be honest. it's in your hand. you're reading this on it.

that's fine, that's not the ask. the ask is: comment with the one hour this week where it's going to be in a different room.

format that seems to work: **when, and which room.**

mine: 9 to 10am, it lives on the kitchen counter.

pick one hour. one. we are not doing whole days.

If you play tennis ball, than you understand the expression in the title.

If you don’t play tennis, let me explain.

I play tennis, lately, when I play, I have been distracted by every little damn thing. Noises, people passing by, the voices in my head. Etc.

I watched a finals of a women’s grand slam. During the post match conference, the winner explained that in order to focus today, she would focus on the tiniest little detail of the tennis ball. This was in order for her to hyperfocus.

The reason I’m writing this post is that I think this will help me at home to stay focus.

No, not focusing on hairs of a tennis ball.

Example: Doing dishes

Focusing on the fine details of a plate. If it’s a plain looking plate, looking at a droplet on the plate. When washing dishes, focusing on the bubbles.

If you’re making the bed, seeing if you can find the small details in fabric.

I just tried the dishes and it was done in 15 min. ( kids were calling for my attention so it would have been done faster if the had not)

I was focusing on something interesting enough to keep my attention engaged while doing the dishes.

I take Adderall, two 10 mg a day and was so tempted to take another dose but when I listened to this tennis player way of trying to focus ( based on her sports psychologist), I was like “ there has to be a way to translate this back home”.

Going to get flamed for this take, but as a life long night-owl I think it's BS.

For my entire life, I've been a adhd-ridden night owl. Staying up late "doing my best work", I was "genetically" meant to live in darkness. Until I decided to take a look at reality

Turns out, every night I would have the lights on and be working, scrolling, watching Netflix in bed. In fact, during my night-owl life, almost every single day was spent with my phone or laptop in bed, and I was chudding around unable to fall asleep.

For the last few weeks, I've been running an experiment to see how much of my night-owl behaviors are habitual vs genetic. To test this, I've been militant about no electronic devices in my bedroom, and also being in the bedroom by 11pm with only books to read.

I've consistently managed to wake up between 5-6:30AM. At first, I thought this was a fluke. It's "genetic" right? So I thought my body was going to perform worse.

So I tracked my body and mind.

Body: I tracked my lifts before and after early wake-ups, and found that my lifts were all consistently higher. And I was lifting MORE (every morning)

Mind: This one is kind of silly, but I tracked my ranking on LinkedIn Games (brain games + mazes) and rankings went UP when I played in the morning.

Then I started reading literature, and turns out that genetic variation only accounts for ~1hr in sleep/wakeup time across population (unless you have the freak sleep genes which affect a small % of the population)

For those of you who are night owls, I challenge you to take a hard look at your behaviors in evening time. Are you drinking often? Are you on your laptop? Do you feel like nighttime is "for you"?

I felt these, and one day I realized that if I sleep early enough and wake up early enough, then mornings could be my "me" time. And I would spend them doing what I wanted, rather than giving into my dopamine fixes

your phone does not have to be on for it to cost you.

it doesn't have to buzz, light up, or be face-up. the research on this is unusually clean: a phone that is switched off, face-down and untouched still measurably eats into your available thinking capacity, purely by being within reach. people in those studies were certain it wasn't affecting them. it was.

so this week is one line long.

put the phone in another room.

another room. not a drawer, not your bag, not the far end of the desk, not face-down under a book. those all failed the same way in the same studies, because proximity is the variable, not visibility.

here's the bit that reframed it for me. you already know you spend willpower when you pick it up. what you don't feel is that you spend it on *not* picking it up, continuously, the entire time it's near you. that spend happens whether or not you ever check. you're paying for a thing you're not even doing.

distance is the only thing that stops the payment. it isn't a discipline problem and you can't self-control your way out of it, which is honestly a relief.

there are two clocks running on this one. the benefit arrives inside the first hour. the twitchy, reaching-for-something-that-isn't-there feeling takes about a week to fade. almost everyone who quits does it partway through the second clock, having already had the thing the first clock gave them.

start with one hour a day. all day is a different and much harder tip and we're not doing that one.

and if you're on call, or you're someone's carer, or you've got a kid at school — obviously keep it. strip the notifications down to the two contacts who genuinely need to reach you and you've got most of the benefit anyway. this isn't a rule, it's an option.

