‘am i Having A Brain Problem or Being a Shithead’: a short procrastination checklist

tealdearest:

adhdpie:

aka why tf am i procrastinating on The Thing (more like a flowchart, actually)

lots of people who have executive function difficulties worry about whether they’re procrastinating on a task out of laziness/simply wanting to be a jerk or mental struggles. this checklist might help you figure out which it is at any given time! (hint: it’s almost never laziness or being a jerk.) (obligatory disclaimer: this is just what works for me! something different might work better for you.)

1) do I honestly intend to start the task despite my lack of success?

  • yes: it’s a Brain Problem. next question
  • no: it’s shitty to say one thing & do another. better be honest with myself & anyone expecting me to do the task.

2) am I fed, watered, well-rested, medicated properly, etc?

  • yes: next question
  • no: guess what? this is the real next task

3) does the idea of starting the task make me feel scared or anxious?

  • yes: Anxiety Brain. identify what’s scaring me first.
  • no: next question

4) do I know how to start the task?

  • yes: next question
  • no: ADHD Brain. time to make an order of operations list.

5) do I have everything I need to start the task?

  • yes: next question
  • no: ADHD Brain lying to me about the steps again, dangit. first task is ‘gather the materials’.

6) why am i having a hard time switching from my current task to this new task?

  • i’m having fun doing what i’m doing: it’s okay to have fun doing a thing! if task is time-sensitive, go to next question.
  • i have to finish doing what i’m doing: might be ADHD brain. can I actually finish the current task or will I get trapped in a cycle? does this task really need to be finished?
  • the next task will be boring/boring-er than the current task: ADHD brain. re-think the next task. what would make it exciting? what am I looking forward to?
  • I might not have enough time to complete the task: ADHD brain wants to finish everything it starts. (if task is time-sensitive, go to next question)
  • i just want to make the person who asked me to do it angry: sounds like anxiety brain trying to punish itself, because I know I’ll be miserable if someone is angry at me. why do i think I deserve punishment?
  • no, I seriously want to piss them off: okay, i’m being a shithead

7) have I already procrastinated so badly that I now cannot finish the task in time?

  • yes: ADHD brain is probably caught in a guilt-perfection cycle. since I can’t have the task done on time, i don’t even want to start.

reality check: having part of a thing done is almost always better than none of a thing done. if I can get an extension, having part of it done will help me keep from stalling out until the extension deadline. i’ll feel better if I at least try to finish it.

  • no, there’s still a chance to finish on time: ADHD brain thinks that I have all the time in the world, but the truth is I don’t. 

reality check: if i’m having fun doing what I’m doing, I can keep doing it, but I should probably set a timer & ask someone to check on me to make sure I start doing the task later today.

8) I’ve completed the checklist and still don’t know what’s wrong!

  • probably wasn’t honest enough with myself. take one more look.
  • if I’m still mystified, ask a friend to help me talk it out.

hope this helps some of you! YOU’RE DOING GREAT SWEETIE DON’T GIVE UP ON YOU

This is…entirely too real lol

hmm actually writing out a list did not especially help and it didn’t even include the 12 reports I need to review and publish next week if I want to take a much-needed long break over the holidays, I have a tension headache because I can’t stop clenching my jaw and I kind of want to cry for various reasons 🙃🙃🙃

seriously, what are some strategies for stopping a stress-induced depression spiral before it gets really bad

New Tumblr Algorithm Flagging Images of Fully Dressed Fat People as Nudes

thisisthinprivilege:

Tumblr’s new algorithm is flagging non-pornographic blogs that feature images of fully clothed fat people. As a result, great fat-positive blogs that in no way break the new Tumblr rules as stated (not that I agree with those rules) are being forced off the
platform.

Let this be a sober reminder that fat discrimination and fatphobia can present itself in all things, including
machine learning algorithms. Remember, algorithms are
only as unbiased as their developers, and are only as smart as their training set. Suppose you want to train an algorithm to detect porn, so you feed it a lot of porn images. However, you want to exclude nude art and scantily clad people, so you feed it the most popular sets of images of nude art and scantily clad people. These images are more likely to be of thin people, since fat people are often excluded by virtue of their fatness from being so-called influencers and fat people are largely excluded in art (brief chubby art periods notwithstanding).

So now, you have an algorithm that flags any bulging bit of skin it perceives as “too much” (i.e., more than would be exposed on a non-nude picture of a thin Instamodel-type) as porn. Fully clothed fat people are then flagged for their arms, cleavage, tummy in a crop top, legs in short shorts, basically any way of dressing short of draping oneself in a tent.

