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Is anyone else having trouble focusing? What strategies do you use to help with focus?
Since the election, and especially in the last couple of weeks, I’ve had an incredibly difficult time focusing on important tasks.
I get a bit nihilistic at the worst times, wondering what the point of my day job is with what feels like the collapse of society happening around us. It’s also been a really stressful month or so at work, which doesn’t help with trying to focus on the edge of burnout.
The last few days have been incredibly unproductive, but also not restful. I’m just sort of stuck in a loop.
Anyone out there feeling the same, or does anyone have suggestions for getting out of this loop?
Adderall, mostly.
But more seriously therapy, cutting off following the news during the day, and reminding myself of a post I keep sharing to students:
Because you still need to live and eat and pay your bills so that you can be there for your family and friends and neighbors, and we need you and your plants to not be dead, because that's not better.
But I do highly recommend finding a good therapist who can help you with individual coping strategies.
Yeah, I would argue a lot of (pre-Gen Z) generations have this mindset, and apply it to more than just anxiety. Almost everyone I've talked to has heard "finish your plate of food, there are starving children in Africa who are less fortunate than you" from their parents or their friends' parents while growing up. Many of these same parents expressed similar sentiments when confronted with mental health concerns.
Using comparisons to minimize your emotions, mood conditions, mental health issues - whatever term applies best to you - is ultimately not helpful. Different perspectives can be a positive experience. But everyone needs to acknowledge their struggles and find ways to work through them or employ a compensating strategy to work around them. Pretending they aren't big enough to be something that affects you is a sure fire way to get burnout.
Gen Z seems to be much more cognizant and accepting of mental health topics. While have some personal gripes with terms like "neurodivergent," and worry a little about self-diagnosis, I still believe this increased awareness is a net good.
I don't think this is only a pre-Gen Z belief. Anxiety is often coming from a place of unrealistic and unwarranted worry. That isn't a comparison thing, but a "my brain has decided I'm being fired today because my boss sent a short reply instead of a smiley face" thing. (Fun fact, I'm not being fired. )
But when anxieties revolve around plausible but exaggerated or even an accurate description of the situation just without the immediate doom anxiety tells you is coming, it can be harder to talk yourself out of that reaction. Because things are bad. You just also have to keep up your daily self-care, watering your plants and your cats too, partially because it grounds you and partially because it's important you survive the bad stuff.
Oh absolutely, I was moreso saying that even the warranted anxieties are often treated by others (and perhaps even one's self talk) as unwarranted. Worrying about hypothermia while shoveling your driveway in inadequate clothing is warranted, even if your grandfather "walked 2 miles in the snow uphill both ways to get to school" and you think you should be able to tolerate it by comparison.
And regardless of how "warranted" they are, they should be acknowledged as valid concerns and be treated with coping strategies. Anxiety is a mental state - regardless of how you've entered that state, it's now very real.
(Also, I hope you don't take this at nitpicking at your comments, I'm just trying to share my perspective for the general audience. I've been in states where I try to talk myself out of anxiety by telling myself that I'm overreacting, and it never ended well.)
Ah I see what you're saying. Those "back in their day" thoughts aren't the thoughts I usually see - though some level of "people are being kidnapped and put in cages and brutalized my problems aren't valid" is more common - but lots of people invalidate their own anxiety.
I can usually catch myself and talk myself down these days but that wasn't always the case. It's taken a lot of practice and therapy to get here.
This was the key phrase in a social media post I saw years ago. And I've been in a similar mental state due to a confluence of factors (quit nicotine, stressful work, moved from my home of 10 years, vague gesturing at it all).
This week I've achieved a bit of traction though, I took a day off mid-week and focused on sharpening some programming skills. This led to a simple linear algebra problem (degree 10 polynomial interpolation) that I worked out on my whiteboard by hand last night. It's been years since I worked on something in that way and it's felt like being in touch with myself again. I'm trying to bring this type of thing back in to my job.
So I dunno, I guess rather than focusing on the chaos, I'm focusing on reinforcing my own identity 🤷.
This is why I have a pumpkin full of ground meat chucked into my supervisees offices every now and then.
I prefer the human sized cat tree
Both are good
I realize I say this from a place of privilege (as I’m not likely to be targeted unless I cause MAGA too much trouble), but things in America have been worse before and we’ve been able to come out improved. It’s reasonable to be anxious, but don’t let your anxiety explode to infinity. I’ve spent time in therapy, in meditation, and with psychedelics to reduce my naturally untamed level of anxiety. Without proper grounding and coping it’s easy to have your anxieties be unbounded. I would read about the underground railroad, the fights against the Vietnam war, the Red Scare, etc. and apply that to today. Then you’ll know what you can do and what the consequences might be for various actions or inactions. MAGA is the minority. If the people stand up we can take back control even if they don’t want us to.
Avoiding as much of the focus-draining digital things (social media mainly, but including tildes, youtube, any news) as possible helps quite quickly for me (a few days), but I know this is something I personally have a problem with and not everyone does.