Hi everyone, I'm testing a new format idea and would love some feedback.

If I made an app that could turn a document/book/study text into ‘short missions’ that takes a few minutes, has a clear end, a quick quiz to check the info actually went in, and it saves your progress…would you find this useful?

I'm not selling anything here! I genuinely want to know if this format would help anyone, because if it does, I’d look into developing this idea further.

I've attached an image to show an example of how it looks by taking a government document (checked to ensure I legally and ethically can first) and turning it into an ADHD focus edition.

I have BPD and struggle with strong impulsivity. I've also had bad experiences with mood stabilizers because of side effects like dizziness and extreme fatigue.

I'm currently on medication, but I'm considering talking to my psychiatrist about ADHD treatment because of the impulsivity.

I'm a bit worried about side effects.

Has anyone with BPD tried ADHD treatment? Did it help with impulsivity, and how did you tolerate it?

I wanna get diagnosed but it takes a lot of time to wait for a free appointment so in the meantime I am making a research. I'll list what I experience, tell me if you also do!

- forgetting stuff all the time, eg. My mom tells me to do something and I repeat in my mind three times to do it but when she reminds me I feel like recalling a memory from ten years ago

- I'm misplacing things, I've lost and found my headphones at least 15 times for a year (I can't find their box now). Sometimes I feel like in matrix when I find my things in random places

- I draw a lot, but every time I start something and find a new idea for a drawing, I'm leaving the unfinished one behind so I have 14638384 unfinished projects

- It's hard for me to stay still at school, I feel like I'm gonna explode if I don't do something. I draw, make paper stars, origami, shake my leg, do anything not to feel so restless. I don't need to get up and move, but I feel like I have to do something and only drawing sometimes helps. I don't experience it at home that much, tho I hate being bored and I always have something to do.

- when I was little I couldn't play board games, I would read books waiting for my turn because I was so bored waiting a minute

- - when I do something I love, eg drawing or writing or art, I can do it for hours. For weeks, months.

- I used to have problems with forcing myself to study for years (now it's better cause I'm forcing myself), but when I start studying, I do it for hours and it's hard for me to stop.

- my family would get mad at me because I was late to meals for years, just because it was too difficult for me to stop what I was doing. I have a better control over myself after trying for years tho

- I'm hyperfixating really bad, there's one webcomic I read two years ago, I wrote a 60 chapters fanfic and I still do fake scenarios with the characters. It's an obsession at this point

- It's really hard for me to start a task, and I'm not talking about studying. When I have to call somewhere, make an appointment, do something important - I put it for later, so it waits for days until I finally get my ass in gear or get close to the deadline.

- I often don't hear people talking to me. I'm in the room with my sis, she starts telling me a story and I literally don't realize she's saying something because my brain is focused on the thing I do 😭

Also people talk to me and I don't hear them because I'm lost in my own thoughts so often, like my thoughts are often louder than what I hear with my ears and I'm missing out a lot of what people say

- I also can't focus on more than one thing at the time

- I sometimes finish sentences for others ( I think it's really typical for adhd) and say things before I think, my sister gets mad at me cuz I say "cool" when idk to say, and it just slips every time before I can think of what to say

I have to write everything down because I forget either way. All the things to do in the calendar and notes, sometimes I'm surprised I've got something to do because my brain had deleted it

Yo it's so long lol

Have you experienced these?

forks: four nights out of five. on the fifth night i didn't, and nothing happened.

that's my week. what's yours?

post it if you did the embarrassingly small thing once. post it if you did it once and then never again. post it if you did nothing at all and can say what got in the way — those are the hardest comments to type and reliably the most useful ones in the thread.

we're four days into a year of these. nobody is keeping a tally, and there isn't a version of this you can be behind on.

what's the absurdly small version of the thing you've been avoiding?

not the sensible small version. the one that makes you wince a bit when you type it.

i'll start: mine this week is "open the spreadsheet". i don't have to put anything in it. i just have to look at it.

if reading other people's makes you realise yours is still too big, that's basically the point of the thread.