How can I fix my seemingly-broken attention span?
January 6, 2011 6:19 PM Subscribe
What are some good tips for improving my attention span?
Hello hive mind, here's a question that has been bugging me for a while. Sorry for the length.
I don't have ADD or ADHD (well, I haven't been diagnosed with it) but I often find myself in this same unfortunate cycle of behaviour.
I'll get an idea for something, or develop an interest in a particular plan or idea. For example, say it's a good plot for a book. I'll get massively excited about the prospect of writing it down, I get a massive endorphin rush and I start writing.
And then I crash, hard.
The idea which I was so enamoured with before suddenly makes me almost unbearably tired to think about. If I've actually managed to produce anything towards the idea I look back on it with scorn bordering on disgust. In my mind I almost immediately relegate the idea into the folder of "Well, that didn't work out".
This is annoying for creative projects like writing and music, but what really alarms me is that this behaviour has manifested in my personal or professional life as well.
Any of my friends or family would be able to talk about several instances where I've come back from a particular university information session, or job fair and I start talking about how excited I am about the prospect of a new career or education direction. For example, I once was completely convinced that I wanted to go into a career as a TV writer. I applied to the school, bought books for comedy writing and practiced writing scripts every day for a couple of weeks. Eventually I even got accepted to the program, but by then I had "crashed" and I wasn't even remotely interested in it anymore. I didn't accept the offer. I don't regret it now, because I feel that the idea was completely silly. But I remember feeling so excited about the prospect. I have no explanation whatsoever about how I can go from being so keen on an idea to so apathetic about it in such a short time frame.
To put this all in context, I'm not a miserable person with a cavalcade of broken dreams and ambitions weighing me down at every turn. I consider myself pretty happy and well adjusted, I've got good career prospects at the moment in a field I enjoy and good friends and romantic interests. However, I am really worried that this "high-crash-high-crash" cycle will negatively affect me throughout my life, if only just by preventing me from ever accomplishing a creative goal or side-project.
Does the hive mind have any tips? I'm looking for people who have similar problems staying engaged with an idea and have come up with ways to maintain a steady level of interest, rather than being so passionate about a topic for a short period of time that it burns up all of your interest before you can actually follow through. If what I've described sounds familiar to you, how do you cope with it?
Thanks a bunch in advance.
Hello hive mind, here's a question that has been bugging me for a while. Sorry for the length.
I don't have ADD or ADHD (well, I haven't been diagnosed with it) but I often find myself in this same unfortunate cycle of behaviour.
I'll get an idea for something, or develop an interest in a particular plan or idea. For example, say it's a good plot for a book. I'll get massively excited about the prospect of writing it down, I get a massive endorphin rush and I start writing.
And then I crash, hard.
The idea which I was so enamoured with before suddenly makes me almost unbearably tired to think about. If I've actually managed to produce anything towards the idea I look back on it with scorn bordering on disgust. In my mind I almost immediately relegate the idea into the folder of "Well, that didn't work out".
This is annoying for creative projects like writing and music, but what really alarms me is that this behaviour has manifested in my personal or professional life as well.
Any of my friends or family would be able to talk about several instances where I've come back from a particular university information session, or job fair and I start talking about how excited I am about the prospect of a new career or education direction. For example, I once was completely convinced that I wanted to go into a career as a TV writer. I applied to the school, bought books for comedy writing and practiced writing scripts every day for a couple of weeks. Eventually I even got accepted to the program, but by then I had "crashed" and I wasn't even remotely interested in it anymore. I didn't accept the offer. I don't regret it now, because I feel that the idea was completely silly. But I remember feeling so excited about the prospect. I have no explanation whatsoever about how I can go from being so keen on an idea to so apathetic about it in such a short time frame.
To put this all in context, I'm not a miserable person with a cavalcade of broken dreams and ambitions weighing me down at every turn. I consider myself pretty happy and well adjusted, I've got good career prospects at the moment in a field I enjoy and good friends and romantic interests. However, I am really worried that this "high-crash-high-crash" cycle will negatively affect me throughout my life, if only just by preventing me from ever accomplishing a creative goal or side-project.
Does the hive mind have any tips? I'm looking for people who have similar problems staying engaged with an idea and have come up with ways to maintain a steady level of interest, rather than being so passionate about a topic for a short period of time that it burns up all of your interest before you can actually follow through. If what I've described sounds familiar to you, how do you cope with it?
Thanks a bunch in advance.
Have you ever made it through a "down" period? Ie, gotten excited about something again after you hated it for a while by pushing through?
posted by EtzHadaat at 9:07 PM on January 6, 2011
posted by EtzHadaat at 9:07 PM on January 6, 2011
This happens to me when I initially don't realise quite how much work a project will be, and then when I get heavily into it and see how far I have to go before it's finished, I lose interest.
There are two ways around this in my experience:
1. If the project is small enough - do it hard and fast and don't stop. For example, writing projects: if you work slowly an hour or two at a time over a year or more, you will get to the point where you just can't face it any more, no matter how excited you were. Instead, don't let yourself start writing until you have a huge space of time to devote to it (a few weeks off work, for example) and then write all day every day until it's done. This keeps the excitement up, and means you don't have time to stop and realise how much more there is to go!
