I used to be good at time management and very motivated in my career. Then about two years ago I lost a close friend over a strong disagreement and then lost my job.
Slowly but surely I became a bit depressed and had some physical health issues. I’m seeing a therapist already, and a few months ago I finally managed to get a plebe job at a retailer, but when it comes to doing my personal work that would open doors in my industry I just can’t seem to find the time and motivation to do it.
Don’t get me wrong. I got plenty of time available, I just find myself being ridiculously avoidant or distracted or tired, you get the idea. And, no, I don’t use social media much, I don’t videogame or binge shows. I just get distracted with house chores or simply overthinking.
I’ve already tried lists, planning and goal setting ( all this comes naturally to me), but it makes no difference.
I’ve tried reducing the expectations and goals, no difference. I still don’t do anything.
I tried apps to keep track of my progress; also useless.
I’ve even considered finding a life coach, but I get the feeling they’re a scam. Unfortunately I don’t have any friends or relatives that can help me stay on track with my goals.
TLDR I’m getting a bit desperate here. Any suggestions welcome. Thanks.
yeah life coaches are unregulated and therefore extremely likely to be a scam or some earnest wanker who will make you worse with bad advice like manifesting, bootstraps mentality, or other impossible bullshit.
My favourite peep show episode is when Jeremy the “life coach” lives with a client and sleeps on the floor in a garbage bag.
What do you give a shit about?
Separate your main goals into a list of more manageable tasks, arrange them by orders/priorities/delendencies and try to set a reasonable due date on the first tasks, but don’t push yourself too hard or you’ll get discouraged. It’s also okay to have some downtimes.
They only advice I can give you is there is no trick or fix. You are going to fail and that is okay. You have to think of it like a mussle. You don’t start with 600 lbs weights. You start at like a 6 lbs weights and work your mussles up.
Building focus is the same way create very small goals maybe it’s write one paragraph of your resume then stop. You built up your motivation mussle just a little bit.Then when that becomes a habit add more goals and maybe bigger goals as you go along.
The biggest issue I find is people make goals around results and sometimes those results are not in your control. So people think they failed their goal and got discouraged but framing your goals about what you are doing keeps you going. As you celebrate the accomplishment of the journey of doing not achieving as that is just a byproduct of what you are doing.
Muscle*
Can one of our available scientists please confirm how much lbs a mussle can bench-press?
Perhaps it’s not procrastinating, but instead it’s executive dysfunction. Or not but from someone who has really bad executive dysfunction, that kinda sounds like it.
Perhaps talk to your therapist about that, and perhaps some research as lots of times people with executive dysfunction think it’s just procrastination which are two separate things.
I’ll look into this as I’m not familiar with it. Cheers
I don’t believe you’re spending all your time “overthinking” or “doing chores”. Stop bullshitting yourself. Try harder.
I used to think like you before this happened to me. I’ll try harder nonetheless
You accomplish years and years of intense, highly productive and rewarding work then this happens. It’s not about puckering up. Be curious. People have stated things like “depression” and “executive dysfunction”. You can look these up, there are plenty of resources.
Imo, guilt and/or fear is holding you back from the industry. Forgive yourself and everything else about the past situation somehow. Every job has the potential to be different even in the same industry. There are a lot of books and techniques that help to process blame, guilt and fear. This and what everyone else is saying.
I agree with you. My problem isn’t rational understanding of what’s happening to me but actually finding a method to get over it. To make an analogy, knowing what disease you have doesn’t make it go away.
I sent you one that I use probably everyday. It’s amazing how we make decisions that our brains try to help with, but gets messed up because they conflict. Your therapist should be able to help with more.
Thank you, I’ll give it a try!
Don’t sabotage Slef. He’s a good dude, who’s had a hard life.
In all seriousness, though, I’d love an answer to this as well. It’s hard once you find yourself in a cycle of procrastination. You get used to allowing yourself to put things off, and it makes it harder to get back into the habit of doing them right when you should.
