I’m having a great deal of difficulty with my life right now. It could be my depression spiralling out of control, or maybe I am just incredibly out of form.
I can’t seem to function well. At my work, my focus is fleeting. There’s a couple of coding projects I want to done in my free time but I rather watch YouTube. I can’t muster motivation for anything challenging - be it going to a social gathering, working on my game projects, or just tidying up my room.
Boss at work had a talk with me and say I am getting increasingly irritable at work, appeared to be defensive about everything and that when my mood is good, I am a capable worker. But when I swing low, I am terrible. I’ll admit that he is right.
I’ll want something badly (say, get a mobile game done in my free time) that I feel frustrated that I am not working on getting it during work, but when I got home, the prospect of putting effort into what I want is so overwhelming that I go and do something else.
I hate to be stuck like this. Can anyone offer me any advice? How can I stop being so lazy?
I feel for you bro. I don’t know the answer really. Seems like I have to give myself the ‘talk’ everyday to get up and get things done. Having to force yourself to do things is like wading through hip deep molasses, and that’s just more depressing in itself. Some days I’m so worn down I don’t have the energy to get angry at the world for not conforming to my every desire. It sucks.
So, see a doctor to make sure there’s no physical cause. Change your habits, try to get more sleep, or maybe less as the case may be. Get outside more, away from the TV and the computer and the refrigerator. Play with the best dog in the world, Blackjack. Eat less, exercise more. Get a change of pace, go somewhere or do something different. At least for me, doing things differently helps.
You already have the first step, which is recognition.
Now you need to set up rules for yourself and stick to them. The applicable rule here is, when you have a task in need of doing that you’re not, ask yourself, “What’s wrong with right now?” and decide that “because I don’t feel like it” is not an acceptable answer.
Do what needs doing, then “reward” yourself with YouTube or whatever once it’s done. Do it in small increments. “I’ll do this much work, then I’ll fart around for 10 minutes.” Rinse and repeat.
It’s just willpower, really. You just have to do it.
I’m sure that’s not the answer you want to hear, but that’s really all there is to it.
I get stuck in one activity and often lack the inertia to pull out of it. Take, for instance, the Straight Dope. I will tell myself that after five minutes I need to stop flipping through threads so that I can do other stuff. But before I know it, an hour has passed and I’m still sitting here. With a load full of crap to do.
One thing that kinda-sorta helps is writing down what I have to do instead of keeping it all in my head. This makes me feel like I don’t have this overwhelming mass of chores to do, but rather something that is easily doable. If a break a task down in to subtasks and sub-subtasks, this also helps.
True, but I think the OP is having the problem of a lack of willpower. It’s easy to say the words, but when that’s the part that’s missing it doesn’t help.
But what else is there? Either you do it or you don’t. The force of will comes only from within; nobody else can make you do it.
Obviously there’s something a lot deeper than just laziness going on here. Besides “just do it” I would have to recommend a visit to a mental health professional.
This. The best advice I got when I was in therapy for a similar inability to do anything, ever, was to eliminate the word “should” from my vocabulary. As in, “I should make some food,” or “I should wash some clothes,” or “I should really get this paperwork done.” I would say all these things and I agreed with them but I never actually got around to doing them. By taking out “should” (or similar phrasing; “need to,” “am going to,” or whatever), I was taking actual responsibility for my decisions. So “I should finish this paperwork,” became either “I will finish this paperwork” or “I will not finish this paperwork.”
It sounded ridiculous when he said it to me but it’s amazing how much good it did. It’s much harder to be “lazy” when you know you’re making a conscious effort to not do things rather than falling back on “But I’m SO DEPRESSED! I can’t do anything!”
Crowbar, would you normally feel very passionate about these projects that you now are struggling with?
Do you feel confident that if you applied yourself you could get them done or do you feel they are slightly over your head?
What you describe requires passion and full attention, anything less and they become impossible. Are you getting good positive feed back when you feel you have made some good progress? Sometimes concentrating on the aspects you know you are strong in will give you some added momentum that will carry you into more challenging aspects. Every forward step builds momentum so just make sure you are making forward steps.
I would say I feel passionate, but every time there is a setback, my mood will affect what I am doing. Sometimes, I got so anxious thatI am unable to proceed. Back of my mind feeling is - I could do it, if I don’t “switch off”. I find it easy to start, but hard to carry it through. Eventually, at a point, anxiety will make me break off doing whatever I am doing - “it’s not good enough” or “I never could get it done”, only to feel guilty days later and tried doing it again, but I will be so agitated at setbacks that I give up again. If it something non-significant, say writing a review for a game or movie, I don’t have any issues.
