Req for recs

[kaberett]

Time management for crips with executive dysfunction. Go.

(This brought to you by yet another late night of being desperately excited by my science and not wanting to go to sleep because I could be sciencing... in the middle of a sprint that's been brought on by executive dysfunction getting everywhere when I could've been working slow&steady if I had any sense of how to manage this.)

Comments

[shehasathree]

*tracking the comments so hard*

[jelazakazone]

Awesome icon is awesome.

[kaberett]

I've been mulling this over and don't have conclusions yet, but I think what's tripping me up is that I can know what has to be done without knowing why or when; and I need at least one of those two in order to have any motivation. This is why I get into really excited work-sprints close to deadlines - because if I settle down to something under the compulsion of when and do a whole bunch of stuff I'd been going "... but why?" about, often the why falls out/becomes apparent pretty rapidly - in a way that it couldn't without having sat down to do it, but motivating myself to Just Do It in the absence of either "why" or "when" is nigh-on impossible. (And if the "when" is too far in the future - like, probably about a fortnight max - and the "what" is nebulous - "work out what to plot up, plot a bunch of graphs, have opinions about them" - then it's much much harder; "look at your diary for the middle two weeks of July and work out when to get chemistry done" is much easier, because chemistry is a very specific set of steps I have to follow in a very specific order that take known time so can be timetabled easily, rather than tripping up on working out the "when" as well as the "why"...

Does that feel about right in terms of the ways the executive dysfunction kicks in? I'm not sure I've quite untangled it and I'm not sure I've said anything significantly different to neurotypicals' worldview on this. Hmm.

(I wonder if everything I do/I do instead/of something I want to do more/the question fills my head...)

[amianym]

It sounds like you don't struggle with continuing to work on things once you've begun and the "why" makes itself apparent - like what you're trying to do is get the excited hyperfocus to show up earlier. If this is the case, can you think of ways to make yourself do a little bit of work on a project earlier on? What if you were to promise to yourself to do some small, manageable amount of work per $timeframe before the intrinsic motivation shows up, optionally trying to reward yourself when you do?

What I'm guessing is that organized work periods spread out evenly are just not going to be the way you work - I've never been able to manage that, either - and it makes more sense to try to adapt and exploit the way you already work to be less risky and sleep-disruptive.

[rysmiel]

One of the things I can often manage to use to get me to do task X I'm not otherwise able to settle on is identify a fairly convincing task Y that I can treat task X as displacement activity from; I think that has worked for me in broadly similar situations to what you describe here, so it seemed worth offering in case it was of use.

[shehasathree]

Re: work-sprints close to deadlines:
http://shehasathree.dreamwidth.org/2778639.html

I definitely have problems with "When" and "in what order" and that's partly to do with "why" but also "how much" and "how much right now" and "how do i get started?" and "how do i know when to stop?" (both overall and for this session. because when i'm on a roll i never want to stop and that's bad for my body and my brain and my sleep patterns and my tomorrow.)

[swaldman]

Hmm. Not sure it's helpful, because Different People Are Different, but one thing that I find helps is to split big or far-away items on my to-do list into two items:

1. Is the main item, so I can see the whole
2. Is the next little thing that needs doing that will contribute to the main item.

Often I will simply ignore 1, because it is Big and Far Away and I Can't Start Something That Big Right Now. But by having 2 on the list, I've already done the hard part (figuring out what's next) and can just get on with carrying out the next action.

[jelazakazone]

So, when I get excited about something, it can interfere with my sleep. If I can manage it, it's best for me not to work on the thing that gets me excited for a couple hours before bedtime. So, for me, that's around 8pm to stop thinking about exciting things. If I can manage it. Sometimes that's not enough and I still do serious brainstorming at night, while I'm trying to sleep. That's the best I got for you.

Do you have a decent sense of time or no? My eldest does not seem to have any awareness of the clock. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, just wondering if could figure into the equation in some way.

[amianym]

I have so far not discovered a reliable general solution to executive-dysfunctiony time problems - I think most situations need to be addressed on a per-task basis.

To successfully task-switch, I need the reward of the switch to outweigh its difficulty. In practice, it is mostly quite difficult to tactically deploy rewards that are compelling enough to counteract significant task inertia. I mostly work on engineering things so that desirable activities are as easy to transition to as possible.

One thing that helped me is using my computer in lots of different places. Computers are usually much easier to switch to than to switch away from for me, so I don't need to worry about making them any easier to use, and I do need to worry about getting Stuck in Internet. Having no defined laptop-space means I never really have computer-use cues and I'm usually in the presence of cues for more desirable activities - at the kitchen table, I have cleanup, cooking, and eating nearby to work on. In my room, I have guitar practice and room-cleaning. etc. I also use my laptop's battery more often, and when it runs down, that provides a natural hook to switch to something else. I don't have a lot of other examples, right now, of high-inertia activities that I have to engineer myself to do less of, but I hope that description helps a bit with the kind of thinking that helps me.

Having other people around can very reliably cue me to do whatever they're doing, even if it makes no sense for me to try to do the same thing at the same time they are :P I have not yet met someone with whom I can deliberately exploit this tendency.

I noted that rewards are hard for me to engineer, but having HabitRPG living in a browser tab is one thing that's helped a bit with some self-care stuff and going to bed at reasonable times. Firstly, it's right there in my browser next to anything I might be focusing on, so it reminds me to have the things I care about doing at the forefront of my mind. Secondly, it attaches rewards to things that are valuable but not very rewarding, or only rewarding in a very long-term way. Thirdly, my dailies force me to *decide* between doing a thing and consciously not doing it, versus avoiding the decision until enough time has passed that it doesn't make sense to try.

Lastly, I'll note that in my case, punishments of any kind - self-inflicted, natural, social, etc. - are completely ineffective at getting me to task-switch. I could have multiple alarms interrupting my workflow and telling me to go to bed, but if I'm sufficiently immersed in what I'm doing, I *still* won't get off the internet. Punishments make the undesirable activity less rewarding, but they don't make bed *easier* or *more rewarding* - it almost compounds the problem, because I'm still trying to get internet-reward and aaa it's not theeeeere. Additionally, simple cueing with alarms is only useful if the thing is already easy to switch to, or if the thing is important and time-sensitive enough that I can expend lots of willpower on the switch.

I hope some of this has been helpful to someone, somewhere.

[quirkytizzy]

What's a HabitRPG? That sounds sorta useful.

[amianym]

Behold!

It's basically a gamification-thing that's like an RPG, and you have equipment and stats and mounts and etc., but you level up by getting stuff done! The thing that makes it compelling, for me, is that it's an actual game - not a particularly deep one, but there are goals worth attaining in the game itself (like trying to collect all the pets and mounts, or getting new shiny spells). This has proven to be enough that I will look for useful things to do because I'm trying to get enough potatoes to raise my lion cub. Best of luck with it!

[quirkytizzy]

OMG THIS IS SO COOL! I am signing up right now! It will come super in handy for the more extreme states of mania/depression. THANK YOU!

[kaberett]

I have dumped a comment in response to shehasathree above in which I attempt to characterise the problem, if that is of interest! Thank you for this comment; it helped shake a few things loose.

[tim]

I don't ID as a crip and sort of ID as someone with executive dysfunction, but here's my summary (from a year ago) of what sometimes works for me.

[kaberett]

Thank you!

[fyreharper]

Likewise and thank you for the link/post; am now chewing over some of the things from it.