TL;DR: Help me go less crazy and I’ll give you $100 after six months.
I’m a long-time lurker and signed up to ask this. I have a whole lot of mental issues, the worst being lack of mental energy (similar to laziness, procrastination, etc., but turned up to eleven and almost not influenced by will). Because of it, I can’t pick myself up and do things I need to (like calling a shrink); I’m not sure why I can do certain things and not others. If this goes on, I won’t be able to go out and buy food, let alone get a job. Or sign up for cryonics or donate to SIAI.
I’ve tried every trick I could bootstrap; the only one that helped was “count backwards then start”, for things I can do but have trouble getting started on. I offer $100 to anyone who suggests a trick that significantly improves my life for at least six months. By “significant improvement” I mean being able to do things like going to the bank (if I can’t, I won’t be able to give you the money anyway), and having ways to keep myself stable or better (most likely, by seeing a therapist).
One-time tricks to do one important thing are also welcome, but I’d offer less.
After reading this thread, I can only offer one piece of advice:
You need to see a medical doctor, and fast. Your problems are clearly more serious than anything we can deal with here. If you have to, call 911 and have them carry you off in an ambulance.
This is just a guess, and I’m not interested in your money, but I think that you probably have a health problem. I’d suggest you check out the book “The Mood Cure” by Julia Ross, which has some very good information on supplementation. Offhand, you sound like the author’s profile for low-in-catecholamines, and might benefit very quickly from fairly low doses of certain amino acids such as L-tyrosine.
I strongly recommend reading the book, though, as there are quite a few caveats regarding self-supplementation like this. Using too high a dose can be as problematic as too low, and times of day are important too. Consistent management is important, too. When you’re low on something, taking what you need can make you feel euphoric, but when you have the right dose, you won’t notice anything by taking some. (Instead, you’ll notice if you go off it for a few days, and find mood/energy going back to pre-supplementation levels.)
Anyway… don’t know if it’ll work for you, but I do suggest you try it. (And the same recommendation goes for anyone else who’s experiencing a chronic mood or energy issue that’s not specific to a particular task/subject/environment.)
Buying a (specific) book isn’t possible right now, but may help later; thanks. I took the questionnaire on her website and apparently everything is wrong with me, which makes me doubt her tests’ discriminating power.
I’ll come out of the shadows (well not really, I’m too ashamed to post this under my normal LW username) and announce that I am, or anyway have been, in more or less the same situation as MixedNuts. Maybe not as severe (there are some important things I can do, at the moment, and I have in the past been much worse than I am now—I would actually appear externally to be keeping up with my life at this exact moment, though that may come crashing down before too long), but generally speaking almost everything MixedNuts says rings true to me. I don’t live with anyone or have any nearby family, so that adds some extra difficulty.
Right now, as I said, this is actually a relatively good moment, I’ve got some interesting projects to work on that are currently helping me get out of bed. But I know myself too well to assume that this will last. Plus, I’m way behind on all kinds of other things I’m supposed to be doing (or already have done).
I’m not offering any money, but I’d be interested to see if anyone is interested in conversing with me about this (whether here or by PM). Otherwise, my reason for posting this comment was to add some evidence that this may be a common problem (even afflicting people you wouldn’t necessarily guess suffered from it).
I’ve got a weaker form of this, but I manage. The number one thing that seems to work is a tight feedback loop (as in daily) between action and reward, preferably reward by other people. That’s how I was able to do OBLW. Right now I’m trying to get up to a reasonable speed on the book, and seem to be slowly ramping up.
I have limited mental resources myself, and am sometimes busy, but I’m generally willing to (and find it enjoyable to) talk to people about this kind of thing via IM. I’m fairly easily findable on Skype (put a dot between my first and last names; text only, please), AIM (same name as here), GChat (same name at gmail dot com), and MSN (same name at hotmail dot com). The google email is the one I pay attention to, but I’m not so great at responding to email unless it has obvious questions in it for me to answer. It’s also noteworthy that my sleep schedule is quite random—it is worth checking to see if I’m awake at 5am if you want to, but also don’t assume that just because it’s daytime I’ll be awake.
Hope this doesn’t turn into a free-therapy bandwagon, but I have a lot of the same issues as MixedNuts and anonymous259, so if anyone has any tips or other insights they’d like to share with me, that would be delightful.
My main problem seems to be that, if I don’t find something thrilling or fascinating, and it requires much mental or physical effort, I don’t do it, even if I know I need to do it, even if I really want to do it. Immediate rewards and punishments help very little (sometimes they actually make things worse, if the task requires a lot of thought or creativity). There are sometimes exceptions when the boring+mentally/physically-demanding task is to help someone, but that’s only when the person is actually relying on me for something, not just imposing an artificial expectation, and it usually only works if it’s someone I know and care about (except myself).
A related problem is that I rarely find anything thrilling or fascinating (enough to make me actually do it, at least) for very long. In my room I have stacks of books that I’ve only read a few chapters into; on my computer I have probably hundreds of unfinished (or barely started) programs and essays and designs, and countless others that only exist in my mind; on my academic transcripts are many ‘W’s and ’F’s, not because the classes were difficult (a more self-controlled me would have breezed through them), but because I stopped being interested halfway through. So even when something starts out intrinsically motivating for me, the momentum usually doesn’t last.
Like anon259, I can’t offer any money — this sort of problem really gets in the way of wanting/finding/keeping a job — but drop me a PM if gratitude motivates you. :)
To some extent, the purpose of LessWrong is to fix problems with ourselves, and the distinction between errors in reasoning and errors in action is subtle enough that I would hesitate to declare this on- or off-topic.
It should be mentioned, however, that the population of LessWrongers-asking-for-advice is unlikely to be representative of the population of LessWrongers, and even less so of the population of agents-LessWrongers-care-about. This is likely to make generalizations drawn from observations here narrower in scope than we might like.
A few years back I was suffering from some pretty severe health problems. The major manifestations were cognitive and mood related. Often when I was saying a sentence I would become overwhelmed halfway through and would have to consciously force myself to finish what I was saying.
Long story short, I started treating my diet like a controlled experiment and, after a few years of trial and error, have come out feeling better than I can ever remember. If you’re going to try self experimentation the three things I recommend most highly to ease the analysis process are:
Don’t eat things with ingredients in them, instead eat ingredients
Limit each meal to less than 5 different ingredients
Try and have the same handful of ingredients for every meal for at least a week at a time.
What has helped me the most, by far, is cutting out soy, dairy, and all processed foods (there are some processed foods I feel fine eating, but the analysis to figure out which ones proved too costly for the small benefit of being able to occasionally eat unhealthy foods).
Also, don’t offer money. External motivators are disincentives. By offering $100, you are attaching a specific worth to the request, and undermining our own intrinsic motivations to help. Since allowing a reward to disincentivize a behavior is irrational, I’m curious how much effect it has on the LessWrong crowd; regardless, I would be surprised if anyone here tried to collect, so I don’t see the point.
My understanding is that the mechanism by which this works lets you sidestep it pretty neatly by also doing basically similar things for free. That way you can credibly tell yourself that you would do it for free, and being paid is unrelated.
To the contrary. If you pay volunteers, they stop enjoying their work. Other similar studies have been done that show that paying people who already enjoy something will sometimes make them stop the activity altogether, or to at least stop doing it without an external incentive.
Edit: AdeleneDawner and thomblake agree with the parent. This may be a counterargument, or just an answer to my earlier question, namely “Are LessWrongers better able to control this irrational impulse?”
Obviously, many people do love their day job. However, your question is apt, and I have no answer to it—even with regards to myself. I often have struggled with doing the exact same things at work and for myself, and enjoying one but not the other. I think in my case, it is more an issue of pressure and expectations. However, when trying to answer the question of what I should do with my life, it makes things difficult!
I didn’t download the .pdf, but it looks like this was probably conducted by paying volunteers for all of their volunteer work. If someone got paid for half of their hours volunteering, or had two positions doing very similar work and then one of them started paying, I’d expect this effect to diminish.
The study concerns how many hours per week were spent volunteering; some was paid, some was not, though presumably a single organization would either pay or not pay volunteers, rather than both. Paid volunteers worked less per week overall.
The study I referenced was not the one I intended to reference, but I have not found the one I most specifically remember. Citing studies is one of the things I most desperately want an eidetic memory for.
Edit: AdeleneDawner and thomblake agree with the parent. This may be a counterargument, or just an answer to my earlier question, namely “Are LessWrongers better able to control this irrational impulse?”
On reflection, it seems to me to be the latter—my cognitive model of money is unusual in general, but this particular reaction seems to be a result of an intentional tweak that I made to reduce my chance of being bribe-able. (Not that I’ve had a problem with being bribed, but that broad kind of situation registers as ‘having my values co-opted’, which I’m not at all willing to take risks with.)
That seems to work. If I were teaching part-time simply because I needed the money, I wouldn’t do it. But I decided that I’d teach this class for free, so I also have no problem doing it for very little money.
Agreed—I do basically similar things for free, and am reasonably confident that my reaction would be “*shrug* ok” if I were to work with MixedNuts and xe wanted to pay me.
(I do intend to offer help here; I’m still trying to determine what the most useful offer would be.)
MixedNuts, I’m in a similar position, though perhaps less severely, and more intermittently. I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar, though I’ve had difficulty taking my meds. At this point in my life, I’m being supported almost entirely by a network of family, friends, and associates that is working hard to help me be a real person and getting very little in return.
