How to stay focused when suffering from ADHD and other conditions. Please contribute thoughts and advice

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Hello everyone, first if this is not appropriate for this forum I get it and no issues if it needs to be deleted. This is just what I can think of to offer my help here while I’m still learning Godot and think it is relevant for some people on here.

So I’m new to game development with some computer schooling education. I also am Audhd (Autistic and ADHD) Along with Fibromyalgia. (A nerve disease that like to make all pain double or triple what it actually is. Super fun one.)

I bring this up because I know I’m not the only one on here with struggles like these and thought it would be nice to have a little brainstorm and sharing on things that help you with your conditions. I’ll start and FYI while phycology and physical disabilities is something I researched a lot of. (orginaly wanted to be a therapist) I am not a legal professional in any way. I can help direct you to the right people but take my advice as anecdotal. :slight_smile:

So first struggle is with my Audhd. Primarily Executive Dysfunction. There’s no official way to fix this but from the community and experimenting. Body Doubling is one of the best ways to work with it. Example: I can’t get myself to clean the house. Nothing but my mind stopping me, but when someone starts cleaning the house around me it becomes almost an impulse to start cleaning with them. This can be translated to programming. Being on discord voice or video chat with someone also programing can help you. (I skimmed a lot but if you’re struggling with Executive Dysfunction or not sure. I can explain a lot more. I’ve been working on it a lot this last year trying to find the best ways to help people.)

Another one is focus AKA the ADHD bread and butter. Not as easily dealt with but for me using a fidget spinner in between typing has helped a lot with my mind wondering. Previous things have been having my nails painted bright colors or using bright colors on a keyboard. (I have a white keyboard and different colors for every key) It seems silly but for some people it really does help a lot. It does require trial and again if you have further questions let me know. :slight_smile: My GF has really intense ADHD and used to helping her.

For fibromyalgia: I’ll simplify this more about physical pains and injuries. This one can be the hardest challenge. Like when I have a Migraine there’s no getting around it until it’s gone. I do find certain tools like putting your monitor on an arm so you can easily move it wherever you want so your eyes are level with it helps a lot so you can change how you’re sitting without having to bend your neck weird or strain. Another is having a timer on the other side of the room for an hour to force you to get up and move around. I find I have to take a lot of breaks or I can’t stand up by the end of the day. I’m about to experiment with some AOA yoga type stuff.

So those were just a few things. Some of this is probably very obvious for most of you but I meet people every week that suffer from these kinds of conditions and know none of this. (Some of the things that have helped me the most I got from a random post like this years a go.) I’m new to programing but not this stuff which can greatly affect your ability to program on your own. So I hope I can help some of you on here.

So please feel safe to share what kind of condition and/or symptoms (only what you feel comfortable sharing. I don’t want people to feel forced or unsafe) and what you do to work around them or if you are not sure what to do and maybe some of us on here can help give you some advice or directions where to go to get the help you need.

I hope this thread is okay and really hope this can help at least one person on here that’s struggling. Thank you all and good luck on your projects!

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I suggest doing regular meditation. Not just any meditation but the original one that leads to Samadhi. The practice may definitely help you.

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Fully understand the house cleaning problem! By myself, it’s challenging but when my wife starts cleaning something she knows I’ll be happy to help and usually do more than she does.

For game development I have a text editor open where I type “what my game should have”. If I don’t have that, I don’t really know what to read or work on. It also stops me from being overwhelmed with how much I need to do. Somehow writing ideas in a text document tricks my brain. :laughing:

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Do you mind me asking why you need to use/do all this? Never heard someone do all this so curious what it’s about.

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Yeah Body doubling can be insane. My GF and I sort of take turns trying to make ourselves do something to help the other push through. (If you’re someone who has an easier time doing things for others and not for yourself. you can use that to help body double another person and hopefully they can do the same back.) Do you have ADHD or just an isolated case of Executive Dysfunction? Don’t answer that if you don’t feel comfortable to say.

That’s a really good idea with the text box. I’m going to try that. Yeah my mind just races so much and hard to just focus on one thing long enough.

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Well, I don’t have any neurodivergence, and maybe this is not exactly the point of this topic, but I wanted to share my experience in case it helps someone. I have always struggled with “finishing things”. It could be gamedev related or not, like learning new stuff or similar. Almost everyone in my family has excelled in their life, whether it is sports, academic life, work, etc., so I kinda “normalized” success in all its forms. This has led to recurrent Impostor Syndrome and uncontrolled perfectionism in my life.

For the last year or so, I have been digging in the reason why I can’t keep up with any project I start. I was tired of not meeting my own expectations. Finally, I found 3 mistakes that where holding me back. I will present them and then explain how I’m currently trying to deal with them.

(Please, have in mind that I am no psychologist and this is just my experience, so do not take any advice as a professional guideline.)

