Something is stopping me........

[dragos240]

The lack of motivation to go on and procrastination. What is a 14 year old boy to do. I have a distro to finish!! It's very difficult to find motivation in life sometimes, I can't focus. Procrastination is bringing me down! I need to get some motivation. Anyone else feel the same way? I can't focus on one thing for more than a few minutes at a time. THE DISTRO IS COMING ALONG WELL! Don't worry, it's just hard to focus. What is a good way to focus on something. I have ADHD so I'm looking at everything at once, I can't focus on something, my train of thought is very short. Please help :(

[SuperSonic4]

Compile mplayer from SVN :D

[dragos240]

Compile mplayer from SVN :D

I've done that already. I don't need things to do, I'm not bored. I am easily distracted, and I'm not motivated. It's strange. I WANT to do something, but I end up putting it off. It's either my ADHD, or it's just procrastination. It's very confusing.

[toupeiro]

Fix Chrome-OS.

[dragos240]

Fix Chrome-OS.

Why? What's wrong with it?

[Mornedhel]

Unfortunately, I don't think there's a cure for procrastination yet. Mostly you'll have to get some work done through sheer willpower.

You could measure how long you are able to focus on a single task and try to improve on that. There are several tools for Linux to do that sort of thing (not the improving part, the timing part only...). The Hamster project for Gnome is in heavy development and looks promising.

Close windows unrelated to your task (e.g. if you're coding, close the file browser that points to the TV series you're currently watching, close the tabs on random but interesting Wikipedia articles, etc., keep only the editor, documentation and console open).

Try to maintain a To Do list. Most importantly, try to mark things as Done on your To Do list. Scheduling time in advance for specific tasks is not necessarily a good idea in my opinion, you risk working for ten minutes on something, procrastinating 50 minutes, and then start working another ten minutes on the next task. Instead, focus on getting something done all the way.

Oh, do try not to procrastinate by setting up and configuring tools to help you with your procrastination :)

If you're only fourteen, procrastination is not yet too damaging unless you never get your homework done on time. It will, however, get more problematic as your responsibilities increase (procrastinating on your actual job : not a good idea).

[Simon17]

There IS a cure for procrastination. You need to find a parent or a good friend and have him kick you in the ***.
Works every time.

[LinuxFanBoi]

The lack of motivation to go on and procrastination. What is a 14 year old boy to do. I have a distro to finish!! It's very difficult to find motivation in life sometimes, I can't focus. Procrastination is bringing me down! I need to get some motivation. Anyone else feel the same way? I can't focus on one thing for more than a few minutes at a time. THE DISTRO IS COMING ALONG WELL! Don't worry, it's just hard to focus. What is a good way to focus on something. I have ADHD so I'm looking at everything at once, I can't focus on something, my train of thought is very short. Please help :(

There's always internet pr0n.

[markp1989]

The lack of motivation to go on and procrastination. What is a 14 year old boy to do. I have a distro to finish!! It's very difficult to find motivation in life sometimes, I can't focus. Procrastination is bringing me down! I need to get some motivation. Anyone else feel the same way? I can't focus on one thing for more than a few minutes at a time. THE DISTRO IS COMING ALONG WELL! Don't worry, it's just hard to focus. What is a good way to focus on something. I have ADHD so I'm looking at everything at once, I can't focus on something, my train of thought is very short. Please help :(

what disro you working on?

[SmittyJensen]

The lack of motivation to go on and procrastination. What is a 14 year old boy to do. I have a distro to finish!! It's very difficult to find motivation in life sometimes, I can't focus. Procrastination is bringing me down! I need to get some motivation. Anyone else feel the same way? I can't focus on one thing for more than a few minutes at a time. THE DISTRO IS COMING ALONG WELL! Don't worry, it's just hard to focus. What is a good way to focus on something. I have ADHD so I'm looking at everything at once, I can't focus on something, my train of thought is very short. Please help :(
adhd doesn't go together well with distro development.

[LinuxFanBoi]

I would tell you what I do to focus, but someone would go tattle tale to a mod and this thread would get shut down quicker than you can say canna.... [never mind]

[dragos240]

what disro you working on?

The name of the project codename is 'wakarimashita' it means 'understand'. It's meant for people who want customization in every way possible, and an easy start. I am going to make an installer after the first release that has a gui, and that is easy to follow. You select packages manually, or select a group of packages. This helps the average user manage what he/she has in a nice easy to use environment.

[Ewingo401]

Sounds interesting. What is it based on?

[toupeiro]

Why? What's wrong with it?

Lack of broadcomm support and a range of other hardware drivers. oh, and lack of a CLI to fix things ourselves.