I have one book that has helped me tremendously, “The Depression Cure”, by Dr. Ilardi. He claims that depression-spectrum disorders are primarily caused by lifestyle, and that almost everyone can benefit from simple changes. As any book—especially a self-help book—it ought to be read skeptically, and it doesn’t introduce any ideas that can’t be found in modern psychological research. Rather, it aggregates what in Ilardi’s opinion are the most important: exercise works more effectively than SSRIs, etc.
If you really want a copy, and you really can’t get one yourself, I will send you one if you can send me your address. It helped me that much. Which is not to say that I am problem free. Still, a 40% reduction in problem behavior, after 6 months, with increasing rather than decreasing results, is a huge deal for me.
Rather, I want to give you your “one trick”. It is the easiest rather than the most effective; but it has an immediate effect, which helped me implement the others. Morning sunlight. I don’t know where you live; I live in a place where I can comfortably sit outside in the morning even this time of year. Get up as soon as you can after waking, and wake as early in the day as you would ideally like to. Walk around, sit, or lie down in the brightest area outside for half an hour. You can go read studies on why this works, or that debate its efficacy, but for me it helps.
I realize that your post didn’t say anything about depression; just lack of willpower. For me, they were tightly intertwined, and they might not be for you. Please try it anyway.
Thanks. I’ll try the morning light thing; from experience it seems to help somewhat, but I can’t keep it going for long.
If nothing else works, I’ll ask you for the book. I’m skeptical since they tend to recommend unbootstrapable things such as exercise, but it could help.
There is one boot process that works well, which is to contract an overseer. For me, it was my father. I felt embarrassed to be a grown adult asking for his father’s oversight, but it helped when I was at my worst. Now, I have him, my roommate, two ex-girlfriends, and my advisor who are all concerned about me and check up with me on a regular basis. I can be honest with them, and if I’ve stopped taking care of myself, they’ll call or even come over to drag me out of bed, feed me, and/or take me for a run.
I have periodically been an immense burden on the people who love me. However, I eventually came to the realization that being miserable, useless, and isolated was harder and more unpleasant for them than being let in on what was wrong with me and being asked to help. I’ve been a net negative to this world, but for some reason people still care for me, and as long as they do, my best course of action seems to be to let them try to help me. I suspect you have a set of people who would likewise prefer to help you than to watch you suffer.
Feeling less helpless was nearly as good for them as for me. I have a debt to them that I am continuing to increase, because I’m still not healthy or self-sufficient. I don’t know if I can ever repay it, but
Yes, I’ve considered that. There are people who can and do help, but not to the extent I’d need. I believe they help me as much as they can while still having a life that isn’t me. I shouldn’t ask for more, should I?
If you have tips for getting more efficient help out of them, suggestions of people who’d help though I don’t expect them to, or ways to get help from other people (professional caretakers?), by all means please shoot.
You indicated that you had trouble maintaining the behavior of getting daily morning light. Ask someone who 1) likes talking to you, 2) is generally up at that hour, and 3) is free to talk on the phone, to call you most mornings. They can set an alarm on their phone and have a 2 minute chat with you each day.
In my experience if I can pick up the phone (which admittedly can be difficult), the conversation is enough of a distraction and a motivation to get outside, and then inertia is enough to keep me out there.
The reason I chose my father is that he is an early riser, self-employed, and he would like to talk to me more than he gets to. You might not have someone like that in your life, but if you do, it is minimally intrusive to them, and may be a big help to you.
This sounds like a great idea. I have a strong impulse to answer phones, so if I put the phone far enough from my bed I had to get up to answer it, I’d get past the biggest obstacle.
There are two minor problems: None of the people I know have free time early in the morning, but two minutes is manageable. When outside, I’m not sure what to do so there’s a risk I’d get anxious and default to going home.
Seth found that his mood the next day was significantly improved if he saw enough faces the previous morning. There was a LessWronger that posted somewhere that this trick helped him a lot, but I can’t remember who or where right now.
I see quite a lot of faces in the morning already. Maybe not early enough? Though I’m pretty skeptical; it looks like it’d work best for extroverted neurotypicals, and I’m neither. I added it to the list of tricks, but I’ll try others first.
I’m willing to try to help you but I think I’d be substantially more effective in real time. If you would like to IM, send me your contact info in a private message.
Do you take fish oil supplements or equivalent? Can’t hurt to try; fish oil is recommended for ADHD and very well may repair some of the brain damage that causes mental illness.
I don’t understand the link. It doesn’t mention fish oil but does suggest that she changed her medication (for depression and anorexia) and then experienced suicidal ideation, which she later acted upon. Medications causing suicidal ideation is not unheard of but I haven’t heard of Omega-3 having any such effect.
Some googling gives me more information. It seems that her psychiatrist was transitioning her from one antidepressant to another, and adding fish oil supplements. There is also suggestions that her depression was bipolar. Going off an antidepressant is known to provoke manic episodes in bipolar patients and even those vulnerable to bipolar that had never had an episode. Going on to an antidepressant (and in particular SSRIs, for both ‘on’ and ‘off’) can also provoke mania. A manic episode while suffering withdrawal symptoms and the symptoms of a preexisting anxiety based disorder is a recipe for suicide. As for Omega-3… the prior for her being responsible is low and she just happened to be on the scene when people were looking for something to blame!
I don’t understand the link. It doesn’t mention fish oil
Ah, sorry, I should have checked. (I guess it seemed an important enough detail that I just assumed it would be mentioned.)
Here (18:20 in the video) is an explicit mention of the fish oil, by her mother; apparently she was taking 12 tablets daily.
The way I had interpreted it, which prompted my caution above, was as a case of replacing antidepressants with fish oil, which seems unwise. Looking at it again now reveals there was in fact a plan to continue with antidepressants. It’s unclear, however, how far along she was with this plan.
In any case, you’re right that fish oil may not necessarily have been to blame as the trigger for suicide; but at the very least, it certainly didn’t work here, and to the extent that it may have replaced the regular antidepressant treatment...that would seem a rather dubious decision.
I have had and sometimes still struggle with similar problems, but there is something that sometimes has helped me:
If there’s something you need to do, try to do something with it, however little, as soon after you get up as possible. The example I’m going to use is studying, but you can generalize from it.
Pretty much soon as you get up, BEFORE checking email or anything like that, study (or whatever it is you need to do) a bit. And keep doing until you feel your mental energy “running out”.. but then, any time later in the day that you feel a smigen of motivation, don’t let go of it: run immediately to continue doing.
But starting the day with doing some, however little, seemed to help. I think with me the psychology was sort of “this is the sort of day when I’m working on this”, so once I start on it, it’s as if I’m “allowed” to periodically keep doing stuff with it during the day.
Anyways, as I said, this has sometimes helped me, so...
Order modafinil online. Take it, using ‘count backwards then swallow the pill’ if necessary. Then, use the temporary boost in mental energy to call a shrink.
Ok, I didn’t know that scoring illegal prescription drugs online was so easy. Isn’t it risky? I know people have been busted for this the USA, though it may be easier in France.
I will not go into detail on what I understand to be the pragmatic considerations here, since the lesswrong morality encourages a more conservative approach to choosing what to do.
The life-extentionists over at imminst.org tend to be experienced in acquiring whatever they happen to need to meet their health and cognitive enhancement goals. They tend to give a fairly unbiased reports on the best way to go about getting what you need, accounting for legal risks, product quality risks, price and convenience.
I do note that when I want something that is restricted I usually just go tell a doctor that “I have run out” and get them to print me ‘another’ prescription.
since the lesswrong morality encourages a more conservative approach to choosing what to do.
I’m curious why you say this. I don’t get the impression that more than a tiny number of people here would have moral or even ethical qualms about ordering drugs online, though I would non-confidently expect us to overestimate the risk on average.
In the USA it’s no problem to order unscheduled prescription drugs over the internet. Schedule IV drugs can be imported, but customs occasionally seizes them with no penalty for the importer. No company that takes credit cards will ship Schedule II or Schedule III drugs to the USA; at least not one that will be in business for more than a month or two.
I believe it’s all easier in Europe but I don’t know for sure. PM for more info.
Thanks, but it gets worse. I can’t order anything online, because I need to see my bank about checks or debit cards first. I can imagine asking a friend to do it for me, though it’s terrifying; I could probably do it on a good day. Also, I doubt the thing modafinil boosts is the same thing I lack, but it could help, if only through placebo effect.
EDIT: More questions as you answer these questions. Too many questions at once is too much effort. I am taking you dead seriously so please don’t be offended if I severely underestimate your ability.
I keep doing something that doesn’t require much effort, out of inertia; typically, reading, browsing the web, listening to the radio, washing a dish. Or I just sit or lie there letting my mind wander and periodically trying to get myself to start doing something. If I’m trying to do something that requires thinking (typically homework) when my brain stops working, I keep doing it but I can’t make much progress.
Increase the amount of effort it takes to do the low-effort things you are trying to avoid. For instance, it isn’t terribly hard to set your internet on a timer so it automatically shuts off from 1 − 3pm. While it isn’t terribly hard to turn it back on, if you can scrounge up the effort to turn it back on you may be able to put that effort into something else.
Decrease the amount of effort it takes to do the high-effort things you are trying to accomplish. Paying bills, for instance, can be done online and streamlined. Family and friend can help tremendously in this area.
Increase the amount of effort it takes to avoid doing the things you are trying to accomplish. If you want to make it to an important meeting, try to get a friend to pick you up and drive you all the way over there.
