The last couple days I’ve finally been able to work on some of the big projects I care about and have wanted to do for months. But wanting to do all the things I want to do and having lots of ideas is painful, like before I got anxiety, ADHD treatment (which my doctor interpreted as being more of an anxiety thing) but also stopped doing the big things.
It’s so tempting to ignore the things I really want and go burry myself in a video game or something.
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Two things.
A really great goal for meditation or just mental health in general is trying to be conscious of the pleasantness of having an idea and desiring to do it or even just having the desire to do something before you have attached any higher level executive functioning type of thoughts and rationalized that desire within a framework of events and logic. Just try to enjoy the feeling without rushing to attach things to it. WAYYY harder said than done of course :)
Second thing, prioritize getting high quality time burying yourself in video games or whatever else you go to hyperfocus on and shut out the outside world. Set an alarm, play the video game and make yourself forget about all those anxieties hanging in your head about what you should actually be doing right now. Lean into your ability to get lost in a thing and trust the alarm. I am realizing if I don’t do this I just feel always exhausted from a thirst for stimulation, and often people are unfortunately disgusted or repulsed when they perceive how much stimulation my ADHD actually needs for me to feel balanced enough to become functional and adult.
I find that everyone in my life will frequently start to be disgusted by how much I am focusing on one thing to the exclusion of all others but those outside perspectives don’t understand no matter how much they say exactly how much I need those long stretches of meditative pursuit of a single thing in order to be functional or even remotely happy. As someone with ADHD unless you are really lucky, you have to hide how much time you spend doing this or there are very real social consequences (again it really doesn’t matter what people say they accept, people won’t accept you for it unless they have a mind like you). One of the best ways to do that is to just ensure the stimulation you are getting is high quality, distilled stimulation that fits best into your life.
From another perspective setting an alarm and leaning into a favorite hyperfocus is a great way to slow down the feeling of a day sliding by, it helps counteract one the worst consequences of time blindness which is just a general feeling that you are never actually arriving anywhere but just chasing after things you are behind on.
I face something similar to it.
I have so many things I would like to learn and do that I think I end up getting overwhelmed by the amount of things and I do nothing. It’s difficult for me to put things in action in an active way. Mainly for starting things.
One thing that at least prevents me of forgetting such things is dumping it in notes.
I feel that. It’s not perfect, but I started writing down all of my ideas as bullet points just to relieve some of the urgency. I know that I’m likely to forget about them and completely ignore the list, but it really does help, regardless. I use an app called Logseq and I have it bound to a gesture on my phone so I can open it quickly. I hope it works for you.
I use and am deeply in love with org mode, but Logseq looks a fantastic solution for many people and I am super happy when it gets mentioned in ADHD circles.
I started doing that last year with Joplin on my computer and it’s a big help.
I also keep big notes to just dump everything I’m working on into - websites, pdfs, screenshots, screen video captures with no commitment to organization except I can add things in chronological order. A lot of it is initiated by showing it to someone else and then realizing I should have a note for myself too.
I really should start doing the same with personal stuff and random observations. If something is important enough to tell (or what to tell) other people about it should be important enough to tell my future self about.
It’s crazy how much not experiencing rewards yourself/the inability to do things for yourself influences things I wouldn’t even imagine before understating what ADHD is/does and consciously examining them.
OneNote has been my dumping ground for 15 years now, it’s a chaotic mess, because I’ve been lazy and search works really well.
Today I have a few notebooks, some for actual, organized work, and some for the grandiose ideas I get, or the random stuff I find.
I recently started a new notebook using the PARA model:
Projects
Areas of Responsibility
Resources
Archive
(And an additional section which I added to the model)
Reference
I added this to PARA, I find it useful for some resources to be in a separate Reference section, since Resources gets archived upon completion of a Project or Area of Responsibility.
So in addition to my other notebooks, I have this PARA one at the top, with these four elements as Section Groups (Sections Groups Are Sections that can contain other sections, kind of like major tabs in a notebook, that can have smaller tabs in them). I largely work out of it every day, using other notebooks to capture all the random stuff that catches my eye.
Every Project/Responsibility/related Resource is added to that notebook. Other stuff (random articles, curiosities, etc) go elsewhere. This notebook is specifically for actionable, actually important, life management stuff.
Everything flows from the Project Section and the Areas of Responsibility Section. Resources never exist on their own - they are always related to either a Project or an Area of Responsibility (I even name the Sections in Resources the same as their related Project or Responsibility so it’s clear they go together).
Just last week I archived my first project, including it’s related Resource section - what a great feeling!
The need for external validation is a burden, indeed, but you’re already on the right track. You got this!
When I started using Evernote (years ago) I was clipping everything, but it became a giant black hole eventually, and like all those bookmarks we’ve saved, I never looked at 95% of that stuff.