Lemme just premtively catch the “this isn’t an ADHD specific thing” by saying; That comment on this post is like going to a community of people in wheelchairs, finding an “ugh stairs” meme, and commenting “everybody hates stairs, that’s not a wheelchair specific thing”. Sure, everyone procrastinates, and you might think you relate but it’s not the way we relate.
People procrastinate, but I’m pretty sure that most people don’t sit in a cloud of anxiety, unable to do any work but also unable to do something fun, for six hours while staring at the wall unable to do anything. I’m pretty sure that when most people want to work, they just do so. I think that screaming at yourself to work but being unable to start is like, some kind of disorder… 🤔
It’s like when I have an appointment today at 2 PM. Guess I’ll get ready at 9 AM and sit around waiting until it’s a reasonable time to leave to arrive an hour early…
So, there was this one time, back when I was in college (and very medicated), that I had a big research paper due, and I had a great idea: what if I get started “early” for once so that I’m not scrambling at the very last minute to finish? I’ll even have some time to proofread it and relax once I’m done, and it will be so nice to enjoy some downtime without the anxiety of the looming deadline!
I legitimately got started on it “early” and was reasonably focused. Most of my attention was directed towards the assignment, not cleaning my toilet or scrolling on Reddit. But guess what? I still wound up scrambling at the very last minute to finish and didn’t get to enjoy any of the supposed perks of starting early.
I think what happened was that since I had “so much time”, I got lost in the research portion of the assignment and really struggled to make much progress on the writing portion until that wave of adrenaline hit.
I realize this is just an anecdote, but that whole experience has made it even more difficult to try and get anything done early. I feel like if I start early, I’m not going to also finish early, instead I’m just going to spend more time on the task, so why bother?
Every time. Try to get ahead of your work? Well, good for you, that first 20% went really well, now let’s spend the next two weeks on “work” that interferes with your other needs and needs to get thrown out because there’s no way it’s integrating with the other 80% that needs to happen within the next hour and also everything that you did for the other 20% is useless and needs to be redone now that you broke it with that tangent.
It’s been a painful summer “preparing” to teach my fall courses.
This used to work great for me before I got my diagnosis (about 19), but years of abusing this to get school stuff done sort of got me used to the fear and stress.
Now the fear just transforms into guilt of not being able to finish the task if that makes sense.
Please be aware of this and don’t rely on it for functioning like I did.
Fortunately I’ve learned to start a bit earlier than that, most of the time, in my late twenties 🥲. To regular of an adrenaline rush is detrimental to health, so I would recommend trying to mitigate it…
I’ve found that i can sometimes break this tendency by leveraging my ADHD’s impulsiveness symptoms… “I have something to do? Let’s not plan it at all and do it right now. Not in 5 minutes, right now.”
As long as I’m not forced to think about it twice, it can work. The result won’t be as great as if I overanalyzed the task beforehand, though!
Not the first time I’ve thought “do it before you start thinking about it”.