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Comment by circleit | Hacker News Reader

Mentally: It’s actually not that hard, you’re over thinking it. Just do anything else than the thing you don’t want to do. The thing you fall back on is a habit. It is one thing you do over and over, instead of the infinite other things you could otherwise be doing. Recognize in life these fallback habits and do something different. Take the same road to work? Take a different route one day. By breaking habits you open your world to infinite possibilities.

Physically: put your phone in your bedroom or wherever you keep it when you go to sleep. Don’t be in that room till you go to sleep. You break the habit of normally having the phone with you all the time. See what happens when it’s not.

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Mentally: It is that hard. Executive dysfunction and ADHD are both fully understood physiological disorders that are only the domain of psych because the symptoms are psychological in their manifestation.

A would wager a fair amount of these people will be doomscrolling because they essentially have too little, or too much, dopamine, and while there are ways to get the body to prompt creation of it, often there are tangible problems in the number of neurotransmitters or the amount that is created that can cause this.

For example: Often I want to take a shower, but end up sitting on my bed for hours, essentially unable to move to complete my task. I wondered for a long time if this was me, if I just tried hard enough, maybe I could beat it. But the fact is, it isn't -- it's a tangible and measurable problem with the way my body functions that stops me from being able to move to complete the task.

The poster's description of this above sounds extremely, alarmingly similar to my experience, and those of my friends and coworkers with it. Personally, I wonder whether the widespread, common, and societally endorsed distribution of caffeine and nicotine -- both stimulants, have effects on the developing child. It would explain the sheer prevalence of it, and also the prevalance of the stimulants, as stimulants are drugs that are prescribed for managing ADHD* :)

* - most people who are diagnosed are found to already be weakly medicating themselves with stimulants!

I came here to agree with your post! I wanted to add that when you are having as much trouble functioning as someone with severe ADHD and a general lack of executive function no number of tried and true tricks that a neurotypical person uses are going to be enough to cause real change in your life. I was definitely a heavy caffeine user for years before I was diagnosed as ADHD and given access to Adderall which really helped me be more in control of my schedule.

So then how do you take showers or in general, how do you move on from being stuck and change activities? How do you motivate to do anything?

Given the advice in my first comment, and I guess counter to the other comment in this thread saying “neuraltypical” tactics don’t work, I was going to ask, have you ever said to yourself at the count of three you will get up and do the task you have in mind?

I have difficulty taking showers over scrolling everyday. I'm just too tired.

> So then how do you take showers or in general, how do you move on from being stuck and change activities? How do you motivate to do anything?

Because eventually the physiological system normalizes and you have enough dopamine to do things. It's functionally impossible to wrestle yourself out of being in an executive dysfunction spot, though.

> have you ever said to yourself at the count of three you will get up and do the task you have in mind?

Hahahaha, yes. Hundreds of thousands of times. I'm surprised you would have reason to believe that I hadn't tried this. It doesn't change that I do not have enough of a specific brain chemical in my neurological system to do something -- whether that's because I have a difference in my neurophysiology or the rest of my body's production of dopamine. And while having specific social structures, habits, and patterns in my life can help, they very very quickly fall apart because my brain will just forget about them, regardless of how much mental energy I expend on trying to maintain them (A dysfunction with object permanence is another problem that may present as a result of the physical condition of ADHD). Actually, it's funny -- it's been shown that the more effort is expended on focus, the less someone with ADHD is able to focus. Because the act of making the effort to focus in the first place expends dopamine!

> “neuraltypical” tactics don’t work

neuro- from the Greek for nerves or the nervous system

neurotypical -- The prefix joined with a word. Originally a colloquial term in autistic circles, but has been adopted by the scientific community. Describes the typical status quo of the brain in the wider sociological context. While there's no evidence for a specific anatomical "status quo" of the brain, there is a broader sociological context present whenever one considers "normality". Antonyms: neurodivergent, neurodiverse, neuroatypical

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical

I do strongly suspect I am ADHD, but avoid basically all stimulants (unless we count sugar as a stimulant, in which case I eat sugar sometimes. And lots of carbohydrates in general that aren't sugar)

I haven't sought a diagnosis or even been screened because I'm not interested in taking strong stimulants, even though I'm sure it would help a lot with some things, and besides a prescription I don't see any obvious benefits to having it "made official".

Have a few ADHD family members who have seen great success with their prescriptions though. All in all, I do feel like I am making a little improvement to my executive function over time through purely psychological means, but it can feel like pretty slow going sometimes.

I have bad ADHD. I basically can't code or do anything mentally tedious without pills. No matter how much sugar, caffeine etc I take, my brain doesn't want to. I have gone months without, exercised properly and tried low sugar diets etc, tried everything, nothing worked. I made some tiny gains, as do everyone, how you treat yourself still matters for handicapped people. But then I got those pills, and now I can happily code many hours per day, my handicap is gone, it changed my whole life, without it I would never have gotten a good software job etc.

Note, those pills aren't really "stimulants", they help you focus they don't make you stressed out or high like sugar or caffeine does, they just help you get into the "zone". Maybe they do get you high to some degree and that is why some use them as a drug, but they don't really have that effect in the dosages you take them for ADHD, the feeling I'd call it is "a kid on Christmas eve", that makes it hard to sleep since you want to do so many things, not like caffeine at all. The dosage which made a night and day difference for me felt like nothing to a normal person.

So at least give it a try. Worst case it doesn't help much, best case it changes your life.

Children tend to be discouraged from drinking coffee. And non-adults tend to hate the taste so they don’t tend to be motivated to do it in the first place.

People still consider coffee and many other minor stimulants safe enough to be consumed during pregnancy, and that people might have largely stopped smoking during pregnancy, it doesn't alter the fact of mass exposure to and consumption of stimulants in the 20th century.

> People still consider coffee and many other minor stimulants safe enough to be consumed during pregnancy

I was specifically talking about children, addressing the theory that it can affect development.

> and that people might have largely stopped smoking during pregnancy

I was specifically talking about coffee.

> I was specifically talking about children, addressing the theory that it can affect development.

I was specifically talking about prenatal development, though. I am the person who wrote the original post you are responding to, and was/am clearing up that misunderstanding. Whether or not children are directly given coffee to consume does not at all apply to what I intended to say.

Got it. Thanks for clarifying.

This is precisely the thing I figured out when I finally eventually quit a long-term weed dependence: do anything else. It does not matter what it is (well, within reason). At first, I spent a lot of time staring at the walls, literally, simply resisting the urge.

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