These are somewhat complicated and broad categories and I don’t know how much they would help.
That wouldn’t work. I do these things by default, because I can’t do the things I want. I don’t even have a problem with standard akrasia anymore, because I immediately act on any impulse I have to do something, given how rare they are. Also, I can expend willpower do stop doing something, whereas “I need to do this but I can’t” seems impervious to it, at least in the amounts I have.
There are plenty of things to be done here, but they’re too hard to bootstrap. The easy ones helped somewhat.
That helped me most. In the grey area between things I can do and things I can’t (currently, cleaning, homework, most phone calls), pressure helps. But no amount of ass-kicking has made me do the things I’ve been trying to do for a while.
The worst are semi-routine activities; the kind of things you need to do sometimes but not frequently enough to mesh with the daily routine. Going to the bank, making most appointments, looking for an apartment, buying clothes (don’t ask me why food is okay but clothes aren’t). That list is expanding.
Other factors that hurt are:
need to do in one setting, no way of doing a small part at a time
need to go out
social situations
new situations
being watched while I do it (I can’t cook because I share the kitchen with other students, but I could if I didn’t)
having to do it quickly once I start
Most of these cause me fear, which makes it harder to do things, rather than make it harder directly.
This matches my experience very closely. One observation I’d like to add is that one of my strongest triggers for procrastination spirals is having a task repeatedly brought to my attention in a context where it’s impossible to follow through on it—ie, reminders to do things from well-intentioned friends, delivered at inappropriate times. For example, if someone reminds me to get some car maintenance done, the fact that I obviously can’t go do it right then means it gets mentally tagged as a wrong course of action, and then later when I really ought to do it the tag is still there.
I ended up just explaining the issue to the person who was generating most of the reminders. It wasn’t an easy conversation to have (it can sound like being ungrateful and passing blame) but it was definitely necessary. Sending a link to this thread and then bringing it up later seems like it’d mitigate that problem, so that’s probably the way to go.
Note that it’s very important to draw a distinction between things you haven’t done because you’ve forgotten, for which reminders can actually be helpful, and things you aren’t doing because of lack of motivation, for which reminders are harmful.
If you’re reading this because a chronic procrastinator sent you a link, then please take this one piece of advice: The very worst thing you can do is remind them every time you speak. If you do that, you will not only reduce the chance that they’ll actually do it, you’ll also poison your relationship with them by getting yourself mentally classified as a nag.
I can’t do that, but thanks anyway. A good deal of the reminders happen in a (semi-)professional context where the top priority is pretending to be normal (yes, my priorities are screwed up). Most others come from a person who doesn’t react to “this thing you do is causing me physical pain”, so forget it.
I can’t do that, but thanks anyway. A good deal of the reminders happen in a (semi-)professional context
In that case, you’ll have to mindhack yourself to change the way you react to reminders like this. This isn’t necessarily easy, but if you pull it off it’s a one-time act with results that stick with you.
That’s a good change to make, and there’s also a complementary third option: A specific variant of ‘making a mental note’ that seems to work very well, at least for me.
1) Determine a point in your regular or planned schedule where you could divert from your regular schedule to do the thing that you need to do. This doesn’t have to be the optimal point of departure, just a workable one; you should naturally learn how to spot better points of departure as time goes on, but it’s more important to have a point of departure than it is to have a perfect one. It is, however, important that the point of departure is a task during which you will be thinking, rather than being on autopilot. I like to use doorway passages as my points of departure (for example, ‘when I get home from running the errands I’m going to do tomorrow, and go to open my front door’) because they tend to be natural transition times, but there are many other options. (Other favorites are ‘next time I see a certain person’ and ‘when I finish (or start) a certain task’.)
2) Envision what you would perceive as you entered that situation, using whatever visualization method most closely matches your normal way of paying attention to the world. I tend to use my senses of sight and touch most, so I might visualize what I’d see as I walked up to my front door, or the feel of holding my keys as I got ready to open it.
3) Envision yourself suddenly and strongly remembering your task in the situation you envisioned in step two. It may also work, if you aren’t able to envision your thoughts like that, to visualize yourself taking the first few task-specific steps—for example, if the task is to write an email, you’d want to visualize not just turning on your computer or starting up your email program, but entering the recipient’s name into the from: field and writing the greeting.
If this works for you like it works for me, it should cause the appropriate thought (or task, if you used that variant of step 3) to be triggered at a useful time, and with practice it only takes a few moments to set up, so you can ask the person giving you the reminder to give you a moment to make a mental note of it, and then move on with the conversation. Also, if you do have a trigger like this set up for a given task, it gives you a very good response to repeated reminders: “Yes, I know; I’m planning to do that at whatever particular point in time.”
A further advantage is that since this method causes the reminder to be triggered by something that will happen automatically anyway, you don’t have to keep thinking about it; in fact, I’ve found that my memory will be triggered more reliably when I haven’t worried about the task in the meantime. And if you can let the task go until the trigger reminds you of it, that will reduce the cognitive load that you’re carrying, as well.
There is a noteworthy concern with this method, though: It can make you reliant on your schedule staying consistent. If I have plans to run errands, for example, and add a trigger to go off when I get home from that, then I can’t change my plans without interfering with the trigger—and if the trigger is set for when I come home from the errands, I may not even remember that I had it set at all when I decide to change my errand plans. There are a few ways to work around that; I go with a combination of having a separate mental to-do list as a backup (which I strictly only refer to during mental downtime, and never try to work from directly: another cognitive-resource saving mechanism), and sometimes using a daily review of what I was intending to get done that day, with brief visualizations of all of the transition points where I’m likely to have had a trigger that wasn’t triggered. (“Ok, I was going to get on my bike and go to the craft store and the grocery store, and then bike home, and then… bugger.”)
Overall, I’ve found this to work very well, though.
The technique should work even if you find yourself thinking about the task at other times; it just might not work as well, because of the effect that jimrandmoh mentioned about reminders reducing your inclination to do something. A variation of the workaround I mentioned for dealing with others works to mitigate the effect of self-reminders, though—don’t just tell yourself ‘not right now’, tell yourself ‘not right now, but at [time/event]’.
I can’t say much about how to disable involuntary self-reminders altogether, unfortunately. I don’t experience them, and if I ever did, it was long enough ago that I’ve forgotten both that I did and how I stopped. I have, however, read in several different places that using a reliable reminder system (whether one like I’m suggesting, or something more formal like a written or typed list, or whatever) tends to make them eventually stop happening without any particular effort, as the relevant brain-bits learn that the reliable system is in fact reliable, which seems quite plausible to me.
That sounds like a cognitive-load issue at least as much as it sounds like inertia, to me. (Except the being-watched part, that is. I have that quirk too, and I still haven’t figured out what that’s about.) There are things that can be done about that, but most of them are minor tweaks that would need to be personalized for you. I suspect I might have some useful things to say about the fear, too. I’ll PM you my contact info.
What do you mean by “cognitive load”? I read the Wikipedia article on cognitive load theory, but I don’t see the connection.
For me, the being-watched part is about embarrassment. I often need to stop and examine a situation and explicitly model it, when most people would just go ahead naturally. Awkward looks cause anxiety.
The concept I’m talking about is broader than the concept that Wikipedia talks about; it’s the general idea that brains only have so many resources to go around, and that some brains have less resources than others or find certain tasks more costly than others, and that it takes a while for those resources to regenerate. Something like this idea has come up a few times here, mostly regarding willpower specifically (and we’ve found studies supporting it in that case), but my experience is that it’s much more generally applicable then that.
And, if your brain regenerates that resource particularly slowly, and if you haven’t been thinking in terms of conserving that limited resource (or set of resources, depending on how exactly you’re modeling it), it’s fairly easy to set yourself up with a lifestyle that uses the resource faster than it can regenerate, which has pretty much the effect you described. (I’ve experienced it, too, and it’s not an uncommon situation to hear about in the autistic community.)
Yes! It does feel like running out of a scarce resource most people have in heaps. I don’t know exactly how that resource is generated and how to tell how much I have left before I run out, though.
There is evidence linking people’s limited resources for thought and willpower to their blood glucose, which is another good reason to see a doctor to find out if there’s something physiological underlying some of your problems.
That’s a good question. There is a correlation between running out of it and thinking about it, but it’s pretty obvious that most of the causation happens the other way around. Talking about it here doesn’t seem to hurt, so probably not.
I have, for a few months, about a year and a half ago. It was slightly effective. I stopped when I moved and couldn’t get myself to call again.
Nothing that looks like it should matter.
Not much. I had a routine blood test some years ago. Everything was normal, though they probably only measured a few things.
No prescription drugs.
When I’m on campus I eat mostly vegetables, fresh or canned, and some canned fish or meat, and generic cafeteria food (balanced diet plus a heap of French fries); nothing that requires a lot of effort. At my parents’, I eat, um, traditional wholesome food. I eat a lot between meals for comfort, mostly apples. I think my diet is fine in quality but terrible in quantity; I eat way too much and skip meals at random.
Given your symptoms, the best advice I can give you is to see a medical doctor of some kind, probably a psychiatrist, and describe your problems. It has to be someone who can order medical tests and write prescriptions. You might very well have a thyroid problem—they cause all kinds of problems with energy and such—and you need someone who can diagnose them. I don’t know how to get you to a doctor’s office, but I guess you could ask someone else to take you?
How much fresh citrus fruit is there in your diet?
