I always think of the description I saw years ago: Self-imposed deadlines don't help me, because I know the person who set them, and they're full of shit.
Give yourself the treat before you start. I'm serious. And ideally during the task and afterwards too.
Executive dysfunction comes from a lack of available dopamine. Common advice is wrong. You need to provide your own dopamine before you can start. Otherwise you're trying to run your car on empty.
"But what if I still don't do it" well you already weren't getting it done anyway. Now you have a little treat. Try again later.
You deserve kindness and care even when you aren't being productive.
(Also read How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis)
I give my students a LOT of techniques for starting writing when it feels overwhelming or daunting, but one of them is exactly this: dopamine load BEFOREHAND. It may sound weird to people on tumblr dot com, but a lot of people seriously struggle with executive dysfunction when it comes to writing literally anything, to the extent that it can cause such symptoms as panic, depression, and AI chatbot use.
I usually suggest this technique as a "Reverse Pomodoro." In the original Pomodoro, you work for 25 minutes and then take a break for 5 minutes (the times vary, but that's the essential ratio). People with executive dysfunction often find this insurmountable, and they get even more frustrated, and then the task seems even more difficult. So instead, flip those times.
FIRST, spend 25 minutes doing something energizing and engaging that you like to do. Not scrolling social media passively, not watching tv, not napping. Try something like colouring, doing yoga, running/walking around the block, talking about your favourite tv show with someone in real time, playing with the dog or cat, making and eating a lovely sandwich, hula hooping, something active. Having a little treat absolutely falls in this category!
(on the subject of little treats: refusing yourself food until you do work is for fucking Puritans and you can be kinder to yourself)
Then, after 25 minutes (or however long it takes to eat the sandwich or finish the yoga routine, it doesn't have to be exact), spend 5 minutes writing (or doing whatever you're struggling to start). Most people can coax themselves into doing something they find difficult for five minutes, if they have already filled up the joy/energy/engagement bucket. You can put a timer on for the 5 minutes if you want, or if you find that annoying, just work for as long as you like.
The other key is: don't push yourself to keep going when you're frustrated or tired—that will just reinforce the negative belief that you already have, which tells you that this task is painful to do, and needs to be avoided. If you've commonly had to force yourself to do this kind of task, that's likely part of why you think of it as painful and have trouble starting it now. Also, you should just, at a basic level, try not to put yourself in pain for the sake of productivity. So just do it till the good feelings run out. Then start hula hooping or colouring again for another 25 minutes. When the tank's refilled, try another 5 minutes of work, if you can. Adjust times to taste.
Not every technique works for everyone, but I've seen this one work for many students who are genuinely and seriously disabled by executive dysfunction. And many people find themselves getting more and more excited and engaged in the "difficult" task—because the good feelings from the hula hooping carry over, and because they're suddenly able to do the task without feeling pain, and feel accomplishment without feeling pain.
"You survive this and in some terrible way, which I suppose no one can ever describe, you are compelled, you are corralled, you are bullwhipped into dealing with whatever it is that hurt you. And what is crucial here is that if it hurt you, that is not what’s important. Everybody’s hurt. What is important, what corrals you, what bullwhips you, what drives you, torments you, is that you must find some way of using this to connect you with everyone else alive. This is all you have to do it with. You must understand that your pain is trivial except insofar as you can use it to connect with other people’s pain; and insofar as you can do that with your pain, you can be released from it, and then hopefully it works the other way around too; insofar as I can tell you what it is to suffer, perhaps I can help you to suffer less."
- James Baldwin, The Artist's Struggle for Integrity
I’m glad so many people have discovered Judith “Judy” Heumann through this silly little gif set. I am sorry to say she has died at the age of 75. She was known as the mother of disability rights. In 1970 she sued the Board of Education to become a licensed teacher and she won. In 1977 she was one of the organizers of the 504 Sit-in, a 24 day protest for disability rights. You can learn more about her story from her book Being Heumann, the picture book Fighting for YES! or the documentary Crip Camp.
Judy Heumann believed in the inherent value of each disabled individual and would never back down on what she thought was right. Her friends and fellow activists remember her as a strong leader.
