I was supposed to do boring life stuff today but I got heavily sidetracked by trying to model a physics problem.
This sort of distraction happens a lot to me, when I’m meant to be doing one chore but drop it and do a different one when I see it needs to be done. Like needing to clean the stove, then noticing the cupboards aren’t clean, and then staying up late cleaning my kitchen from top to bottom. The sort of thing where it’s hard to find motivation but once I do then I’m unstoppable.
I have a friend on adderall, and how he describes that drug it wouldn’t work to help this because it helps you focus, but not necessarily on the right thing. He once took it to finish an assignment and then got fixated on a videogame instead and played it until 5am.
Passage of time can be really hard and can make it difficult to stop doing a problem. They make buzzers you can put in your pocket that buzz every 10 minutes which can help you make sure you don’t get distracted for too long. It doesn’t solve continuing to do the distraction, but that’s a more managable problem (meds, insentives, and practice.) Timers can also fill the same role. Just make sure you have to aknowledge the passing of time. I have found that the fixation on random things dissipates as you use the meds more. Eventually it becomes easker to pick what you need to do. It took me ~1.5 years to get there.