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executive dysfunction and laziness

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TheWingman
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16 Sep 2011, 8:21 am

you might have apathy wich is the opposite of flaw.

I have it too and it's very hard to get away with.



ZaannV
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16 Sep 2011, 8:26 am

Surfman wrote:
I'm as lazy as all hell

Its probably my main problem, but I'm too lazy to fight it. Sigh


lmfao i love this. completely the same ahaha


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16 Sep 2011, 8:43 am

Moog wrote:
I think I have both. One definitely exacerbates the other. I often don't do get around to doing things just because organising it will be such an effort. I can very easily procrastinate my life away.

Also, I appear to have a problem which may be related in that I seem to be utterly addicted to stimulation, which (at best) usually takes the form of intellectual pursuits. At worst it'll be some horrible, pointless but hooky videogame. I get lost for hours and hours in research, but taking 20 minutes to wash the dishes seems like a terribly burdensome ordeal. And when I'm doing things I don't want to do that I should be doing, I get the urge to go back to my stimulating thing. I'm kind of attempting to turn my mental stimulation addiction toward something useful that I can hopefully make a couple of bob doing.

It's a bit like being a crack addict, but instead of crack it's philosophy or psychology or something


I hear ya, bro-la. :D


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16 Sep 2011, 8:46 am

Yeah I run into this issue as well........though sometimes its not about being overwhelmed and not being able to figure out where to start, sometimes i just feel to depressed to bring myself to get stuff done. one of those things someone cannot really understand unless they have experianced it themselves.



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16 Sep 2011, 9:03 am

Aimless wrote:
I agree, although it feels like laziness.


Of course it does. When you feel this way, do people call you lazy? I got that a lot in relation to my school work, although I probably put more work into it than NT students, but never managed to get as far as they did with less offort. Even though I believed that crap because I heard it often enough, being lazy was pretty exhausting at times.

Most people don't bother with the moral or ethical complexity of understanding other people's behavior, and prefer to label it strictly via surface observations and shallow analysis - or they understand, but they don't care. It's much easier to lay down a moral judgment ("you're lazy") then understand and have compassion for the fact that you're dealing with cognitive issues that make a lot of things harder than they should be.



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16 Sep 2011, 9:52 am

Verdandi wrote:
Most people don't bother with the moral or ethical complexity of understanding other people's behavior, and prefer to label it strictly via surface observations and shallow analysis - or they understand, but they don't care. It's much easier to lay down a moral judgment ("you're lazy") then understand and have compassion for the fact that you're dealing with cognitive issues that make a lot of things harder than they should be.


Are you suggesting that these individuals are being--oh, I don't know--lazy?

And why should you say that "they don't care"--aren't you engaging in precisely the same behavior that you're complaining about here? Haven't you put the onus on yourself to "understand" the complex neurological processes that lie behind that behavior? Why aren't you explaining away their unsavory behavior with some kind of sterile-sounding neurological terminology?

:roll:



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16 Sep 2011, 10:21 am

Poke wrote:
Verdandi wrote:
Most people don't bother with the moral or ethical complexity of understanding other people's behavior, and prefer to label it strictly via surface observations and shallow analysis - or they understand, but they don't care. It's much easier to lay down a moral judgment ("you're lazy") then understand and have compassion for the fact that you're dealing with cognitive issues that make a lot of things harder than they should be.


Are you suggesting that these individuals are being--oh, I don't know--lazy?

And why should you say that "they don't care"--aren't you engaging in precisely the same behavior that you're complaining about here? Haven't you put the onus on yourself to "understand" the complex neurological processes that lie behind that behavior? Why aren't you explaining away their unsavory behavior with some kind of sterile-sounding neurological terminology?

:roll:


asshatitis?


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16 Sep 2011, 10:55 am

I used to struggle with sluggish cognitive tempo in my late teens and 20's.

(SCT is the epitome of "laziness.")

One thing I did with this lack in motivation was to force myself, or place my self, or to knuckle drag my self into a routine I didn't care about doing at the moment.
Eventually, I could get into the groove and have the ability to feel it, or sense it, to get the hang of thinking in it, to make it work.

It was slow at the start up, but hyperfocus envelopes you to eventually make it work. The irony is by the time you are done, you are at the peak of motivation, but now you can't get out of this new inertia that you started. The things that were done are now replaying in the mind over and over, in a continuous loop. It's a charged up state now. Sometimes this won't allow you to sleep.



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16 Sep 2011, 12:26 pm

Mdyar wrote:
I used to struggle with sluggish cognitive tempo in my late teens and 20's.

(SCT is the epitome of "laziness.")

One thing I did with this lack in motivation was to force myself, or place my self, or to knuckle drag my self into a routine I didn't care about doing at the moment.
Eventually, I could get into the groove and have the ability to feel it, or sense it, to get the hang of thinking in it, to make it work.

It was slow at the start up, but hyperfocus envelopes you to eventually make it work. The irony is by the time you are done, you are at the peak of motivation, but now you can't get out of this new inertia that you started. The things that were done are now replaying in the mind over and over, in a continuous loop. It's a charged up state now. Sometimes this won't allow you to sleep.


How did you put this struggle in the past tense?

I was very SCT in my mid-late teens, the symptoms are now less severe, but in no way can I consider my struggle with it over. (I am 42 now)

I really relate to the charged up state that will not allow you to sleep. In fact when I get into this state my mind seems to find another gear and I think much more clearly and efficiently - Instead of being zoned out on some random chatter like during the day, my sleep deprived thoughts are much more focused.



