There’s some productivity traps I fall into on a regular basis. They all tie into my personal flavor of ADHD but it’s not totally fair to blame the ol’ meat-wad brain when I know when, where, and why it happens.
- There’s a Big Thing to do, so I can’t do anything else
- Boredom in meetings leads internet wanderings
- I should blog this real quick turns into work avoidance
The Big Thing…
One of my ADHD quirks is that if there’s a Big Thing to do that day (doctor’s appointment, package delivery, big presentation) then 100% of my brain goes to that important event. I can’t miss it. Nothing else gets done until The Big Thing gets done.
Conversely, after The Big Thing gets done, nothing else gets done either because my brain –flooded with dopamine– feels an enormous sense of accomplishment for remembering to do The Big Thing. I did The Big Thing. The Big Thing is done. Mission accomplished.
Completing that big task should free up new brain RAM allocation for the next task… but it doesn’t work that way. I spent so much energy keeping the horses in the barn, my brain won’t even consider letting them out again until much later in the evening. Hands numb from sitting on them try to grab a new task from the shelf, but can’t.
If anyone deals with this and knows how to either a) make The Big Thing less blocking or b) perform a tactial reset after The Big Thing, I’d love to know.
Boredom in meetings…
I have a bad habit where I get dopamine starved in a meeting and I naturally hop over to YouTube and start queuing up interesting videos. This regrettably creates a backlog of open tabs for me to clear out when I’m out of the meeting. This isn’t good. It’s so bad because I’ll even look for other videos to watch while I’m watching a video. Why do I do this to myself?
I need to reprogram my brain to smell boredom and find dopamine another –more temporary– way. I used to speed cube during meetings, that was probably my most successful era of doing meetings. I should try and go back to that. Or 3D print a bunch of fidgets. I bought a big drawing pad at Five Below and put it next to my desk and have had a little success sketching during meetings, but YouTube and social media are so damn convenient.
It’s not just video, it happens with blog posts too. One social media link. Links to another link. Links to another. Now I have 5,000 tabs. Oof.
Focus tools to block social media sites has been effective, but any other strategies I need to know about?
Blog this real quick…
If I ever think about something too much and it’s blogpost-worthy content, I try to fire up a draft to get the idea out of my head. If I can create a rough outline in my second brain now, I can come back to it later… but it’s a worm hole.
While the intent is to capture the idea, I naturally switch into writing mode trying to fill out sentences and shape paragraphs. I think it’s dopamine starvation again. When I’m writing in my note taking app, I’m in a fun place where I’m a high functioning adult and the desire to go back to trudging through thousands of lines of JSON is low in comparison.
Of all these productivity traps, writing a blog post is the least offensive to me. Writing ideas helps cement knowledge and that’s a good thing for a knowledge worker. It also keeps a skill I use at work (writing) sharp. But when it’s a form of escapism from what I actually need to do, I need to find efficient ways to curb that behavior. Time-boxing seems like a good idea here.
Here be dragons
I’m sharing these traps in the hope that I become more cognizant and accountable to myself. I can almost see myself falling down these traps in a third-person over camera angle. “The Big Thing” probably gets me the most often, I’d love to overcome it.
I’m curious about other brains. Have you found other traps I need to know about? Do you embrace the chaos and let the day fall apart? Do you have systems built up to self-correct?
