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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3672 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for November 16, 2022

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:

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I got a great new software development job that's easier and much higher-paying than my old one, but the first few weeks have been really rough. I work from home and find myself just playing endless videogames rather than working, then staying up really late and still mostly playing videogames just to get an hour or two of work done. Don't know what's going wrong really--I think I might be stressed or burnt out, but I need to get some work done to give my new employers a good first impression.

Crazy thing is, it's a great job, I'm really good at it, and I only have to do 1-2 hours of focused work a day to excel. But even that seems to be beyond me currently. Anyone else been in a similar situation and have good tips for how to concentrate?

You have a few options, you could make a habit of going to your local library or cool coffee shop and work from there for the 2 hours you need in the morning, then get back home. Generally if you go in a space that you haven't trained yourself to associate with gaming, you won't game. You could also install something like the paid version of ColdTurkey to prevent you from gaming. Going on the pharmaceutical end, you could get hold of some modafinil and use that to focus, it's much milder than amphetamines and easier to get (I use indiamart and have some indian dude ship it to me).

I actually did buy ColdTurkey but it was too easy to uninstall it, lol. I thought modafinil was generally for wakefulness?

modafinil was generally for wakefulness?

Just like caffeine both keeps you awake and focuses/motivates you, modafinil also has quite significant effects on focus and motivation, it's sort of the intermediate step between caffeine and amphetamines. I wouldn't necessarily use it everyday, otherwise you get used to it, but it could really give you 2 days per week of great motivation.

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