Every work of art says things the creator hasn’t considered, but if you’ve really thought about what you’re trying to say then generally the additional dimensions you didn’t know it had are in alignment with your purpose, whereas if you think you’re making no cultural comment at all you are actually making a LOT of cultural comments, most of which will be unflattering to you
“I don’t want to make anything with cultural dimensions. That’s why I only write within the genre that is legally sequestered away from every other kind of storytelling because of my culture’s attitude towards depictions of sex.”
getting lost in boston is fun because I turned around on a street corner three times and some guy yelled "hey stupid! the bus is that way!" very helpful interaction and accurate insult, 10/10 no notes
one time I walked around a building a couple times looking for a bathroom and this guy went "this bitch thinks she's on a merrygoround, where the fuck are you tryna go? bathroom? one floor down to the right behind the door that says bathroom."
My very first time in Boston. I was absolutely miserable, trying to drag my giant suitcase up a lengthy set of stairs in the pouring rain. This guy who had already reached the top looked back at me with the most pure expression of disgust I’ve ever seen in anyone’s eyes, marched back down the stairs, grabbed my suitcase, carried it to the top, left it there for me, and walked away without ever saying a word. I think about him often.
For the people in the notes going "why is Boston like this": a) the insults are a way to show you have no ulterior motives when helping someone (and don't need to be thanked or repaid), and b) Boston was settled by the Irish
also the Italians. mixing Irish and Italian sociocultural attitudes had the effect of multiplying the Sass Levels by the power of infinity, in the sense that you get all of the clever dry wit of the Irish and all of the bitchy gossipy condensation of the Italians rolled into one very stereotypically overly-friendly American package.
also worth noting that who you are to them doesn’t matter. they’ll talk to strangers like that and will also talk to their best friends like that. they’re just Like That.
Trying the new Little House on the Prairie series and I am convinced of several things I did not realize as a child:
-Pa is a dumbfuck
-Pa caused if not worsened most of all his family’s miseries
-Western expansion was a dumb fucking idea for everyone involved.
-Fording a stream with all your earthly possessions where if a horse slips you and your whole family die and you lose everything you have?? Sure great idea. Let’s have everyone do it regardless of skill
I just saw a comment on fb that ran off the misconception that dowries were a sexist subjugation of women for the purposes of buying and selling them like objects, and since this morning I would rather die than engage with a stranger on fb I'm going to talk on here instead about dowries as they were around Jane Austen's era/regency England.
Basically: dowries were an inheritance. It was a way to give a daughter what they would need to live comfortably at the time when they were most likely to need it - leaving their father's care and support and beginning a home elsewhere. In Austen terms we're generally talking about a sum of money, but dowries can also include items for a household like linens and China (goods like this were called a trousseau from at least the 1830s onward). Dowries very materially improved the life of a woman as they were meant to.
Some of the ways they did this were actually before marriage. We tend to call every inheritance a woman was to receive a dowry but that's incorrect, most of Austen's heroines don't have a dowry, though we know how much they'll inherit upon the death of their father and/or mother. Fortune =/= dowry. The Bennets of Pride and Prejudice, the Dashwoods of Sense and Sensibility, Anne Elliot in Persuasion, and even Emma Woodhouse in Emma all will inherit a little to a great deal of wealth but not as a dowry. This means that even Emma, who will one day have the staggering amount of thirty thousand pounds, would not be bringing wealth immediately into a marriage (though in her circumstances she has a father who would hardly let her live impoverished if she had chosen to marry a penniless man).
For women as poor as the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice (though they should've had more money each, if their parents weren't useless, as has been discussed) the distinction between dowry and eventual inheritance didn't mean much: a max of fifty pounds per annum in interest was literally less than what some servants were paid so couldn't alleviate the need for their husbands to have an independent income. But what money a woman could bring into a marriage definitely increased the likelihood of her preferences being realised. Northanger Abbey's Catherine Moreland, who "would have three thousand pounds" means she has enough of a fortune to "smooth the descent of [General Tilney's] pride" and make him consent to the marriage of his son to her. She certainly would've been glad her parents saved this money for her, instead of feeling that she was an object being bought or sold. It empowered her choices, rather than reduced them.