  1. Unrealistic goals and expectations for my projects: when you are a begginer with something, you can’t pretend to do the same things that professionals do. This seems obvious, but in reality, I found myself constantly setting goals that I wasn’t yet prepared for. For example, for my first game, I wanted to make a multiplayer strategic survival action game with polished pixelart graphics and intelligent enemies…

  2. Wrong planification. I have to admit I have always had issues with discipline. But one can’t just go from 0 days per week working in anything to 7 days per week, fulltime. It just won’t work, that step is way too big.

  3. Inability to deal with poorly done work. As a perfectionist, seeing how the things I do are not as cool as in my head really bothers me and has played a major role in demotivating me.

I think that I have always been scared of finishing projects because I didn’t want to feel ashamed of the imperfections of what I called a finished project. Labeling them as “work in progress” was like a shield for me. But that is, in fact, a terrible approach. If you can’t even finish bad projects, you will never finish good projects. You need to do a bad game first in order to learn how to do good games. But you can’t learn fron your mistakes if you don’t allow yourself to make mistakes. This works for everything, not only gamedev.

In order to solve these problems, I first changed the main goal for my projects: The goal must be finishing them, regardless of how good they are.

Therefore, I started to make short and easier projects, focusing primarily on finishing them and learning from them for the next one. I told myself: “You have one month and you have to finish it, even if it is not as good as you want” But why short and easy? 3 reasons:

  1. I had to experiment what finishing projects was. Learn from all the phases, not only the brainstorm and exploratory phase, but also production and detail polishing.
  2. I needed to go step by step. It’s like running. You first have to learn how to walk, and the you can learn how to run. Once you have a solid base, you will be able to do more complex things.
  3. That initial motivation boost doesn’t last for too long, so short projects are better in this context.

Yes, my first project was trash. And the second one. But that’s totally fine. Accepting that is key. The goal was finishing them, and once you do, you feel good because you feel that, at least, you did it and you are building valuable experience that will allow you to perform better in the future. The second project, despite being far from what I wanted, was better than the first one. And seeing that there is some progress feels good and gives you motivation for the next one. It also helps seeing how I went from “doing nothing” to finishing projects.

If you are still reading, thanks, that was a lot of text. At least, I hope it helped. I have learnt a lot from seeing how other people face their problems in life.

The best thing I’ve learnt is that failing is part of the process. Even if everthing goes wrong, take a step back and try again later. Being familiar with failure allows you to find small pearls in an ocean of imperfections.

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Wow thank you for sharing. Worded really well in my opinion. I think I keep getting stuck to on the project scope and like some others have said to. Really need to do the tiny projects to get wins and completions under your belt then go from there.

PS. I might of done the title better but was mainly looking at these kinds of topics that a lot of us struggle with. Sometimes just hearing advice worded differently can make it click.

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It’s not fully off topic - if suggestions help someone focus and improve on their Godot skills then I don’t see a problem.

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A quote from the author Jim Butcher:
“My first novel was bad. My second one was worse”

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ADHD. Sometimes my brain gets stuck in some sort of turbo mode and is all over the place. I take some medication to take the edge off, which helps.

I was finally given a prescription at 49. :laughing:

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Something that note about mental illnesses and vitamins. The mental illness often makes the vitamins run out faster than normal. It might be helpful to check it. I recommend 5strands.

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Hi Matthew. I’m in the same boat except for the Fibromyalgia, just wondering are you still able to do sport like Running? It helps me with the ADHD at lot. I’m almost pre-historic so I added a stretch and mobility course at the gym to my weekly plan. Ah, reading in Wikipedia: “The European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology strongly recommends aerobic and strengthening exercise”.

Something I took from watching talks that Russell Barkely has posted in his Youtube channel: Productivity over Quality. Meaning, it’s important to do (and finish?) something instead of getting stuck in this “I have to do Important Thing first” downward spiral. To this add habits like “Put it back, not away” and cleaning the dishes before you go to bed (this also doubles as time away from a display before sleep).

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What has worked for me is practice. I have anxiety I practice relaxation. I have lack focus I practice focus. I doubt myself i practice confidence. I lack motivation I practice motivation.

I had palpitations caused by high anxiety , i practiced heart control to the point my palpitations went away.

I had IBS I practiced digestion control which also eliminated my heartburns.

I approach everything as a skill and through trial and error I improve this skill.

I control pains through practicing relaxation and decreasing pain sensitivity.

I train my brain to take control of my body, thoughts and emotions. Nothing magical about it just very slow progress through a ton of trial and error practice.

I make sure every day my brain is more trained in the skills needed to deal with my issues.

I found this to be massive more effective than psychotherapy and taking drugs. Although psychotherapy helped learn a lot on how the unconscious works and xanax has been a big help to help learn what relaxation is.

I have a collection of things that cannot be diagnosed and solved with drugs because they are highly specific to me. I have been in psychotherapy and medication for almost 10 years.

Through brain exercises I have literally hundreds times the progress last 2 years compared to previous 8. Nobody told me how to do this i had to learn myself.