2. If the project is too big for that: plan plan plan! Don't let yourself do that initial work-on-it-all-the-time talk-about-it-all-the-time burn, because that will burn you out! Instead plan the project into small modular units and only let yourself do one of those modules now and again. Stop while you are still excited! If that means you stop writing in the middle of a sentence, so be it! That way you'll still be keen to get back to it at your next scheduled time.
posted by lollusc at 9:09 PM on January 6, 2011 [1 favorite]
There are two ways around this in my experience:
1. If the project is small enough - do it hard and fast and don't stop. For example, writing projects: if you work slowly an hour or two at a time over a year or more, you will get to the point where you just can't face it any more, no matter how excited you were. Instead, don't let yourself start writing until you have a huge space of time to devote to it (a few weeks off work, for example) and then write all day every day until it's done. This keeps the excitement up, and means you don't have time to stop and realise how much more there is to go!
2. If the project is too big for that: plan plan plan! Don't let yourself do that initial work-on-it-all-the-time talk-about-it-all-the-time burn, because that will burn you out! Instead plan the project into small modular units and only let yourself do one of those modules now and again. Stop while you are still excited! If that means you stop writing in the middle of a sentence, so be it! That way you'll still be keen to get back to it at your next scheduled time.
posted by lollusc at 9:09 PM on January 6, 2011 [1 favorite]
I think this happens to a lot of people. It certainly happens to me.
Things that help me retain interest include:
- Regular social meetings of people with the same interest. Anything where I will enjoy being there to socialise even if I'm not currently feeling enthused about the topic.
- A "project partner" who may be enthusiastic when I am not, and vice versa.
- Some short activity I can do regularly with a good payoff. Weightlifting, for example. I can work out for half an hour and then feel great!
posted by emilyw at 2:37 AM on January 7, 2011
Things that help me retain interest include:
- Regular social meetings of people with the same interest. Anything where I will enjoy being there to socialise even if I'm not currently feeling enthused about the topic.
- A "project partner" who may be enthusiastic when I am not, and vice versa.
- Some short activity I can do regularly with a good payoff. Weightlifting, for example. I can work out for half an hour and then feel great!
posted by emilyw at 2:37 AM on January 7, 2011
I can agree with emilyw. The key to retaining interest in a large project in this day and age is to break it down into a system wherein you get a strong payoff for whatever little work you do.
This will not necessarily cure lack of interest or boredom, but I think that's normal. Eventually, when you look back on the work you have achieved, you'll be proud of making it so far.
The key is to not break the cycle, or it will remain broken forever.
I'll second lollusc's advice that you should stop while you're still excited. IIRC, Haruki Murakami does it while writing, but he does it non-chalantly; i.e. he writes the same amount every day, regardless of how excited he is to write it or not.
It also helps to have an idea of uptil when you can expect your project to be completed, and what you will do after that. Having an idea of that is like having a compass in a video game; helps your orient yourself.
And one last thing; ignore passion. Just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you'll find it without hard work or painless; just that maybe you will appreciate it much more when you're finished than otherwise.
posted by Senza Volto at 6:55 AM on January 7, 2011
This will not necessarily cure lack of interest or boredom, but I think that's normal. Eventually, when you look back on the work you have achieved, you'll be proud of making it so far.
The key is to not break the cycle, or it will remain broken forever.
I'll second lollusc's advice that you should stop while you're still excited. IIRC, Haruki Murakami does it while writing, but he does it non-chalantly; i.e. he writes the same amount every day, regardless of how excited he is to write it or not.
It also helps to have an idea of uptil when you can expect your project to be completed, and what you will do after that. Having an idea of that is like having a compass in a video game; helps your orient yourself.
And one last thing; ignore passion. Just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you'll find it without hard work or painless; just that maybe you will appreciate it much more when you're finished than otherwise.
posted by Senza Volto at 6:55 AM on January 7, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
It's more like - you feel you should be passionate about things you're, basically, not passionate about. Take your book plot idea - coming up with book plots is fun! Writing novels is really hard work, that happens to be fun, or addictive, for some people. Often these people are miserable!
Or, the TV writing. Buying the books is fun! It's great to imagine yourself being swept up in a lifelong passion for writing Everybody Loves Raymond gags. Some people have that passion! But if you had that passion, you'd have known about it for a long, long time.
Don't feel any less authentic, for this. You're a human. Rimbaud was a human. It's just that people like Rimbaud write the descriptions of being human that the rest of us read, and not vice versa, so our sense of what's normal gets distorted. Most people live a life in which nobody pays them a salary or gives them fame for doing what they truly love. It's cool, relax. You're sane.
So: you maybe need to think a bit more about how realistic you are, when you get into something. Don't look at the saint in the throes of prayer and think: "I could be like him! I'll buy the rosary beads tomorrow! It'll be amazing!". Think of the long boring days in cold half-empty churches, and think "would I like that more than videogames? More than sex?". Because when, if, you find your passion, the passion of the person that is you, you'll know about it.
posted by piato at 7:27 PM on January 6, 2011 [1 favorite]