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Comment by triggercut | Hacker News Reader

I generally agree with that. It should not be glamourized. I liken it to being like Cyclops in the X-Men. Sure you can shoot lasers out of your eyes, but you can never look upon the love of your life naturally and unfiltered.

That being said, some of most cherished achievements would not have been possible without it, and that's where the cognitive dissonance begins.

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I feel like I just don’t know. How can I? I can hyperfocus, get into flow, and crank through things that make hours and days and weeks fly by. I can also be deeep in the pit of distraction where it is impossible to start anything and I feel broken and the deeper I get the more I try to avoid doing even the smallest thing that might mean forward progress because everything is already so bad so just go and play some games or something anyway. Granted that was my early 20s and I learned to achieve balance and even now in my early 40s I can focus on demand but it took me a loooong time to get there and I think my approach to how I do that and the way I structure my life is different from a NT persons. And for most people that was their normal their whole life.

I very much relate to this. Sometimes challenging and complicated problems come apart easily. Sometimes you waste a week procrastinating something simple. Unfortunately my procrastination has been rewarded so many times. Of you've got a change in scope for the thing I haven't even started yet? No problem! Oh, our priorities have changed and we no longer need that thing? Fantastic! Most recently, I was supposed to be planning a vacation with another family. I procrastinated it long enough that circumstances changed and the other family had to cancel for unrelated reasons. That can be even more frustrating because I know it's just reinforcing those bad behaviors.

I am a fan of Jocko. He talks about that very thing with procrastination. You procrastinate so long the thing loses all importance. I notice I had a habit of conveniently only remembering the times it helped and not the significant amount more it hurt.

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