Procrastination Advice?

[theyrebothakilogram]

I've been having a massive issue with procrastination. Between avoiding homework and avoiding drawing, I have managed to successfully complete absolutely nothing. I have adhd, and sitting down to finish stuff before a hard deadline is really difficult for me. Is there any techniques to help deal with procrastination? I'm really tired of not getting anything done

[WildMoonCrow]

I feel you, I have adhd and same issues unless I hyper focus on something
Sometimes timers help, like sitting down and putting a short timer, giving myself a reward when time ends and restarting the timer after a break. It doesn’t always help though. Putting away distractions, turning off Wi-Fi can also help. I know some people find meditating really helpful as it helps focus.

[Illo]

Dedicate hours for everything, Like tell yourself that in a X day you will focus on art and the next or previous day you will do homework, do that a bunch of time and you will gradually create a habit, at least that's what I did, I don't know if it works as well for you but you should give it a chance

[darthmongoose]

I have serious problems with attention span, and as a kid was definitely the type to leave homework til the night before. Methods I use to keep going with a weekly webcomic:

1. Be kind to yourself and don't expect to make stuff at the same steady pace as Neurotypicals. Sometimes you'll barely get anything done, sometimes you'll get like... a day's worth of work done in two hours. Embrace it and keep your deadlines with plenty of extra time, planning for rests and also inertia when task-switching.
2. Make a mark on the paper or digital canvas to get yourself going. Just draw a little squiggle or a line in the corner. Once you've "started" the task, it'll feel easier.
3. Procrastinate on homework by making comic. Procrastinate on comic by doing homework, procrastinate on chores by doing either.
4. Make comics part of your routine... this might work better for my autistic brain than an ADHD one, though. I make two pages a week and I have specific days and specific hours that are comic time.
5. Watch a show while you draw. Draw for the length of an episode. If you need a break, take a break, do something else, then go back to watch another episode and draw for the length of the episode.
6. Audiobooks while working, or podcasts, just ANYTHING that will keep your brain happy while doing a repetitive task.
7. Read awesome comics that will make you feel inspired to work on yours.
8. Make a hype playlist and do a little workout to it before you start drawing to get out some pent up energy.

[Lensing]

Habits.
Habits with a timer.
The trick is to start with a very short time period which feels like nothing.
That´s the way I taught myself to do things that I avoid doing.
They become habits which you will miss when you don´t do them.

Monday is pushups day, that´s the first thing I do in the morning.
Then I set the timer and clean every room for 3 minutes.
I do drawing warm up with a timer. I go on a walk for 30 minutes
after lunch and learn song lyrics while walking.
Tuesday I do another excercise and clean the house again
with the timer and so on.
I have learning periods and creative periods and chill periods.
I hated walking and now I miss it when I didn´t go on a walk one
day. I also hated cleaning and always avoided it best I could and
now my house is clean all the time and I feel great about it.
Weekends are off because it´s good to have a break sometimes
and I´m also playing shows on the weekends and not at home

[Surihpas]

Aside from the great advice already given here, I have 2 suggestions to add:

1) Set a timer for 5 minutes. That all. And draw for those five minutes. If they're up and you feel like you can't continue, be kind to yourself and stop. However, I find that often I get into the groove and tell myself "well just a little more", which ends up being a pretty nice amount of work done.

2) Find someone who can keep you accountable. Tell them you're sitting down to draw and share your progress with them. This should be someone you trust, obviously, and are comfortable bringing into your creative space (figurative or literal). An "upgraded" (though not always accessible) version of it would be to partner up with a body double - find someone who'll do the same thing for an x amount of time you'll agree on. If you can physically do it together it might be the most effective (if you don't distract each other, that is), but I find that doing it virtually really helps too.

Most importantly though, don't despair. Just from this thread you can see a lot of us struggle with this, and sometimes our brains just don't do what we want them to do. Be kind to yourself, take breaks as needed, and remember that small bouts of progress lead to significant one. You got this.

[TAMAnnoying]

I don't know how much my advice can help you cause ADHD is a real self discovery kind of thing to know what's gonna work for you. Some people just want to use the medication and it works for them. But some people like me can't do the medication cause of heart murmurs so in senior year I had to quit my meds cold turkey and BOY was that a fucking trip.