That the inheritance of a woman is presented as a dowry also reduces the chances a woman and the man she loves will need to wait to marry until either of them inherit something or he makes a living. If Anne Elliot of Persuasion had had a dowry, instead of a future inheritance (a "share of ten thousand pounds which must be hers hereafter"), would she have broken off that original engagement? In ch23 she tells Captain Wentworth she would've been engaged to him when he had only "a few thousand pounds" and the likelihood of more thanks to an advantageous posting. If she would receive her own few thousand pounds upon marriage would that've been enough to remain engaged from the first, and perhaps even marry once he had added a few more thousands to that instead of needing to wait for Wentworth to build their shared fortune himself?
We can also see that a dowry was an inheritance parents provided for their daughter's benefit, rather than a sale price, by how carefully marriage articles were drawn up. This could legally define pin-money (how much money a woman would receive for her private usage and upkeep from her husband), and often specified that the husband couldn't diminish the bulk sum of his wife's fortune, only use the interest it generated, so that there would always be something to support the wife and her children no matter how spendthrift he was. Think of it like an old-fashioned pre-nup or family trust.
This is a huge reason why eloping was so bad, it meant there hadn't been articles drawn up beforehand and so the legal default of 'everything the wife has is now the husband's in full' applied instead of the chance to preserve her rights to her own fortune. If Wickham had succeeded in eloping with Georgiana Darcy in Pride and Prejudice her thirty thousand pounds would've become his in full when she turned twenty-one, though her guardians could've withheld it before then, and he could've spent it all and left her penniless without legal consequence.
There are plenty of historical examples of husbands without the regulations of marriage articles squandering the fortune and selling off assets, leaving the wife eventually destitute. Marriage articles are a response to that as father's wanted to protect their daughters and her future children. It actually limited the power of a husband in favour of preserving the comforts and rights of his wife, so was opposite of misogyny (though the society and laws which required these extra protections was undeniably sexist and male-centred)
Nor was receiving an inheritance upon marriage a specifically female-only practice. Eldest sons would generally receive the bulk of their inheritance when their father died, but it was common in this time and for centuries beforehand for them to be confirmed as heir or given a set income from their father (or one of their father's lesser estates, if we're talking nobility and the ultra rich) as part of the marriage articles (which would generally benefit the wife for the remainder of her life, either as a jointure or dower). Younger sons, if not already provided for, could also be given something upon their marriage and may have a commission in the army or a church living bought for them, to give them some independence. In Sense and Sensibility, after accepting the engagement of Edward and Elinor, Mrs Ferrars gives her son ten thousand pounds "towards augmenting their income" and this allows the marriage to occur. No one accuses Mrs Ferrars of selling Edward off in matrimony, even though what she's doing is so similar to a dowry that the narration points out it's exactly what "had been given with [her daughter] Fanny".
Fortune hunters and those marrying purely for money and a comfortable lifestyle definitely existed, as they do now, but dowries were not a socially and legally mandated way to give women to men to benefit them financially. 'Mercenary' marriages were frowned upon, and women were taught to look out for fortune hunters (like Wickham). Nor was it considered only men who might marry primarily to benefit from their spouse's wealth (Charlotte Lucas being a sympathetic female example). That both men and women could have inheritances gifted upon marriage, and were represented as seeking to marry for money, helps show that the practice of dowries wasn't a sexist practice which reduces women to little more than livestock.
In fact, there's an argument to be made that the very existence of large dowries being a cultural norm indicates that daughters were valued and loved. Instead of leaving everything they could to the sons (which would be expected if daughters were worthless objects to be given away at any price) these daughters were considered worth saving for, worth drawing up legal contracts to protect the living standard of, and worth leaving an inheritance often equal or greater than what younger sons would receive (as they could earn their own income). A dowry didn't reduce the humanity of a woman, it empowered her choices and protected her future. It was the women without dowries or an inheritance that were in danger of needing to marry whomever would take them.
This what I mean when I say science writing is terrible and you need to actually go back to the academic publications themselves to get what’s going on
also i seem to have developed a reputation among my family for being willing to die on any hill. This is patently absurd. Im willing to die on specific hills, of which there are many and in locations that strike witnesses as odd and arbitrary
the original got flagged with no way to appeal it when every contributor is deactivated but I will never let this post die. it's monday and we are getting on it cunts