I never felt confident about something before, to be honest. That I usually work on my projects alone (being depressed does wonders for your work and life relationships) mean I find it hard to find people to complement my weakness.
This applies to looking for new friends, or trying out a new sport. I head down to an event, and couldn’t click with anyone, and become so moody that I wouldn’t go for any more. Then I sulk till a point I couldn’t take the loneliness any more, and head out again, and meet the same results. I mean, I am not surprised, with my mood being bleak..
I know that sometimes when I hit a roadblock all I see is the road block. I find it helps if I disect the roadblock into as many aspects as I can identify and deal wit them individually. Just the process initself can be relaxing and as you conquer each aspect it will tend to power you into the next aspect. We depend on chemicals being produced to keep us in the proper state of mind to do what we do. If we switch off the production of those chemicals its like driving a car with no gas.
Sorta like working for something and then as soon as its time to collect the reward for all the hard work determination and accomplishment it vanishes as if it never existed.
Happens to me over and over.
Anything I attempt to do requires a lot of time, money and energy only for it not to exist in the same way as it did when I started.
You have to have a crystal ball and a lot of luck to capitalize on any endeavor that takes more than a few months to achieve.
Jami, have you thought about a slightly different twist where you opened up a shop and taught people how to build their own guitars. You could sell the supplies and possibly some of the needed machine work. Maybe create kind of a casual workshop club enviroment.
People will often spend several times the cost of buying something for the pleasure of making it themselves and learning a new skill. You could even make some money off of coffee and refreshments and have a cool place to hang out while you worked.
A business built around custom-made guitars may be unrealistic. But that doesn’t mean you can’t come up with a smaller, less profit-motive driven dream.
I have my own very small (microscopically so) business. I make so little from it that it’s almost pathetic that I’m mentioning it…except that it has fulfilled my dream of being an artist. It strokes my ego every time I make a sale, and I get a sense of pride every time I devote my efforts to it. But I would never dream of sacrificing my day job so I can do it full-time. That would be crazy. And so is not doing anything. There is a happy medium between living a dream and playing it safe. With some creativity, you can find it.
We aren’t independently wealthy. We need to work to pay bills. We would have to sell as many guitars as we could make every week to keep the doors open.
To have people pay us to teach them skills and using required tools would put a big dent in INSURANCE PREMIUMS. I wouldn’t be worth the effort.
Part of being happy in life is doing what you LIKE to do…It just so happens anything I like to do doesn’t make money anymore like it used to.
I’m too creative, when I did Ornamental Iron work, I was allowed to be creative, but that turned to a shit job after a while. I have arthritis because of it.
I postulated making trinkets out of brass and copper for homes to sell at the flea market. But, no one but wealthy people could afford any of it because the cost of time, materials and consumables. I can’t compete with China and India…or Walmart in that area.
Jami, my hobby is making all wood bows and arrows. I do it purely for love and sometimes I feel money contaminates it. I went on a 15 year obsession of building these all wood bows and testing every imaginable aspect of them. I competed at the world flight shoots and on two occassions broke world records.
This is where it stopped being fun. I was asked to write a chapter on my work for a popular book series that added a volume every several years. My name got out there and e mails started pouring in. I was getting some offers and even did some TV shows. It stopped being fun and my passion for it has all but died. Now I work in quiet anonymity and am starting to love it again.
Most all of my life I have started and owned small business related to something I loved. As a small child I loved to catch frogs and lizards. I made a business out of selling them for gardens, I expanded it into creating small backyard habitats and even building a few ponds. I loved it because I felt I was able to not compromise how I expressed myself. It was my way or the highway. I can relate to what you are saying.
The problem lies in the marketability for something.
If I like something and do it for fun then all the sudden people want to give me money for me to do for them. Hey that’s great. It happens all the time in the real world.
My ideas and likes are pretty independent of my surroundings. So, anything I like just stays that way.
I usually can’t find what I want in a store. So, I just make it myself If I can. I make my own tooling at work, because is cheaper and specific to what I need it for.
The general population have not the equipment nor the abilities and so regard what is in the store the only option and just get used to it as the norm and adapt to it.
To me it seems there’s too much “Shitercity” (different object type same applications but all crap) and not enough “Diversity” (Same tried and true object type for many applications).
I cant make a toaster, (actually if i wanted to I could), every single one I found is crap. I want one built to last (not till the next ice age, but reasonably sturdy) and actually makes TOAST.
