I work from home, and I have to use lots of methods. Then it works.

Just two examples:

• I always have to work strictly with todo-lists. When it’s not on a list, it’s not getting done. On the other hand, putting it on the list, rather than doing it, feels like 55 % of the mental effort.

• Implementation intention: My brain takes offence to “must do now” orders. Instead, when I catch myself on a youtube/scrolling binge, I set a trigger (e. g. time, end of video) at which I do one item from the list. If there is no list, I write the list. That way, I get to continue enjoying for a bit longer, but now guilt-free (!), and can continue guilt-free after doing that one thing.

I think the big picture is huge and not entirely known. One angle: A cause of ADHD is a bad gut biome. This may also affect the bioavailability of micronutrients, thus leading the deficiencies. Compensating for that by taking more, with supplements, could help with additional symptoms.

Long before I had a diagnosis or meds, I had some good runs, few years even, and even back then, I saw the link to certain foods. When fixing multiple problems at the same time, the effect was enormous.

Some caffeine, but well distributed, as a poor man’s stimulant, combined with drinking a lot, very specific foods … I think it was a mix of “medication”, hydration, gut biome (low sugar, probiotic foods) and fixing multiple deficiencies at the same time. When that extra energy results in more physical activity, additional amplification happens.

So yes, I believe that multi-vector attacks on your health problems work in synergy, better than the sum of their parts.

As for iron specifically, a lot can be done wrong. What I recall: Best in the morning before first coffee / tee and some time in-between, with Vitamin C. Personally, I can’t stomach it, so I got to ignore that rule and just take it with the biggest meal.

What works best for me is to focus on what I CAN fully control. Taking a hike and having fun is overwhelming, because who knows how I will feel. On the other hand, making the plan to eat my lunch sandwich at the lake (hiking destination) is totally doable.

When there is no list and the weekend starts, I work with implementation intention: Totally do keep scrolling until time X, then make the todo-list, then back to scrolling. Next thing would be to do ONE item from the list at time Y.

It’s similar with the “plan” to sleep at midnight. Better: By midnight, I’ll be setup perfectly so that I could sleep, the rest is not my job: Pyjamas, teeth brushed, room temperature, bed ready. Sometimes that leads to sleep, sometimes it doesn’t, but better than when I don’t even give it a chance, or when I feel pressure to fall asleep.

Oh, he might be me. 1 also applies to 2: Don’t see “dentist” as this complex task that is about figuring out what to do, getting the money, getting it done.

Focus on one thing: Get a quick cheap appointment for a first assessment. Typically 10 - 20 minutes, I think, unless he does same day x-ray.

OP would feel like a million bucks when he walks out and has a first idea how how extensive the work will be. When I was in that situation, I was sure it would be horrific, like many pulled teeth, expensive dentures. In reality, there were just lots of discolourations and 5 cavities, which is not great, but so much better than I thought. And it’s likely that my case is already near worst-case, because with anything more, there’d be enormous pain and infections.

If dentist anxiety is involved, first step is to find a dentist who specialises in that. Like, when you first come, he’d have a talk in the office, not the dentist chair, and only if you feel like it, he’d have a look based on your limits (e. g. no instruments in mouth, not on the dentist chair, etc.).

Yes, the anxiety, guilt, pressure that gets it done eventually in a panic frenzy, when the adrenaline kicks in. It was not a good life, though.

For my son, I don’t want that, I want to be understanding that he might have a dopamine/noradrenaline imbalance that would make it disproportionately cruel to force him to clean his room right now. (He’s getting checked, of course, but in the meantime got to take my best guess.)

But the result is that he does not get even priority tasks done, sometimes.

I’m sure I can find a different way for him, starting with getting him checked. Some methods also work for him. E. g.: Don’t have to do it right now, but when it’s 5 p.m. / the video is done / whatever, set a stopwatch and do 10 minutes of cleaning. Or, since he can’t find where to start, do one thing: All garbage into a bag, or all toys into the box, or all dirty clothes into the wash.

Don’t get your anxiety back, find a different way for yourself.

A lot can be learnt, as I did for decades. Always obsessed to try all the various methods, and enough of them work for me, to a degree.