The
biases and blind spots of the developers of any given algorithm will be
present in how the algorithm operates. The culture promotes and celebrates thin people and does its best to hide fat people. So the algorithm will most likely misflag images of fat people, as it is most likely to have been trained on over-represented thin bodies.

@fatpeopledoingthings (which is no longer automatically linkable, I had to do it manually) was misflagged by the algorithm, despite the fact that the fat women in the images it publishes are fully clothed. Its description is, simply, “Pictures of fat girls doing things…because fat girls do things, just like everybody else!” Pictures of fat people doing things are now being treated like porn by Tumblr’s algorithm.

@foodiefeedee was also misflagged, but their blog was restored and they were issued an apology, of sorts.

What can we do about Tumblr’s attempt to remove images of fat people from the site?

1. If you have a blog with mostly images of fat people and it is being
flagged for content that is in no way pornographic, please post about it
and tag your post #fatphobia. If you can’t participate in the tags
anymore, please submit a post about your experience to @thisisthinprivilege (we are also not automatically linkable!). 

2. Comment on blogs and news articles about Tumblr’s new policy letting people know it is mis-flagging fully clothed pictures of fat people.

3. Use social media to talk about this. Be loud. Tumblr’s new policies meant to maximize ad-money are discriminating against a whole category of people.

4. Reblog other posts pointing out how Tumblr’s algorithm is flagging LGBT content, too.

Let’s fight this. And, if we have to go, let’s not go quietly.

-ArteToLife

have 8 million things to do very soon and I can tell that I’m riiiiiight on the edge of a depression spiral (which is itself at least partly caused by being overwhelmed, dealing with it poorly and becoming more overwhelmed, and hating myself for dealing with it poorly) which is SUPER GREAT TIMING. so obviously I’m making a list, because sometimes that helps.

things I absolutely must do this weekend:

  • finish the hair repaint on my current Etsy order so I can mail it Monday or earlier
  • do anything I might need to do for the other outstanding order that the customer also wants in time for Christmas somehow, so that when the parts arrive on MONDAY I can put the thing together and mail it almost immediately (damn well better show up on Monday, which is itself irritating because the site said free 2-day shipping but nobody really means that when they ship to Alaska)
  • wrap and prepare any gifts I want to mail out because I should also send those no later than Monday, and in fact earlier would have been better, but for some reason every year I’m like “eh, it’s fine, there’s time” right up until there suddenly isn’t
  • do…whatever I still need to do with Tumblr. import to WordPress, back up the whole thing to my computer with one of several methods I’ve reblogged, try to find specific posts I want to save (original posts and anything tagged “fic ideas” will be tedious but at least easy to find; no idea about other stuff)
  • semi-related: add something to my Dreamwidth profile so it’s not…blank
  • haul some more stuff to Value Village and other donation sites, because I’m about to pick up a bunch of shit that will take up too much space in my car (somewhat related: books, music, movies, and toys are 40% off today and tomorrow, which is unusual for them)
  • set up the damn tree, like even if we don’t put ornaments on it I’d at least like to have the tree up (requires digging it out of the garage, which is a disaster and very much not my disaster)
  • do something with my dad and sister for my birthday (but first, figure out what and when, and like…I don’t have the mental energy for that)
  • try to get more birthday donations for SPLC (I went with Trevor Project last year and got several donations without doing much to promote it, so I don’t know if this one’s getting a lot less because it seems more political, or algorithms are hiding this and a lot of my other posts, or a lot of people have deliberately snoozed me because of my political posts, or…something else, idk)
  • transfer stuff into my new planner, because my current one is close enough to the end that it’s not very useful anymore

other things that don’t necessarily have to happen this weekend but should happen in the really near future, both because they need to get done and because they’re contributing to my overall mental load that means everything is overwhelming:

