I remember a few years back, after I finished my university exams (which were online), I was desperate for a break from a screen, but all of the things I would do to chill out from exams (namely, spending time with friends) was mediated by a screen.
I know it can be really difficult to listen to the advice to “turn off all distractions” when I need to interact with technology in order to do most things besides my martial arts and spending time with my partner. I also rarely keep to a habit or just reducing something, I need to replace it with something that pushes me to do something else which isn’t easy.
Something that I’ve found useful is finding ways of leveraging inertia[1]. A big part of this is using separate devices for different things. Some people find it useful to have a clear divide between work devices and personal, but that’s never worked for me, I tend to separate contexts. I’m getting too abstract, so I’ll bring it back with a few concrete examples:
If I decide to take a break and do something fun on my laptop, I might sit somewhere out of reach of my charger, which limits me to around 2 hours of battery life. If I have to get up to put my laptop on charge, I find it easier to change task back to working if I’m already up.
If I am gaming on my PC and want to wrap that up but am at risk of a “just 10 more minutes”, I might order takeout (if I remember to eat), because that’s another forced stop to my task and when I’m up, it’s much easier to honestly ask “is gaming what I want/need to be doing right now” than it is when I’m mid-game
If a friend I want to reply to has messaged me when I need to work, I may make myself reply to them from my main computer at my desk, because I’m less likely to get stuck doomscrolling on my phone in bed in that world.
Inertia definition below, in case you or anyone else reading this are unfamiliar with it in this context:
[1]: a term borrowed from physics, which means basically the same in the neurodivergent context as it does in physics: an object in rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion, UNLESS acted on by an outside force. In an ADHD sense, this captures some aspects of task switching; procrastination and task activation; hyper focusing and cycles where you do lots and then crash.
I remember a few years back, after I finished my university exams (which were online), I was desperate for a break from a screen, but all of the things I would do to chill out from exams (namely, spending time with friends) was mediated by a screen.
I know it can be really difficult to listen to the advice to “turn off all distractions” when I need to interact with technology in order to do most things besides my martial arts and spending time with my partner. I also rarely keep to a habit or just reducing something, I need to replace it with something that pushes me to do something else which isn’t easy.
Something that I’ve found useful is finding ways of leveraging inertia[1]. A big part of this is using separate devices for different things. Some people find it useful to have a clear divide between work devices and personal, but that’s never worked for me, I tend to separate contexts. I’m getting too abstract, so I’ll bring it back with a few concrete examples:
If I decide to take a break and do something fun on my laptop, I might sit somewhere out of reach of my charger, which limits me to around 2 hours of battery life. If I have to get up to put my laptop on charge, I find it easier to change task back to working if I’m already up.
If I am gaming on my PC and want to wrap that up but am at risk of a “just 10 more minutes”, I might order takeout (if I remember to eat), because that’s another forced stop to my task and when I’m up, it’s much easier to honestly ask “is gaming what I want/need to be doing right now” than it is when I’m mid-game
If a friend I want to reply to has messaged me when I need to work, I may make myself reply to them from my main computer at my desk, because I’m less likely to get stuck doomscrolling on my phone in bed in that world.
Inertia definition below, in case you or anyone else reading this are unfamiliar with it in this context: [1]: a term borrowed from physics, which means basically the same in the neurodivergent context as it does in physics: an object in rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion, UNLESS acted on by an outside force. In an ADHD sense, this captures some aspects of task switching; procrastination and task activation; hyper focusing and cycles where you do lots and then crash.
1 ↩︎