As an ADHD person for whom “reduce impulsiveness” is about as practical a goal as “learn telekinesis”, reducing delay is actually super easy. Did you know people feel good about completing tasks and achieving goals? All you have to do to have a REALLY short delay between starting the task and an expected reward is explicitly, in your own mind, define a sufficiently small sub-task as A Goal. Then the next one, you don’t even need breaks in-between if it goes well—even if what you’re doing is as inherently meaningless as, I dunno, filling in an excel table from a printed one, you can still mentally reward yourself for each page or whatever.
The first salesman guy could set himself a task of “make three cold calls” regardless of success, and then feel good about having done them. The third guy could make a checklist at the start where tasks are listed in order and enjoy an uninterrupted checkmark row when he’s not behind on anything. The student could feel really proud for making the front page, then the next part, etc.
I try to do this, but it often times derails into irrelevant (to the initial goal) tasks like “okay, let’s Format this excel to look as pretty as possible”, “now convert every expression into properly typed latex” and things like that. They might seem somewhat related or sometimes even productive, but result in me taking a long time to do something.
Any ideas how to keep these sub goals in direct service of the main goal?
In my experience? Just do it. Push through. Format the excel to look pretty. Taking a long time to do something is better than not managing to do it at all. And it can make the whole process a lot easier and more pleasant, if you commit to maintaining the aesthetic you enjoy for it. And if you keep doing it that way (your way, together with the aesthetic parts), you’re going to get better & faster at the whole thing (making it properly typed latex in the first place instead of changing to it later, and so on). Do not fight yourself, because you losing is an inevitable outcome one way or another and both suck. Be weird about it. Take longer. ADHD is a disability. Accomodate yourself and do the thing the way you long to do it.
If you’re good and you enjoy it, it’s entirely possible you end up doing it faster than your colleagues who don’t do the formatting, anyway. AND you will have prettier formatting than them!
As an ADHD person for whom “reduce impulsiveness” is about as practical a goal as “learn telekinesis”, reducing delay is actually super easy. Did you know people feel good about completing tasks and achieving goals? All you have to do to have a REALLY short delay between starting the task and an expected reward is explicitly, in your own mind, define a sufficiently small sub-task as A Goal. Then the next one, you don’t even need breaks in-between if it goes well—even if what you’re doing is as inherently meaningless as, I dunno, filling in an excel table from a printed one, you can still mentally reward yourself for each page or whatever.
The first salesman guy could set himself a task of “make three cold calls” regardless of success, and then feel good about having done them. The third guy could make a checklist at the start where tasks are listed in order and enjoy an uninterrupted checkmark row when he’s not behind on anything. The student could feel really proud for making the front page, then the next part, etc.
I try to do this, but it often times derails into irrelevant (to the initial goal) tasks like “okay, let’s Format this excel to look as pretty as possible”, “now convert every expression into properly typed latex” and things like that. They might seem somewhat related or sometimes even productive, but result in me taking a long time to do something.
Any ideas how to keep these sub goals in direct service of the main goal?
(I also have an active ADHD diagnosis).
(yes its me on a different account)
In my experience? Just do it. Push through. Format the excel to look pretty. Taking a long time to do something is better than not managing to do it at all. And it can make the whole process a lot easier and more pleasant, if you commit to maintaining the aesthetic you enjoy for it. And if you keep doing it that way (your way, together with the aesthetic parts), you’re going to get better & faster at the whole thing (making it properly typed latex in the first place instead of changing to it later, and so on). Do not fight yourself, because you losing is an inevitable outcome one way or another and both suck. Be weird about it. Take longer. ADHD is a disability. Accomodate yourself and do the thing the way you long to do it.
If you’re good and you enjoy it, it’s entirely possible you end up doing it faster than your colleagues who don’t do the formatting, anyway. AND you will have prettier formatting than them!