How I overcame procrastination and developed consistency

My Struggles!

Hey everyone, I’m a founder with ADHD. Building habits is challenging but so important when it comes to saving time and living your 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 squander my time by

• Getting distracted and avoiding tasks,
• Thinking about what I needed to do instead of doing it,
• 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
• Spending an hour on a task that should have taken 5 mins

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 fill bad habits with good ones. Learning to build strong habits ultimately allowed me to stop taking medication and overcome my ADHD. Here’s how I did it!

How I started to build habits!

After 6 months of struggling with my first job, I started 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. Deep Work gave me the framework to use my time effectively. Here are the key learnings from Deep Work:

• If I want to improve, I have to measure myself
• Focus on impacting my actions rather than the results
• Review my actions & results regularly and make adjustments
• Give myself time limits by timeboxing tasks otherwise I’ll waste my time
• Give myself deadlines to generate urgency and create pressure
• Don’t let my phone blow my time

After learning these insights, I started implementing these learnings and making improvements. I started with a couple of easy habits and did them daily. Here are a few things I did:

• Make my bed every morning → I had to build the habit of consistency first. I started with an easy habit and let it carry me into other habits.
• Review my day → Reviewing my day helped me assess my day, identify improvements, and iterate on my solutions.
• 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.

How I implement my learnings!

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
2. Make things attractive and desirable
3. Make things easy to do
4. Make it rewarding

For example, here’s how I’m implementing these learnings for my coding journey:

1. Send myself a text message to remind myself I have to code
2. Remind me of the reward (DJ turntables) I promised myself if I complete my task
3. Follow along with the Odin Project during my allotted time for programming in the morning when I have nothing else to do and have energy
4. Reward me daily with affirmations and monthly with a tangible reward (DJ turntables)

I'm following these exact steps in my coding journey and it has allowed me to stay consistent with coding since January 2023. I’ve productized my systems including this one into ScatterMind to help you overcome procrastination, build new habits, and achieve your goals. If you’re struggling to overcome procrastination & achieve your goals, reach out!