end up in the gym, and inevitably, I work out. If I need to drive 20 minutes though, well my willpower just ain't that great, so it basically never happens.
The best book I've read on this topic is Atomic Habits by James Clear. He goes deep down the rabbit hole of these techniques you can employ and touches on the research it's all based on. The brain's not a computer so I mean it's not all just going to come together automatically, but in my experience this stuff does work.
Willpower is what you use when you’re allowed choice and know you should make the good choice but actually feel like choosing the bad choice. The trick to good discipline is to never allow it to be a choice. There are no excuses. There is no negotiation. It just is the same way the sun rises or the tax man comes. Good discipline is a skill you develop and it is far easier than trying to live via something as temperamental as willpower.
You say "when you're allowed choice" like there are some times when you aren't allowed choice, and I think this is where you lose me. Everything is a choice. Always. It's not a matter of "allowed/not allowed." It's just a reality of existence for me. I'm not sure if I can explain this, but I can try.
You seem to have a kind of "decision persistence" that I don't have, where having decided it once makes it still true in the actual moment of taking the action. It doesn't matter how many times I choose things in advance, in the hypothetical, for the future--and the future is always in the hypothetical. I still have to choose every moment, day in and day out, what I'm doing. Even now, it's not quite a foregone conclusion that I'm going to finish typing this and click the "reply" button. Probably will, but I won't know that for SURE until I've done it. I might decide it isn't worth it after all.
My brain simply does not consider past decisions binding on present activity. I might still decide to do the same thing I thought I would do at this time when I thought about this earlier, but I have to decide it again, because it hasn't happened yet. Every moment is a "deciding again," which means every moment needs willpower. Putting on one shoe doesn't guarantee the other shoe comes next. After a shit, pulling up my underpants doesn't guarantee the pants come next. Maybe I step out of the pants and am halfway through lunch before I realize I never pulled my pants up after the toilet and have been walking around my house without pants for 45 minutes.
"It just is" is not an experience I have. They're not excuses. The next thing just goes, right out of my head. I don't talk myself out of doing what I previously decided to do next or into something else. But there is no mechanism that makes something happen just because I decided it should earlier.
There always has to be another choice, in each moment, about what to do, and whether to keep doing it. Every one of these choices requires willpower, and there's only so much in the jar. But it's not like the jar fills up once, overnight, and I just draw from the jar until it's empty and then it's gone for the day. The jar arbitrarily loses and gains willpower ad hoc throughout the day. So I can always reach into the jar, and sometimes there's some willpower in there and I can do the thing that Planning Smeej thought would be a good idea yesterday, but sometimes there's not, and nobody knows what's going to happen until maybe there is again later.
I don't know if I've made that make any sense. I just know that you're describing a reality fundamentally different than the one I experience.
I have utterly horrible executive function. Diagnosed and everything. Sitting here on HN right now avoiding boring spreadsheet work to finish my day out.
It’s not easy for anyone to develop these style of habits and routines. It’s just hard mode and takes much more effort for folks with executive dysfunction.
The first rule is choose one thing and stick to it. With realistic goals. Mine was: I am going to walk at least 6,000 steps a day. No matter what. Zero excuses.
Since schedules are insanely difficult for me I set none. If I remembered I still needed to walk and I could do it in the moment I simply prioritized it. It’s surprisingly easy to fit in 10 minutes of walk in throughout your day, even when working a desk job. It could simply mean pacing while on conference calls.
Another rule was “if I fail to achieve it one day, I must achieve it the next” to avoid the “all or nothing” mental trap.
This was to the level of getting into bed, checking step counter, and if I was under target literally getting out of bed, putting clothes back on, and walking until I hit it. I had all sorts of technical widgets to enforce this and help remind me.
It totally sucked for the first couple months. Then it started to just become a thing. Then I ramped it up to 12k/day until I hit a weight goal.
It’s the best thing I ever did for my mental health since it started a snowball in other areas of my life. I was able to swap out a few days of steps for an hour workout (beginning with a personal trainer to force me to show up 2 days a week minimum). I was and still am constantly 10 minutes late to my session but no matter what I show up to them.
The weeks I miss them due to schedule conflicts or travel I feel much worse mentally. And it’s easy to give into the anxiety and panic over not having enough time in the day to fit it in after procrastinating on other items. You also start to realize that those other items are probably not as important as you thought.
I find routine and habits over schedule and calendaring are hyper-important for my dysfunction and have leaned into that. It’s more of a “this thing before that thing” sort of deal vs “at 3pm I do the thing” since the latter would go off the rails immediately.
It’s possible. Just the hardest thing I’ve maybe ever accomplished in life so far.
Gonna be different for everyone and you probably need that one moment of clarity to get the initial motivation. The motivation will go away, but the habits and discipline will probably stick around.