  • figure out how to send in the claim for my car accident last year to my life-insurance-and-a-few-other-things company, because it’s worth $50 (should probably also see if I can get something similar for the earthquake, because I think it did fuck up my neck a little more, and $50 is $50 when I’m paying them that much each month)
  • list other things on Etsy…now that it’s too late to take advantage of holiday sales 😖
  • sign up for actual training with Hazy
  • also, bug the rescue group again about recent vet info to figure out whether she has any pre-existing conditions and when she needs a checkup (maybe soon, because she seems to scratch herself a LOT and sometimes she gets kind of wheezy)
  • also also, try to figure out ways to work on her separation anxiety and general hyperness, which I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO because it’s all a gradual process that I don’t really have time for, and I have yet to find a smart/puzzle toy or a good chew toy that really seems to occupy her attention so I guess I still need to try more, and apparently mental stimulation through training can be good for anxiety and hyperactivity both so I should really be working on extremely basic commands on my own probably??
  • shit that’s right I also need to figure out if I want to get her on VCA Care Club and do research for pet insurance that might be better than the one we had for Scully
  • get myself back into a better Planet Fitness habit, because I didn’t go at all this week and I’ve definitely dropped off in the last few weeks, which is partly because I’ve been busy with other things INCLUDING THE GIANT EARTHQUAKE but partly because the main reason I was good about it before was that I literally tricked myself into wanting to work out so I could listen to The Adventure Zone, and once I caught up on that, nothing else I’ve tried (MBMBAM, occasional TAZ updates, Night Vale) has quite filled the gap of “hilarious goofs + suspenseful long-form narrative” that makes me actually want to work out, so…either I need to figure out how make myself go without that motivation (mixed success so far or I wouldn’t be talking about it or feeling guilty about it) or find another podcast I want to binge. and try to figure out if there’s any point to asking them to stop playing so many news channels (especially Fox two or three times and fucking OAN once) at the TV bank for the cardio machines, because that is…honestly another thing that makes me not want to go
  • related: somehow find a way to make myself do my core exercises regularly, because slacking on those and slacking on Planet Fitness is probably part of the reason my headaches and neck and general constant exhaustion have maybe been worse lately, AND ALSO start regularly doing the exercises that are supposed to help with my newish hand/wrist pain, all of which sucks because a big ol’ theme here is me having a hard time forming un-fun new long-term habits (exercise, going to bed earlier) that are crucial for improving basically every part of my life and not worsening the health problems i already have
  • TYPE UP MY DAMN NOTEBOOKS and organize everything so I actually know how much I have in my current WIPs; now that my computer is back there’s no excuse for not doing this
  • also like…write. in general. now that I have a Christmas-related idea I’d kinda like to do and I also want to do a Yuletide treat, and maybe Avengers: Endgame isn’t really a deadline for lots of other fics but also it kind of is
  • actually organize my backups so they’re not a disaster and it’s not a crisis next time I have computer problems (plus like, I’m going to need everything backed up when I upgrade)
  • research and buy a CPU, motherboard, SSD, and maybe new PSU, ideally without spending a horrendous amount of money
  • make more progress in SWTOR because there’s no guarantee how long it’s going to be around and tbh it’s ridiculous I haven’t finished all the class storylines despite having been a subscriber for like. SEVEN YEARS
  • unfuck my iTunes library YET AGAIN
  • find a therapist, because I’ve probably been needing one for a while but a huge theme in all of this is being overwhelmed because I have too much to do and don’t know how to deal with it, and then getting into guilt and self-loathing because I dealt with it badly and it got worse, and I’m increasingly sure it’s my not-really-diagnosed-or-treated ADHD starting this old, old cycle to begin with and that means it’s even more important to find a therapist who will actually. do stuff. with the ADHD. instead of just kinda…dropping it.
  • slight problem though, adding yet another regular appointment means less time for…everything else and that doesn’t exactly help with being overwhelmed, so it’s like…a disincentive to pursue it

the only thing I really want to do:

  • sleep for about a year

thelightofthingshopedfor:

Guess who wore winter boots to work because of snow and FORGOT TO BRING SHOES

No, guess

I can’t go back home for them either because poor Hazy will have an absolute meltdown if I come back and then leave again (her separation anxiety has maybe gotten worse lately, which could be due to the earthquake, and I don’t know how to fix it). luckily I do keep a pair of Croc slippers in my car, plus a very cheap pair of running shoes just since last week, but neither of those options are super ideal, especially since my orthotics are…in my shoes

update: the shoes hurt because they’re too small. this makes very little sense because I don’t think my shoe size would have changed in the last several years if not for getting orthotics, but either they did or I did a bad job getting these shoes. however, the Croc slippers have very little support, they make my feet sweat even more, and they look unprofessional as hell

Guess who wore winter boots to work because of snow and FORGOT TO BRING SHOES

No, guess

I can’t go back home for them either because poor Hazy will have an absolute meltdown if I come back and then leave again (her separation anxiety has maybe gotten worse lately, which could be due to the earthquake, and I don’t know how to fix it). luckily I do keep a pair of Croc slippers in my car, plus a very cheap pair of running shoes just since last week, but neither of those options are super ideal, especially since my orthotics are…in my shoes