Comment by thethingundone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thethingundone | Hacker News Reader

That text is describing my life since 10 years or so. I am in my 30s and lost the capability to do the thing, _any_ thing, with the exception of going out with friends/family/my partner to do social activities. Everything else is literally impossible for me to do.

I’m currently kicking off my second attempt to fix this by talking to a psychologist about it. But I am not very hopeful. Still searching for the root cause. I have all the ground works set to having a good life, except that I am incapable of moving to start that damn thing.

Where is my interest in stuff gone? Why do I prefer my couch over just typing "git clone" and play with some new tech? Why is my 3D printer sitting dusty in the corner even though I was one of the first adopters? Why is the act of hand-craft wood working, that I am dreaming of since forever and would now be able to do, impossible for me to start?

My motivation is high. My brain thinks whole projects through. I start fixing things in my head. But I am not even capable of dumping all that planning into an speech-to-text-LLM to build an actual design document out of it.

It feels like I played everything through already, so no point in starting that thing.

What the fuck is my problem?

At the risk of making unqualified self-diagnoses, the phrase that always comes to my mind is "anticipatory anhedonia": On some level I do not expect the thing will actually be that fun, and I'm not filled with bubbly joy now about how awesome it'll be when it happens tomorrow.

I may have fun during the thing, but beforehand it's mostly trying to plan for what might go wrong, and afterwards it fades to the satisfaction of checking something off of a list.

https://www.britannica.com/science/anhedonia

Thanks, will read about this!

You probably lost the “finish” muscle. That happens when you lack wins for a long time.

Best way to to train yourself to win again. Start, finish, and celebrate a 1h task. Then half day. etc

That is probably one of the causes. I don’t feel comfortable to put in effort into any _thing_. I probably unlearned that.

Finishing small things like cleaning dishes is no problem for me. It gives some sort of gratitude, but most likely not what bigger tasks would give.

Are you burned out at your job maybe?

I definitely lack motivation to do anything at my job, but it’s the same will all private/hobby stuff. IT is probably not it for me anymore, however I have that job situation under control. I wish I could do something else though (not IT at all), but that also requires me to start that thing (and take some risk).

Sounds like you'd benefit from working with a therapist, i.e. someone specifically trained in understand these kind of problems and guiding you through them.

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