Worst mistake I keep making: I think “I did it 2 days ago, don’t need to today.”

The reality is: Having less than one load of dirty laundry is a theoretical state that is rarely reached.

It’s an illusion, caused by stacks of laundry that “don’t count”, because they are wool and I’m waiting for a full load of wool (in reality, they add up already), or they have some other kind of “special status”.

Or heck, let’s just only ever start when there is nothing to wear, or the laundry bin is overflowing.

That is a method which actually worked out, for years! Just now, with a child, I use a dishwasher.

One big regret: As a single, I should have bought one of those tiny dishwashers that don’t need installing and can just be filled with water on top.

Which ones do you find bad?

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW08NoTQI1c

(Not that anyone cares)

It’s very different for everybody, but here are things that would apply to SOME:

• She might reject “must do now” orders. Instead of saying “Start your homework now and do it until it is finished”, change both the start and duration to something manageable. “Hey, you are home! Just relax for 20 minutes, and 5 minutes before dinner starts, get everything for your homework ready on your desk.” Starting the actual homework is far less overwhelming, then. And instead of “… until it’s done”, make a deal like: “You only have to do 12 minutes of the task, but with a challenge: 12 minutes of maximum efficiency and performance!”. When it is about cleaning the room, also provide a clear unit of work, such as a time constraint (with stopwatch, never wing it!), or toys only, dirty laundry only, a well-defined section only.
• She might already be the willpower equivalent of a body builder, because she has to do with force of will what other people have done for them, be it the frontal lobe breaking down a task, or handing out dopamine rewards that she does not get. When she starts a task such as homework, she has to face the whole tree of little steps and what could go wrong: Find the backpack, alternative plan for when the math book is not in it, the notebook has half a page left, so she will have to stop in the middle to find the new one (where is it?), …
• When she is on a productive obsession, such as reading, an instrument, an area of knowledge, let it run its course undisturbed. There might be phases in which everything feels like too much, so these phases are invaluable. Much of her skillset might come from intense obsessions rather than continuous habits.
• Focus on finding a starting point to an overwhelming task, such as point 1: Get the homework ready and in place, then do something else. It might trigger a thing where she WANTS to start immediately, and otherwise, the start will be so much easier.
• Allow her to skip homework when it is too much and write a note for the teacher. E. g. got back home sick, doctor visit on the afternoon, exhausted and unable to finish homework, but did a start. When necessary.

**It’s more like things about neurotypicals: **

• They don’t have an iron will; actually, their willpower is often much weaker. But their frontal lobe rewards even little things such as clearing the dishwasher right when it is done with little dopamine shots, which they crave and and seek out, almost involuntarily.
• When they face a task, they don’t break it down into little steps with superior conscious intellect. They see the goal, e. g. a tidy kitchen, and their frontal lobe breaks it down and tells them what the next tiny step is to get a dopamine fix. They are not overwhelmed with all the little things that need to be done and what could go wrong, e. g. that wiping a surface could fail when it turns out that the cleaner is in the bathroom or there is still dishes on it.

What really works for me to have my cake and eat it: I keep doomscrolling / watching until a time I set, with the extra bonus that it’s guilt-free.

E. g. I have to sleep and it’s already 30 minutes late, and I’m watching a video. 10 minutes later doesn’t matter now, so I turn off the guilt and pressure completely and really enjoy watching another 10 minutes, then go to bed.

Result: A lot of my time is still spent procrastinating, but I also get like 50 % done of what I should get done, rather than 0 %. And procrastinating is a lot more fun without the guilt.

Oh yes, I remember all those guides and methods about procrastination, the procrastination monkey etc. In the end, if you need to try and evaluate all the methods, and chain the dozen that work best, just to start your laundry, the most important method becomes: Check for mental problems. Could be a depression causing that, could be ADHD, could be something else.

Yes, an absolutely infuriating city dweller question. Even in this day and age, you work in a bakery and live in a village, you have a pitchfork. Maybe your daughter has a pony, maybe you have a grassed area that gets cut with a sickle.

In your case, it seems like daily intake is necessary to avoid these everyday problems. For myself, it would already help a lot to have like 2x3 hours per week when everything gets done.

My insurance would actually pay, but it’s a painful process, so I’m paying everything out of pocked, in addition to nearly EUR 1k insurance premiums.

Neurotypicals think they have this superior discipline and attitude to “get on the task”, and I believed them, too! Now, medicated, I realise that they only work on these constant dopamine micro rewards in their prefrontal cortex. Which I now get, too.

I developed this unique tea leaf / tree bark mix over 20 years ago, and I could swear it changed my life. I studied for 14 hours per day sometimes and absorbed all my training within a few years. Then the effect was gone.