There's also been some research saying that temporary deficits of focused voluntary attention (caused among others by social media, but also simply work and other causes) can be recharged by relaxing your brain using things that create "soft involuntary attention" - things that you somewhat focus on without trying and without any aggressive elements, most effectively calm walks in nature. The research on this is relatively solid. I assume it works on anxiety as well to some degree.
In the medium term I very much recommend meditation. It won't help you in a week, but:
It's a great supplement to therapy - in my experience it makes therapy more effective, and therapy helps deal with any overly difficult things meditation may uncover (which is quite rare, but it's nice to be safe).
Hobbies and social engagement. In short, I find people are the best medicine for getting outside of my head. I'm prone to ruminating and overthinking.
I strictly limit my social media time, and I try to get out in the real world. Turns out there really is something special about touching grass, especially as a group activity!
It may seem like common sense in 2025, but everybody who makes touching grass a priority in their lives is doing it right, I think.
I nuked my social accounts a number of years ago and in retrospect, it feels like I quit smoking. I'd encourage everyone to do it.
It's really easy to spend time at home scrolling or burning hours in the day. On paper, humans have never had so much free time, yet we're more isolated than ever.
I appreciate online socialization like Tildes, but it doesn't replace a game night with friends or strangers. Stepping outside our social comfort zones really does make a difference.
Out in rural America for another day here and something that's really helped is just walking. I've been going for walks every day, usually for an hour and it helps keep the anxiety at bay and just overall feel calmer throughout the day, which then helps me sleep and get quality rest which therein helps with the anxiety.
Therapy and medications are extremely helpful, but I only had a breakthrough with my capacity to focus when I finally put time into daily meditation and yoga. The yoga is really a bridge between meditation and exercise, and I mention it primarily because your experiences sound more like trouble with anxiety than focus, per se, and exercise is a great tool for dealing with anxiety.
These are the cliche and woowoo answers, but I think they're cliche for a good reason. Meditation in particular can be treated as panacea, or an easy fix, but it is neither. Nor is it an exclusively religious practice, though the religious paradigms can be useful for the practice itself. It's really about learning your mind, learning how to appreciate discomforts as not-all-bad, and training that basic mental 'muscle' of "back to the task at hand".
Some people can't practice these habits solo. Some people can't practice them, ever. If they're not for you, there's no shame in that. I will impress: if you think meditation isn't for you because you're bad at it, or it's boring, it probably isn't not for you. But people can enter very bad places if they're not careful.
For that reason, any advice for beginners comes back to focusing on breathing, while seated or laying comfortably. Count the breaths, or think "in/out", or notice sensations in your airways, whatever, and if you stop or get distracted, noticing the distraction is the work you're practicing.
Regardless of whether this was at all helpful, I hope you can find some relief. It's a rough time, and I think we're all feeling the same ways to some extent or another.
P.S. Seriously, therapy can be really great. Do that, if you can. I didn't talk about it, but not because it isn't helpful.
Not a solution for all, but when it comes to work I find the simple act of walking while I do it to be amazingly motivating.
I was talking with my therapist years ago about how helpful it is to process feelings and think creatively with one foot in front of the other.
And for my one and only trick, I'll recommend the treadmill desk.
I've been focusing on my niche interests and interacting with my local community by collecting their stories.
For example, I went to an estate sale today and instead of thinking about the world outside of my street which I ultimately have very little impact on, I listened to a daughter talk about hunting trips with her late father and how the delorean he put into a family trust is a great way for them to stay involved with the local community in the form of car shows and photoshoots with their friends' kids.
When I got home, I had a shipment of memorabilia arrive from eBay from a person I've been having lovely conversations with for the past week on what it was like for them to grow up around test pilots and NASA astronauts.
It takes up time and money, sure, but my time and money can be spent much more destructively and with much less gain than what I feel I've gotten out of a single day.
Limit any social media or news doomscrolling to predefined hours of the day, even if it's still approximately the same amount of scrolling time as you did before.
Exercise, socialise, hydrate, eat well, sleep 8+ hours at consistent times.
Volunteer or get involved in something local. Let yourself see the small ways people are making things better. Become part of it, even if "it" is just picking up litter.
Do harder tasks earlier in the day and save the easier stuff for later when you're tired.
Romanticise your process.
If you have trouble getting started, complete one or two super easy tasks to gain some momentum.
Don't give up hope and give yourself some grace when you falter.
When I was in therapy for ADHD as a child, they taught me to “get back on track” instead of trying to force myself to stay on track.
Because your short term memory can be exercised and improved, but focus isn’t as straight forward.
So, now, I can have a stack of like 5 tasks in my head before it overwhelms me and I need to write it down. I still do one thing at a time, but I can come across other things and switch while still keeping my memory stack in place.
Vyvanse and zazen.
Thank you all for the tips!! They did help a bit yesterday, and I’m looking forward to plugging more of them in.
It was actually nice to come to the realization that I’m feeling a ton of anxiety at the moment. I hadn’t put that together until reading a few of the comments here.
You all are amazing.
Best of luck ʘ‿ʘ