I Desperately Need Help

I have a lot of trouble focusing on school (I am a sophomore in high-school). Some tell me it is ADD or ADHD and I have a little of that (everyone does) but this is different. I have tried both ritalin and adderol and while they help they don't get to the base of the problem so they can't solve it. Basically I can't do my work. Well, I am fully capable of doing it but I have a kind of super-procrastination problem. I just think "oh, I'll do it in a minute". Boom, 5 hours have gone by, and I haven't gotten anything done. Then it just gets worse until I need to make a last-ditch effort and barely save myself from getting an F. However, when am able to do it I always get A's. The problem is, the only time this problem goes away is when I get really pumped up and motivated, which never lasts for more than a week or two. Like I will get a rush of motivation and do really well for a week and then mess up again.

I REALLY need a way besides sheer motivation to deal with this. It seems to just erode my willpower. I was absolutely determined today to do my math the instant I got home, but then I put it off and I still haven't finished it. All it took was the one "just a minute" and it was all over.

Someone please help me this problem is basically ruining my life. I get bad grades, then depression, then absolute drain of motivation, worse grades, more depression, etc. It is a snowballing cycle and it will kill me if I can't stop it. Last year I had it and I had an unshakable depression, all I wanted to do was die. Fortunately I am mentally healthy now, but that is only because I spent a long time in the wilderness and it cured me. Also, school started a few weeks ago, and the cycle started shortly after. I will soon reach this stage again if I can't stop the cycle. Please help.

First of all, you need to calm down a bit, take a few breaths. As soon as you start getting desperate it's game over. Remember, it's always better to stop right were you are whenever you feel you're getting off track, and evaluate your current situation. What's important here is to notice that you didn't get to where you're at by mere chance. Note that your procrastinating problem was developed over time and has grown out to become a very stable habit which you naturally relate to. We've all been there, believe me, it's like you know that what you're doing isn't helping you yet you can't stop doing it. That's only natural, a habit isn't something that's easy to change out of thin air. It took you a great amount of time to build it, so note it's going to take an equal amount of it to replace it. That's the beauty of it, because if you alone got yourself into that procrastinating habit, then you alone can get out of it. You and only you can change all this for the better, it all lies with what you do or stop doing.

The way I see it, based on personal experience, is that the mind loves what it's used to doing, it resists change at all costs. If you try to change any habit by jumping over it, then 99% of the time you'll find yourself back in square one, with little to no progress being made, the mind is really that powerful. The trick here is to ease the change slowly, so as to make it almost imperceptible for the mind to notice. You'll want to keep a challenge that may allow for some resistance by the mind, yet not strong enough that you can't handle. Note that motivation alone isn't going to work for this. Action is needed, you need to DO something if you want to change this habit.

So, lets start at the absolute worst situation you could be in: you get home and you don't spend a single minute doing any of the work you've been left to do for school. What I recommend then is that you devote at least 30 minutes to DO your work. It's 30 minutes, it's that easy, that simple, piece of cake. Or, if you find it too easy, then go for the hour, but keep it simple, keep it as something that's easy for you to handle without much effort. You do this for 25-30 days, and you'll see yourself becoming naturally more and more comfortable with devoting the 30 min. doing your school work. After the 30 days, you increase the challenge. So, in this case, if you started with 30 min. then the next month you go for the hour. If you started with the hour, then the 2 hour mark is your goal. You do this again for 25-30 days, then increase the challenge. Before you know it, you'll suddenly find yourself devoting up to 3-4 hours (or more hours if that's what you want) to the completion of any school work you have. A new habit will have been born into you.

It's amazing how the mind gets around simple tasks like this. It 'thinks' the activity is too easy; it's only 30 minutes of work, the mind can afford to 'waste' 30 minutes doing something productive. Yet, if you keep with the practice the mind will suddenly find itself devoting more and more time doing something which it least 'expected' doing. Then, what was naturally habitual for it (procrastination) has now changed (whichever new habit you wanted to develop).

A word of caution though, the most important, the most fundamental aspect to reaching anything is action. You must DO something different if you want to CHANGE something. It only works one way. Thinking about it is of no help in this situations. In fact, do not think about your problem or anything related to it when attempting to change. Just do, doing is what's important in here. Make this the most important thing for you as soon as you get home. It's the first thing that you do, nothing else. Also, if you decide to do this, then notice that starting a new habit, changing, is the most difficult thing. It's that initial period where you'll feel the greatest challenge. The 30 min. or an hour of practice might appear to be easy in paper, yet it's something obviously easier said than done. But press on, and persist with the practice. If you manage to persist, if you continue moving, continue doing, then you'll soon find yourself breaking through and into a much more comfortable state with what you're doing. After that initial period of challenge, it only gets easier from there.

