jack

There was an article recently about how "eye-contact" was used to indicate turn taking in conversation, which led to a lot of reactions. But I didn't actually read it and I'm not sure how much it was talking about what I think of as "eye contact" (mutual face-looking however briefly) and how much it meant "looking at someone's face". And I realised I wasn't totally sure if I did that instinctively, or if I didn't do it at all.

I'm going to describe how I perceive things, and then ask people both neurodivergent and neurotypical what their experience is. And then maybe talk what else goes into who's turn it is. And some cultural differences.

Eye contact

I'm used to being aware of how much someone wants to speak, from cues like "shifting in their chair", "leaning forward", "having an expectant expression", up to and including "starting to talk and getting cut off" or (occasionally) asking for a chance to talk. And I think my brain has some magic neurotypical dust that does some sneaky cross-correlating with things like "did they do that when someone just said something they're likely to want to say something about" and "does it happen more than once" and just generally distinguishing miscellaneous shifting about or other expression changes from "wanting to speak".

My experience of... presumed normal people, is that these are all heuristics with a reasonable amount of flex in them. People misinterpret. People notice signs slowly. The "system" such as it is works when this communication *mostly* works it doesn't need to work reliably. Some people are particularly good at noticing. Some people can notice, but are bad at noticing, or bad at caring, or pessimistic that they'll actually be interested in what someone says.

So, my experience includes "being aware of someone's face cuing they might want to jump in and speak". But not a sort of mutual recognition, of "ok, message received". Now I describe this, I think this happens subconsciously: if someone looks to being paying attention to me and other people while they're talking, I'll subconsciously assume that they'll know if someone else wants to speak and be less concerned about it; and I will hopefully notice if someone is eager to speak, and subconsciously orient on them more to indicate "I'm interested in you shortly".

But I'm not sure that's what happens, because I think it's partly subconscious or automatic. And I think it works well enough without as long as people know each other well enough to expect they'll all get a chance to talk.

But now I'm saying all that, I'm really interested in what other people think. Does that sound right? Or does that sound like I've completely missed what everyone else does? Or somewhere between?

Other turn taking and cultural differences

What I described above is basically a lowest level handshake protocol for "who's turn to talk next". I think the biggest cultural difference is, some groups expect people to interrupt much sooner, like, as soon as you get the gist of a sentence, jump in to show support, and others much later, like, let someone develop several paragraphs and be sure they're done done before trying to interrupt

And there's also stuff like, who should speak next, which is going to be too long for this post. I think I'm average-ish at that. I do keep being confused, but I think that's because the actual protocol DOESN'T really work. And maybe a bit I don't notice status enough?

Opinions? Experiences? Observations?

I expected this to go on a lot longer, but I think we're wrapping up already. I guess those posts were quite long. But also, how many of you found that really familiar? How many of you went on a similar journey? How many of you never really had a problem with it? Or had completely different problem? Is there anything you're curious about my experience?

I tried many, many different things to get more productive. None of them fixed everything, but many of them were useful.

Getting Things Done

Gettings Things Done by Dave Allen was about getting a handle on a mess of different todo lists you never actually do. The advice that worked I've mostly internalised so I can't easily remember what was actually in it, just stuff that seems normal now.

But what I really liked about it was that it gave you a compartmentalised network of different tools, and explained what purpose each was supposed to serve, so you could choose ones that worked for you and adapted ones that weren't quite right, and skip ones where you already did something else that worked.

I know some people respond better to "just trust me, do what this says and don't question why" but I always find it really hard to trust without knowing why.

Assorted tips from here. Keep a calendar! Having google calendar or similar means now that's easier for most people to do automatically, but if you need to remember to do things on specific days, calendar.

Have a filing cabinet. Or somewhere else where papers are *supposed* to go (scanned on a computer would also make sense). You can't tidy things when they don't have a place to go. It feels like you can, but you can't. It should be not overfull (I'm falling down on this nowadays), so that it's as easy to put bills etc straight into the filing cabinet as to "put them down somewhere to deal with later".