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16 Sep 2011, 12:27 pm

This messed my sleep up for years.


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16 Sep 2011, 12:44 pm

TheBrain wrote:
The best term that I have heard for it is "Analysis Paralysis" and yes I do it all the time in fact I'm am currently looking at a list of things that I have to do today, I'm two hours into my day and have yet to start a single task. It doesn't help, though, that I obsess about things and just spent about forty minutes doing research on autism and seizures, like I do every chance that I have. Why won't my brain just do things normally? I am very well versed in many things that no-one else wants to hear about. :wink:


I hate when that happens....I keep thinking about all the stuff I should have started on for college but I have still not even started, in two of my classes the only due date is the end of the semester so yeah now I feel like I have to write down each assignment and set up a scedule but that will probably just confuse me more. And thus I have yet to start on most of the assignments though the smart thing to do would be to do them as soon after they are assigned as I can. I have probably only done half of what I should have done.



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16 Sep 2011, 1:10 pm

BillyTheKid wrote:
Does anyone else have this problem? The only solution I have had that works is to make a list of everything I have to do, and physically strike them off once they are done. Otherwise, I just can't remember or get motivated at all.


Every...

single...

day.

Frankly I don't know anyone successful that doesn't use some kind of listing and scheduling system, regardless of whether they happen to have any memory or cognitive problems.

Simple lists don't work well for me though, unless I have some way of prioritizing things, otherwise I just go from top to bottom and many of the truly important things never get done. Especially the things I'm most disinclined to do. I had a great system a while back, and though I used it religiously and it helped a lot, I still couldn't seem to accomplish anything of long term importance. I managed to accomplish quite a few goals I had never been able to manage before, but nothing truly significant in terms of career or financial goals.

That was one of a few reasons I began to realize there was something else seriously wrong and eventually became diagnosed with PDD-NOS and ADD. I'm not saying lists and organizational systems don't work. You should use them. They are actually even more important if you have memory and/or motivational problems.

Actually, I don't believe motivation is usually the core problem. I really think habits are far more important. All the hooting, hollering and positive thinking in the world won't do you any good at all if you're habits aren't productive ones.


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16 Sep 2011, 1:13 pm

Aimless wrote:
Verdandi wrote:
League_Girl wrote:
Yes. I call myself lazy. I don't know if I have ED or not. I just get very forgetful and tend to procrastinate. I even have a hard time planning my routines to just do it. I keep telling myself "I'll do this later" and I forget. "I'll do this tomorrow" bam next day comes and I am like "I'll do it later," never happens.


That sounds pretty EDish.


I agree, although it feels like laziness.



But I do eventually get it done, it just takes a while or I have to really force myself to do it. I can still make it to my appointments when they have been scheduled.



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16 Sep 2011, 1:16 pm

The_Znof wrote:
Mdyar wrote:
I used to struggle with sluggish cognitive tempo in my late teens and 20's.

(SCT is the epitome of "laziness.")

One thing I did with this lack in motivation was to force myself, or place my self, or to knuckle drag my self into a routine I didn't care about doing at the moment.
Eventually, I could get into the groove and have the ability to feel it, or sense it, to get the hang of thinking in it, to make it work.

It was slow at the start up, but hyperfocus envelopes you to eventually make it work. The irony is by the time you are done, you are at the peak of motivation, but now you can't get out of this new inertia that you started. The things that were done are now replaying in the mind over and over, in a continuous loop. It's a charged up state now. Sometimes this won't allow you to sleep.


How did you put this struggle in the past tense?

I was very SCT in my mid-late teens, the symptoms are now less severe, but in no way can I consider my struggle with it over. (I am 42 now)

I really relate to the charged up state that will not allow you to sleep. In fact when I get into this state my mind seems to find another gear and I think much more clearly and efficiently - Instead of being zoned out on some random chatter like during the day, my sleep deprived thoughts are much more focused.


Some people completely outgrow it when mid life, as it is a developmental disorder, and the growth has a delayed presence. This is something I recently read in comments from a blog. What the sufferers described it was what exactly the experience I had--" Gawd awful."

I'd say the " laziness" amended to a lesser degree, as compared to my early years, not gone though, as you.

I used "ephedra" when legal. It would do the trick. This was before I knew I was ADHD. When ephedra was banned, I found "smart drugs" or Nootropics in my 30's.



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16 Sep 2011, 2:11 pm

Mdyar wrote:

Some people completely outgrow it when mid life, as it is a developmental disorder, and the growth has a delayed presence. This is something I recently read in comments from a blog. What the sufferers described it was what exactly the experience I had--" Gawd awful."

I'd say the " laziness" amended to a lesser degree, as compared to my early years, not gone though, as you.


I used "ephedra" when legal. It would do the trick. This was before I knew I was ADHD. When ephedra was banned, I found "smart drugs" or Nootropics in my 30's.



Thanks for the answer. Yes "Gawd awful" is right - teachers would accuse me of being on drugs when I wasn't :?

I was diagnosed ADHD-PI about a month ago by a psychologist, right now I am waiting to see a psychiatrist about meds. Was wondering about selegiline (l-deprenyl) and possibly asking about trying it first rather than going straight to traditional stims.

Have you tried it?



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16 Sep 2011, 2:14 pm

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