Tools I use to help achieve #1: LeechBlock (Firefox) or Chrome Nanny (Chrome).
Tool I use to help achieve #2: Beeminder.
Tools I use to help achieve #3: Focus@Will and Coffitivity.
A summary of those tools: LeechBlock and Nanny block certain websites during certain time periods; Beeminder keeps track of your progress with goals and lets you punish yourself for not going fast enough; and Focus@Will and Coffitivity play "attention-amplifying music" and ambient sounds (like a coffee shop), respectively.
I'm similar so this post resonated with me very much.
I had one studying project two years ago and I basically got it done by just disconnecting from the outside world completely. For a few months, I didn't use a computer, a television, or read anything except what I was studying. During the breaks I listened classical music.
The problem is that you can't go on like that for very long because sometimes you just have to go on the internet. Or sometimes you just stumble upon interesting things. When that happens my routine usually breaks down completely and it takes at least a few weeks to get it all under control. Sometimes when I have been a long time without going on the internet I tell myself that I can do it for 1 hour or something like that, but then I actually use it for 20 hours straight and that goes on for days and it even disrupts my sleeping cycle completely.
There are just so many interesting things out there! I wish I had endless time so I could see it all.
I could imagine a solution of having two computers, preferably in two rooms -- one for fun, another for work. The idea is that you are completely forbidden to have any fun on the working computers (and there are a few programs to make sure you don't visit funny websites, etc). Any time you could go from one computer to another, it's just inconvenient and you cannot pretend to work then you are not.
More meta: with enough money, this kind of problem can be solved easily. Most straightforward solution would be to pay some strong guy to guard you the whole day and physically prevent you from doing any of the typical procrastination.
I agree with setting yourself up so that you don't recieve a reward when you procrastinate e.g. changing your computer's settings to block highly-addictive sites (this worked quite well for me).
The next step after this is a bit tricky though. To become interested in something the brain needs a constant supply of effort and reward. With some things though, you have to work very hard for quite some time before you can get any tangible reward. So it's very easy to lose focus. I don't know of any solution to this. Thoughts?
I think the standard advice is to make up your own goals, and let the reward be the fact that you've achieved those goals. (Or add an additional reward to that, like chocolate or something.) If you want to start running, then print out a running calendar and check off every day that you actually do it. Set a goal to run today, or a goal to run three times this week, or twelve times this month—whatever sort of goal seems both significant and achievable.
This is part of how the "ignore everything except the next bit" method is supposed to help. Checking that next item off your to-do list should feel rewarding enough to justify the small effort of carrying out that task.
I agree with your responses to the first and second problems. Not the third (there's nothing good about using DSM diagnostic terms as a layperson speaking to laypeople. That stuff is for diagnosticians and needs to stay in its box. Nothing wrong with therapy, though).
My advice for the third is "Stop and meditate for 5-10 minutes". If you don't know how to meditate, learn. It's both simple and challenging (meaning it is inherently good for building focus)
You're identical to me, remember? I have ADD, so you have ADD.
He's saying that he has ADD.
Which is useful to know in context - it means he has lots of experience dealing with lack of motivation, difficulty with stopping interesting activities. and difficulty filtering irrelevant thoughts.
It also means that if you are having similar issues for different reasons...say, anxiety induced Ugh field, or motivation-sapping depression, or intrusive thoughts about some worrying thing in your life, then this advice might not work for you.
For what it's worth, I have indeed been diagnosed with ADD by mental health professionals (I don't remember what kind). And yeah, I'm not saying that the reader has ADD; I'm just pretending I know that they do. (And this article is for my own personal use, to some extent.)
Is difficulty with stopping interesting activities an ADD trait? My mom says it's an Asperger syndrome thing, but maybe she's wrong.
As for ugh fields, I sort of intended to address those with the paragraph about "figuring out the next task". Ideally, choosing the next task in an intelligent manner will help puncture an ugh field. If you don't have a to-do list, then the undesirable activity is a "have to think about this, but not necessarily now", which you'll end up avoiding for a very long time. If you do have a to-do list, then the activity starts out as "don't have to think about this", but at some point reaches the top of your list, and thus turns into "have to think about this and deal with it right now". Breaking through ugh fields ought to be easier when you're focusing all of your effort on a single activity.
Is difficulty with stopping interesting activities an ADD trait?
People with ADD are indeed prone to internet addiction, and addiction in general.
Your prefrontal cortex is connected to every other part of your brain. The act of consciously shifting attention away from X and onto Y is basically your prefrontal cortex inhibiting your brain's representation of X and exciting your representation of Y. ADD is thought to be a result of less prefrontal cortex inhibition. That's why you tend to have more stray thoughts at any given moment, and also why you are more distracted by irrelevant things in your environment.
So you can see why it would be especially difficult for you to. wrench yourself away from the pleasurable, attention-grabbing stimuli X and onto the dull, uninteresting stimuli Y.
The general difficulties with generating extrinsic motivation is related. Reward, motivation, inhibition, self control, and attention share many of the same dopaminergic pathways.
In different settings, there's differing ideal levels of dopaminergic activity to have. Lots of alleles floating around, some downregulating dopaminergic activity and others upregulating it. Balancing selection keeps them all in the mix. ADHD involves having alleles associated with less dopaminergic activity (not always though - brain damage can do it too). This which is why dopamine reuptake inhibitors are usually the treatment.
