ADHD memes

I find it difficult to pull myself out of long autopilot "drifts" is what I like to call them; where I'm not consciously electing to do anything in particular, I'm just moving through the day at the whim of whatever catches my attention. This is problematic because there are things that I actually want to do during the day; things I've been thinking about doing for a while like making music, DIY projects, anything really.

While I'm in these drifts I'm essentially lighting time on fire. It's almost always completely wasted time which causes a problem. Once I'm able to snap out of the drift, I realize I've squandered time that I needed to dedicate to the things I actually wanted to do. This causes me immense stress and existential dread. Feels like I'm actually wasting my life.

If I snap out of it early, I'm stressed to cram in all the things I wanted to do and sometimes the stress is so overwhelming that I can't think clearly enough to get anything done and I'll just give up and fall into doomscrolling or some other time wasting thing like that.

This ties into my habits because when I didn't have day-to-day chores and responsibilities integrated into these drifts it would all get pushed to the next day and I'd procrastinate heavily until it became a problem not only for me but for my wife as well.

I put some deep thought into what's going on during these weird drift times and I realized a lot of what I'm doing is actually just force of habit, some good habits but mostly bad habits. I figured that since these habits are so strongly ingrained in me to the point that I often don't even realize that I'm doing any of them in particular until after they're done, I thought that if I could integrate the chores and other undesirable necessities of being a functioning person in a household into these drift states, I'd likely just end up getting all this shit done without putting too much brain power into tracking and remembering to do them, let alone the effort to commit to the task.

It took me about two months of painful dedication to burning these activities into my brain as new habits. When I'd be tempted to just put them off until later, I'd stop and pep talk myself into just fucking doing the thing, no exceptions or excuses and not allow myself to do anything else until it was done. Sometimes it was stuff as simple as just taking cups from my office down to the dishwasher. Other times it was more detailed and lengthy responsibilities that come with being a husband and a homeowner.

It was incredibly difficult for a while to force myself as a round peg through the square hole so to speak. Sometimes I just wanted to cry when I realized that I couldn't just procrastinate and that I had committed myself to doing the dishes after every single meal. Sounds silly but when your mind is racing with all these things that you're hyperfixated on (mostly music for me), the thought of losing time with that, even for 15 minutes to do dishes, can feel catastrophic.

What's funny is that I didn't even realize a specific moment when these new habits just clicked. My wife said one day "Man, you've done a complete 180 on this stuff. The house is clean, everything is done all the time, I can't believe it". In that moment I hadn't even realized that I had actually achieved my goal. All of these previously loathsome tasks that drove me nuts were just integrated into my day and I wasn't even thinking about them anymore.

I'd think about what I did previously first thing in the morning; make a pot of coffee. Where previously I'd just stand around scrolling waiting for my coffee, I noticed in hindsight that I had actually brought laundry downstairs on my way to the kitchen, started the pot, went out side and filled bird feeders and baths, finished up a small amount of dishes in the sink from movie night the night before, and cleaned the counter tops because they needed it - all on autopilot.

This isn't a flawless process either. It requires its own maintenance. I'll notice every couple of weeks that I'm leaving more cups and dishes on my desk in my office than I should be, or that I put off scooping the cat litter until the morning for no real reason and have to have my own little internal pep talk again to remind myself of my commitment to myself and also to my wife; that I'm an active participant in this household with shared responsibilites with my wife and that I'm not a slave to my mind's weird thought process. I stop and I think about what I'm doing and why and that gives me the motivation to do the things I need to do.

The best part is that this is much more efficient than just living off the cuff and at the whim of my brain's weirdness and that despite doing more chores than ever, I have way more free time to do the things I enjoy. I consider it one of the biggest wins of my life up to this point.