One of the things that helped me with near depression symptoms when i was in another country was consumption of fresh fruit. Apples and pears helped me, but you already are having apples. hmm..
Try some fresh orange/lemon/sweet lime/grapefruit juices. Might help.
Okay. Nothing I have will help you. My problems are generally OCD based procrastination loops or modifying bad habits and rituals. Solutions to these assume impulses to do things.
I have nothing that would provide you with impulses to do.
All of my interpretations of “I can’t do X” assume what I mean when I tell myself I can’t do X.
Sorry. If I were actually there I could probably come up with something but I highly doubt I would be able to “see” you well enough through text to be able to find a relevant answer.
The number one piece of advice that I can give is see a doctor. Not a psychologist or psychiatrist—just a medical doctor. Tell them your main symptoms (low energy, difficulty focusing, panic attacks) and have them run some tests. Those types of problems can have physical, medical causes (including conditions involving the thyroid or blood sugar—hyperthyroidism & hypoglycemia). If a medical problem is a big part of what’s happening, you need to get it taken care of.
If you’re having trouble getting yourself to the doctor, then you need to find a way to do it. Can you ask someone for help? Would a family member help you set up a doctor’s appointment and help get you there? A friend? You might even be able to find someone on Less Wrong who lives near you and could help.
My second and third suggestions would be to find a friend or family member who can give you more support and help (talking about your issues, driving you to appointments, etc.) and to start seeing a therapist again (and find a good one—someone who uses cognitive-behavioral therapy).
This is technically a good idea. What counts as “my main symptoms”, though? The ones that make life most difficult? The ones that occur most often? The most visible ones to others? To me?
You’ll want to give the doctor a sense of what’s going on with you (just like you’ve done here), and then to help them find any medical issues that may be causing your problems. So give an overall description of the problem and how serious it is (sort of like in your initial post—your lack of energy, inability to do things, and lots of related problems) - including some examples or specifics (like these) can help make that clearer. And be sure to describe anything that seems like it could be physiological (the three that stuck out to me were lack of energy, difficulty focusing, and anxiety / panic attacks—you might be able to think of some others).
The doctor will have questions which will help guide the conversation, and you can always ask whether they want more details about something. Do you think that figuring out what to say to the doctor could be a barrier for you? If so, let me know—I could say more about it.
I recommend a counseling psychologist rather than a psychiatrist. Or, if you can manage it, do both.
I used to be just like this, I actually put off applying for college until I missed the deadlines for my favorite schools, just because I couldn’t get myself started. Something changed for me over the last couple years, though, and I’m now really thriving. One big thing that helps in the short term is stimulants: ephedrine and caffeine are OTC in most countries. Make sure you learn how to cycle them, if you do decide to use them. Things seem to get easier over time.
Why? (The psychiatrist is the one who’s a psychologist but can also give you meds, right?)
Caffeine seems to work at least a little, but makes me anxious; it’s almost always worth it. Thanks. Ephedrine is illegal in France.
ETA: Actually, scratch that. I tried drinking coffee and soda when I wasn’t unusually relaxed, and the anxiety is too extreme to make me more productive.
A psychiatrist is someone who went to medical school and specialized in the brain. A psychologist is someone who has a PhD in psychology. Putting “clinical” before either means they treat patients; “experimental” means what it sounds like. There’s some crosstraining, but not as much as one might imagine. (“Therapist” and “counselor” imply no specific degree.)
Counseling Psychology is a very specific degree program within psychology. A psychologist can have a PhD, a PsyD, (doctor of psychology degree), or in some fields, even a masters.
Psychiatrists also don’t specialize in “the brain” (that’s neurology), they specialize in treating psychiatric disorders using the medical model.
See the psychiatrist first. Your problems may be caused by some more physiological cause, such as a problem with your thyroid, and a medical doctor is more likely to be able to diagnose them.
(Note: I’m a psychology grad student, my undergrad work was in neuroscience and psychology.)
Psychiatrists (in America at least) are usually too busy to do much psychotherapy. When they do, get ready to pay big time. It just isn’t worth their extremely valuable time and in any case, it isn’t their specialty.
You don’t want to see a clinical psychologist because they treat people with diagnosable psych. disorders. You may have melancholic depression, but it sounds like you just have extreme akrasia issues. If you go to a psychiatrist first, they’ll likely just try to give you worthless SSRIs.
Also, it would be worth checking for data on the effectiveness of a psychiatric drug before spending on it; many may be ineffective or not worth the side effects.
(Suggest seeing a psychiatrist first then a psychologist. Therapy works far better once your brain is functioning. Usually just go to a doctor and they will refer you as appropriate.)
If so, a mind hack that might work is imagining what a hypothetical companion might find attractive in a person. Then try and become that person. Do this by using your hypothetical companion as a filter on what you are doing. Don’t beat yourself up about not doing what the hypothetical companion would find attractive, that isn’t attractive!
Your hypothetical companion does not have to be neurotypical but should be someone you would want to be around.
We should be good at following on from these kinds of motivations as we have a long history of trying to get mates by adjusting behaviour.
Maybe you need to go more crazy, not less. Accept that you are in an existential desert and your soul is dying. But there are other places over the horizon, where you may or may not be better off. So either you die where you are, or you pick a direction, crawl, and see if you end up somewhere better.
I’ve considered that. There are changes in circumstances that would effect positive changes in my mental state, like hopping on the first train to a faraway town or just stop pretending I’m normal in public. I’d be much happier, until I run out of money.
Not one big abnormality. Inability to work for long stretches of time (you can get good at faking). Trouble focusing at random-ish times (even easier to fake). Inability to do certain things out of routine (now I pretend I’ll do it later). Extreme anxiety at things like paperwork. Panic attacks (I can delay them until I’m alone, but the cost is high). Sometimes after a panic attack my legs refuse to work, so I just sit there; I could crawl, but I don’t in public. Stimming (I choose consciously to do it, but the effects of not doing it when it’s needed are bad; I do it as discreetly as possible while still effective).
I do, very much; I want a job so I can get money so I can do things (such as, you know, saving the world). I don’t particularly like schooling but it helps get jobs, and has less variance than being an autodidact.
I imagine a specific authority in my life or from my past (okay, this is usually my mother) getting really angry and yelling at me to get my ass up and get to work. If you have any memories of being yelled at by an authority figure, use those to help build the image.
I’m desperate enough to ask on LW. Of course I’ve Googled everything I could think of.
The link is decent, combining two good tricks and a valuable insight, but all three have been on LW before so I knew them.
Pointing out Alicorn in particular may be useful, but isn’t it sort of forcing her to offer help? She already did, though, which makes this point moot.
I more or less meant direct a question to her and see what happens rather than impose and keep bugging, which I had a feeling you wouldn’t do in either case.
I’m flattered, but while I enjoy helping people, I’m not sure how I’ve projected being proficient at it such that you’d notice—can you explain whence this charming compliment?
why of course!
I’ve been lurking for a few years now so I remember when you began posting on self help etc.
now that think more about it though, I might’ve had pjeby in mind as well, you two sort of ‘merged’ when I wrote that above comment, heh
but really, proficient is just a word choice, I guess it is flattery, and I did mean to signal you, but that’s how I usually write.
apologies if that overburdened you in anyway..
ETA: oh and I’d meant to write ‘more proficient’, not just ‘proficient’.
I suggest you pay me $50 for each week you don’t get and hold a job. Else, avoid paying me by getting one, and save yourself 6mo x 4wk/mo x $50 -$100 = $400! Wooo! What a deal for us both, eh?
That’s an amusing idea, but disincentives don’t work well, and paying money is too Far a disincentive to work (now, if you followed me around and punched me, that might do the trick).
This reminds me of the joke about a beggar who asks Rothschild for money. Rothschild thinks and says “A janitor is retiring next week, you can have their job and I’ll double the pay.”, and the beggar replies “Don’t bother, I have a cousin who can do it for the original wage, just give me the difference!”
TL;DR: Help me go less crazy and I’ll give you $100 after six months.
I’m a long-time lurker and signed up to ask this. I have a whole lot of mental issues, the worst being lack of mental energy (similar to laziness, procrastination, etc., but turned up to eleven and almost not influenced by will). Because of it, I can’t pick myself up and do things I need to (like calling a shrink); I’m not sure why I can do certain things and not others. If this goes on, I won’t be able to go out and buy food, let alone get a job. Or sign up for cryonics or donate to SIAI.
I’ve tried every trick I could bootstrap; the only one that helped was “count backwards then start”, for things I can do but have trouble getting started on. I offer $100 to anyone who suggests a trick that significantly improves my life for at least six months. By “significant improvement” I mean being able to do things like going to the bank (if I can’t, I won’t be able to give you the money anyway), and having ways to keep myself stable or better (most likely, by seeing a therapist).
One-time tricks to do one important thing are also welcome, but I’d offer less.
After reading this thread, I can only offer one piece of advice:
You need to see a medical doctor, and fast. Your problems are clearly more serious than anything we can deal with here. If you have to, call 911 and have them carry you off in an ambulance.
This is just a guess, and I’m not interested in your money, but I think that you probably have a health problem. I’d suggest you check out the book “The Mood Cure” by Julia Ross, which has some very good information on supplementation. Offhand, you sound like the author’s profile for low-in-catecholamines, and might benefit very quickly from fairly low doses of certain amino acids such as L-tyrosine.
