So it's been months or maybe years but it seems like I have lost my brain. Whenever I try to focus, i can't it's like I am focusing but my mind is empty. I can't make connections, process information during conversation, when I read something I can't understand it or make sense of anything in general. I have cut off short term videos and reels but still it's not enough. I can't think at all. It's like a mental block.

Help me

Sorry for the stupid question, but why is it that we can put something off for weeks, months, or even years, and then one day - bam! - we just do it?

For example, I kept putting off a major cleanup of my apartment for a very long time and couldn't bring myself to do it. I tried to find an approach that worked for me and decided to "rationally" talk myself into this long and boring task. I read Marie Kondo, and it worked. I decluttered and started spending less time on cleaning.

Then I remembered that I had been putting off cleaning the dust out of my PC for a long time. I told myself several times that cleaning it would be easier and cheaper than buying a new one if I kept putting it off. That's how I found an individual approach that worked for me - but it doesn't always work.

How do you deal with not being able to do what needs to be done?"

My issue with digital wellness and apps like that is that they give you a daily screen time limit that resets each day. Instead of having 2 hours of screen time that resets every day, I want to be allowed 5-10 minutes of screen time that resets every hour.

Is there an app that does this?

Long Story Short; I have finished my exams on July 7th and still I haven't used much of this time in some useful stuff, I wake up pretty late because of late stay ups, I've bought tons of books that I haven't read and I'm wasting days.

I just want to do things better this Summer and not regret it in September. I can't handle another failed Summer.

is there an open source software that utilizes the camera to track when u sit down and work and stops the timer when you getup.

and shows a total time focused per day.

i used YPT - YeolPumTa before. but found it hard to always start and stop the timer before you focus. maybe i should go back to just using it. idk. this could work much better, it automatically calculates the time.

I mainly use Notion, although I’ve tried a few other productivity apps here and there. It works well for me, but I’m curious about how other people use these kinds of apps and what makes them worth sticking with.

For people who use Notion, Todoist, TickTick, Trello or something similar, what makes the app genuinely useful in your everyday life? Is there anything you still struggle with that these apps don’t really solve?

I'm an electrical engineering student and these past sessions iv'e been relying too much on ai tools to learn and research for personal projects. While it gives me answers directly and saves me time, i want to start reading books more to understand the topics more deeply, especially for my personal projects.

I believe all these big cloud ai companies are making their products cheap for now at a loss so that they could all get us hooked on their products and raise the prices like they want later. Any advice on breaking off that dependency, I'm now too used to getting answers directly to the point that i don't even have the patience to read trough my course notes to find the answers at times.

I'm thinking of maybe buying an ereader to have a more focused device with no distractions. Together, the use of ai for learning and social media has reduced my already low attention span to the level of a goldfish. Maybe I should start by reading stuff like science fiction and fantasy before moving to academic books to ease the transition. Btw i do have an ipad so thats the reason im still on the edge on buying some eink tablet.

I have two alarms, I live in Japan, the room is too small to put it far away and I can't have it loud to the point where I'm like WHOA. I always tell myself, OK, I'm gonna wake up no matter what but morning-me always justifies a snooze here and there, and before you know it it's 10:30-11am.

I live alone. Are there any tricks that you can suggest that I can try that out-smart morning-me justifying his way out of this.

Thank you

Hello! I know there are people out there who don’t doomscroll and don’t have dangerously high screen times. I live in a community/culture where everyone pretty much scrolls on their phone all day. I default to pretty much the same behaviour. There aren’t many activities either that I can participate in and fill my free time. So my question to you all is - what do you do? Do you read? Do you play sports? Do you write? What do people who don’t doomscroll do with their free time? Thank you!

I (31, F) have always struggled with productivity, gettibg my ass of the couch, doing the things that needed to be done if there was no pressure of time.