Do not succumb to the temptation to have a file for "important" things. File by subject. Don't worry too much about ambiguities, if it's under "HSBC" or "bank", you'll still find it really quickly as long as you're looking for one file out of twenty -- but don't have duplicate files where some of the content is in one and some in the other. It's much easier to find "six months ago, I got a letter from the bank" than "six months ago, would I have considered this 'important'"?

That's for everything which you need to keep. If you still need to pay it it's ok to have a pile of things you need to DO (although better to keep it in a filing cabinet and have a list of things to do instead). Indeed, he advocates having an "inbox" of stuff, which you deal with now and move into long term storage. I need to resurrect this, I fell off the bandwagon.

Do not succumb to the temptation to put in your calendar or todo list things which you HOPE to work on today. Be clear what you HAVE to do today, because the deadline's today, and have a separate list of things you INTEND to work on today.

Diary

Inspired by some of Allen's advice, but later on, I started keeping a diary, a text file, a mix of "what I did today" and "todos for today/the week". Keeping that all in a single file really really helped keep spiralling todo lists out of control, even as I repeatedly declared bankruptcy and started over.

And at some point Ghoti introduced me to bullet journals and bought me fancy erasable japanese biros, and I incorporated a lot of the bullet journal techniques into my diary, and I really loved using the pens for quite a few things, even though "making todo list pretty" didn't work for me the way it did for many people.

Beeminder

Beeminder is a website built around committing to specific goals. The actual idea is rather weird -- instead of a paid subscription, you commit money to pay if you fail your pledge, which you can have go up in a fibonnci-sequence like rise. I avoided that side of the site entirely -- I knew the pressure would make me worse not better, and it's specifically designed for goals where you commit to an average of X, no matter what, which wasn't always what I wanted. But the admins were ever so helpful (Thank you Daniel et al!)

This is finally what started my gym habit. I resolved for twice a week, and doing extras when I could, and to start with I was often doing it on the last day I could when I *had* to do it, although now it's just a part of my usual routine.

I've used beeminder for a few other goals too, when the "ALERT ALERT YOU'RE GOING TO FAIL IF YOU DON'T DO THIS IN THE NEXT TWO DAYS! NEXT ONE DAY! RIGHT NOW!" effect is what I need to keep myself honest.

And recently I've adopted another app, currently Habits by Loop Habit Tracker, for day to day habits where I don't want to be pressured when I don't have time but I do want a helpful guide to "I have five minutes, can I remember to tidy up/do duolingo/etc" which has been useful.

Pomodoros

The name is embarrassingly "hip", but the idea is simple and good, of setting a timer -- traditionally 25 minutes -- where you work on something specific. I've done this occasionally, but it's very useful for most people where a little bit of guidance getting into the flow on a task helps.

I would like to do this more but it veer between "don't need it" and "I have a more fundamental problem it doesn't help with" so I only sometimes use it, but it's a really good one to try. Many people have online chat rooms where they set a timer, and having other people with you virtually really helps.

I used them for slightly different reason. When I had tasks to do that I was so scared of I was actually shaking, and even when I'd got all of my procrastination excuses out of the way and was staring at a computer trying to do them, setting a timer for five minutes, or twenty five minutes, and trying to do, well, even thirty seconds of work in that time, broke me out of being completely stuck.

In retrospect, I wish I'd thought to see if someone else would help me with the tasks I was most blocked on, but that didn't seem appropriate (partly, several were financial, and partly, I didn't want to make anyone feel responsible for it as an ongoing thing) and I didn't have the awareness to realise it might have been better to do that anyway. Anyway, I got through it.

I don't recommend this as a technique, but when I used to be blocked like this, it often used to involve staying up late (or staying at work late) not so much until I finished, but until I started...

