I really need som tips on how to avoid getting trapped by my own hyperfokusing.
I very often i get completely consumed by either youtube shorts or something similar and i loose complete sense of time and spends literally 5 hours on just doom scrolling and wasting time. The worst part is that I’m hyperly aware that I’m doing it the whole time and I really want to stop but I just won’t shake myself off of it. I feel so bad because i should go walk the dog or go do my hobies instead. It happens the most often when I’m supposed to work from home and it makes the guilt feel even worse. If only I could do something for myself at least while not actually working. The only way I’ve found working so far is blocking the websites from me using blockers but I know that I’ll just either circumvent them or find something else that’s equally bad for me to hyperfokus on. And I do have legitimate reasons to use YouTube sometimes for work for tutorials etc so blocking it doesn’t really work so well for me.
How do I get out when I find myself in that trapped state? Let me know how you are dealing with it.
I wanna add that I’m medicated with methylphenidate but it doesn’t really work on getting out of the trap if I’ve first gotten in.
When medicated I feel like it’s easier to stick to a task, but it doesn’t help me with picking the right task so I think I understand some of what you feel. The Time Timer has helped me sometimes when I just need the extra bit of external help. The act of picking it up and deciding to use it helps reaffirm my intention of working on a thing, and then the visual indicator of time passing helps my really really bad time sense to be moored to reality a bit better. The mental UHG of beginning the work task seems to melt away pretty quick after that initial step. Then the medication helps to let me proceed without my mind wandering. Other stuff is a necessity like physical activity and enough sleep. Getting out of a misdirected focus is tough, so I feel for ya.