As an ADHD person for whom “reduce impulsiveness” is about as practical a goal as “learn telekinesis”, reducing delay is actually super easy. Did you know people feel good about completing tasks and achieving goals? All you have to do to have a REALLY short delay between starting the task and an expected reward is explicitly, in your own mind, define a sufficiently small sub-task as A Goal. Then the next one, you don’t even need breaks in-between if it goes well—even if what you’re doing is as inherently meaningless as, I dunno, filling in an excel table from a printed one, you can still mentally reward yourself for each page or whatever.
The first salesman guy could set himself a task of “make three cold calls” regardless of success, and then feel good about having done them. The third guy could make a checklist at the start where tasks are listed in order and enjoy an uninterrupted checkmark row when he’s not behind on anything. The student could feel really proud for making the front page, then the next part, etc.
I try to do this, but it often times derails into irrelevant (to the initial goal) tasks like “okay, let’s Format this excel to look as pretty as possible”, “now convert every expression into properly typed latex” and things like that. They might seem somewhat related or sometimes even productive, but result in me taking a long time to do something.
Any ideas how to keep these sub goals in direct service of the main goal?
As an ADHD person for whom “reduce impulsiveness” is about as practical a goal as “learn telekinesis”, reducing delay is actually super easy. Did you know people feel good about completing tasks and achieving goals? All you have to do to have a REALLY short delay between starting the task and an expected reward is explicitly, in your own mind, define a sufficiently small sub-task as A Goal. Then the next one, you don’t even need breaks in-between if it goes well—even if what you’re doing is as inherently meaningless as, I dunno, filling in an excel table from a printed one, you can still mentally reward yourself for each page or whatever.
The first salesman guy could set himself a task of “make three cold calls” regardless of success, and then feel good about having done them. The third guy could make a checklist at the start where tasks are listed in order and enjoy an uninterrupted checkmark row when he’s not behind on anything. The student could feel really proud for making the front page, then the next part, etc.
I try to do this, but it often times derails into irrelevant (to the initial goal) tasks like “okay, let’s Format this excel to look as pretty as possible”, “now convert every expression into properly typed latex” and things like that. They might seem somewhat related or sometimes even productive, but result in me taking a long time to do something.
Any ideas how to keep these sub goals in direct service of the main goal?
(I also have an active ADHD diagnosis).