Procrastination root causes

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ty2tjPwv8uyPK9vrz/my-algorithm-for-beating-procrastination

Someone on less wrong message board wrote an essay which really resonated with me at the time, of diagnosing the root cause of individual cases of procrastination. Like, if you're hesitating over the task because you expect that you will fail it, or that the result will be one you don't want, recognising that and being realistic about your expectations can help more than forcing yourself to do it anyway.

If you're just finding the task itself unpleasant or boring, then little tricks like "do five rows, then take a break and do something nice for a minute, then repeat" can help a lot.

If the reward is very distant from the task itself, setting intermediate rewards can help. e.g. you need to hand this work in but it won't be marked for months, then try to work with someone and encourage each other, or give yourself a chocolate after.

This didn't turn out as useful for me as I'd hoped, because my problems tended to be much bigger (and the problem was obvious but not easy to fix) or much smaller (I didn't want to do this analysis for every little household chore), but I still think it was a useful way of thinking about it.

General principles

What lessons do I draw from that? Well, there's several examples above, but one big one, is don't overthink it looking for the perfect technique, MOST techniques help a lot just by providing some structure whether they're the best or not, and it's often easy to tweak them once you get a better idea what you need. So... just pick something promising and try it.

The ones that are most likely to be useful seem to be:

* Anything with other people providing mutual support and just being there so someone sees if you do it or not
* Anything providing a regular routine which can become a habit

Overall conclusions

If the coping technique works well enough, that can be a solution all by itself.

If you can keep on top of all the admin, but only if you use a clock for pomodoros, or if you work alongside someone else, or whatever, well, if there's no particular downside to that, then just keep doing that!

Most successful people have *ways* they work, they don't just magically work wonderfully by strength of will regardless of the situation.

Indeed, many successful people are super screwed up and do SOME things exceedingly well, while relying on other people picking up the slack for everything else (a spouse to do household admin, hiring employees to work the way that works for them and never working with people who need to work a different way, people who are good at work but crap at work politics, or people who are good at work politics but crap at useful work, etc)

Working in different circumstances when you need to is a skill it's worth developing, but it's not a threshold you need to count for what you get done to "count". (Just, if you completely fall to pieces without your coping strategy, be aware of that and know what to do if it happens, don't just pretend it isn't true.)

This didn't work for me that much, as I had lots of coping strategies which helped some amount, but still left me really struggling to get anything done. Indeed, now I've dealt with some of the serious issues, I find myself in a place a lot more like what other people described, picking up techniques to deal with what feel like normal levels of getting round to things.

I still keep introspecting about what, if anything, is up with my brain. I recently had a bit of a slump in my current work project, several weeks of knowing what I needed to do and it was fairly simple, but not actually knuckling down to it. And that sort of spilled over to a general malaise. But, as best as I can tell from the inside, that's basically how I used to be *most* of the time. And when I have tasks I actually do achieve, I'm mostly fine, even more-content-than-average, maybe. But I don't know how to describe that -- it doesn't sound like depression as such, if I'm able to snap myself out of it *at all* -- but I feel like perennially feeling dispirited, whether or not it's just who I am, feels like a problem of *some* sort.

I should read over some of my old angst-y posts, I think my overall self-perception has become much, much less gloomy over time, but occasional bouts of introspection appear to be part of that.

History

As a teenager I never drank tea or coffee. I must have tried them at some point, but never felt the desire.

At university I started drinking both. I can't remember exactly, I remember having them as a ritual something to do when hanging out with friends. IIRC I drank instant coffee, and real coffee tasted too bitter.

And I think I reached a point where I needed coffee and got dopey and too tired to get up without it, either at university, or after I started working. Unrelated to the caffeine (I assume?) I also had student-y programmer-y sleep patterns, always wanting to sleep a bit later. I don't know how much that was inbuilt physiology and how much it was putting things off, including going to bed and doing things in the morning.

