I really appreciate your trying to help. I was so upset yesterday. Also because I was so tired from having worked 9 hours straight and then getting blocked, couldn't work more because I got too "low" about not meeting that deadline and knowing I was gonna have to ask for an extension, that or I was gonna kill myself trying to work more the same afternoon lol. Luckily that was fine, I was given the chance to finish it by next morning. I did finish it OK but because of that am tired now too, lol


I frankly think it also already helps if I can just talk to someone or somewhere regularly about how to plan stuff out, and especially how I get to step / slip on these banana peels LOL, if you know what I mean. I mean when trying to get this stuff working, I have stupid little issues. Those then fu** up the whole thing for me. I wasn't like this before this whole issue started for me...

(Some of the below parts, the italicised stuff in brackets, I don't expect you or anyone else to engage with it deeply! It just helped me think now that we are talking about tips here. It's a lot of help actually, getting my brain moving like this.)


Like now today I went to meet my social worker, I didn't see her for several months bc lockdown. And she asked about how I'm doing and I realised while talking to her why I crashed last weekend and why I couldn't do the jobs nicely on time like I wanted to do them. Well at least I realised part of the why.

(Not a solution yet though. I basically just faced how I was probably doing something like full time work for these few days because it was 5 days and needed 6 hours on average each day to complete the work tasks, because it required about 30 hours in total. 15+15. And it's full time even though not 8 hours a day because I did not have extra rest for "weekend days" before these 5 days.....and in general it's supposed to be part time....long story but full time work seems too much for me for now yeah)

I am just weird (if you read the above paragraph I put in brackets), because since my cPTSD I just keep forgetting basic things like I need rest days like that. And I just plain forget everything about planning, time management, and I do not feel it properly if a task is easy or hard. It's overly hard initially, for the first few hours of the work or whatever. Etc. I swear I am not ADHD


Anyway .... Again the real point is... On my own it takes very long to figure those things out because I just don't have my brain moving like when I can talk to someone else about it. I think that's the depression part

So I'll see if I can talk about it at that link/resource you gave. Besides the structured accountability partner thingy

I'll look at the book too if I can download it.

(I've looked at books before but they don't really take into account these issues of mine as above. There was a CBT book that did sorta.....it had an example of a guy, a college student, who was embarrassed and upset about how due to his depression he had to plan out in this painstaking way which school assignments he was going to do on which days and specifically which parts of the assignments. The CBT therapist was helping him plan it out and I dunno, it was nice as an acknowledgment that this thing can exist, where you used to deal with tasks very well, and then you are like you forgot how to do the planning and all that. But his case seemed easier because he could feel how hard or easy a task would be. So he could plan it out like that with the therapist's help. For me that planning was too advanced, I can't do it like that. I can't feel these things most of the time now, it's completely messed up lol. cPTSD+depression together is a bi*** but it's getting better and that's why I want to give this a go, sorting this out and relearning how to do all this.)

***

Oh I just noticed you did mention this in your earlier post:

So you did 12 hour days before, yeah sounds like me LOL!

It's true and it's a very rational plan that working 2 hours on it each day is way more comfortable and less stressful and the quality of the work done will probably be better too. I think when I tried to do it like this I had this issue that when the task is a "new topic", then the first few hours are harder so if I was to split it up 2 hours every day it would be probably overwhelming for the first 1-2 days and then I would not be able to start

....hm that's my thinking right now anyway. I haven't considered this so much before. But it did contribute to my crash this last weekend, not being able to work much on Friday which made me delayed with everything. So maybe I can't split things up evenly in this neat way for each day like that. I don't know if this matters for others that much or just for me in my bad state.

What do you think about splitting up your portfolio work tasks based on effort and not simply based on time? I hope in your case this will not be an issue though! Maybe in your case new topics do not feel like harder effort than when you are already familiar with the stuff.

(It's complex anyway though, I did already try to make it easier, but it wasn't easy enough.... The idea was, something like 2 hours for this 15-hour job on Friday, 2 hours on Saturday, 4 hours on Sunday, 4 hours on Monday, 3 hours on Tuesday. But thinking of 2 hours for Friday was POOF INSTANT overwhelm. Because I was also supposed to do something like, a couple of hours (undefined number) for Friday, Saturday, Sunday for a task I already started on earlier but wasn't fully feeling comfortable with that task yet. Though more comfortable than when I started that one a while ago. ... Also I have to say, on Thursday I was tired, had to recover from previous crazy work bout, crash&working hard at night, deadline pressure blah blah, and that didn't help either with overwhelm!!)

How was the hike? I noticed you put it first on your list, is this a list in order of priorities? I like that actually, sometimes you do want to put fun sports in front of work/school tasks lol!