What to do if you can't form any habits whatsoever?

1. I've tried introducing routines around that, but (at least with me) it works really badly.

   Most of the time, it's less going to bed and more like suddenly waking up a few minutes/hours after. If I was wearing regular clothes, that's what I'll wake up in. When I get up it's usually because of a message notification, so that tends to be the first thing I look at. I do have routines set up on my Google Home for going to sleep (turns off the lights and starts background noise) and waking up (turns on the light and reads the news), but they go unused more often than not. I also made it tell me to prepare to sleep (close curtains, brush teeth, drink water etc) at 23:30, and tell me to stretch and/or meditate at 23:40 before turning the lights off at 24:00, but that also fails much more often than not.

   (The 23:40 one can sometime spur me to close the curtains but the bathroom is like 15 m away with two rooms in between, so the teeth get forgotten), so I tried adding another one at 23:50 for the stretching, but it didn't work either.)

   Also! Sometimes I manage to do some low effort things right before sleeping (e.g., sending a good night message to my SO). Sometimes I have full conversations with her while sleeping and then I wake up and reread it and it's coherent. But even then it's a toss-up if I actually end up sleeping. Sometimes I've stayed up until the sun came up, or I've gone to sleep and then start looking up answers to things, or start doing things. I fail badly if I try and sleep on my own, even without lights or devices. (Also no coffee etc, because caffeine doesn't work on me.)

2. For the placing things part, I'd probably look for it around me on my bed or on the floor. That's where most of the things I actually use are. I'm pretty good at finding things in the last-used order. I'll try the otsukare trick for objects if I remember.

3. Except I do have to think all that much. There's almost no automatic/instinctive component. It's not just remembering/starting to do the thing in the first place, but it's the right order of things. Without the checklist, I often forget to put toothpaste on my toothbrush, or forget to rinse it at the end. So I can do enough to survive/live okay, but there still aren't any automatic routines or habits, which is why I made this post.

   That being said, I do plan a lot. What happens if this fails or that fails, or different things got delayed etc. I'm waiting for a visa for my fourth job in 2.5 years, and I was financially ready for my first job loss within six months, and have been ready ever since. I'm now on month four of what should have taken a month or two, and I'll have been un(der)paid for 5 or 6 months before my first full paycheque.

   Or what happens if a pandemic happens? Bought my first ever car with cash (and then took out a retroactive loan because I like having the buffer) and masks etc and started stockpiling food in Jan and Feb last year because COVID was coming and it was going to be bad and everyone was ignoring it. I wrote up a huge report on 4 Feb on whether it'd be safe for me to go get her, and for her to come etc. She was considering postponing a couple of months, but I told her that we'd almost certainly not be able to see each other this year if she delayed to April.

   I also had plans of what to do in case my SO decided to go back because she didn't like the country etc. One thing I didn't plan for/expect was for things to close down, so we didn't even have the time to get her application going. If we had, she'd be able to properly immigrate whenever. At least I managed to reuse part of the "what if she doesn't like the country" prep.

4. It's a huge accomplishment! I'm happy about it, especially when it works. The second onboarding is usually much faster than the first (it takes about a week), but the third and fourth etc take about as long and I haven't seen any reduction. It also lasts longer. Though if I ever miss it, there goes a month or three of not having any system until something inspires me to find something else. The problem with these kinds of things is that the novelty wears off very quickly, and there is no motivation without the novelty. I'd love to make something like that automatic.

   The point of systems and habits is to make it intrinsic, because strong habits are inelastic with respect to intention. Most people "have to" brush their teeth before going to bed, "have to" eat at a set time (or when they get hungry), and "have to" grab for the seatbelt as soon as they sit down in the car. Many "have to" make their bed in the morning, or write in their journal, etc.

5. For digital stuff I do make conversion scripts between formats from time to time. But a lot of it is on my whiteboard, or on physical paper which gets thrown out etc. 2019 was the first time I had a physical journal which I used mainly as a set of lists of stuff that were more temporary. I got another one for 2020 but almost nothing happened so it's still mostly empty.

   I don't have a centralized repo of all my "important things" list, because these go into whatever tool I was using at the time. I don't like that at some level, but at the same time they change so often that even if I tried converting everything every time, and was perfectly productive, I don't expect I'd be done before the tool needs to change again. So for the most part, I kind of expect everything I do to be ephemeral. I think I'll pay for Google Photos in a few years once I'm over my storage limit, though, because I take lots of pictures, and they're often a nice chronicle (along with the Google Maps timeline; did I go somewhere yesterday/last week?).

   If I ever become important enough to warrant someone digging around in my history, they'll have plenty of information about me in so many different places (including this post - hi!) that I don't know where they all are, and that's fine.

