The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
(Reposting in the latest Wellness Wednesday following a suggestion)
I am seeking advice on how to fix a chronic, persistent, extreme lack of discipline.
I am currently 25, live with my mother, I have failed out of college (again) and I currently work part time at a grocery store for minimum wage within walking distance (I still don't have my driver's license). The reason I failed out of college both times was that I just didn't show up to class. When I did show up, I passed the exams with no real problem and I managed to pass a few classes with that. I have yet to tell my mother I failed the second time. I went to a 4 year college, failed out of that, then went to a 2 year community college. The only reason I managed to get a degree was that it was during COVID years, so the standards were super lax. I'm pretty sure I missed a few final exams, didn't hand in almost any assignments and yet somehow I still passed. After passing, I went back to the 4 year school and went back to failing.
I only have the job because, after I finished the 2 year degree, I didn't sign up for classes for the 4 year college in time, so I was doing nothing for months. My mother kept telling me to get a job since I wasn't in school and was threatening to kick me out if I didn't. She gave me multiple deadlines that I blew past with no consequence, but I could tell she was getting increasingly fed up. I ended up getting a job and I'm pretty sure if I waited a month or two longer, I would've been kicked out.
After the second time I failed, I decided to go to a therapist. She told me to see a psychiatrist for ADHD. He eventually said I have ADHD, and even though I am still quite skeptical of the diagnosis (
for reasons I can go into if neededsomeone asked, so I answered here), I have been taking the Methylphenidate ER that I've been prescribed. I am only doing this because my mother has great insurance so all the therapists, doctors and medication is all paid for fully by insurance, but that will only last until I am 26 (close to a year from now). She also doesn't know I am going to a therapist, doctor or that I am taking any medicine.With regards to my job, for reasons that I still do not know, I am able to go to my job without missing a day. I am almost always a few minutes late (anywhere from 0 to 10 minutes), but given the super low standards of a minimum wage job, I never get reprimanded in any way for it. But, I still always show up, unlike my school classes. This confusion is part of what prompted me to go to therapy. I have repeatedly tried to figure out why I am late and to fix it, but nothing really worked.
So, the question is: what do I do? Here is me listing all the options I can think of
Continue going to therapy and seeing the psychiatrist. Both haven't been helpful so far (I've seen two therapists so far. the first abruptly told me she was leaving that practice. Both have been similarly effective), but maybe they just need more time. Hopefully, I will learn why I didn't go to class and fix that, then I will go back to school, finish my degree and get a job like "normal". My worry: it's been 3 months of this so far and I can't see any progress, so I am not too optimistic. Plus, I'm not sure I can hide me failing from my mother much longer and if she does find out, I'm pretty sure I will be kicked out. Maybe I need a new therapist? If it's not part of insurance, as all the good therapists seem to be, I don't think I'd be able to afford it with my minimum wage job. And, even though every therapist that doesn't take insurance says they offer it cheaper for people that find it hard to pay, I'm not sure I'd qualify since, even though I make little money, my mother makes decent money.
Give up on college, give up on therapy, the psychiatry, the adhd medication and try to find a job with the 2 year degree I have. Hope that what happened with me not going to college doesn't happen at my new job. My worry: doing this without understanding why I failed in college seems very risky. I'm also not sure I can find a good enough job to move out with just a 2 year degree.
Tell my mother. Hope she gives me another chance. But then what? What is my plan then? No idea. Plus, I am unsure I would even get another chance (or if I deserve one). I mean, would you give me one? I don't think I would.
Continue working my dead end job. Eventually, my mother will figure out I failed, maybe she'll give me another chance, maybe not, eventually I get kicked out. (doom scenario)
Am I missing any options? What should I do? How do I fix this extreme lack of discipline? How do I fix this extreme laziness? Have you, or anyone you know, fixed this extreme lack of discipline? How?
If it matters, for context I live in the New York metropolitan area. Also, "kicked out" in this context doesn't mean me being homeless. I'm not 100% sure, but it probably means me either living with my dad, or my brother. However, if I don't solve my issues, they would probably kick me out eventually as well, and after that, who knows.