(everything i said here is super oversimplified in the interest of my time and some of it is on partial evidence, but if some particular topic catches someones interests I can un-simplify and cite later)
ADHD is a relatively simple disorder. Aspergers is extremely complex and still poorly understood, and seems to vary a lot more between individuals.
Aspergers is extremely complex and still poorly understood
Is Asperger's anything other than high-functioning autism spectrum without speech delay?
Diagnostically, yes that is the major difference, but Aspergers, Autism, and ADHD are just symptomatic descriptors. There might be all sorts of differences that aren't captured by the symptomatic description. In the original context, I can be fairly confident that "difficulty using self control to stop doing interesting activities" is true for many people who have ADHD (for individualized values of "interesting"), but I can't make broad statements like that about autism/aspergers.
What I meant that biological basis is less understood - as in, the various mechanisms which cause the syndrome, which structures are affected, and why those structures behave differently is less well understood for autism/aspergers than for adhd. Part of this is because Autism/Aspergers effects multiple structures, which is not the case for many diseases (Parkinson's is primarily the basil ganglia, ADHD is primarily the dlPFC, sociopathy is (probably) primarily the amygdala and vmPFC, and so on)
biological basis is less understood
I quite agree with that, but it's news to me that ADHD has been well-connected to underlying biological issues. I thought it was another label for a collection of symptoms (albeit with a few known pharmaceutical ways to ameliorate it).
Is difficulty with stopping interesting activities an ADD trait?
Yes, it is. The phenomenon is frequently called "hyperfocus". It's worth exploiting by trying to induce an overlap between interesting and useful things.
So, you procrastinate. A lot. And it's a really big problem in your life, and so you really want to, y'know, stop procrastinating. But for some reason, it's just not that easy.
So, why do you procrastinate?
It's probably a really hard question to answer. Is it "because I'm lazy"? That's not a useful answer, because "stop being lazy" is just as hard to do as "stop procrastinating". How about "because of akrasia"? That's not a real answer; that's just a restatement of the question in more vague terms. Maybe "because of hyperbolic discounting"? Even if that's true, that's not really a useful answer, because there's no way to turn hyperbolic discounting off. (Or is there? If you know of a way to turn hyperbolic discounting off, please tell us.)
Maybe your procrastination has three parts. First, once you start doing something interesting, it's very hard for you to stop; second, having stopped, you don't usually feel like starting to do something useful; and third, having started, you often find yourself losing focus and wanting to do something else.
So let's look at each of these parts in turn.
For you, this one's a pain in the ass. (I know this because for me, it's a pain in the ass, and since you're reading this article, you must be identical to me.) You've told yourself that once you find yourself doing something interesting, you're just going to stop immediately. But that doesn't work at all. You've tried setting a timer, and telling yourself that you'll definitely, absolutely stop when the timer goes off. But that doesn't work, either; you just ignore the timer. What if you set a timer to repeatedly and annoyingly beep at you until you tell it that you've started working? You repeatedly ignore the timer and quickly become annoyed.
For you, once this problem has started, there just doesn't seem to be a way to stop it. So the solution is to just not start in the first place. The ideal situation is that you're not doing any interesting and fun activities whatsoever until you're done working for the day (unless, of course, one of those activities is part of the work you're supposed to get done).
You should still take breaks, of course; don't expect to work for four hours solid without stopping. Just don't do anything interesting during your breaks. Listen to music, or stare out the window or something.
And, of course, this raises the question: how do I avoid doing these interesting activities? It turns out that, compared to the rest of your procrastination, this one is really easy to deal with. Hopping on Facebook or whatever when you're not sure what to do is a breakable habit. So break it. And how do you do that?
One technique is to neuter the worst culprits. Go into your computer's configuration and tell it that reddit doesn't exist. Then if you accidentally try to access reddit, you'll just get an error message. Stop making status updates on Facebook, don't accept friend requests, and block everyone from showing up in your news feed. Disable your IRC bouncer and only access IRC through the server's crappy web interface. Avoiding temptation is easier when you set yourself to be disappointed every time.
Still, there's a bit of residual temptation left over. How do you avoid this? Just use plain force of will. Tell yourself, "I need to avoid doing this right now." That ought to work. Hopefully.
So now that you've got that fixed (kind of), you've got another problem on your hands.
The easy answer to this question: just do it anyway. You may feel kinda crappy, but this doesn't actually have any negative effects.
Or maybe you really, really don't feel like working. All right. Why not? Is it because there's a fuckton of stuff you have to do, and getting it all done is going to suck royally? Well, you can only do one thing at a time, so figure out what the one thing you should do next is, and completely ignore every obligation except for that one. (Figuring out which task is the one you should do next should be easy. If it's not easy, make a to-do list and use it properly.) If that little piece still seems too arduous, figure out the next little piece of that little piece that you need to do, and ignore the rest of it for the time being. Repeat.
All right, so now you're working (hopefully). But it's not going very well.
Part of the problem here is that you have ADD. (Since you're reading this article, I'm assuming you're identical to me, and so you have every disorder I have.) Consider medication and talk to your psychiatrist. Therapy's probably a good idea, too, and it's easier to get seen by a psychologist or therapist than by a psychiatrist.
Remember to eliminate distractions, too. Close unnecessary browser tabs and applications. Set your IM status to "do not disturb". Maybe try writing some of your thoughts down.
And once you've done that... hell, I have no idea. Good luck.