But I think when it has gone to the point, there is more to it. In my case, it was the ADHD. My brain did not follow through with the plan to start doing the task, always had to push through some inner “pain”, and that is not pleasant. For others, it might be depression. So I had a lot of pain just to do the highest priorities barely good enough, while a normal brain would do it all without the effort, and kick in sweet dopamine rewards after each task.

Most important is to not get hung up on some image of what you “should” do. See if you are capable of improving yourself for 15 minutes per day, exact, with a stopwatch.

A first 15 minute session might just be a best effort of assembling study material.

Then see how it goes: Can you learn something new during that time? If so, you can do it, and it’s just a matter of time.

What motivates me is that after those 15 minutes I’ll be smarter than I have ever been before. You can also do 25 minutes if you feel it.

I have done great at times, long ago, to study something new. Most times it didn’t work out, though. One of my most toxic thoughts is: I should basically know this and it shouldn’t take long, I’ll just skim through the material. No, real progress happens when I set aside a brief moment to learn just this one little basic thing, but for real, with taking notes, practising if applicable. Turn that into a daily habit, and it’s really powerful.

I even had a referral from my GP to get checked for ADHD, after asking him specifically, but still no appointments. I would have taken one in a year, but not even that.

Another 15 months later, I found a private practice that specialises in it. They are running it pretty smart, like a business: Psychology graduates without therapist training do the time intensive work of testing and talking, eventually write an expert assessment as a psychologist. Then a licensed therapist writes the official diagnosis after reading that and talking for 15 minutes. If needed, a psychiatrist finally just signs the prescription.

Bit frustrating to pay for all of that out of pocket, while insurance premiums are over EUR 900 per month.

It’s going a lot better so far for my elementary school child. Called the best looking clinic, which has psychiatrists and therapists, and got an appointment in 3 months. Didn’t bother trying for something sooner, as 3 months wasted seem like nothing compared to my over 30 years, lol.

How similar the life stories are. Maybe your depression diagnosis is just wrong, result of a line of questioning that caught problems caused by ADHD.

Different for me is that I had some good years where one aspect worked out great, e. g. 4 great years of education around 30 out of nowhere, after so many previous attempts failed. A few years of healthy relationships and even marriage, before it all fell apart again. I am still able to draw a lot from skills learnt during those 4 years.

Still no clue where those “good years” come from and where they went, just hoping that now, with treatment, it’s all going to be good years, at least in terms of ADHD.

This is SO insane. I wonder in my case how something could have been done sooner. The suffering has been going on undiagnosed and untreated for at least 35 years.

One thing that would have helped is if either a teacher or my parent who is a teacher would have been like: Ok, maybe 5 % chance of attention disorder, check it out please.

Sometimes, I suspect that a teacher got it and reported it to my parents, who angrily rejected it. There was a weird conflict between them and a teacher that made no sense, because I got along with that teacher, and what little I got was him “talking shit”, yet he was the most thoughtful and scientific of them.

Another option: Just do a “full checkup” on people starting early in life, even for things where no indication has been reported. The vicious cycle of doctor visits: Patient comes, reports symptom -> questions -> tests -> whatever going on in their minds -> diagnosis. It doesn’t work, at all. I feel like overall, a lot of money would be saved in the global economy (nobody cares for saved suffering anyway) if the procedure for things were: Doctor attempts treatment if it seems simple just once, if it fails, go full Doctor House. Might overall save money. All the negative findings from this would be a goldmine of information, and saved money, for 1 or 2 decades of doctor visits.

For ADHD, why doesn’t everybody do a multiple choice test, not wasting any trained professional’s time if it is clearly very negative? Further steps only if it is not very clearly negative.

And at some point, after decades of this, they pick up on what it caused, rather than the ADHD itself. The result of other people and yourself telling you that you are just an assclown who can’t handle your own household, appointments, education, job.

In hindsight, the earliest that I presented something to a doctor that should have lead to ADHD, if investigated with full force, were gut / digestion problems in the 90s. 2000s, I came to a doctor for a sick note as things at a crappy workplace got “too much”, got benzos, which helped through the worst. I often used the “too much” phrase over the next 2 decades, usually met with benzos or “can’t really do anything with that phrase”.