Looking at it objectively, maybe the trick was that it had just the right amount of caffeine, but unlike pure black tea, not too much at once and with a lot of water. Possibly also compensating a micro nutrient deficit. Could also be complex indirect effects, e. g.: ADHD related to gut biome, additional problems due to bad bacteria / yeast overrepresented, medicinal plants in the mix fighting that, to a mild degree.

Treating digestion problems with medicinal tea in combination with caffeine and love for black tea started the whole idea, IIRC, so it’s not entirely impossible.

It can take time to find the right dose.

I even started with 5 mg only, and it felt great. Crashed after just 3 - 4 hours, and within the first week figured that 12 mg is right for now.

The individual differences can be enormous.

This guide to understand dosage finding is pretty good, but doctor’s orders first: https://www.adxs.org/en/page/232/dosing-of-medication-for-adhd

“Being bad at stuff” is also so selective. The other kids are not expected to be two years ahead in math, but I am expected to be able to sit perfectly still for 4 hours and pay attention in an oxygen depleted room. Everybody has to have this nearly exact same skillset.

It’s not what society needs, not even what the industry needs in the workforce, but that is most convenient for the teachers.

I get 0 done without lists. People laugh about my lists, because every tiny detail has to be on it. So let’s say I’m in the situation you described, and it’s 10:30 am. What I’d tell myself is: There isn’t even a list, so let’s make a list, and if it’s the last thing I’ll do before lunch.

The list is quite often as detailed as:

• decide which task / ticket to work on
  • ask coworker for advice what is suitable
• assign myself to the task
• read the task start to end
• understand the task
• reproduce the problem (if it’s like a bug that needs fixing) … and so on

Then, even in my worst state, I can tell myself: You can check off just the next item. That’s not overwhelming, that’s not too much.

When I’m in my own messy kitchen, I can’t find a starting point. I feel like I’d have to be this big octopus creature that stands in the middle and does a thing with each tentacle simultaneously: Threw this into the garbage, put that into its place, start a heap of things that need to go into different rooms, clean neglected things such as the area behind the sink, clean the floor and main surfaces (but there is too much stuff on it even if I had the 10 tentacles), do dishes, put clean dishes away, throw out expired food from every shelf and the fridge, complex sequences such as bagging the garbage -> put new garbage bag in …

Yes, weird with the teacher relationships. A kid from my class, strong on the hyperactive side, was really hated by some teachers. One threatened to beat him up in front of the whole class, another (of the super nice relaxed ones) just threw him out with a book to study on his own in the hallway. I suspect that he never did a single line of homework or studying at home, but his test grades were too good to let him fail.

I don’t have hyperactivity. The best teacher I had really hated me, because he was all about punctuality, reliability, discipline - totally not my approach to math. His teaching was great, I didn’t forget a single lecture to this day, and it allowed me to get all the math course certificates for a STEM field later, although I never finished the degree. A few STEM teaches though realised that my obsession with electronics and programming was really getting somewhere and tried to motivate me to put in the time in related fields, but I never put any work in, and only for computer science was that enough to still ace it.

My own son is even stronger in the extremes. He is barely old enough for his grade, but already has to take math in the grade above. Can’t skip, because his reading & writing is just on par (although in two languages). But he is extremely disruptive. His teachers seem like they understand that he puts in the same mental effort to focus and sit still, just with worse results than the average. And they support my suspicion that he has ADHD and should get tested. Well, will probably take 4 - 6 months to get an appointment, and another 4 - 6 months until there is a diagnosis.

Amazing about the comments is that while a majority seems to “deliver” when the pressure is on, they split 50/50 on whether they feel great during it or suffer greatly, no middle ground.

I’m definitely in the 2nd group. I can get it done if the alternative has horrifying consequences, but it’s not a good feeling.

Maybe two things are mixed up, though. One is like a thing where not doing it is horrible, such as vet appointment for the pet, crucial last deadline at work, kid’s birthday party. The other is like working in a high stress environment, like a project where everything is on fire and under pressure, it’s not about our condition, or an emergency situation like a sinking ship.

I, personally, suffer greatly in the former, but less than the average person in the latter.

I noticed that I can be a bad friend, at times. Need to unload for hours, too impatient to listen, and when I do it out of politeness, I won’t pay attention.

With some friends, I suspect that they just have the pity to be like ChatGPT, like “That’s so relatable!”, “Wow, that IS an interesting day you had there!”, “So funny! Glad I missed South Park to listen to your much funnier ramblings!”

At times, I had a like-minded friend, and we would just take turns talking for roughly the same duration, like an unspoken agreement.

It’s actually the normies who can’t even do laundry without a little neurotransmitter bottle from mommy frontal cortex. We fight demons every day.