The story

skip to the bottom for TL:dr;

So I have been diagnosed with ADHD since I was 5. The hyper part has calmed down ever so slightly as I've aged, but my attention disorder has gone to 💩.

I often find myself not just struggling to get things done but the ever annoying mind tangled mess of "should I even do this project anymore?", where I'm questioning everything.

It doesn't happen every day, sometimes I can go a few weeks or months without feeling like I'm overwhelmed, having that feeling of being burnt out.

So the hack? Whats the hack I use to get past that? How can I make myself do the work, not just getting through the slump of uncertainty but find myself enjoying the work and making serious progress?

A timer! Yup, I have a quick timer where you can just flip it to the time you want and it starts a countdown.

This weekend, I couldn't decide if I wanted to work on my side projects anymore. It felt as though it was pointless. All the doubts came rushing at me at once.

That is when I told myself, well then, do a 5 minute timer and see what you can get done in 5 minutes.

I picked 1 item I knew I could complete in 5 minutes or at least close to. I completed the task and when the timer went off, I was in a rush to turn it off so I could focus.

That was all it took! I spent the next 4 hours refactoring my code and completed way more than I originally set out to do.

I have used this trick for the last year and every time it's worked for me. Maybe it's not going to work for you, but the point is, that you can find your own hack to trick yourself in to getting started.

Once you're started, it's pretty easy to fall in to a good work flow for a lot of us.

The timer I use is on amazon, it's called "Home & Office Timer with Clock, 5,15, 30, 45, 60 Minute Preset Countdown Timer, Easy-to-Use Time Management Tool (Orange)"

You can also just google "flip timer" and you'll see a huge amount of choices. I'd avoid getting anything too complicated to set as this will distract you.

Next time, I'll talk about Bullet journalling and how it helped me as well.

Share yours

What's your hack? Please share any ideas or tools you use to help.

TL:DR;

I've used a timer for the last year, to help me kick start progress. Any time I'm disinterest in a task, I start a 5 minute timer to encourage myself to do it for at least that long... which once I start then I'm golden.