Hacker News Reader

Comment by ulnarkressty | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about you guys but the last week's Ask HN thread about their most impactful achievements really messed up my weekend.

I don't understand how some people can set their mind up and just _do_ stuff. I struggle with not doing stuff but when I try to my brain is violently asking why.

View on HN

I think if you're using a feeling of guilt about not doing stuff as the principal motivation for doing stuff, that's a recipe for... precisely the results you describe.

I'd recommend taking a step back and thinking about what's truly important to you, and see if you can identify an activity or a goal where the journey itself makes you feel inspired and energized. In my experience, if you can find something with a positive feedback loop like that, one day you'll wake up and realize you've made it a lot further down that path than you initially thought possible.

Some people have unusually strong passions for very specific topics. Some of those happen to lead to high impact projects.

I have one such passion that played out well. The consistent work felt natural, while it rarely does otherwise. I can't stick to a gym or guitar practice schedule, but I can spend a few months building a slightly better tax calculator. Go figure.

This is exactly me! For some reason my passion lies in learning a particular foreign language (Mandarin Chinese). That's the only thing that I kept on doing for the last 10 years. Nothing else sticks, not even other foreign languages like Japanese or Korean.

When people compliment me on my Mandarin I say "thank you" but I really want to say that it's not really "talent" or "hard work", unless finishing Game of Thrones or reaching high level in World of Warcraft also counts as hard work.

I wish my passion was in something more useful and impressive (in my opinion) though, like having a side project that I don't lose interest in after a week, which could become my own start-up eventually, but alas.

Have you considered that maybe your brain is right? I've accomplished a lot of things I've set out to do in my life and not a one of them made me a happier person.

Is the goal to accomplish or do you want to accomplish because you think it'll make you happier?

Have you considered if you might have ADHD? If you feel like you have great potential but can never apply it to anything productive, or only for short periods of time, then it might be worth first doing an adult ADHD self-assessment checklist (easily available online from official medical sources) and then if you score highly on it, book yourself in for a psychiatric appointment.

You may not have it but if you do then it can be a life changing diagnosis and subsequent medication and learned coping mechanisms/coaching.

Do you have any good ADHD coping mechanisms or other tricks and tips?

Use alarms and your calendar religiously, alarms for unmissable events, calendar for every appointment. Use your phone for this, you're probably addicted to scrolling or games on it anyway.

Exercise and get good sleep. Caffeine helps but isn't as good as ADHD medication.

Remove distractions aggressively. Don't beat yourself up when you fail; expect it and move on.

Use people in your life to help be your executive function for you. It isn't really fair on them but if they love you they may be willing to anyway. A gym buddy or sports team is another way of achieving this without needing them to love you particularly.

Block all the sites you lose hours to, aggressively. You're not smart enough to build a system you can't get out of but you can make it high friction. Same for games or media or whatever it is.

Pair programming is tiring but it works for using an external party as your executive function. Keeps you on track.

Negative external consequences are motivating but stressful, use sparingly.

Try find a job with or structure your life with enough variety to keep you entertained; I find people to be stimulating but YMMV.

Medication is far more effective than any coping mechanism.

I feel like I can get a glimpse of how these people can pull it out. I have done stuff. Cool stuff, even. My brain has had moments where it didn't shout why all the time. What really wonder me is how they can be _consistent_ at it. How can they pull it off everyday for a long time? I'm crashing every week. Sometimes I can hold this glimpse for a couple of months, but if there is something certain in my life is that it'll crash at some point. And it will be painful.

So many accomplishments are the result of someone just putting one foot in front of the other with a vague idea of where they're going. Hopefully, their north star is something others find respectable once achieved. They're then labeled "geniuses" if it works out and "fools" if it doesn't. Accomplishments are only impressive with hindsight.

90% of life is showing up. Just grind it out. It’s work, and it might not pay off. But doing nothing definitely doesn’t pay off.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com