Been using this same method to build habits and routine into other areas of my life now as well.
> I find routine and habits over schedule and calendaring
I find the same. To keep myself honest, I built a simple habit tracking sheet (grid paper; 1 page/month; x axis list items; y axis list days). Keep it simple to reduce friction, no more than a handful of items, and try to stack habits and routines. Focus on anchor points of the day like sleep/work/exercise/nutrition/meal prep/tidy house. I’ll also track non-action items like coffee/alcohol/anxiety/video games/book reading, etc. Include the process as part of end of day wind down and reflection.
> Insurance companies completely dictate what she can and can't do, and frequently she is unable to do more in-depth, best-practice analysis because insurance won't pay for it.
The distinction between "can't do" and "can't get paid for" seems to get lost a lot with medical providers. I'm not saying this is necessarily what's happening with your wife, but I've had it happen to me where someone says, "I can't do this test. Your insurance won't pay for it," and then I ask what it costs and it's a few hundred or a couple thousand dollars and I say, "That's OK. I'll just pay for the test myself," and something short-circuits and they still can't understand that they can do it.
The most egregious example was a prescription I needed that my insurance wouldn't approve. It was $49 without insurance. But the pharmacy wouldn't sell it to me even though my doctor had prescribed it because they couldn't figure out how to take my money directly when I did have insurance.
I get that when insurance doesn't cover something, most patients won't opt to pay for it anyway, but it feels like we need more reminders on both the patient and the provider side that this doesn't mean it can't be done.
> The distinction between "can't do" and "can't get paid for" seems to get lost a lot with medical providers. I'm not saying this is necessarily what's happening with your wife, but I've had it happen to me where someone says, "I can't do this test. Your insurance won't pay for it," and then I ask what it costs and it's a few hundred or a couple thousand dollars and I say, "That's OK. I'll just pay for the test myself," and something short-circuits and they still can't understand that they can do it.
Tell me you've never lived in poverty without telling me.
An unexpected expense of several hundred to a couple thousand dollars, for most of my lived life both as a child and a young adult, would've ruined me. If it was crucial, it would've been done, and I would've been hounded by medical billing and/or gone a few weeks without something else I need.
This would be comical but for the years I did live in poverty. In what world does my being able to afford it now mean I've somehow always been well off?
Neither does collective responsibility, for the same reason, particularly in any sort of representative government. Or did you expect people to pause being idiots as soon as they stepped into the ballot box to choose the people they wanted to have collective responsibility?
To all the people saying this doesn't go far enough to change things: Of course it doesn't. This is a symbolic beginning, not the whole project.
Things like the composition of school lunches were determined for years by the recommendations that formed the shape of the food pyramid. What gets subsidized with SNAP and WIC was determined for years by the recommendations that formed the shape of the food pyramid.
The depiction of the recommendations does get fixed in people's minds. And then when actual guidelines come out for things that actually matter, like food programs, people expect them to correspond to what they know of the guidelines.
It's not that different from any corporate rebranding announcement. They show you the new direction they want to take the company with new imagery. You don't laugh and roll your eyes and say, "Suuuuure. Show us some new pictures. That'll fix it." You evaluate the direction the imagery says they're trying to go to decide if you think it's an improvement.
So, is eating "real food" like meat, vegetables, and fruit an improvement over a diet based on (especially processed) grains for people's health? Of course it is.
I'm not a fan of this government (or anyone else's, really), but I also think the people who are most likely to take this administration's word for it on something like dietary change are statistically among the people who would most benefit from this kind of dietary change, so I sincerely hope this works, and I'm glad to see they're trying to steer it this way. Even if the damn pyramid is upside down and looks like a funnel.
Also came looking for this comment. I get the symbolism of leaving grains at the bottom, but it's dumb.
Just turn the darn thing over. I won't even complain much about having the bottom bulk be "meat, vegetables, and fruit" with just a tiny layer of grains at the top. But this is a funnel, not a pyramid.
What got to me was when my own doctor was telling me I was "healthy at any size" when I was telling her about things like plantar fasciitis in my feet that clearly got worse as I gained weight. Like, it would be one thing if I told her I felt like a million bucks and my labs were excellent and I was a little bit big. But I was in there explicitly telling her that I was NOT healthy at my size.
I eventually got a better doctor and a dietitian and lost 50 lbs by changing my macros to focus on getting enough protein, fat, and fiber, which finally curbed my hunger, and wouldn't you know it, my feet feel better.
I do at least appreciate that emails from one Proton account to another Proton account are secured by default. It has made it much easier for me on the few occasions I've needed to send someone something securely but haven't wanted to walk them through setting up PGP. "Create a free Proton account" is a much easier process.
So I dispute this statement with some enthusiasm.
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