How to overcome anxiety and ADHD when it comes to working? These

>>302193
vodka
shochu/soju also acceptable if you can ride the 7-Eleven gallon bottle for $12 train

>>302193
lower your standards and / or work on something else
I dont think ADHD and anxiety is the problem here
just perfectionism
otherwise take your meds like the doctor prescribed so you can be "normal"

OP,

Diagnosed Generalized Anxiety Disorder, possibly ADD anon here. Also someone who opened up their own creative studio and has since collected 27 design awards.

I know that fucking feel, fampai. But you can and will overcome that shit.

The good news is you probably have self-critique down to a brutal science. When you think your work is shit, it's probably just alright. When you think it's passable, it's probably really nice. Most designers don't take to self crits the way you can because that's just how your brain is wired. Even though it feels like shit pretty much all the time, I swear to you that you can parlay that into a strength. The tricky part is staying objective. Critique your work, not yourself. You have to monitor your thoughts and know when you're just being an asshole to yourself, then dismiss it. Critique the work. Not yourself.

Now the bad news is your tendency for distraction. The thing is, you can't fight that. So don't. When you're at the point where you're staring at the project on the screen and you feel like exploding out of your skin, I want you to do two things: first, set a timer on your phone (or anything else with an alarm you can actually hear, so you can start conditioning a response) for 7 minutes. Not 5, not 10. 7 minutes. The second thing is whatever you want to do. When your 7 minutes are up, come back to your work for as long as you can handle. Take a 7 whenever you need to and you'll find you've actually got incredible stamina. Feed your distraction with these breaks and it will leave you alone long enough to make actual progress instead of letting it gnaw at you for hours, leaving you feeling constantly burned out.

cont.

cont.

For anxiety, calligraphy helped me learn how to calm myself enough to work. You can get a cheap pen/ink set at most arts and crafts stores. Blackletter is easy to learn so start with that, but the trick is you won't be able to do any lettering while you're anxious. You start to focus on steadying your hands, your breath, and your mind kind of follows.

When your nerves are especially hard to tame, look up something called "4 square breathing" and do that until you're mellow. It regulates your circulation and your oxygen levels in your blood stream, and eventually will pleasantly calm you at a physiological level.

Anyway, if you want to chat about struggling through that shit with somebody who actually gets it, please ask away. I got your back.

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Smoke weed.

>>302193
Adderall.
Best. Shit. Ever.
Only downside is that you need to take days off, so every Sunday I crash hard and am useless. Like, I can barely get out of bed.
It's worth it.

If you can't get an adderall script or a connect get yourself some modafinil. It's similar and also works well, and is pretty much legal, I buy it all the time from afinil express and never had any problems

Lift. Drugs are just borrwing confidence from future you.

>>302236

>taking a stimulant to deal with anxiety
>can't go to sleep? Drink coffee!

Chances are if OP has ADHD he's already on Adderall or something similar.

>>302193

OP, I deal with the same problems and don't have a perfect solution myself, but here's some things to try:

>Divide a project into sections

When you're dealing with a general feeling of "lack of progress", the best solution can be setting short term goals that YOU can meet. Not the amount you think you should accomplish, but what you can realistically get done in an hour, day or week. Chances are you've heard this before or something along those lines. That's because it works dingus, so do it.

>Listen (or watch if you have multiple monitors) to something while you work

If you aren't stuck on a problem that requires your full attention, a good podcast can go a long way in helping you get through large chunks of the "boring" parts of work.

>Exercise

Seriously.

Being sedentary naturally is part of an occupation spent mostly at a computer. That's not an excuse for not taking 10-45 min to run/jog when you'd otherwise be staring blankly at your monitor. NEET life make stepping outside too much? Replace your chair with a stationary bike.

This is one of the easiest and most effective ways of coping with anxiety/stress, ADHD or not. Or you could be like most people and pay for antidepressants or find that "one need trick!" instead of trying any sort of exercise.

>>302216
>>302215
I'm not OP but I suffer the same thing and needed this. That self crit bit is pretty much exactly what I went through in school. Thank you senpai

>>302499
Then the same thing goes for you. I don't have all the answers, but I'm happy to share whatever gets me through a shit day. If I were to highlight just one thing to take away from my tl;dr-ass wall of text, it would be the bit about critiquing the work and not yourself. If you're like me, that applies to a fuckton of your life, even outside of your work as a designer (ex. This spaghetti is alright, but I went too heavy on the basil VS. I fucked this spaghetti up. I can't do anything right).
It's easier said than done, but if you can make an effort cooler/more forgiving to yourself in general, your life will improve drastically.

>>302495
Also, this dude knows what's up. Setting little goals within your goals is sometimes referred to as "chunking" (in eye-gougingly chipper blogs about workplace productivity), but it's serious shit. Chunking has gotten me through more seemingly-impossible projects and deadlines than I could count. And hitting those little milestones feels good, no matter how many you set or how incremental they are.

And podcasts are my shit. Keeps that nagging need to process new information at bay so I can focus on work with the rest of my brain. I've found that the less important it is to really concentrate on what I'm listening to, the easier it is to work simultaneously. Like I'll have an easier time tuning out when I need to if I'm listening to some pointless comedy like The Roundtable of Gentlemen rather than something like Serial.

And it took me a long time to figure it out, but I absolutely cannot be trusted to work with a tv on. The visual distraction is just too much for me, gives me an excuse to take my eyes off my work.