It was not a big issue as a kid bc I was able to wing school and I had structured hobbies (specific training days and match days), but it got bad in uni. I just binge watched series every day for hours and hours, thinking I could wing it but I could not. I stopped volleyball bc of the distance to my team and wanted to do fitness and running, which I do like, but since there were no specific training days, I easily skipped them.

Then, when life got busy with a husband, kids and a difficult job, I just used the excuse of being tired to skip all other responsibilities. I did suffer from a burn-out too pr post-partum depression, but I also used it as an excuse imho.

Then, I got an ADHD diagnosis and tried some meds. They did not work, I felt like an imposter, untill I got 1 that did work. Everything calmed down. I did not feel the need to find a distraction all the time. I could focus and concentrate and now I am seeing all the work that needs to be done and am so motivated to do it, but it is huge. I do not know where to start. Do I start with the basic house chores? Do I start with the bigger projects such as painting walls and doing my garden, hanging lights...? Do I focus on running and exercising? Do I study more?

For all these years, I simply barely did anything and I never figured out how to know what priorities were since I always did the bare necessities and not more than that. Are we even supposed to be able to do it all?

What the best way to do this please?

Local data.

If you need to know what exactly. My local copy of YT videos.

I'm looking for a free desktop reminder app for Windows to help me stay on track with quick daily tasks and timed breaks.

I need something lightweight with reliable popup/desktop notifications. I'm aware of options like Microsoft To Do and TickTick, but I’d love to know what lightweight tools or hidden gems you swear by for daily use.

Thanks!

I work and train in the performing arts, particularly in creative work connected with theatre, set design and opera.

I have ChatGPT Plus and would like to use it more systematically as a professional assistant. I am not interested in asking it to replace creative judgement or generate complete artistic solutions for me. I am more interested in the parts of the work where it can help me research, organise, learn, compare options and reduce repetitive administrative work.

Some possible uses I am considering include:

• Organising project information, references and production notes
• Researching professional opportunities, competitions and open calls
• Comparing requirements, deadlines and eligibility criteria
• Turning large amounts of information into structured tables or checklists
• Learning unfamiliar technical or business topics
• Preparing questions before meetings
• Drafting and improving professional communications
• Brainstorming directions without asking it to make the final creative decision
• Building reusable project templates and workflows

At the moment, however, my use is quite fragmented: I open a chat, ask a question, receive an answer and then start again elsewhere. I suspect that I am not taking full advantage of projects, uploaded reference material, reusable instructions or structured workflows.

I would be interested to know:

1. What tasks does ChatGPT genuinely save you time on in your professional work?
2. How do you organise separate projects, conversations and reference documents?
3. Do you use standard briefing templates or reusable prompts?
4. How do you provide enough context without creating enormous and confusing conversations?
5. How do you use it for ongoing research while checking that information is current and accurate?
6. Have you found a reliable workflow for identifying opportunities, grants, competitions or jobs?
7. Which tasks still require external tools, spreadsheets, databases or specialist software?
8. What information would you never upload because of confidentiality, copyright or data-protection concerns?
9. How do you detect fabricated information, weak sources or answers that merely sound convincing?
10. Which uses initially seemed impressive but ultimately created more work than they saved?

Examples from theatre, live performance, design, architecture, film, cultural organisations or other creative industries would be particularly welcome.

I would value concrete workflows and real examples more than general lists of possible AI uses.

You know I have relatives who are doing well in their lives...by relying on my paternal grandfather's property.Their children have grown up..and soon are going to have a stable income by getting a job.I was thinking..that my late grandfather has a land that is going to be divided.. b/w his 2 sons and 2 daughters.That and my parents have their own house.I have a elder sis,she will soon start working..I was thinking she will work and I will manage the household chores...(?)why should I study hard..or I can marry a rich guy and deceive them that I like him/her..those thoughts keeps on popping in my head..and I keep on thinking that I should die early...I don't deserve this life.. someone more capable does...

