throwaway_time's Shortform

I can relate to parts of this. School was simple, math olympiad was the peak of my life, then I switched to CS because I hoped I could make lots of money and retire early. (Spoiler: didn't happen.)

Then I failed to get a PhD, and realized I also suck at life outside of the school system. I was able to keep a job, but I switched jobs quite often. I don't finish most of the things I start, I waste a lot of time, and I neglect my health.

From outside I probably seem quite successful -- I make decent money, own an appartment in the city center, have a wife and two kids -- but if you know me closer, you can see a lot of stupid or self-destructive behavior. Life feels very difficult to me, and I don't know what to do to make it better. (Or like, I know on some level, but I am unable to follow my own advice. Turning off the internet would probably immediately greatly improve my quality of life.)

I have some evidence of being an undiagnosed asperger (or something very similar to it). Reading descriptions of people on the spectrum feels very familiar, except they usually feel things even stronger than me, so what is "possible, but with great suffering" for me, is "impossible" for them.

Seems to me that some problems are a vicious circle. Doing stupid things brings problems, problems make me mentally tired, being tired makes me do stupid things. Lack of interaction with friends makes me sad, being sad makes me less likely to reach out to my friends. Not finishing my projects makes me pessimistic about my abilities, being pessimistic about my abilities reduces the motivation to work hard on my projects. Predicting bad future makes me feel bad right now.

Building good habits is hard, and it is easy to lose them. I wish I could give some actionable advice here, but I can't. The best I have is... sometimes things get okay by a lucky coincidence, then the vicious cycle is broken, and things keep being okay for a while... until another coincidence disrupts them. I mostly know how to maintain the okay state, but I don't know how to regain it when I lose it.

It feels like there should be an easy solution... but maybe that's like telling a depressed person "why don't you simply smile and be happy?". Similarly, why don't I simply try to get enough sleep, exercise regularly, and meet my friends often? Dunno. I had time like this in the past, and it was great. But when something disrupts the routine, it is very difficult to build it again.

If you are similar to me, I would suggest ignoring the "GTD" and "picking up skills" for a moment, and focus on getting the fundamentals (friends, sleep, exercise -- probably in this order) right. That will give you the energy necessary for the rest of your life. On the other hand, focusing too much on other things may take your attention away from the fundamentals, and shortly afterwards everything will fall apart again. Also, friends need to be in real life, online doesn't work; you need to interrupt the internet, not to use friends as yet another excuse to get online.

Now maybe I should go and follow my own advice.

↑ comment by MikkW (mikkel-wilson) · 2020-10-16T02:15:10.292Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

On building and keeping habits, I have a notebook with little bubbles for keeping track of daily habits:

There's a list of things to do every day (which I chose), and when I do them, I fill in the bubble for that task and day. Habits I have tracked include brushing my teeth 2x/day, meditating, excercisizing, working towards my goals, clearing Anki, and writing a short "mission statement" every day (I have also recently reserved a few pages for weekly habits, such as playing chess, shaving, or doing my laundry, which I have found so far to be valuable). Of course, you could choose whatever you think would help you live a better life. It should be fairly easy to recreate this system using blank paper, especially using graph paper.

I find that it has provided a good amount of value to me, and would recommend it to anybody who wants to build stronger habits.

If you can't effectively work on your own projects, it might be worth getting a job so that you have a structure.

I don't have anything helpful to say, but I'm commenting because it's important to me that you know that you're not just shouting into the void. Life's tough. You matter, and I am confident that in the right conditions, you could do amazing and valuable things.

As far as actually getting into those right conditions... I'm reluctant to say anything, because I don't know your situation, and I'm sure you've heard plenty of the obvious refrains many, many, many times

Happy to just chat if you'd like.  I've battled with similar problems of lack of focus, and done a lot of work myself.  Happy to listen.

Thank you for writing this post. It can be hard to realize that one is in a persistent rut and harder to write it up publicly.

As someone similar to you (math competitions during high school, CS major, ambition often outruns my capacity, trying to avoid reverting to the mean during my adult years), I believe that I'm susceptible to failure modes like this. DM me if you want to video call to exchange advice or something; this would be valuable enough to me that I'm willing to pay a fair rate if you need funding.

Check that you are not missing any neurodiversity diagnoses such as aspergers or adhd. Your problems sound a lot like my problems. Internalized ablism could be really depowering. One wouldn't run a marathon with a hearth condition. It is true that these kinds of things can have alot of blurry lines and sceptics can have easy time to not believe it even exists but most of the time taking correctly a problem into account is way better than ignoring it completely.