I strongly recommend reading the book, though, as there are quite a few caveats regarding self-supplementation like this. Using too high a dose can be as problematic as too low, and times of day are important too. Consistent management is important, too. When you’re low on something, taking what you need can make you feel euphoric, but when you have the right dose, you won’t notice anything by taking some. (Instead, you’ll notice if you go off it for a few days, and find mood/energy going back to pre-supplementation levels.)
Anyway… don’t know if it’ll work for you, but I do suggest you try it. (And the same recommendation goes for anyone else who’s experiencing a chronic mood or energy issue that’s not specific to a particular task/subject/environment.)
Buying a (specific) book isn’t possible right now, but may help later; thanks. I took the questionnaire on her website and apparently everything is wrong with me, which makes me doubt her tests’ discriminating power.
It’s a marketing tool, not a test.
FWIW, I don’t have “everything” wrong with me; I had only two, and my wife scores on two, with only one the same between the two of us.
I’ll come out of the shadows (well not really, I’m too ashamed to post this under my normal LW username) and announce that I am, or anyway have been, in more or less the same situation as MixedNuts. Maybe not as severe (there are some important things I can do, at the moment, and I have in the past been much worse than I am now—I would actually appear externally to be keeping up with my life at this exact moment, though that may come crashing down before too long), but generally speaking almost everything MixedNuts says rings true to me. I don’t live with anyone or have any nearby family, so that adds some extra difficulty.
Right now, as I said, this is actually a relatively good moment, I’ve got some interesting projects to work on that are currently helping me get out of bed. But I know myself too well to assume that this will last. Plus, I’m way behind on all kinds of other things I’m supposed to be doing (or already have done).
I’m not offering any money, but I’d be interested to see if anyone is interested in conversing with me about this (whether here or by PM). Otherwise, my reason for posting this comment was to add some evidence that this may be a common problem (even afflicting people you wouldn’t necessarily guess suffered from it).
I’ve got a weaker form of this, but I manage. The number one thing that seems to work is a tight feedback loop (as in daily) between action and reward, preferably reward by other people. That’s how I was able to do OBLW. Right now I’m trying to get up to a reasonable speed on the book, and seem to be slowly ramping up.
I have limited mental resources myself, and am sometimes busy, but I’m generally willing to (and find it enjoyable to) talk to people about this kind of thing via IM. I’m fairly easily findable on Skype (put a dot between my first and last names; text only, please), AIM (same name as here), GChat (same name at gmail dot com), and MSN (same name at hotmail dot com). The google email is the one I pay attention to, but I’m not so great at responding to email unless it has obvious questions in it for me to answer. It’s also noteworthy that my sleep schedule is quite random—it is worth checking to see if I’m awake at 5am if you want to, but also don’t assume that just because it’s daytime I’ll be awake.
Hope this doesn’t turn into a free-therapy bandwagon, but I have a lot of the same issues as MixedNuts and anonymous259, so if anyone has any tips or other insights they’d like to share with me, that would be delightful.
My main problem seems to be that, if I don’t find something thrilling or fascinating, and it requires much mental or physical effort, I don’t do it, even if I know I need to do it, even if I really want to do it. Immediate rewards and punishments help very little (sometimes they actually make things worse, if the task requires a lot of thought or creativity). There are sometimes exceptions when the boring+mentally/physically-demanding task is to help someone, but that’s only when the person is actually relying on me for something, not just imposing an artificial expectation, and it usually only works if it’s someone I know and care about (except myself).
A related problem is that I rarely find anything thrilling or fascinating (enough to make me actually do it, at least) for very long. In my room I have stacks of books that I’ve only read a few chapters into; on my computer I have probably hundreds of unfinished (or barely started) programs and essays and designs, and countless others that only exist in my mind; on my academic transcripts are many ‘W’s and ’F’s, not because the classes were difficult (a more self-controlled me would have breezed through them), but because I stopped being interested halfway through. So even when something starts out intrinsically motivating for me, the momentum usually doesn’t last.
Like anon259, I can’t offer any money — this sort of problem really gets in the way of wanting/finding/keeping a job — but drop me a PM if gratitude motivates you. :)
To some extent, the purpose of LessWrong is to fix problems with ourselves, and the distinction between errors in reasoning and errors in action is subtle enough that I would hesitate to declare this on- or off-topic.
It should be mentioned, however, that the population of LessWrongers-asking-for-advice is unlikely to be representative of the population of LessWrongers, and even less so of the population of agents-LessWrongers-care-about. This is likely to make generalizations drawn from observations here narrower in scope than we might like.
Same deal as the other two—PM me IM contact info, we can chat :)
PM me with your IM contact info and I’ll try to help you too.
Look, I’ll do it for free too!
For what it’s worth:
A few years back I was suffering from some pretty severe health problems. The major manifestations were cognitive and mood related. Often when I was saying a sentence I would become overwhelmed halfway through and would have to consciously force myself to finish what I was saying.
Long story short, I started treating my diet like a controlled experiment and, after a few years of trial and error, have come out feeling better than I can ever remember. If you’re going to try self experimentation the three things I recommend most highly to ease the analysis process are:
Don’t eat things with ingredients in them, instead eat ingredients
Limit each meal to less than 5 different ingredients
Try and have the same handful of ingredients for every meal for at least a week at a time.
I’m curious. What foods (if you don’t mind me asking) did you find had such a powerful effect?
I expanded upon it here.
What has helped me the most, by far, is cutting out soy, dairy, and all processed foods (there are some processed foods I feel fine eating, but the analysis to figure out which ones proved too costly for the small benefit of being able to occasionally eat unhealthy foods).
Also, don’t offer money. External motivators are disincentives. By offering $100, you are attaching a specific worth to the request, and undermining our own intrinsic motivations to help. Since allowing a reward to disincentivize a behavior is irrational, I’m curious how much effect it has on the LessWrong crowd; regardless, I would be surprised if anyone here tried to collect, so I don’t see the point.
My understanding is that the mechanism by which this works lets you sidestep it pretty neatly by also doing basically similar things for free. That way you can credibly tell yourself that you would do it for free, and being paid is unrelated.
To the contrary. If you pay volunteers, they stop enjoying their work. Other similar studies have been done that show that paying people who already enjoy something will sometimes make them stop the activity altogether, or to at least stop doing it without an external incentive.
Edit: AdeleneDawner and thomblake agree with the parent. This may be a counterargument, or just an answer to my earlier question, namely “Are LessWrongers better able to control this irrational impulse?”
So can a person ever love their day job? It seems that moneymaking/entrepreneurship should be the only reflectively stable passion.
Obviously, many people do love their day job. However, your question is apt, and I have no answer to it—even with regards to myself. I often have struggled with doing the exact same things at work and for myself, and enjoying one but not the other. I think in my case, it is more an issue of pressure and expectations. However, when trying to answer the question of what I should do with my life, it makes things difficult!
I didn’t download the .pdf, but it looks like this was probably conducted by paying volunteers for all of their volunteer work. If someone got paid for half of their hours volunteering, or had two positions doing very similar work and then one of them started paying, I’d expect this effect to diminish.
The study concerns how many hours per week were spent volunteering; some was paid, some was not, though presumably a single organization would either pay or not pay volunteers, rather than both. Paid volunteers worked less per week overall.
The study I referenced was not the one I intended to reference, but I have not found the one I most specifically remember. Citing studies is one of the things I most desperately want an eidetic memory for.
On reflection, it seems to me to be the latter—my cognitive model of money is unusual in general, but this particular reaction seems to be a result of an intentional tweak that I made to reduce my chance of being bribe-able. (Not that I’ve had a problem with being bribed, but that broad kind of situation registers as ‘having my values co-opted’, which I’m not at all willing to take risks with.)
That seems to work. If I were teaching part-time simply because I needed the money, I wouldn’t do it. But I decided that I’d teach this class for free, so I also have no problem doing it for very little money.
Agreed—I do basically similar things for free, and am reasonably confident that my reaction would be “*shrug* ok” if I were to work with MixedNuts and xe wanted to pay me.
(I do intend to offer help here; I’m still trying to determine what the most useful offer would be.)
MixedNuts, I’m in a similar position, though perhaps less severely, and more intermittently. I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar, though I’ve had difficulty taking my meds. At this point in my life, I’m being supported almost entirely by a network of family, friends, and associates that is working hard to help me be a real person and getting very little in return.
I have one book that has helped me tremendously, “The Depression Cure”, by Dr. Ilardi. He claims that depression-spectrum disorders are primarily caused by lifestyle, and that almost everyone can benefit from simple changes. As any book—especially a self-help book—it ought to be read skeptically, and it doesn’t introduce any ideas that can’t be found in modern psychological research. Rather, it aggregates what in Ilardi’s opinion are the most important: exercise works more effectively than SSRIs, etc.
If you really want a copy, and you really can’t get one yourself, I will send you one if you can send me your address. It helped me that much. Which is not to say that I am problem free. Still, a 40% reduction in problem behavior, after 6 months, with increasing rather than decreasing results, is a huge deal for me.
Rather, I want to give you your “one trick”. It is the easiest rather than the most effective; but it has an immediate effect, which helped me implement the others. Morning sunlight. I don’t know where you live; I live in a place where I can comfortably sit outside in the morning even this time of year. Get up as soon as you can after waking, and wake as early in the day as you would ideally like to. Walk around, sit, or lie down in the brightest area outside for half an hour. You can go read studies on why this works, or that debate its efficacy, but for me it helps.
I realize that your post didn’t say anything about depression; just lack of willpower. For me, they were tightly intertwined, and they might not be for you. Please try it anyway.