So, I was in a pretty similar position to you, though my procrastination and absenteeism started in middle school and never really cleared up. My last year of high school I was going to class less than once a week to hand in assignments or write tests and spending the rest of my time at home reading, programming, or playing video games. The school tolerated this because I got an exemption from a psychiatrist (who I was forced to start seeing after I said, basically, "If I have to waste another fucking year of my life in that place I'm going to end up killing myself," to my mother when explaining why I kept skipping class.)
The psychiatrist diagnosed me with "social anxiety" which I didn't agree with at the time, and still don't, but I played along because it at least meant being able to graduate on time.
I moved out at 18 to go to college. Predictably, it did not go very well. While the coursework was trivial (freshman CS) the profs were hardasses about attendance, so I dropped out after two semesters. Moved back in with my mom to her great disappointment and did odd jobs to make my student loan payments and help with rent. (Picking apples in autumn and a part-time gig at the butcher's shop she worked at for the rest of the year, mostly. I didn't have trouble with showing up to these jobs for some reason.)
If discipline (conscientiousness?) is a Real Thing then I'd wager I'm <1st percentile. Whatever standard script typically engenders "work ethic" in people was completely ineffective on me; the only thing that's motivated me to do things I actively don't want to do is an overwhelming sense of panic and imminent fear of disaster. This is a pretty severe character flaw, there's no sugar-coating it, and I haven't been able to overcome it except in brief spurts. I've tried a friend's Vyvanse prescription: it seemed to make it easier to initiate annoying tasks, but I wasn't in school or working full-time, so I have no idea if it would've been effective in those scenarios, and it may have been placebo to begin with.
I'm 29 now, and unfortunately I never found a satisfactory solution to this problem; I gave up on the "standard" normie wageslave life a long time ago. Post-COVID, online courses and remote work might be a viable means to cope with the issue -- when I was in college, the idea of an online class being remotely equivalent to a "real" one was pure fantasy. You can, apparently, even get student loans for them now. I found my own personal success (such as it is) in other ways: I made a decent chunk of money in crypto early on (ironically using some of the student loan money which I'm still making the minimum payments on -- the interest rate is so low, it's the only Rational(tm) choice) and multiplied it with some Wallstreetbets-tier investments. The COVID years were particularly kind, and Nvidia secured the bag, so to speak. This was enough to live independently and comfortably (though not lavishly) for the foreseeable future.
This came out as more of a blackpilling post then I expected; I don't know that I have any advice per se, as "get lucky with crypto 8+ years ago" is not exactly actionable. That said, if you aren't able to solve the root of your issue (as I wasn't) it's worth considering more unconventional coping methods, e.g., finding some way to make enough money to achieve your goal of living independently. You are clearly very literate, fluent in English, intelligent, and an American citizen: this combination alone puts you ahead of a lot of people, and there has never been a better time to make a living on the internet. If your morals are at all flexible and you have a bit of risk tolerance (and if the alternative is "getting kicked out and eventually living on the streets", well...) there are many roads available.
Probably not the answer you were looking for, but (personally) the NEET life is great, if you can find a way to make it happen.
I appreciate the post regardless. This is useful info since you usually hear stories of how people get better and fix everything. I generally have a low risk tolerance (I'm the type to tell my friends or relatives to just invest in the S&P instead of random crypto or to buy the S&P instead of real estate and renting it out), but it makes sense that I'd need to change that as the situation gets more desperate. I will keep this in the back of my mind as I try other strategies.
More options
Context Copy link
I wish I YOLO’d my student loans for online university (ASU) into crypto / apehood.
All I got was a shitty Masters (and Bachelors) and a continued career in retail.
More options
Context Copy link
It sounds like you don't really need advice anymore, and I never had as bad of a problem as you or OP did, but there are outdoor manual labor jobs that pay better and have more of a pathway to retirement than those two. (I guess butchering isn't outdoors, which opens up even more opportunities.). May be worth exploring--not everyone has to be a programmer, and tasks involving trees are supposedly going to be difficult to automate.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link