Noodling about executive function

[wildeabandon]

One thing that I've become a bit more aware of recently is a tendency to procrastinate doing quite a lot of things that I actually enjoy, in favour of mindlessly refreshing the internet or playing pointless games on my phone. I'm still not entirely certain of why I do this, but there seems to be something in my subconscious which is reluctant to commit to spending an extended period on something, especially when I'm tired, and wants to spend a few minutes doing something that requires no effort first. But the division into activities which I can do for a few minutes and those which I'm committed to spending longer on seems to be almost entirely arbitrary.

Does anyone else do anything like this and have any ideas? At the moment I'm mostly just trying to notice when I'm doing it, but I'm wondering whether deliberately doing things other than futzing on my phone for only five minutes to prove to my subconscious that it's an option might be a good idea. Or telling myself that I have to knit/read/draw/write/&c for at least five minutes before each time I pick up my phone?

Comments

[atreic]

That is so very me. I don’t have brain to unpick it at the moment, but do make some time to talk to me about it at some point if you’d like to.

[simont]

Me three.

I'm not so much about the mindless refreshing of the Internet, but I definitely resonate right now with 'can't even read a book for more than 5 minutes – a good book, one I'm enjoying and want to know what happens next – without a sudden urge to pick up tablet and play a daft game on it'. Fortunately I have a daft game that comes in genuinely bite-sized levels that you can dash off in 10-30 seconds.

I'd assumed it was a 'just me' phenomenon, but if you're having it too, then on the basis of three data points, perhaps it's a 'this bloody year' phenomenon as much as anything else?

[wildeabandon]

Hmm. This is, I think, a slightly different phenomenon to the one I'm talking about. It is something that happens to me sometimes, and usually when I'm in a situation of some uncertainty which is out of my control and I'm waiting to be resolved, which would certainly make sense of it being a "this bloody year" thing for you.

But where I am at the moment, once I start doing the thing that I enjoy I usually settle into it and can happily continue with it until I'm interrupted. But somehow the sense that I'm committing to doing it for a while stops me from starting, iyswim.

[simont]

Hmm, yes. "Slightly different" is an understatement – I seem to have failed to notice that you were describing the exact opposite phenomenon! Sorry about that.

[wildeabandon]

Heh - not at all. I'm not sure that exactly opposite is right either though, because although the manifestation looks quite different, I feel as though the cause is probably something quite similar.

[ewt]

I have done this basically forever, and I'm going to try to keep this description of my experiences short because I was "just" checking DW before my morning walk, and also it will probably be unhelpfully rambly.

It's worse when I'm tired or depressed or anxious or some combination, and it's worse in the evening (the "too tired to go to bed even when I have a book etc" phenomenon is particularly hard).

It's better when I have a regular, don't-think-about-it routine that includes at least some the things I enjoy early in the day.

Figuring out which bit of the internet I'm mindlessly refreshing the most and taking a break from *that bit specifically* can help break the cycle, for me. So can figuring out if I'm falling into a pattern of avoiding things that are enjoyable for me because I believe I don't deserve enjoyment, or if I'm anxious.

Making the activities mandatory in some way doesn't usually help me, it just sucks the enjoyment out of them as they become one more thing I can fail at. There's a fine line for me between a routine which includes enjoyable things, and the enjoyable things turning into yet another overwhelming to-do list item. Sometimes, but not always, an in-person or online appointment with someone else set up with the aim of doing the things together helps -- Focusmate is sometimes good for this, depending what the activity is, though I mostly use it for work things. But -- a lot of the activities that I see as leisure still use the same parts of my brain as things I see as work, and sometimes I'm just at the end of the day and I'm tired and my brain doesn't wnat to do any more work and that's okay. My leisure time doesn't have to be productive. It's okay to mess around online and play sudoku on my phone if I don't feel like doing anything else. Giving myself permission to do the activities earlier in the day as part of a routine is also a way of giving myself permission to use my "best" brain time on things that aren't career-related. Some books I can read when I'm tired, some I need to be more alert for.

