Doing things doing things doing things

[aliothsan]

Somehow, despite being pretty depressed over the last couple of weeks, I managed to fall into a doing-things frenzy this evening. Work! Emails! Scheduling things! Dealing with accumulated mail! Watering plants! Etc etc. (This does not match up with symptoms of bipolar, at least not to the point of needing treatment; I've never had a manic episode

Comments

[gigglefest]

Yay, doing things! I would definitely like to see those posts.

[ch3cooh]

Complete forgiveness/Data

[aliothsan]

I like the idea of pre-deciding "I will spend X% of time on blah, and Y% of time on mumble". I recently encountered a similar method, which can be summed up as "put the big rocks in first". You know that anecdote about the demonstration where the person puts rocks in a jar, "is it full?" "yes", then they put gravel in the jar, "is it full?" "yes", then they put sand in the jar... and the lesson here was, how the heck would you have gotten the big rocks in if you hadn't put them in first. So, basically, priorities :)

There are so many systems out there, from the very simple to the very elaborate, that I'm not sure how to pick one. But as far as I can tell, the most important thing is to have one, that works... well, maybe the second most important thing, after "get the heck out of bed in the morning", which I'm making some progress on :)

[nuclearpolymer]

yay for doing things...
mostly, I find that if I am lying in bed, deciding whether to continue doing that or to get up and do things, although it always seems more pleasant to stay there, that never actually improves how I feel, while doing things often is at least distracting

[aliothsan]

Yes! I was sacked out on the couch last night reading the internet, and I started to feel a little... foggy?... and then I thought "Is this making me feel better? No. I'm just spinning my wheels." and got up and drilled a hole in a thing I had been meaning to drill a hole in. Surprise, felt better and then did more things :)

[laura47]

"(This does not match up with symptoms of bipolar, at least not to the point of needing treatment; I've never had a manic episode that was actually a problem.)"

not trying to diagnose you, but fyi bipolar type 2 is hypomania only, no actual mania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_II_disorder

[aliothsan]

Hmm. Interesting. I do not meet the criterion that the hypomania has to last at least four days; usually it's over in a matter of hours. But when I'm in that sort of "cleaning frenzy" state, it does meet several of the descriptive criteria listed. Food for thought, anyway. Thanks :)

[laura47]

there are variations on that, like rapid cycling or ultra rapid cycling. basically the breadth of things that are still classified as some kind of bipolar is bigger than you might think (dsm blah blah things are more complicated et cetera standard disclaimers)

[aliothsan]

*nod* I'll keep it in mind to discuss, next time I have a therapist/psychiatrist. I kinda have some yak to shave before I get one, though.

[calledtovienna]

One other thing that I found useful in forming habbits, is to form them temporarily and then analyze if they fail consistently. So, instead of saying "I will always go to the gym in the morning", it is "For the next month, I will go to the gym in the morning." At the end of the month, I can ask -- did I? When I didn't, what was the biggest reason? For example, it turns out that it is very hard for me to go to the gym in the morning because the only thing that gets me out of bed is the promise of food, and I can't to exercise on a full stomach. So, I am going to need to figure out another way to deal with it, but it means that rather than beating myself up for failing, I can say 'oh well, experiment fails' and use the data. Sometimes the answer is 'well, I can excercise for two hours every day for a week, but any longer than that and I miss having a social life' so that's not sustainable in the long term, and I get my checkmark and can reassess. And it is a lot easier to say 'I must make this effort now, and in a month I will stop'

[aliothsan]

analyze if they fail consistently

That makes a lot of sense for habits where it's not certain if they are the best way of implementing the goal. Thanks for the example :)

I've also heard "anticipate that you will fail in your new habit, preemptively forgive yourself for it, and pre-decide what you will do in case of failure" -- though this is more of a don't-beat-yourself-up and don't-fall-off-the-wagon measure.