From Procrastination to Consistency

My Journey of Overcoming Inaction

Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash

My struggles

As a founder with ADHD, building habits was a significant challenge for me. However, I realized that habits are essential to saving time and living my ideal life. When I had bad habits, I ultimately lived on autopilot, and my days went by according to whatever my mind wanted. I was a hostage to my mind and not intentional with my time. I’d waste my time by getting distracted, avoiding tasks, thinking about what I needed to do instead of doing it, and looking for things because I misplaced or lost them. Redoing things because I couldn’t understand my notes or forgot I did it, putting out fires because I forgot to prepare, or didn’t do something, and spending an hour on a task that should have taken 5 minutes.

Most of my time was spent accounting for my bad habits instead of propelling me forward. Bad habits generated problems, slowed me down, and built time debt. On top of that, habits compound with time and become harder to unlearn. Luckily, good habits work in the inverse. By building good habits, I save time, solve future problems and enable myself to achieve more. Plus, I was able to learn other habits faster. That’s why it’s essential to unlearn and replace bad habits with good ones. Learning to build strong habits ultimately allowed me to stop taking medication and overcome my ADHD.

The journey to building good habits started after six months of struggling with my first job. I began reading a few books to learn more about myself and how to overcome my ADHD. The two books that helped me the most were Deep Work and Driven to Distraction. Driven to Distraction helped me with accepting my ADHD, and Deep Work gave me the framework to use my time effectively.

My key learnings

Here are the key learnings from Deep Work:

1. Measure yourself: If I want to improve, I have to measure myself.
2. Focus on impacting my actions rather than the results: Focusing on my actions rather than the results helped me to identify which habits I needed to improve on.
3. Review my actions & results regularly and make adjustments: Reviewing my actions and results regularly enabled me to identify areas where I needed to make changes to my habits.
4. Give myself time limits by time-boxing tasks: Giving myself time limits allowed me to focus on completing tasks quickly without wasting time.
5. Give myself deadlines to generate urgency and create pressure: Setting deadlines helped me to focus on the task at hand and motivated me to complete it quickly.
6. Don’t let my phone blow my time: Minimizing distractions from my phone helped me to stay focused on my tasks.

After learning these insights, I started implementing them and making improvements. I started with a couple of easy habits and did them daily. For example, I made my bed every morning, reviewed my day, and started using a progress tracker to ensure I was growing. This allowed me to create an easy feedback loop to ensure I was getting things done, and when I was missing the mark, I knew quickly. When I was missing the mark, I iterated and tried something new.

A book that summarizes a lot of my learnings is Atomic Habits. It breaks down how to lower the activation energy to form new habits. The key things that they reference are:

1. Make things obvious: Making habits obvious enabled me to remember to complete them.
2. Make things attractive and desirable: Creating rewards for completing tasks made the habit more attractive and desirable.
3. Make things easy to do: Simplifying the habit made it easier for me to form it.
4. Make it rewarding: Creating rewards for completing the habit made it more rewarding and helped me to form it faster.

My implementation

Here’s how I’m implementing these learnings for my coding journey:

1. I send myself a text message every morning to remind myself that I need to code. This helps me stay accountable and ensures that I don’t forget about my coding goals.
2. I also remind myself of the reward that I promised myself if I complete my coding task for the day. The reward that I have chosen is DJ turntables, which is something that I’ve always wanted. This motivates me to complete my tasks on time and keeps me focused on my goals.
3. During my allotted time for programming in the morning, when I have the most energy, I follow along with the Odin Project. This has been a great resource for me and has helped me to stay on track with my coding journey.
4. Lastly, I reward myself daily with positive affirmations for completing my coding tasks and give myself a tangible reward, such as DJ turntables, on a monthly basis. This helps me stay motivated and focused on my long-term goals.