Thanks. I’ll try the morning light thing; from experience it seems to help somewhat, but I can’t keep it going for long.
If nothing else works, I’ll ask you for the book. I’m skeptical since they tend to recommend unbootstrapable things such as exercise, but it could help.
There is one boot process that works well, which is to contract an overseer. For me, it was my father. I felt embarrassed to be a grown adult asking for his father’s oversight, but it helped when I was at my worst. Now, I have him, my roommate, two ex-girlfriends, and my advisor who are all concerned about me and check up with me on a regular basis. I can be honest with them, and if I’ve stopped taking care of myself, they’ll call or even come over to drag me out of bed, feed me, and/or take me for a run.
I have periodically been an immense burden on the people who love me. However, I eventually came to the realization that being miserable, useless, and isolated was harder and more unpleasant for them than being let in on what was wrong with me and being asked to help. I’ve been a net negative to this world, but for some reason people still care for me, and as long as they do, my best course of action seems to be to let them try to help me. I suspect you have a set of people who would likewise prefer to help you than to watch you suffer.
Feeling less helpless was nearly as good for them as for me. I have a debt to them that I am continuing to increase, because I’m still not healthy or self-sufficient. I don’t know if I can ever repay it, but
Yes, I’ve considered that. There are people who can and do help, but not to the extent I’d need. I believe they help me as much as they can while still having a life that isn’t me. I shouldn’t ask for more, should I?
If you have tips for getting more efficient help out of them, suggestions of people who’d help though I don’t expect them to, or ways to get help from other people (professional caretakers?), by all means please shoot.
You indicated that you had trouble maintaining the behavior of getting daily morning light. Ask someone who 1) likes talking to you, 2) is generally up at that hour, and 3) is free to talk on the phone, to call you most mornings. They can set an alarm on their phone and have a 2 minute chat with you each day.
In my experience if I can pick up the phone (which admittedly can be difficult), the conversation is enough of a distraction and a motivation to get outside, and then inertia is enough to keep me out there.
The reason I chose my father is that he is an early riser, self-employed, and he would like to talk to me more than he gets to. You might not have someone like that in your life, but if you do, it is minimally intrusive to them, and may be a big help to you.
This sounds like a great idea. I have a strong impulse to answer phones, so if I put the phone far enough from my bed I had to get up to answer it, I’d get past the biggest obstacle.
There are two minor problems: None of the people I know have free time early in the morning, but two minutes is manageable. When outside, I’m not sure what to do so there’s a risk I’d get anxious and default to going home.
I’ll try it, thanks.
If you’re going to go to the trouble of talking to someone every morning, you might as well see their face:
http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2009/10/15/more-about-faces-and-mood-2/
Seth found that his mood the next day was significantly improved if he saw enough faces the previous morning. There was a LessWronger that posted somewhere that this trick helped him a lot, but I can’t remember who or where right now.
I see quite a lot of faces in the morning already. Maybe not early enough? Though I’m pretty skeptical; it looks like it’d work best for extroverted neurotypicals, and I’m neither. I added it to the list of tricks, but I’ll try others first.
I’m willing to try to help you but I think I’d be substantially more effective in real time. If you would like to IM, send me your contact info in a private message.
Do you take fish oil supplements or equivalent? Can’t hurt to try; fish oil is recommended for ADHD and very well may repair some of the brain damage that causes mental illness.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1093866
Use with caution, however.
I don’t understand the link. It doesn’t mention fish oil but does suggest that she changed her medication (for depression and anorexia) and then experienced suicidal ideation, which she later acted upon. Medications causing suicidal ideation is not unheard of but I haven’t heard of Omega-3 having any such effect.
Some googling gives me more information. It seems that her psychiatrist was transitioning her from one antidepressant to another, and adding fish oil supplements. There is also suggestions that her depression was bipolar. Going off an antidepressant is known to provoke manic episodes in bipolar patients and even those vulnerable to bipolar that had never had an episode. Going on to an antidepressant (and in particular SSRIs, for both ‘on’ and ‘off’) can also provoke mania. A manic episode while suffering withdrawal symptoms and the symptoms of a preexisting anxiety based disorder is a recipe for suicide. As for Omega-3… the prior for her being responsible is low and she just happened to be on the scene when people were looking for something to blame!
Ah, sorry, I should have checked. (I guess it seemed an important enough detail that I just assumed it would be mentioned.)
Here (18:20 in the video) is an explicit mention of the fish oil, by her mother; apparently she was taking 12 tablets daily.
The way I had interpreted it, which prompted my caution above, was as a case of replacing antidepressants with fish oil, which seems unwise. Looking at it again now reveals there was in fact a plan to continue with antidepressants. It’s unclear, however, how far along she was with this plan.
In any case, you’re right that fish oil may not necessarily have been to blame as the trigger for suicide; but at the very least, it certainly didn’t work here, and to the extent that it may have replaced the regular antidepressant treatment...that would seem a rather dubious decision.
I have had and sometimes still struggle with similar problems, but there is something that sometimes has helped me:
If there’s something you need to do, try to do something with it, however little, as soon after you get up as possible. The example I’m going to use is studying, but you can generalize from it.
Pretty much soon as you get up, BEFORE checking email or anything like that, study (or whatever it is you need to do) a bit. And keep doing until you feel your mental energy “running out”.. but then, any time later in the day that you feel a smigen of motivation, don’t let go of it: run immediately to continue doing.
But starting the day with doing some, however little, seemed to help. I think with me the psychology was sort of “this is the sort of day when I’m working on this”, so once I start on it, it’s as if I’m “allowed” to periodically keep doing stuff with it during the day.
Anyways, as I said, this has sometimes helped me, so...
Hmm, this may be why there’s such a gap between good and bad days.
It only applies to things you can do little by little and whenever you want, which is pretty limited but still useful. Thanks.
Order modafinil online. Take it, using ‘count backwards then swallow the pill’ if necessary. Then, use the temporary boost in mental energy to call a shrink.
I have found this useful at times.
Modafinil is a prescription drug, so he would have to see a doctor first, right?
Yes, full compliance with laws and schedules, even ones that are trivial to ignore, is something I publicly advocate.
Ok, I didn’t know that scoring illegal prescription drugs online was so easy. Isn’t it risky? I know people have been busted for this the USA, though it may be easier in France.
I will not go into detail on what I understand to be the pragmatic considerations here, since the lesswrong morality encourages a more conservative approach to choosing what to do.
The life-extentionists over at imminst.org tend to be experienced in acquiring whatever they happen to need to meet their health and cognitive enhancement goals. They tend to give a fairly unbiased reports on the best way to go about getting what you need, accounting for legal risks, product quality risks, price and convenience.
I do note that when I want something that is restricted I usually just go tell a doctor that “I have run out” and get them to print me ‘another’ prescription.
I’m curious why you say this. I don’t get the impression that more than a tiny number of people here would have moral or even ethical qualms about ordering drugs online, though I would non-confidently expect us to overestimate the risk on average.
In the USA it’s no problem to order unscheduled prescription drugs over the internet. Schedule IV drugs can be imported, but customs occasionally seizes them with no penalty for the importer. No company that takes credit cards will ship Schedule II or Schedule III drugs to the USA; at least not one that will be in business for more than a month or two.
I believe it’s all easier in Europe but I don’t know for sure. PM for more info.
And for completeness, I should note that Modafinil is a Schedule IV drug in the US.
Also, downloading music & movies is usually a copyright violation, frequently both civil & criminal.
Thanks, but it gets worse. I can’t order anything online, because I need to see my bank about checks or debit cards first. I can imagine asking a friend to do it for me, though it’s terrifying; I could probably do it on a good day. Also, I doubt the thing modafinil boosts is the same thing I lack, but it could help, if only through placebo effect.
Terrifying? That’s troubling. A shrink can definitely help you!
It may boost everything just enough to get you over the line.
Good luck getting something done. I hope something works for you. Do whatever it takes.
Adrafinil is similar to modafinil, only it’s much cheaper because its patent has expired.
What do you do when you aren’t doing anything?
EDIT: More questions as you answer these questions. Too many questions at once is too much effort. I am taking you dead seriously so please don’t be offended if I severely underestimate your ability.
I keep doing something that doesn’t require much effort, out of inertia; typically, reading, browsing the web, listening to the radio, washing a dish. Or I just sit or lie there letting my mind wander and periodically trying to get myself to start doing something. If I’m trying to do something that requires thinking (typically homework) when my brain stops working, I keep doing it but I can’t make much progress.
Possible solutions:
Increase the amount of effort it takes to do the low-effort things you are trying to avoid. For instance, it isn’t terribly hard to set your internet on a timer so it automatically shuts off from 1 − 3pm. While it isn’t terribly hard to turn it back on, if you can scrounge up the effort to turn it back on you may be able to put that effort into something else.
Decrease the amount of effort it takes to do the high-effort things you are trying to accomplish. Paying bills, for instance, can be done online and streamlined. Family and friend can help tremendously in this area.
Increase the amount of effort it takes to avoid doing the things you are trying to accomplish. If you want to make it to an important meeting, try to get a friend to pick you up and drive you all the way over there.
These are somewhat complicated and broad categories and I don’t know how much they would help.
I’ve tried all that (they’re on LW already).
