28m with extreme ADD, how to finish this book? :^(

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28m with extreme ADD, how to finish this book? :^(

Fizzman
Greetings! Have had the book for awhile now and never got around to digging into it, the problem I find with all academic books is the willpower and motivation to keep reading.

I tend to get so easily distracted by stuff on my computer no matter how hard I try...

Anyone have tips and advice for me?

Hopefully will be able to finish this one for once!

:^)
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Re: 28m with extreme ADD, how to finish this book? :^(

WBahn
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Different things work for different people -- and often what works for you today very effectively will stop being effective some time down the road. So it will probably take a lot of frustrating trial and error to figure out a way forward.

With that said, here are some things you might consider.

Make a bit of a game of it for yourself. Break the tasks down into tiny pieces and then set easy and small goals of when you want different portions completed by. For instance, in Chapter 1, you will implement and test a number of basic logic parts (about fifteen of them). So make a checklist of them and perhaps set a goal of getting three done each day. You might even take index cards, or post-it notes, or scraps of paper, and write the name of each part on a separate one and then put them in a pile near your computer. As you complete each one, move it from the To-Do pile to the Is-Done pile. You make find that you spend a bit more time each session trying to get just one more slip moved over.

In this electronic age, one approach I use on longer or more tedious tasks is to make my list in a text file under the heading To-Do and then move each line from that section to the Is-Done section as I finish. Sometimes, when I'm feeling like I'm not making headway, it gives me an emotional boost when I can look at the document and realize that I have made quite a bit of progress. If I'm really feeling unmotivated, I can look at the list of tasks and then tell myself that all I have to do is move just one task, any task, to the Is-Done list and then I can call it a day.

But don't let yourself get frustrated if you fall behind schedule -- there's no actual deadline here. Things happen. You get side-tracked with car problems, or whatever. Or you find that one part of a certain chapter just gives you a lot more trouble than you expected it would. Feel free to revise your schedule as needed. You can simply rip it up and make a completely new one any time you think it's time to do that.