A few things that help me:
Do it right now. Remember that you left that important thing in the car? Haul your ass out there and get it now, because it gets trampled under foot and lost. Eat a bowl of cereal? Wash the bowl now, not later. Later doesn’t ever get here. There’s always more later when you think later is going to be.
Meditation. Try it. If nothing else, you get a nice little break from whatever your normal routine is, which in itself can help you shake things up. 5 minutes of deep breathing and focus can do wonders. I’m not great at meditating, and sometimes I wonder if I’m even actually doing it, but 5 minutes of breathing is better than not doing 5 minutes of breathing.
Set really small goals. Like, ridiculously sillily small goals. Goals you’d set for a small child. It will feel silly, and childish, and you maybe will feel embarrassed about it, but “I will brush my teeth” or “I will clean that dish” or “I will wash my face”
They’re things you’re going to do anyway, but turning them into a goal gives you a sense of accomplishment, and allows you to get into a habit of completing goals. Gradually increase the goals, and gamify life. It makes you feel accomplished, gives you a sense of progression, and helps to set a pattern you can use going forward.
I hope these things help, or that you find something that does.
To some extent I’m already doing some of these things and it’s not hard to do house chores and personal hygiene (fortunately. I guess one can always get worse). My problem is specific to one area (career) and everything ties into it.
I’ll try the meditation. I’m not convinced though. If you have any recommendations, shoot them. I used to do meditation for a while years ago and it felt like a waste of time, but, I’ll admit back then I had none of these problems.
The small goals part isn’t about setting goals you currently need in addition to what you’re already doing. It’s about setting goals you know you can reach with minimal or no effort. By doing that, you create a pattern of “winning,” of achieving. It can help translate into other areas by tricking your brain into wanting to set more and more goals.
And career specifically is a tough one. Hygiene and food and shelter is all natural to us, but going out and working in an office or for a boss isn’t the natural state of the human animal. It’s something cultural we created for ourselves, and as such it can be a harder area to push yourself into in a lot of ways. It takes a different part of the brain, y’know?
Depression’s a helluva drug, and it can make everything seem terribly difficult, but when it finds one area to really fuck you in, it can be so horrible to find any motivation. Especially in those areas that are outside of our evolutionary instincts. Have you considered speaking with a professional about medication? The meditation and the gamifying and such have helped me some, at the advice of a shrink, but medication is what got me through my early 20s. I’d be dead today without it.
When I went back to college with a new baby, a 2 year old and at times being the sole income for my family, I attended the free yoga courses offered at the school and found that was incredible for managing the stress I knew I had and the stress I didn’t realize I was carrying with me. Plus you can approach yoga as “improving your flexibility” in addition to stress management
if it feels like a waste of time then you have done it for long enough. put on some light music, relax on the couch, and make yourself comfortable. the time will pass anyways and the laundry can wait 30 minutes
That sounds like depression, executive dysfunction or some other brain dopamine issue. No amount of lists or “trying harder” (😂🙄) is going to help. Speak to a doctor about it.
This will sound dumb, but I’m saying it sincerely.
I’ve had similar issues (without getting into details), but what worked for me was getting outside a couple times a week. By that I mean bringing a tent or hammock + tarp and sleeping outside a couple nights a week on workdays.
To be specific: I sleep outside Monday-Tuesday and Wednesday-Thursday. On those days I also make my dinner at my campsite. What I’ve found is that my brain goes into a much more “primal” state of “monke outside in cold, monke get shit done”, and that it propagates into my day and week.
The barrier to this is of course actually going outside, but I’ve been able to get to a place where I have a “deal with myself” about those two nights a week. I always have my pack ready, so it’s just about grabbing it and heading out- I think that’s key.
I’m not saying this is a solution for everyone, but it’s done wonders for me. As of now, I get restless and feel bad if I’m in a situation where I can’t get outside at least once a week. It brings me a peace of mind and will to get stuff done that nothing else can.
