ADHD

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Relevant Lemmy communities:

Neurodivergent Life Hacks

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founded 3 years ago

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I can't stop when its time to stop (lemmy.today)

submitted 22 hours ago by Remy@lemmy.today to c/adhd@lemmy.world

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hello, I have a big problem that interferes with every aspect of my life. And I want to ask you all if you experience this too and/or you have any ideas on how to improve this behavior?

The Problem

When I do anything interesting, or anything that just isn't completely boring, I can't stop when it's time to stop and start the doing the next thing. I always think, something like "Just five minutes more" and then I sometimes finish hours later than I had planned. This breaks all time-sensitive plans and also causes me to go to sleep far too late.

I don't think that its simple procrastination, because what I feel when I do it, is not about not wanting to start the next thing, but about not wanting to stop the current thing.

List of things I already do / have already tried

Setting up alarms that remind me that I need to stop doing the current thing and start doing the next thing
Creating schedules
Configuring the Wifi Router to turn of at certain times: This is very effective (when I have taken out my SIM card before), but its only helping with cutting the wifi at the end of the day for bedtime, not other time sensitive tasks that are necessary to even enable me to sleep on time (like eating dinner early enough)
Buffer time: Most of the time I can't get my self to view the buffer deadline as the actual deadline
Reading books about habits: I read some books about habits, but these books are mostly about starting an activity, or don't starting an activity at all, but I need to do certain things, and stop doing them on time.
This list is probably incomplete

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[–] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

I have the same issue and my understanding is that I don't want to stop the stimulation/distraction, especially to do something mundane. I have learned though that mundane things can be stimulating in their own way, especially the satisfaction of getting them done well. That said, they're probably less stimulating than the distraction but that can be good too as a break from constantly hyper-focusing.

This is often compounded by other typical ADHD symptoms like time-blindness, out of sight out of mind, lack of impulse control, defiance and hyper-focusing. Just separating these things out and putting names to them has started to help me control them better (although still not well).