Hope this helps.

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Originally Posted by Avian

I have a lot of trouble focusing on school (I am a sophomore in high-school). Some tell me it is ADD or ADHD and I have a little of that (everyone does) but this is different. I have tried both ritalin and adderol and while they help they don't get to the base of the problem so they can't solve it. Basically I can't do my work. Well, I am fully capable of doing it but I have a kind of super-procrastination problem. I just think "oh, I'll do it in a minute". Boom, 5 hours have gone by, and I haven't gotten anything done. Then it just gets worse until I need to make a last-ditch effort and barely save myself from getting an F. However, when am able to do it I always get A's. The problem is, the only time this problem goes away is when I get really pumped up and motivated, which never lasts for more than a week or two. Like I will get a rush of motivation and do really well for a week and then mess up again.

I REALLY need a way besides sheer motivation to deal with this. It seems to just erode my willpower. I was absolutely determined today to do my math the instant I got home, but then I put it off and I still haven't finished it. All it took was the one "just a minute" and it was all over.

Someone please help me this problem is basically ruining my life. I get bad grades, then depression, then absolute drain of motivation, worse grades, more depression, etc. It is a snowballing cycle and it will kill me if I can't stop it. Last year I had it and I had an unshakable depression, all I wanted to do was die. Fortunately I am mentally healthy now, but that is only because I spent a long time in the wilderness and it cured me. Also, school started a few weeks ago, and the cycle started shortly after. I will soon reach this stage again if I can't stop the cycle. Please help.

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You sound just like me, a replica, haha. No worries, you are normal, and you'll make it through this. Take the time to ask yourself why you are in such a hurry, so emotionally strung out, so intense. You might have Asperger's Syndrome, I used to think I had it in my earlier days, but wrote it off as being an angsty teen hypochondriac who wanted something to be wrong. After going through a lot, and my mom being the same way, one day she showed me a link to an article that explained things. She thought I would dismiss what she said, but I fully agree. I was 13th in my class and I never tried hard in school a day in my life, I always procrastinated and sometimes got others to do my work for me. I lied, and swindled my way through school. The only reason I was such a good student was because I was an excellent test taker with a surprising intellect and an absolutely unquenchable thirst for knowledge (despite hating having to read books or being made to do anything I didn't want to do). I became very socially withdrawn in high school and and still managed to get good grades. People labelled me as a genius even though I felt I was a dumbass who made really stupid mistakes all the time. I remembered things my teachers told me despite halfway sleeping through class, every day was a painful regurgitation of what I had already been taught and nothing seemed to stimulate me intellectually. Then I got into drugs, music, and video games (well, I already like the last two my whole life, I was very adept at them and highly creative). I seemed to have knowledge just flat out gifted to me, as if I had been endowed with it. I felt that people were idiots for not being able to remember things or get why things worked. How could they be so stupid?

Well, after some really rough life experiences and heavily under the influence of drugs and succumbing to my violent impulses and feeling the need to destroy things, I tried to make a life for myself in the military. I got kicked out for doing cocaine (what a shocker, right?) and went home feeling like a failure, having let everybody down. My life was in shambles, I was truly a mess. Retreating further into drugs and depression, I had to find out why I struggled to do the right thing so much, why I continued to live and why I didn't just kill everybody and myself already, putting an end to a temporary problem with a permanent solution. In my haste, disgust, apathy, and lack of direction, hopelessly misguided, I finally took too many drugs. The police were called, a veteran who was drugged the fuck out but otherwise was a good person and had everything going for him was making a really big mistake in his own home. I let them pin me down, they tranquilized me twice, and I was cuffed to a stretcher and then taken to a hospital. There, I was finally released and I was at home that night, sleeping like a babe. I was given a second chance even though I undeniably did not deserve it, being the ungrateful fuck-wad I was. Then I decided to move back to North Carolina, where I was stationed in the Army and where my best friend was about to get out. I decided it was time to live my own life and be a man. My parent's had taken me in after I had royally screwed up so much, I had to do what was right.

Still somewhat lost and confused, I got my own apartment and found my home. After taking even more drugs, I had an epiphany. I no longer wanted to kill myself or wanted to die. I was finally free from all the torment I had caused myself! I could do what I wanted and nobody could stop me, and I made it my life goal to help others who cannot help themselves, and try and show them how to live. You are not a bad person, you are just confused. Take the time to settle down, to work things out. You will find that life is a wonderful thing and you are a great person, so long as you forgive others and most importantly you forgive yourself. So go and live life to the fullest brother, and tell me how it feels to be free. Make your own choices, the past is in the past, and although it can hurt, the rest is history.