That wouldn’t work. I do these things by default, because I can’t do the things I want. I don’t even have a problem with standard akrasia anymore, because I immediately act on any impulse I have to do something, given how rare they are. Also, I can expend willpower do stop doing something, whereas “I need to do this but I can’t” seems impervious to it, at least in the amounts I have.
There are plenty of things to be done here, but they’re too hard to bootstrap. The easy ones helped somewhat.
That helped me most. In the grey area between things I can do and things I can’t (currently, cleaning, homework, most phone calls), pressure helps. But no amount of ass-kicking has made me do the things I’ve been trying to do for a while.
What classes of things are on the ‘can’t do’ list?
The worst are semi-routine activities; the kind of things you need to do sometimes but not frequently enough to mesh with the daily routine. Going to the bank, making most appointments, looking for an apartment, buying clothes (don’t ask me why food is okay but clothes aren’t). That list is expanding.
Other factors that hurt are:
need to do in one setting, no way of doing a small part at a time
need to go out
social situations
new situations
being watched while I do it (I can’t cook because I share the kitchen with other students, but I could if I didn’t)
having to do it quickly once I start
Most of these cause me fear, which makes it harder to do things, rather than make it harder directly.
This matches my experience very closely. One observation I’d like to add is that one of my strongest triggers for procrastination spirals is having a task repeatedly brought to my attention in a context where it’s impossible to follow through on it—ie, reminders to do things from well-intentioned friends, delivered at inappropriate times. For example, if someone reminds me to get some car maintenance done, the fact that I obviously can’t go do it right then means it gets mentally tagged as a wrong course of action, and then later when I really ought to do it the tag is still there.
Definitely. So that’s why I can’t do the stuff I should have done a while ago! Thanks for the insight. What works for you?
I ended up just explaining the issue to the person who was generating most of the reminders. It wasn’t an easy conversation to have (it can sound like being ungrateful and passing blame) but it was definitely necessary. Sending a link to this thread and then bringing it up later seems like it’d mitigate that problem, so that’s probably the way to go.
Note that it’s very important to draw a distinction between things you haven’t done because you’ve forgotten, for which reminders can actually be helpful, and things you aren’t doing because of lack of motivation, for which reminders are harmful.
If you’re reading this because a chronic procrastinator sent you a link, then please take this one piece of advice: The very worst thing you can do is remind them every time you speak. If you do that, you will not only reduce the chance that they’ll actually do it, you’ll also poison your relationship with them by getting yourself mentally classified as a nag.
I can’t do that, but thanks anyway. A good deal of the reminders happen in a (semi-)professional context where the top priority is pretending to be normal (yes, my priorities are screwed up). Most others come from a person who doesn’t react to “this thing you do is causing me physical pain”, so forget it.
Why do you interact with this person?
They’re family. I planned to be as independent from the family ASAP, but couldn’t due to my worsening problems.
In that case, you’ll have to mindhack yourself to change the way you react to reminders like this. This isn’t necessarily easy, but if you pull it off it’s a one-time act with results that stick with you.
That’s a good change to make, and there’s also a complementary third option: A specific variant of ‘making a mental note’ that seems to work very well, at least for me.
1) Determine a point in your regular or planned schedule where you could divert from your regular schedule to do the thing that you need to do. This doesn’t have to be the optimal point of departure, just a workable one; you should naturally learn how to spot better points of departure as time goes on, but it’s more important to have a point of departure than it is to have a perfect one. It is, however, important that the point of departure is a task during which you will be thinking, rather than being on autopilot. I like to use doorway passages as my points of departure (for example, ‘when I get home from running the errands I’m going to do tomorrow, and go to open my front door’) because they tend to be natural transition times, but there are many other options. (Other favorites are ‘next time I see a certain person’ and ‘when I finish (or start) a certain task’.)
2) Envision what you would perceive as you entered that situation, using whatever visualization method most closely matches your normal way of paying attention to the world. I tend to use my senses of sight and touch most, so I might visualize what I’d see as I walked up to my front door, or the feel of holding my keys as I got ready to open it.
3) Envision yourself suddenly and strongly remembering your task in the situation you envisioned in step two. It may also work, if you aren’t able to envision your thoughts like that, to visualize yourself taking the first few task-specific steps—for example, if the task is to write an email, you’d want to visualize not just turning on your computer or starting up your email program, but entering the recipient’s name into the from: field and writing the greeting.
If this works for you like it works for me, it should cause the appropriate thought (or task, if you used that variant of step 3) to be triggered at a useful time, and with practice it only takes a few moments to set up, so you can ask the person giving you the reminder to give you a moment to make a mental note of it, and then move on with the conversation. Also, if you do have a trigger like this set up for a given task, it gives you a very good response to repeated reminders: “Yes, I know; I’m planning to do that at whatever particular point in time.”
A further advantage is that since this method causes the reminder to be triggered by something that will happen automatically anyway, you don’t have to keep thinking about it; in fact, I’ve found that my memory will be triggered more reliably when I haven’t worried about the task in the meantime. And if you can let the task go until the trigger reminds you of it, that will reduce the cognitive load that you’re carrying, as well.
There is a noteworthy concern with this method, though: It can make you reliant on your schedule staying consistent. If I have plans to run errands, for example, and add a trigger to go off when I get home from that, then I can’t change my plans without interfering with the trigger—and if the trigger is set for when I come home from the errands, I may not even remember that I had it set at all when I decide to change my errand plans. There are a few ways to work around that; I go with a combination of having a separate mental to-do list as a backup (which I strictly only refer to during mental downtime, and never try to work from directly: another cognitive-resource saving mechanism), and sometimes using a daily review of what I was intending to get done that day, with brief visualizations of all of the transition points where I’m likely to have had a trigger that wasn’t triggered. (“Ok, I was going to get on my bike and go to the craft store and the grocery store, and then bike home, and then… bugger.”)
Overall, I’ve found this to work very well, though.
I’m doing this wrong. How do you prevent tasks from nagging you at other times?
The technique should work even if you find yourself thinking about the task at other times; it just might not work as well, because of the effect that jimrandmoh mentioned about reminders reducing your inclination to do something. A variation of the workaround I mentioned for dealing with others works to mitigate the effect of self-reminders, though—don’t just tell yourself ‘not right now’, tell yourself ‘not right now, but at [time/event]’.
I can’t say much about how to disable involuntary self-reminders altogether, unfortunately. I don’t experience them, and if I ever did, it was long enough ago that I’ve forgotten both that I did and how I stopped. I have, however, read in several different places that using a reliable reminder system (whether one like I’m suggesting, or something more formal like a written or typed list, or whatever) tends to make them eventually stop happening without any particular effort, as the relevant brain-bits learn that the reliable system is in fact reliable, which seems quite plausible to me.
That sounds like a cognitive-load issue at least as much as it sounds like inertia, to me. (Except the being-watched part, that is. I have that quirk too, and I still haven’t figured out what that’s about.) There are things that can be done about that, but most of them are minor tweaks that would need to be personalized for you. I suspect I might have some useful things to say about the fear, too. I’ll PM you my contact info.
What do you mean by “cognitive load”? I read the Wikipedia article on cognitive load theory, but I don’t see the connection.
For me, the being-watched part is about embarrassment. I often need to stop and examine a situation and explicitly model it, when most people would just go ahead naturally. Awkward looks cause anxiety.
The concept I’m talking about is broader than the concept that Wikipedia talks about; it’s the general idea that brains only have so many resources to go around, and that some brains have less resources than others or find certain tasks more costly than others, and that it takes a while for those resources to regenerate. Something like this idea has come up a few times here, mostly regarding willpower specifically (and we’ve found studies supporting it in that case), but my experience is that it’s much more generally applicable then that.
And, if your brain regenerates that resource particularly slowly, and if you haven’t been thinking in terms of conserving that limited resource (or set of resources, depending on how exactly you’re modeling it), it’s fairly easy to set yourself up with a lifestyle that uses the resource faster than it can regenerate, which has pretty much the effect you described. (I’ve experienced it, too, and it’s not an uncommon situation to hear about in the autistic community.)
Yes! It does feel like running out of a scarce resource most people have in heaps. I don’t know exactly how that resource is generated and how to tell how much I have left before I run out, though.
Fortunately, the latter at least seems to be a learnable skill for most people. :)
There is evidence linking people’s limited resources for thought and willpower to their blood glucose, which is another good reason to see a doctor to find out if there’s something physiological underlying some of your problems.
Does thinking about having less of that resource than other people tend to consume it?
That’s a good question. There is a correlation between running out of it and thinking about it, but it’s pretty obvious that most of the causation happens the other way around. Talking about it here doesn’t seem to hurt, so probably not.
I have a couple of questions, MixedNuts:
Have you ever been to a therapist?
What kind of you history do you have regarding any kinds of medical conditions?
What kind of diagnostic information do you currently have? (blood profile, expert assesment, hair analysis, etc.)
What kind of drugs have you been taking, if you’ve been?
What does your diet look like?
I have, for a few months, about a year and a half ago. It was slightly effective. I stopped when I moved and couldn’t get myself to call again.
Nothing that looks like it should matter.
Not much. I had a routine blood test some years ago. Everything was normal, though they probably only measured a few things.
No prescription drugs.
When I’m on campus I eat mostly vegetables, fresh or canned, and some canned fish or meat, and generic cafeteria food (balanced diet plus a heap of French fries); nothing that requires a lot of effort. At my parents’, I eat, um, traditional wholesome food. I eat a lot between meals for comfort, mostly apples. I think my diet is fine in quality but terrible in quantity; I eat way too much and skip meals at random.