Thanks for sharing, it’s an unusual take. This doesn’t work for me for a variety of reasons but gives me food for thought.
I do this:
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Tell myself I’m not going to do it. What ever it is, I’m not going to do it.
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Do the bare minimum thing like: open up a word document, turn on a tap to wash dishes, take something out of a box.
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By commencing the task I’ll usually default into doing the next part like reading the document, washing a dish, sorting something out.
Additional tips:
- Break big things into small chunks.
- Dont get overloaded. If your a room do it one draw at a time so you can stop when ever. Getting trapped in a “I can’t sleep until this is finished” task is a trap.
- Lists to keep track.
P.S. I was in recruitment 13 years ago and once thought about throwing myself down the stairs to get out of work. I did that job for 2x years and used it to move to a better industry.
You can make change in your life.
Good luck, we’re all counting on you :)
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Can you do something different for your career? Seems like you hate it.
Is it possible you burnt out at your old job? That takes years to recover from properly and takes a lot of radical self acceptance and being okay with rest
I did unfortunately and only realised when it was too late. Where did you get this information about the years to recover?
I originally came across that idea from someone on TikTok who was studying burnout for their doctorate. But I can’t find them now. The closest I could find for you in terms of a citation was this:
Evidence suggests that [burnout] has relatively high stability over time, with studies showing that physicians who score high on burnout assessment at one point in time tend to continue to do so at subsequent points, at least up to about 3 years.
Edit: I’ll say that in my experience, this timeline is for full recovery, not for reaching the point where you can sustainably work again. One thing I got told that helped me was to plan out in detail what I think my daily schedule would look like outside of burnout and pick one thing to focus on starting to do 5 minutes at a time. And that looked like me literally quitting halfway through cooking instead of pushing myself to finish sometimes. The exhaustion is real but if you don’t have any other major mental health factors (like if you’re in your early 20s and this is your first major autistic burnout for example) then getting back to where you were is realistic.
That sounds interesting but I’m not sure I’m understanding what you did. What do you mean by “daily schedule outside of burnout” ? You mean everything else you need to do except the activity that causes burnout? Or am I getting it wrong, and everything caused you burnout meaning you couldn’t do more than 5 minutes of anything? I you can clarify I’d appreciate it, if sounds like something I could try for myself as well.
Like in the early stages of burnout for me, even getting up off the couch to go to the bathroom was a struggle. And for me, this was my first big autistic burnout, which meant that I needed to reorient my relationship to work, play, and self-care to make sure I was doing all of them in a sustainable way. But in the beginning, that meant if I couldn’t do more than 5 minutes of a task, I wouldn’t beat myself up. But starting with that 5 minutes was a way for me to push myself just a little. Because the normal advice is “let yourself relax” and that advice just didn’t work for me. For one, I didn’t have the support to be unemployed for long periods of time. And for two, being depressed and laying immobile on the couch wasn’t relaxing in the first placed. I was just stressed while appearing relaxed. So getting back to doing things was my way out. And so I built up a tolerance for that and slowly built up the ability to do things sustainably while also pushing through the burnout to survive, which made it last longer. But eventually the sustainable stuff won out. I rest more than I used to and have a better relationship with breaks and self care but I’m working full time in my field again and pursuing betterment both in and outside of work. That said, I work in a job where I can flex my hours and take the breaks I need pretty much at will as long as I let my coworkers know and get my work done. I’m aware I’m very lucky to be able to do this and that it’s not a universal solution. But I’m just trying to be as honest as possible about my experience.
I really appreciate it, thanks for sharing. I feel identified with some of what you’ve described, you give me hope.
Best of luck. It’s slow but you’ll get there
one must be careful not to sabotage the slef. it will become very angry
one cannot reason with the slef, the slef merely knows what it does and charges through all obstacles before it, like the single-minded demented humunculus it is
slef is the mind killer
Slef