[dragos240]

Sounds interesting. What is it based on?

It is based on gentoo. Combined with arch's conf files to make it easier for the user to configure.

[dragos240]

Lack of broadcomm support and a range of other hardware drivers. oh, and lack of a CLI to fix things ourselves.

Don't you have CTRL + ALT + F1/F2.

You can do that!

[markp1989]

sounds interesting, as soon as its done i will give it a try :D

[dragos240]

sounds interesting, as soon as its done i will give it a try :D

I'll need all the help I can get. :popcorn:

[toupeiro]

Don't you have CTRL + ALT + F1/F2.

You can do that!

haha, try it. ;)

[dragos240]

haha, try it. ;)

They disabled switching to a tty terminal? Alllllriiighhttt.......

[Gizenshya]

There's always internet pr0n.

what a shockingly good suggestion ;)

but seriously, you're young. This is a personal project-- not something for work. Every time I've ever tried to work through periods like that, nothing good has ever come from it. I just end up stressed and stay up late... with very little progress.

Stress management is a very important skill to learn, and you are in the perfect position to experiment. Solutions vary among people, so do some trial and error.

For me, if I can, I just go out and relax for a bit. I'll run (or otherwise exercise) for a while, play games, talk on the phone, listen to music, or watch a movie.

If I'm really stressed, it might take a bit to get my motivation back, but it does always come back. The lower I keep my stress levels, the shorter the motivation-less time span is, and the (less bad) it is.

I've foudn it is best to have a routine for whatever project(s) I'm working on. A limited amout of time at a time on project, the relax time mixed in. Work binges might get more output for a short time, but they aren't sustainable in my experience. But that's me.

Just learn about yourself and you'll be fine.

[Eisenwinter]

You don't have to finish the distro.

That's your problem, you're trying to force yourself to finish the distro, and you're going against your will.

Let it go, and work on the distro only when you really feel like working on it.

It's like a musician, for example.

Imagine if you were part of a band. You guys would play great music, something amazing, but only when you really wanted to play.

If you were forced to play, the music would suck, it would sound forced, there would be no depth or emotion to it, and you would be doing it against your will anyway.

I suggest you watch Daria - Is It College Yet?, for an example.

Jane is trying to forcefully paint in order to send a protfolio of her art to Boston Fine Arts College.

She forces herself to paint, and hates it.

[Frak]

Jane is trying to forcefully paint in order to send a protfolio of her art to Boston Fine Arts College.

She forces herself to paint, and hates it.

Did that with programming. Hated it quickly. Also, love Daria, wish it was on the air longer.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

I procrastinate a lot, too, dragos. I can't speak as someone who has overcome it (yet), but one thing I have found that really helps is to maintain a list. Not a todo list; just a list. (Basically, I learned a bit about the Getting Things Done philosophy and morphed it to my purposes).

The idea is that I have this list EVERYWHERE. So, when a thought, idea or observation comes into my head I write it down at some point on the list, based on how important it is. The reason I do this, personally, is because a lot of my procrastination springs from trying to recall stupid things I had thought about a few hours / days ago. Now I just read my list and either know what it was, or know that it was particularly unimportant.

Ideally, I keep track of how quick a task on that list is, as well, so if I am looking for something to fill a particular bit of time I can. (Theoretically).

Also, I'm about 60 times more productive when I don't have an Internet connection.

[mdmarmer]

I'm also trying to build a distro. I think you'll find that the installer is the most difficult part. My distro is based on debian testing and so far I've been using remastersys as it seems too difficult to build an installer or fork an existing installer. The name of my distro is canabix and there is an older torrent up on linuxtracker. I'm using lxde, liquorix kernel based on zen sources, and it will include all multimedia.

I'm interested to know how you are doing on an installer. If your installer could be used with debian I would be very interested.

Mike

[RiceMonster]

All the cool kids procrastinate.

Slackers unite... later.

[SeanHodges]

What is a good way to focus on something. I have ADHD so I'm looking at everything at once, I can't focus on something, my train of thought is very short. Please help :(

Write a simple TODO list of what you want to get done. Stick to just one list and add to it/cross things off as you complete them.

Use colourful pens, so certain important tasks stand out, and maybe number them in importance. You could use a "x/y" format to add the difficulty rating as well. It's also nice to have elaborate decorative bordering around the list, and maybe some diagrams and arrows to show the relationships and interactions between relevant tasks. In fact, maybe you should be doing this on the computer. For that you probably should compile something for your distro, like GTG, so you're expanding your distro repository at the same time. You could maybe write an extension for Labyrinth to integrate with GTG and mind map the...

Wait, what was my point again?

Oh yeah, draw up a simple TODO list.