6. I have a counselor for ASD. I'm happy pretty much all the time, and he's not sure how to help me with the social side anyway (especially with COVID; first session was in December or Jan last year, even though I'd applied in June of 2018; huge waiting list) so most of the practical side of what we work on is ADHD related. He's the one who suggested using two systems simultaneously while the first one is dying, and quite a few of the apps. I managed to make a successful transition three times this year (which gave me about 3 weeks rather than two each time).

   We do talk about things like emotions etc quite often because, well, I'm happy all the time and he finds it strange. One thing he pointed out was in August when the government unilaterally cancelled my work visa because of an error on their side. I had a session with him a few hours after I got the news, and I told him about that, and he said it was my usual ukiuki. The only time he's seen me not happy (but not even sad) was when I told him that my SO had to leave.

   (Bonus fact, I have hundreds more words for emotions in Japanese compared to English, where I basically group things into happy and sad.)

   It's a government funded program, so it's less than 6€ per hour (and sometimes we do half an hour and that gives us another half hour at another date). Ends up being around 20-ish euro every few months. I still have another year or so of that before I no longer get access to it.

   Unfortunately, I haven't found anyone who specialist in ADHD, which I feel causes the most problems day-to-day. But the last time I checked was pre-pandemic, so hopefully there might be some with expanded areas of operation. I listen to podcasts a lot, though, so I get some ideas from there.

   For ASD, things like fashion or body language or music or facial expressions or tone of voice etc are all lost to me and they're skills I want to try and learn. For some things, I can learn the heuristics (e.g., colour wheel), but it's basically knowing the teacher's answers rather than understanding them. Does this outfit look good or bad? The book says that it's bad and it should be fixed by doing XYZ, but it looks fine to me. The minor chord is supposed to be sad. Except everything feels happy to me. Turns out people get it from context (e.g., watching sad scenes in movies) but I don't realize someone is sad unless they say it out loud, and don't realize a situation is sad or creepy or dramatic or whatever either, so "yay, movie == fun/happy!" I'm taking courses (e.g., on the University of Bayes), but the explanations usually don't make sense either.

Looking at the list:

• Blaming others: Maybe 2? When I see how badly COVID was handled. I started preparing in January last year, the governments didn't do much for months, and then didn't learn and didn't learn and kept reopening. When I see people who still haven't learned how to wear a mask properly, who can't keep their distance or who do things because they're the exception for some reason? I have seen a total of three people in person since March, and none of them were unmasked or inside or at a close distance. I know I'm not contributing to the spread. This thing should have been over last summer.
• Difficulty making decisions at 3 or 4, mainly because I plan a lot and have plans for when my plans fail, going multiple levels deep. e.g., my visa application got rejected last week and I knew what to do. I'm also making plans for how to meet my SO whom I haven't seen in March if I end up in one of several countries that I might end up in by the time it's safe for her to come. For some reason, Murphy's law happens a lot with me, so even when I lose my job etc, it's just an "okay, we use this plan now" thing. No shock or surprise or sadness, just a fact of life.
• Spending less time with family or friends: Physically, sure (COVID), but everyone being online made them easier to access, so I spend more time overall with them.
• For the Activities and Personal relationships one, it's more lack then loss for the most part. Work is to make money, money is to be comfortable, and being comfortable allows me to do things that I like to do. Sure, work was interesting (I wouldn't have applied otherwise), but I make it a rule not to do overtime (for the most part; sometimes I get carried away and realize the next morning that it's the next morning). For me, wanting to learn new things is a huge motivation, and trying to figure out how to be reunited with my SO. But I don't really have much interest in working in particular. Also, things that are supposed to be pleasurable (or adrenaline rushy, like jumping out of an airplane or going on a roller coaster) are just a "huh, so that's how it feels like" rather than a "woohoo" that I was expecting. I attributed that to the ADHD because my reward centre is basically broken. I'm still happy all the time, never angry, sad happened only once. Satisfaction is high no matter what happens, but I always want to try and change things so that they move in a direction that would make me even happier.
• Difficulty sleeping at 3 or 4, feeling tired at 2 or 3. I always want to do more things and it's more like turning off suddenly than falling asleep. And I keep waking up to look up something or another. My fiancée is 8 time zones away, and next week it will become 14 hours, with work 6 hours away, so dealing with multiple time zones 100% of the time.
• Also never really had an appetite, so not a loss. I try to eat on time, but I don't really get hungry, and I keep an emergency jar of peanut butter for when my hands start to shake. I eat the peanut butter straight, wait for 15 minutes, and start making food. Both that and the sleep are also common with ASD and ADHD for similar reasons.
• Worrying about my health: COVID. Living in a building with no stairs (4th floor in 1-indexed countries, 3rd floor in 0-indexed countries), with no family on the continent and obviously can't come and help. I'm my own backup and support. And I don't want to risk the long term complications because I like moving around.
• Suicidal anything: Absolutely not. I want to be (functionally) immortal and non-aging.

According to the table, it's anywhere between mild to severe. What do you think?