I’m so close to being done, but somehow this part takes the longest
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2025
86 points (97.8% liked)
ADHD memes
11585 readers
1004 users here now
ADHD Memes
The lighter side of ADHD
Rules
Other ND communities
- !adhd@lemmy.world - Generic discussion
- !ausomememes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !autism@lemmy.world
- !autisticandadhd
- !neurodivergence@beehaw.org
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Painfully true
I go with the 80/20 rule. The first 80% of a task takes 20% of the time. The last 20% of the task takes 80% of the time.
Is it really a project if it's not 180% until completion?
I only give a full 180% when there's no clear cut example/description of the desired end product. And I only find this out after seeing other people's work and realizing that I way overanalyzed the assignment and was stressing and procrastinating about an over the top concept of what I thought they wanted
Unrelated, I spent over 6 months avoiding a final project for my degree that I banged out in 3 days. A week if you include the days between being told where and what to revise because I didn't add some files how they wanted them... Which wasn't documented.
My half a year long bedroom renovation project. Every week a new thing comes up that requires me to plan, prepare, build, and install something or other. What i figured would take me a week, maybe two, has become like 5 or 6 months in progress
If it makes you feel any better, mine's at the six-year mark.
I wouldn't say it makes me feel better, but it certainly makes me feel understood.
I planned to write a paper on my own research in roughly 20 hours (thankfully, the research was a group project and shame is an effective motivator for me, so that got done nearly on time, and the delay wasn’t my fault) and it took me about 60 all told. I got the first third done in a few hours, the next third about 15 hours later, and about 40 hours on the last third and formatting the attachments.
The most irritating thing is that I start to become gradually more and more fascinated and simultaneously hopeful and I’ll finish any moment now, every time I write a paper. I start to enjoy investigating the topic so much that I slow down and hyperfocus on details, sabotaging myself while wishing I had started earlier so I could really get into it. I cannot overstate that this happens every time I write a paper and yet I still always procrastinate starting.
I tried to analyze why I was procrastinating this time and the furthest I got was that I knew once I started, I’d fill the remaining time with it like a goldfish growing to fit its habitat, and I didn’t want to do that much work. But I knew that I would enjoy it once I started, so I couldn’t figure out why I was still avoiding it.
I made a partial breakthrough by writing a to do list for the paper and discussing in depth how one even writes a paper with my endlessly patient husband, but that only worked for the second burst.
Usually yes, but I've been working on a programming project since May that I'm actually making great progress on, mostly because I'm taking my meds and approaching the whole thing without an end goal in mind but rather just with the mindset that it's my replacement for playing Minecraft lol. Might actually reach a stage where people can actually playtest it in about a month if my dayjob doesn't sap too much time in the next few weeks.
I finished! I was ~4 hours late, but it’s a Sunday and I think she’ll be lenient, plus I was done right in time for 04:20 🙃
When I finish nursing this j, I’m going to eat the cookie butter roll I smeared in anticipation of finishing and nearly caved on because it was fucking beautiful.
Sorry, these are some long comments- I guess I’m still in essay writing mode, lol. Now I’m worried that my uptick in posting and prolific comments are going to make it seem like I’m one of the recent ai trolls. I think I just need to eat and sleep for a while, lol.