As with most of my executive dysfunction stuff, I can't always tell whether it's a neurodivergence thing or a trauma thing, and most of the time it doesn't matter, but sometimes thinking about it as related to trauma illuminates something -- I'm more likely to avoid e.g. crochet when I've been having a hard time emotionally, because crochet gives me space to feel my feelings and that's hard.

[wildeabandon]

Thank you - this was exactly the opposite of unhelpfully rambly :)

The thing about giving myself permission to do non-work things earlier in the day is something I really need to take on board, but it conflicts a bit with my difficulties in task-switching, because if I don't start working pretty early in the day then I find it much much harder to start working at all, so I'll need to give some thought to how to balance that.

[charlie]

Yes. I think it's a very typical ADHD/ASD trait. Sometimes the mental energy to do something, even if it would be an enjoyable thing, just seems too great.

I'd love to catch up with you some time if you fancy it - also equally happy to chat about this kind of stuff too if that would be helpful.

[sfred]

I do that too, and I don't think I have good tactics, but I am interested in other people's.

[highlyeccentric]

Sixth'd. It's a major reason why I've read less for fun since broadband internet, and even less since smartphones.

[ludy]

[It's OK to have downtime - even fun/helpful stuff can be overloading and a bit of mindlessness can be a good thing - it's yet another of those tricky having-to-find-a-balance things]

If it's specifically a phone problem then i recommend the "Bored and Brilliant" challenge which is a week long simple (but not necessarily easy) programme that was originally from WNYC's podcast Note to Self in 2015 (and phone apps have only got more addicting since then)
https://www.wnyc.org/series/bored-and-brilliant

The podcaster, Manoush Zomorodi, later wrote a book of the same name exploring these issues:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B074G2K8B5/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
(And left WNYC and now presents the Zig Zag podcast)
She still works in tech-journalism and obviously loves the useful things her phone can do for her so it's not a big hippy/luddite tech-is-bad kind of thing - it's a short break/reflection time to rebalance your relationship with your phone.

[wildeabandon]

Thank you! I definitely agree that a bit of mindlessness can be a good thing; one thing that I suspect might help is finding activities which are very low effort, but don't have the addictive dopamine widget that phone-poking tends to.

I've bought the book, and will give the podcast challenge a try this week.

[the_elyan]

Living on my own, procrastination is a big enemy, especially at the moment (because of Reasons, which I'm happy to discuss, but are quite dull). I tend to view going outside for a walk to clear my head as always a valid use of my time, even if I had something else I was planning to do.

I don't know if it's any help, but something I am trying to do to stop myself doing the "need a break - I know, there's my phone" thing (particularly an issue last week with news from the US) is to have a book of poetry by my desk, and read one or two of those as an alternative. Doesn't always work, but it gets the brain to do something different.

[wildeabandon]

Mmm. I'm not sure that poetry is the right thing for me, but having something that I can do for a few minutes to give myself a break or some breathing space before starting a new thing, but that is actually refreshing would probably be a helpful intervention. I just need to figure out what that thing or things could be.

[jack]

Yup. I used to have this REALLY badly. Now I think it's a lot better.

I used to say, you know it's procrastination, because it's stopping you doing something even when there isn't ANY reason not to.

I think for me the time it was most notable was when I had had some uncommitted time and wanted to make the most of it: I'd get nervous about whether the thing I wanted to do would actually be the best use and then not want to do it and find out. But it was also recognisable if the thing I wanted to do was fun, but also required more thinking than I had brain for. Or if there was something I was supposed to be doing *afterwards* and worrying about that meant I didn't feel entitled to have fun now.