Given your symptoms, the best advice I can give you is to see a medical doctor of some kind, probably a psychiatrist, and describe your problems. It has to be someone who can order medical tests and write prescriptions. You might very well have a thyroid problem—they cause all kinds of problems with energy and such—and you need someone who can diagnose them. I don’t know how to get you to a doctor’s office, but I guess you could ask someone else to take you?
How much fresh citrus fruit is there in your diet?
One of the things that helped me with near depression symptoms when i was in another country was consumption of fresh fruit. Apples and pears helped me, but you already are having apples. hmm..
Try some fresh orange/lemon/sweet lime/grapefruit juices. Might help.
Quite a lot, but possibly too sporadically. I’ll try it, thanks.
Okay. Nothing I have will help you. My problems are generally OCD based procrastination loops or modifying bad habits and rituals. Solutions to these assume impulses to do things.
I have nothing that would provide you with impulses to do.
All of my interpretations of “I can’t do X” assume what I mean when I tell myself I can’t do X.
Sorry. If I were actually there I could probably come up with something but I highly doubt I would be able to “see” you well enough through text to be able to find a relevant answer.
The number one piece of advice that I can give is see a doctor. Not a psychologist or psychiatrist—just a medical doctor. Tell them your main symptoms (low energy, difficulty focusing, panic attacks) and have them run some tests. Those types of problems can have physical, medical causes (including conditions involving the thyroid or blood sugar—hyperthyroidism & hypoglycemia). If a medical problem is a big part of what’s happening, you need to get it taken care of.
If you’re having trouble getting yourself to the doctor, then you need to find a way to do it. Can you ask someone for help? Would a family member help you set up a doctor’s appointment and help get you there? A friend? You might even be able to find someone on Less Wrong who lives near you and could help.
My second and third suggestions would be to find a friend or family member who can give you more support and help (talking about your issues, driving you to appointments, etc.) and to start seeing a therapist again (and find a good one—someone who uses cognitive-behavioral therapy).
This is technically a good idea. What counts as “my main symptoms”, though? The ones that make life most difficult? The ones that occur most often? The most visible ones to others? To me?
You’ll want to give the doctor a sense of what’s going on with you (just like you’ve done here), and then to help them find any medical issues that may be causing your problems. So give an overall description of the problem and how serious it is (sort of like in your initial post—your lack of energy, inability to do things, and lots of related problems) - including some examples or specifics (like these) can help make that clearer. And be sure to describe anything that seems like it could be physiological (the three that stuck out to me were lack of energy, difficulty focusing, and anxiety / panic attacks—you might be able to think of some others).
The doctor will have questions which will help guide the conversation, and you can always ask whether they want more details about something. Do you think that figuring out what to say to the doctor could be a barrier for you? If so, let me know—I could say more about it.
I recommend a counseling psychologist rather than a psychiatrist. Or, if you can manage it, do both.
I used to be just like this, I actually put off applying for college until I missed the deadlines for my favorite schools, just because I couldn’t get myself started. Something changed for me over the last couple years, though, and I’m now really thriving. One big thing that helps in the short term is stimulants: ephedrine and caffeine are OTC in most countries. Make sure you learn how to cycle them, if you do decide to use them. Things seem to get easier over time.
Why? (The psychiatrist is the one who’s a psychologist but can also give you meds, right?)
Caffeine seems to work at least a little, but makes me anxious; it’s almost always worth it. Thanks. Ephedrine is illegal in France.
ETA: Actually, scratch that. I tried drinking coffee and soda when I wasn’t unusually relaxed, and the anxiety is too extreme to make me more productive.
A psychiatrist is someone who went to medical school and specialized in the brain. A psychologist is someone who has a PhD in psychology. Putting “clinical” before either means they treat patients; “experimental” means what it sounds like. There’s some crosstraining, but not as much as one might imagine. (“Therapist” and “counselor” imply no specific degree.)
Some common misconceptions:
Counseling Psychology is a very specific degree program within psychology. A psychologist can have a PhD, a PsyD, (doctor of psychology degree), or in some fields, even a masters.
Psychiatrists also don’t specialize in “the brain” (that’s neurology), they specialize in treating psychiatric disorders using the medical model.
See the psychiatrist first. Your problems may be caused by some more physiological cause, such as a problem with your thyroid, and a medical doctor is more likely to be able to diagnose them.
(Note: I’m a psychology grad student, my undergrad work was in neuroscience and psychology.)
Psychiatrists (in America at least) are usually too busy to do much psychotherapy. When they do, get ready to pay big time. It just isn’t worth their extremely valuable time and in any case, it isn’t their specialty.
You don’t want to see a clinical psychologist because they treat people with diagnosable psych. disorders. You may have melancholic depression, but it sounds like you just have extreme akrasia issues. If you go to a psychiatrist first, they’ll likely just try to give you worthless SSRIs.
Psychologists are for that reason often cheaper. In fact, a counseling psychologist in a training clinic can be downright affordable, and most of the benefits of therapy seem to be independent of the therapist anyway.
Also, it would be worth checking for data on the effectiveness of a psychiatric drug before spending on it; many may be ineffective or not worth the side effects.
Is Crazy meds as good as it looks?
Absolutely. Just reading it made my day! Hilarious. (And the info isn’t bad either. )
And if you live in Australia can sometimes be free!
(Suggest seeing a psychiatrist first then a psychologist. Therapy works far better once your brain is functioning. Usually just go to a doctor and they will refer you as appropriate.)
Do you want a companion of some sort?
If so, a mind hack that might work is imagining what a hypothetical companion might find attractive in a person. Then try and become that person. Do this by using your hypothetical companion as a filter on what you are doing. Don’t beat yourself up about not doing what the hypothetical companion would find attractive, that isn’t attractive!
Your hypothetical companion does not have to be neurotypical but should be someone you would want to be around.
We should be good at following on from these kinds of motivations as we have a long history of trying to get mates by adjusting behaviour.
I’ve sort of considered that, though not framed that way. It might be useful later, but not at my current level. Thanks.
Maybe you need to go more crazy, not less. Accept that you are in an existential desert and your soul is dying. But there are other places over the horizon, where you may or may not be better off. So either you die where you are, or you pick a direction, crawl, and see if you end up somewhere better.
I’ve considered that. There are changes in circumstances that would effect positive changes in my mental state, like hopping on the first train to a faraway town or just stop pretending I’m normal in public. I’d be much happier, until I run out of money.
Why would you run out of money if you stopped pretending you’re normal?
I couldn’t go to school or get a job. If I stay in school, I have a career ahead of me if I can pursue it.
What is this abnormality you have which, if you displayed it, would make it impossible to go to school or get a job?
Not one big abnormality. Inability to work for long stretches of time (you can get good at faking). Trouble focusing at random-ish times (even easier to fake). Inability to do certain things out of routine (now I pretend I’ll do it later). Extreme anxiety at things like paperwork. Panic attacks (I can delay them until I’m alone, but the cost is high). Sometimes after a panic attack my legs refuse to work, so I just sit there; I could crawl, but I don’t in public. Stimming (I choose consciously to do it, but the effects of not doing it when it’s needed are bad; I do it as discreetly as possible while still effective).
Panic attacks are a very treatable illness. See a medical doctor and tell him or her all about this.
Not wanting to go to school or get a job?
Nice try.
I do, very much; I want a job so I can get money so I can do things (such as, you know, saving the world). I don’t particularly like schooling but it helps get jobs, and has less variance than being an autodidact.
I imagine a specific authority in my life or from my past (okay, this is usually my mother) getting really angry and yelling at me to get my ass up and get to work. If you have any memories of being yelled at by an authority figure, use those to help build the image.
I promise to give this a honest try, but I expect it to result in panic more than anything.
try this http://www.antiprocrastinator.com/
also, contact someone who is proficient in helping people, for eg. here we have Alicorn, or try some googling.
I’m desperate enough to ask on LW. Of course I’ve Googled everything I could think of.
The link is decent, combining two good tricks and a valuable insight, but all three have been on LW before so I knew them.
Pointing out Alicorn in particular may be useful, but isn’t it sort of forcing her to offer help? She already did, though, which makes this point moot.
I more or less meant direct a question to her and see what happens rather than impose and keep bugging, which I had a feeling you wouldn’t do in either case.
I’m flattered, but while I enjoy helping people, I’m not sure how I’ve projected being proficient at it such that you’d notice—can you explain whence this charming compliment?
why of course! I’ve been lurking for a few years now so I remember when you began posting on self help etc. now that think more about it though, I might’ve had pjeby in mind as well, you two sort of ‘merged’ when I wrote that above comment, heh
but really, proficient is just a word choice, I guess it is flattery, and I did mean to signal you, but that’s how I usually write.
apologies if that overburdened you in anyway..
ETA: oh and I’d meant to write ‘more proficient’, not just ‘proficient’.
I suggest you pay me $50 for each week you don’t get and hold a job. Else, avoid paying me by getting one, and save yourself 6mo x 4wk/mo x $50 -$100 = $400! Wooo! What a deal for us both, eh?
That’s an amusing idea, but disincentives don’t work well, and paying money is too Far a disincentive to work (now, if you followed me around and punched me, that might do the trick).
This reminds me of the joke about a beggar who asks Rothschild for money. Rothschild thinks and says “A janitor is retiring next week, you can have their job and I’ll double the pay.”, and the beggar replies “Don’t bother, I have a cousin who can do it for the original wage, just give me the difference!”