I really need som tips on how to avoid getting trapped by my own hyperfokusing.

I very often i get completely consumed by either youtube shorts or something similar and i loose complete sense of time and spends literally 5 hours on just doom scrolling and wasting time. The worst part is that I’m hyperly aware that I’m doing it the whole time and I really want to stop but I just won’t shake myself off of it. I feel so bad because i should go walk the dog or go do my hobies instead. It happens the most often when I’m supposed to work from home and it makes the guilt feel even worse. If only I could do something for myself at least while not actually working. The only way I’ve found working so far is blocking the websites from me using blockers but I know that I’ll just either circumvent them or find something else that’s equally bad for me to hyperfokus on. And I do have legitimate reasons to use YouTube sometimes for work for tutorials etc so blocking it doesn’t really work so well for me.

How do I get out when I find myself in that trapped state? Let me know how you are dealing with it.

I wanna add that I’m medicated with methylphenidate but it doesn’t really work on getting out of the trap if I’ve first gotten in.

  • AddLemmus@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    20 hours ago

    I work from home, and I have to use lots of methods. Then it works.

    Just two examples:

    • I always have to work strictly with todo-lists. When it’s not on a list, it’s not getting done. On the other hand, putting it on the list, rather than doing it, feels like 55 % of the mental effort.

    • Implementation intention: My brain takes offence to “must do now” orders. Instead, when I catch myself on a youtube/scrolling binge, I set a trigger (e. g. time, end of video) at which I do one item from the list. If there is no list, I write the list. That way, I get to continue enjoying for a bit longer, but now guilt-free (!), and can continue guilt-free after doing that one thing.