[rosefox]

I would think treating those tasks as a chore would only increase the urge to procrastinate from it. Why not accept that this is where your brain is for the moment? The world is immensely stressful right now and that limits attention span significantly. Maybe you're refreshing the internet and playing games because that's what's accessible to you right now. I mean, it sucks that those other things aren't accessible, but if they're not, they're not.

[wildeabandon]

Hmm. It's not exactly that I plan to treat them as a chore, so much as try to get my hindbrain to realise that starting to do them isn't committing to doing them for a long time.

I don't really want to accept that this is where my brain is for the moment because doing things to relax and refresh myself that I don't find relaxing or refreshing seems unhelpful. I'm not trying to force myself to be more productive - I just want to enjoy my non-productive time.

[juliet]

I get this. Also "I'll just look at the internet for 5 min before I [x] or [between X & Y]" even when X and/or Y are very small things & I could just....do them.

Sometimes for me it's as rosefox suggests just about where my brain is at, but sometimes it's just a habit. It feels very rat-pellet-ish, if you know what I mean? My problem is social media (etc) rather than phone games but perhaps a similar brain-experience. I recently stopped reading Twitter, and signed out of the very-busy-social-Slack on my phone: this has meant that the social media I have immediate access to does not necessarily *have* any new content when I check it. This in turn has made it a bit more obvious that "new thing!" is what my brain is looking for, because I check it, and then...I start trying to think of something else to check instead that might hit that button.

Until about a fortnight ago I had some success with using the iOS time limits per day (because that makes me slightly less likely to "just check this...") but the downside of that is a certain sense of anxiety around "but I only have X minutes". Also this has failed ENTIRELY as of the last week or so, sigh. So I'm back to "noticing it happening".

I have in the past found it helpful to keep a book around at all times as an alternative. For me personally I would be worried that knitting/drawing/etc would turn into a chore if I tried too hard to make myself do that instead of The Interwebs, whereas (for me) that is not a risk with reading because my relationship with reading is way, way too close ;)

[wildeabandon]

Mmm. Yes - the bit where my brain is looking for an easily digestible new thing is quite an important insight. Thank you.

[smhwpf]

Oh, Gods, yeah, all the time! Wish I had an answer. But your initial thoughts seem good.

[yiskah]

Yep, I do this too. It has been a very useful realisation for me to realise that, based on the Brown model of ADHD, my major issues are much more around activation than they are about focus, and as such they can apply just as much to activities that I enjoy and am enthusiastic about as to activities I am dreading. I am about 90% powered my momentum at any given time tbh.

Link to Brown model for anyone who's interested - https://www.brownadhdclinic.com/the-brown-model-of-add-adhd

[wildeabandon]

Ooh. That's a really interesting model, thank you!

[tenebrousphantom]

This is something I do a lot, especially when I'm tired.

One thing that sometimes helps me is to try and do things that are like the things that I'm doing, but slightly more likely to help me move on to the other things. For example doing a physical puzzle in a book rather than playing a phone puzzle game.

I have less trouble with this at the weekend, and I think part of the problem for me is that most of my free time is after work, but that is also when I'm most prone to accidentally spending two hours doing just five minutes of poking at an ipad game.

[doseybat]

As soon as I think something NEEDS to be done, a certain amount of dread and avoidance spontaneously arrives, often followed by procrastination. For example today I asked a friend for a video chat, and then dreaded it, and then enjoyed it 5 mins into the conversation onwards: typical. My interpretation is that overly prescribed timetables trap my free will painfully. I try to maximise my freedom to change choice of task at all times. I think it helps especially at work, I try not to decide what to work on ahead of time, I let the inner child pick whatever it fancies doing.

[wildeabandon]

I think in this particular regard I'm almost exactly the opposite. I'm much much better at getting things done if I've got a deadline, which can be useful, but also means that when I've got a decent amount of time I will faff until the absolute last minute and then get things done in a terrible rush. I also struggle quite a lot with decision paralysis, so if there are lots of things I could do I do none of them instead.