They study so long, shouldn’t there be question techniques that get to the bottom of things? Even with a psychiatrist, when I said really clearly what was going on from my perspective, they were like: Wow, that doesn’t help at all, can’t do anything with that information. The way things are, you have to self-diagnose, then find out how to nudge them in the right direction by saying the right things.

Well 60 mg is still not stronger than a fat line of speed, which people usually survive, and you have the extra benefit that they checked you for heart and other problems that would change the odds.

Consider that the half-life is long, so 24h later, you’d still have the equivalent of 1/4 of the extra 30 mg, so you should take about 7 mg less, which would be about 23 mg. NAM (not a mathematician).

Erectile Dysfunction?

Dude, that’s me on meds, fully cured. Need more unused cables, 3 keyboards (although there are only 2 computers), the old broken mouse, hand lotion, tooth picks, several old food wrappings / jars, important letters all in between, a folding rule, dental floss (where the heck DO you even floss?), mosquito spray, new envelopes, masks, used envelopes with “important” hand-written notes, several pens half of which work, expired credit / insurance cards, vitamins, Covid tests and test wrappers, where is your cup and glass for water?, ironically a duster, 1 extra 1st gen TFT screen from 1999 that’s not attached to anything, who knows what’s underneath.

Could also be that in times of remission, we take on more challenges: Start dating again, get pregnant, challenging new job to pay for it all. Or challenging career change, get a degree, get training.

And that would not be newsworthy at all.

I think it’s not that crazy: It also increases dopamine and noradrenaline in other parts of the brain, too, so in higher doses, it would be a “great” recreational drug, similar to speed. The brain quickly adjusts to the relatively small dose, so it doesn’t feel like a recreational drug any more (unless a lot more is taken), and only the prefrontal cortex still “benefits” from the increased levels of dopamine and noradrenaline, as intended.

So, the initial high is not the intended effect, just a pleasant side effect, and always fades. Otherwise, we could all happily live on recreational drugs all day.

The numbing effect on the emotions, on the other hand, could be the INTENDED effect, just way too strong. Need to take much less, for some people even as low as 5 mg.

So you might have gotten the intended effect and the side effect mixed up: You don’t want the initial 2 week high, you do want the numbing, but much less of it.

That is my VERY limited layman understanding, certainly at least partially wrong. Maybe it’s also hilariously wrong, who knows.

It’s compatible with benzos, so for rare occurrences, like a few times per year, that’s an option.

In my particular case, a magnesium deficit had been missed for a very long time.

Great list! I use a plain txt file that I started about 25 years ago for notes, now 28,000 lines. It used to contain even all passwords, until password managers became a good option.

Indeed, I programmed in vim only, until IDEs just got too good. Still using it for everything else to this day. I’ve been thinking to get Neovim, but it doesn’t seem essential when I stick with IDEs for programming.

I tried Eclipse way back around 2004, but found the advantages not sufficient to make do with a crappy editor. Years after that, IntelliJ IDEA just got too good to miss out on, though. It also had the feature that is essential for me to understand anything: To search for an action rather than click through & stare at endless menus.

Stainless steel for me, too. For most dishes, sticking isn’t much of an issue, and where it’s a bit harder, such as sunny side up eggs, I rather have that little challenge than to deal with cast iron. Or non-stick, which scratch and poison the entire family if I ever pet it with the wrong side of the sponge.

Btw, it actually was kind of complex:

• have a small, 0-installation one delivered
• many pain points, though: 5 litres have to be filled in at the top slowly and painfully, and it can just hold plates, bowls and glasses for 2 people. still doing pods and pans by hand
• to fix the first pain point, got a water tank with a tap. there is mould every 3 - 5 months though from the constant moist at the bottom that doesn’t pour out completely
• after that one broke, finally got a “real” one delivered
• the delivery guys were not able to install it, although that was part of the package
• I did my own research how to do it properly, measured stuff, ordered parts and did it myself. They should really bring a variety of parts and adapters, even at inflated prices, when they deliver!
• happily ever after