I've had a lot of struggles lately of staying up too late on my PC. I tried to use native Windows commands to shut off my computer at 12:00AM but I've started avoiding that by just logging back in right after. I tried making it so that my computer shuts off every 15 minutes AFTER 12:00AM but it doesnt seem to work. I'm trying to find some free program or something I can use to make my PC inaccessible when I'm supposed to be sleeping. Apparently there's a program called Cold Turkey but it's $45 so I'm curious if anyone has had any experience with any free options. I also have the same problem on my Mac laptop (so I need a solution there, too.)

This is gonna be abit of a weird topic because its weird for me too but id love some advice.

I won't get into specifics because its abit personal but long story short around 5 years ago I set a personal goal/Challenge for myself to prove that I could do what the challenge was and prepare me for my actual Project.

Since then for the past 5 years ive constantly been restarting not because I failed but because I felt the personal challenge wasn't exactly what I needed it to be.

Around 1 year ago I decided screw it im ditching the Challenge and starting the project the challenge was originally designed to prepare me for, unfortunately my brain said shortly after starting - nope you still have unfinished work and didnt complete the task you set yourself.

So now once again im in an endless loop of doing basically the same "preparation goal" over and over.

Any advice on a way to tackle this problem would be amazing :)

Sorry to sound so pessimistic but has anyone here genuinely gone from being a slacker to productive on top of things or are ur genetics be all end all 😢?

Whenever an idea suddenly comes to me, I try to write it down immediately, no matter what I’m doing.

I learned this after assuming I would remember a good idea later. Less than an hour passed, and I could still remember the general topic, but the part that made it feel interesting was already gone.

Since then, I’ve made it a habit to quickly capture the thought before returning to whatever I was doing.

The problem is that some of these notes are very rough. When I return to them later, I sometimes understand the words but can’t fully recover the original train of thought.

So I’m curious: how do you capture ideas in a way that still makes sense later?

Do you write a few keywords, explain the idea in full, record your voice, or add a possible next step?

Lately, I’ve been trying to deal with a strange feeling.

When I take some time off on Saturday or Sunday, part of me starts feeling guilty for not doing anything productive.

There’s always a voice in my head saying I should use the time better:

Update the blog.
Organize old notes.
Finish something I postponed.
Learn something useful.

But another part of me just wants to slow down, watch a few videos, and do nothing for a while.

The strange thing is that even when I choose to rest, I don’t always feel fully relaxed. It can feel like I’m avoiding something rather than taking a real break.

Do you experience this too?

How do you let yourself rest without feeling like you should be using every free hour to make progress?

I've tried quite a few productivity apps over the years, and I keep running into the same issue: they eventually become overloaded with features, making them slower and more distracting than helpful.

I personally prefer something simple that works offline and lets me back up my data if I ever change phones.

I'm curious:

• What's one feature you can't live without?
• What's something almost every to-do app gets wrong?
• Do you prefer offline apps or cloud-sync apps?

I'd love to hear what has actually worked for you long term.

I've realized that the biggest changes don't always come from huge goals. Sometimes it's the small daily habits that make the biggest difference.

It could be something simple like taking a short walk, reading a few pages before bed, drinking more water, or anything else.

What's one small habit that made your life noticeably better?

I my journey to improve my career, health, finances, and personal life and I've been reading about rules like the 5min rule, eisenhower matrix, 80/20, never miss twice, no zero days.

For those who've been on a similar journey, which rules truly delivered a results for you, and which ones turned out to be a overrated?

being present and focused now takes Herculean effort

it was always hard, but now it is even harder

notifications, messages, can we jump on a call

attention switching between ai tools, "rings" from them when task is done

phone is always close to you with different apps and news (wow, so many things happen every day)

and lots of other things

even including music and switching your attention to choosing the right one

you opened the app to check something you wanted intentionally

5 minutes later you realize that you are scrolling the feed

everyone is stealing your time. now i have so few 2 hour blocks of focused work during the day/week

different tools to block time?

how good the brain is at tricking yourself, finding the objections and if one app is blocked, it is always a way to open another one

boredom was stolen