Yes, and it’s an absolute TORTURE. I can’t say I have any good advice other than maybe trying to structure things so you are forced to get around to it. Or just embrace the fact that you’re flighty and jump from one thing to another. Anyways, I should stop scrolling lemmy and finish that book I started last month.

Someone said a beautiful thing on the internet: think of playing a game like visiting a friend. You casually pop by as often as you feel like it. Some friends are really once-a-year material.

I recently picked up Derail Valley after an 8-month hiatus, and almost doubled my hours in that game over the course of two weeks (it was a lot of playing). I just felt like it.

that I really should finish

That word “should” is a tricky little fella, he implies a judgement, the question is what’s the source of that judgement?

Wayne Dyer discusses the issues and challenges of words like “should” in his book “Your Erroneous Zones” by using a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy approach: examining and rewriting how we think about things.

When I find myself using that particular word, I ask myself “should, according to who?”. Almost always I find I have an old “script” in my head about priorities, values, etc, that upon re-examining I find it’s no longer useful. Like “I bought this game, therefore I must get maximum value from it”.

Sometimes things run their course, and that’s that.

Yeah my dude. I am surrounded by stimulus and I can’t get interested in anything.
Trying Cyberpunk again but I doubt it’ll last.

What helps me with those kinds of things is to focus on enjoying the thing, whatever it is. Especially digital stuff that occupies no space in my home, I accept that it’s ok to do something as long as I enjoy it, and when it becomes repetitive or boring I can just stop.

Of course sometimes you need to push against this a bit when you know there is a slightly unpleasant section blocking more enjoyable content. The big takeaway is that it’s ok to stop if you’re not enjoying yourself anymore. No one is gonna check or care.

I just keep 5-10 projects and rotate between them.

It’s because:

start of thing == dopamine

finish of thing != dopamine

We yearn for the brain juice and hop from hit to hit

Neurotypical people do not have this issue, I’m told

I find when I get like this I have to give it a bit of a rest for a bit. I figure either I’ve blown out my dopamine receptors to the point of non functionality, or I just need to rest. I find that only doing a small handful of things at a time helps not get in this state, easier said than done though.

I recently realized that many of the things I end up sticking with are those I didn’t pick up on a whim, but that I planned to take a look at for a while and pushed back on. For example, I’ve owned Elite Dangerous for more than a year, I was barely touching it for the first six months, and played extremely occasionally otherwise. This lasted until last November, when something just… clicked, to the point my wife got together with my mother to buy me a HOTAS this Christmas.

Rest assured that your experience does sound extremely familiar. It’s very difficult to stick to something. The dopamine rush I get from the very act of figuring out something new just doesn’t last past the novelty phase.