I've since become a bit of a workaholic which I believe is just as bad of an extreme so I'm also gonna tell you that my tips often involve FORCEING myself to relax as well as work

Adhd differs from person to person but I personally need a lot of noise in the background to help me work. I will put on a playlist of music I love or I'll put on YouTube videos. The videos that have been helping me lately are ones where people review TV shows. Lately I've been watching a lot of people talk about Velma so because the subject is the same I don't HAVE to pay close attention cause I'm already aware of the same subject matter so as not to be distracted with new information. Hell sometimes I'll avoid YouTubers I like listening to because the thing theire reviewing is not something I'm familiar with so my brain will feel the need to pay attention to what they're saying rather then the thing in trying to work on.

Timers are a tricky thing as I've seen maybe people already stated. Timers seem to work for most people but for me I tend to start to develop a negative correlation with them. Did duo lingo and a "don't break the chain" timer once and I had it play to the sailor moon theme- I knew I had to stop using timers when I started to despise hearing the theme .

Instead of timers I often just use my own boy or my dogs as timers instead- if I'm hungry I go take a break and eat. If the dogs are crying it's time to take a break and go for a walk. During these brakes I can ask myself "should I keep working on my comic or start doing video games?" The revers can also be true. If I've been playing video games all day and Its time for a walk I usually talk myself up for working on art once I get back.

Again this is coming from someone who has become a workaholic because of my ADHD but this advice is still important - it is ok if you are NOT productive some days. Even tho you COULD have gone on a jog or COULD have don't three more panels of your comic. It is fine to have a day where you didn't actually do anything productive- infact sometimes having a non productive day can help you be more productive during the week.

Hope any of that helps but there's a lot of tips in the thread. Say safe!

[VibrantFox]

i'm only self dx'd (since finding a start point and knowing the cost is a big concern) but it honestly may not just be procrastination but an issue with executive function, something that i'd only managed to learn about when more adhd info and resources started popping up and i started to do more research to understand

starting tasks is something i still struggle with but if i can narrow down why my brain doesn't want to it gets a little bit easier to adjust. for example if it's because i feel like there's no reward to completing a task i try to come up with my own (i.e finish this and we can buy something or complete this and we can have a sweet). Stuff like that's been especially good for me at least since it helps to build a positive reinforcement for doing necessary tasks (especially if i know i'm not gonna get it elsewhere)

then i think the big one is when i've got to complete large tasks finding ways to break them up makes it easier to tackle. like i work a retail stock job and the biggest challenge sometimes can be knowing where to start (as well as handling when i get "sidetracked" from a primary task to complete a secondary one being introduced (which is usually stock checks from the sales floor associates). but coming back to breaking things up the whole point of the position is cataloging and organizing so if i've got a box of clothes to put back i'll usually start by organizing where things go between stock rooms, then sorting those items for one room by style, then by color and then by size. i won't deny it was really hard at the start and i got overwhelmed a lot at the start to the point i'd have to stop breathe for a minute then come back but after a while i finally managed to adjust. there's definitely still days where it's tough but i do what i can to manage emotions and push through a task especially since any time lost is money too

i honestly really only managed to get a good grasp on things again thanks to research (when i was able to even do that) and useful resources. like a personal favorite person i like to look to is Pina Varnel and her ADHD Alien comics which there's a good chunk of them organized in their pin but one that comes to mind on executive function specifically was this one

https://twitter.com/ADHD_Alien/status/1584921545507573761

that like someone mentioned but sometimes you really can't force yourself no matter how hard you try but the key is to be patient with yourself

[theyrebothakilogram]

Hello everybody! Thank you so much for all your advice it really helps a lot. I've decided to break up my homework sets into little pieces so that I only have to focus on small pieces at a time. (light blue are individual problems)

I'm also going to try an have more defined hours for when I work on schoolwork vs comic vs relaxing. Hopefully I'll be able to get most of my schoolwork done while I'm at school so that when I'm at home I can work on my comic since I lose processing power at the night goes on. I also plan to set a timer so that when I take little 'social media breaks' I don't get lost doom scrolling forever. Once again thank you everyone for input, and your kind words! And here's hoping that I'll be able to stick to my plan!

[XiuLyn_12]

In my experience, making a to-do list helps quite a lot.
If you have a calendar on your working table, try writing down your "today to-do list."
Don't squeeze too much, though. It just needs to be a reasonable amount you can accomplish. I find the feeling of accomplishing something very rewarding.
Wishing all the best to you!!

[system]

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