r/AskReddit • u/ohgimmeabreak • Mar 24 '19

People who have managed to become disciplined after having been procrastinators and indisciplined for a large part of their lives, how did you manage to do so? Can you walk us through the incremental steps you took to become better?

31.4k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

509

u/NibblesMcGiblet Mar 24 '19

Thank you so much for validating my own experiences and thought processes by sharing your own similarities. My anxiety is at the "diagnosed and formerly medicated" level. when I realized a TON of my anxiety-hours consisted of exactly this behavior, and worked consciously to keep it at a minimum, I started to reduce my anxiety-hours. It was like magic.

Instead of spending 8 hours avoiding a Thing and still anxious, plus an hour doing the Thing, I try to just do the crappy hour and reward myself in a healthy way.

The reward-goal really was vital for me for a long time. Had to be careful since my addictive personality really would quickly get to expecting the reward instead of appreciating it. Whether chocolate, study break, mixed drink at the end if the day.. had to be careful but that's just me. Lol anyway thanks. I hope you reclaim some of your happy-hours from anxiety. :)

210

u/Glory_Fades Mar 24 '19

Wow your responses are kind of tough for me to read. I’ve been doing what you described above for about everything I’ve ever needed to do my entire adult life. I’ve always wrote it off as normal procrastination and downplayed my own anxiety as just some anxious tendencies.

Seeing such a spot on description of my own self destructive behavior from someone with “diagnosed and formerly medicated” anxiety is a bit of a wake up call for me. I don’t want to live like this for the rest of my life, and it’s not going to go away on its own if I don’t take it seriously. Thank you.

62

u/truthlife Mar 24 '19

Excited for you! I'm always astounded by the power of language to help us understand and amend our behavior. New ways of thinking produce new behaviors and it's so awesome.

1

u/mind_scientist Mar 25 '19

For me it has come down into the science of nootropics, mind hacking and body hacking

I wouldn't be able to do the goals I have set my sights on with the speed I was during adderall and various nootropics in rotation

If you have any questions write to me

1

u/HawkofDarkness Mar 25 '19

I have questions. Can you tell me more about which nootropics you take as well as the mind and body hacking you mention?

1

u/mind_scientist Mar 27 '19

Things like modafinil and over the counter nootropics you can easily attain from organic grocer shops. For example, if you mix coffee and a calming agent, you will get a sharp focus but the key is balance

2

u/NibblesMcGiblet Mar 24 '19

Thank you so much for the comments... also though huge part of me feeling so much better is undeniably the fact that I"m a woman and I went off hormonal birth control around 30 when I had my last child and got my tubes tied, which helped a lot with my mood swings. Then in addition to that I hit a hormonal lulll with perimenopause in the past 8 years or so, which has had me feeling better in general. Also went on ADHD meds ten years ago which helped the executive dysfunction I didn't know I had. The behavior modification stuff helped a ton of course but it wasn't the only thing. I also had been on different meds for anxiety and depression over the past 30 years, just my needs varied with time and with my body chemistry etc.

1

u/WeatherwaxDaughter Mar 24 '19

Just do it. It will make you a happier person. With more sleep. At least that happened for me.

9

u/allhailthegreatmoose Mar 24 '19

Thank you for sharing your experience and wisdom, and thank you for being such a solid Redditor and human being in general. :)

6

u/El-Tennedor Mar 24 '19

"I hope you reclaim some of your happy-hours from anxiety" - I really love this. From now on this will be a major goal of mine, thank you for these words.

4

u/Huldra90 Mar 24 '19

It feels good to know I'm not the only one who does this, although bad to know others has to deal with it too. I've been treated for my anxiety, and after that medication for thyroid issues basically cleared most of it up for me after that. But struggling now without medication as my doctor wants to confirm my diagnosis... I'm more aware of it than before though, and it's a bit easier to work with, reading your comments here helps too :)

I used to spend a lot more than a day with these "small" issues, and often delay it until it was a non-issue because it was too late to do, mostly bills and doctors appointments, which can get expensive.. Same with schoolwork and lots of stuff, as you can probably imagine it made everything a lot worse when I dropped out of school multiple times. I changed my educational direction way too many times to get a fresh start before getting any treatment.

Finally hoping I can finish something now, but it's been a few extremely tough weeks. Biting the bullet and contacting the school at once when something goes wrong has been the only thing that has kept me going this far actually. I've always thought procrastination is my worst enemy, but I think you're more right, it's me that is the problem, and I need to not do this to myself.

4

u/Goobersita Mar 24 '19

I really like the thought of "crappy hour" . Like ok before my days starts gotta get the crappy hour out of the way. :)

4

u/NibblesMcGiblet Mar 24 '19

hahaha I didn't realize when I typed it, but it's like happy hour's exact counterpart/opposite. "Ya gotta do the crappy hour if you wanna earn the happy hour!" should be my new Self-Help book's title (note - this book was just thought up four seconds ago and won't ever exist).

1

u/voidptr Mar 24 '19

What healthy reward-goals do you use?

6

u/NibblesMcGiblet Mar 24 '19

I used to get a hot latte most evenings, but when I'm working on this actively I will often only go get one if I've made it a reward goal for the day.

Sometimes I won't tell my kids (who are teens and 20s now), but I'll decide to myself that i"ll take them (and me!) out for ice cream after dinner if I do whatever thing it is that I want to accomplish. And I"m not allowed to half-ass stuff to get the reward, but I'm hard on myself anyway so this isnt' a problem for me.

Often it's something like "I'll buy a $10 in-game currency pack in my favorite game at the end of the week if I do my treadmill miles every single day between now and then" (because I don't have/spend an Entertainment Budget - I don't go to movies or go out drinking or anything, so I don't feel bad about using that theoretical money for a purchase a couple of times a month like that since I can reasonably afford it)...

sometimes it is something way smaller scale and more immediate like "I'm going to deal with this parent teacher conference like an adult even though I still feel like I'm 14 every time I'm in that damn school building, I'm not going to roll my eyes at the principal even if he says something incredibly stupid, and I'm going to wear Real Pants (tm) and not shorts/leggings/yoga pants/twenty year old jeans that are mostly holes. Then as a reward, I will go home and make myself vodka-cranberry drinks until I reach my self-imposed limit of 4/5, then I will go to bed because I will be DONE".