At some point, I started drinking real coffee for preference, and instant coffee tasted bad.

When I started dating Liv, I drank a lot more tea, because we'd usually make a pot together. And I started to feel like coffee was too abrupt, and tea gave a slightly slower caffeine release, and gradually switched to drinking tea almost entirely: I'd happily drink coffee if it was served somewhere, but didn't usually drink it at home or at work.

When I started dating ghoti, I started drinking coffee again, because she drank coffee more often and I liked companionably drinking the same thing. I started with mostly instant coffee, and to date, still mostly drink instant coffee, although I also like real coffee when I have it.

Now I tend to switch, drinking instant coffee at home (because it's quicker), tea at work (because I want a break from the screen to faff around in the kitchen for 10 min), and whichever I feel like if I drink something out.

I never really learned to like espresso based coffee, espressos taste much too strong, and all the mixed drinks taste weird. I used to like mochas occasionally. I usually like plain black tea with milk, or plain coffee, with milk.

Except when I'm abroad, I generally drink whatever's common locally if I'm ok with it at all.

I don't track how much I drink. It's probably quite a lot, because I drink it whenever I feel like, not at fixed times. But I used to feel like it was doing something weird, when I'd be completely wrecked when I *didn't* have caffeine, whereas now, I definitely need some, but if I get a drink within an hour or so of getting up, I don't feel completely zombified until then.

So I used to toy with the idea it'd be healthier to give up (ie. awakeness juice was just borrowing future awakeness and immediate gains were offset in future losses). But now it feels like, the status quo is doing ok.

ADHD

A couple of people have commented that they have ADHD or suspect they possibly have subclinical ADHD or something related, specifically that mild stimulants make them feel calmer, even right before sleeping.

That's very me. I've never tried to avoid late-night caffeine have haven't noticed it having any affect on my sleep. Which inclines me to think the status quo is possibly fine.

Away

The one big inconvenience in needing caffeine used to be when I'm away, especially at a con in a conference centre, but also, just anywhere on holiday where I'm out all day and don't have decent tea or coffee facilities where I'm staying.

I found it a big faff needing a certain amount of coffee or tea, but that not always syncing up with when I want to sit down and "have a coffee". And a crapshoot whether there'd be somewhere providing bog-standard coffee or tea cheap, or if the only source was a fancy coffee place. Especially if I'm in a rush, or it's all in a foreign language, or whatever.

At some point, I experimented with bringing caffeine pills. I'd studiously avoided them before since having caffeine without the ritual of drinking it seemed like it would only exacerbate the feedback loop of taking more and more to make up for potential caffeine-crashes. I still avoid them when I'm *not* away somewhere.

But I actually found it really helpful, it basically solved the problem for me. I usually need a couple of actual hot drinks throughout the day, usually one or two in the morning with breakfast and one sometime during the day. But otherwise, having a couple of pills in the interim, either physiologically or placebo-y, made me feel fine. I also remember to drink liquid. It made the whole thing a lot simpler.

I can't help other people though, especially tea drinkers in places where there's not much tea.

Questions

Which bits of those experiences resonate with you and which don't?

Most of my friends seem to default to tea *or* coffee, even though I remember by parents drinking one or the other depending on the circumstances. Do other people drink both at different times?

What is the relative caffeine in a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, and caffeine pill?

Does that status quo sound sensible or is there something else you'd recommend?

Goal #1 was to be on time for things. I certainly didn't *succeed* at this, but I think I got a lot better. Not being early, but giving myself enough slack, and leaving when the slack had been somewhat eaten into, and much less often being already late and thinking "I can't face deciding to leave, I'll procrastinate some more".

Goal #2 was to do a tech project. But March was busier than I'd realised, mostly with thronescamp and with seeing lovely people. So I managed to install Android Studio and run the default "Hello World" program (yay, it was really easy), but not add any of my own code to it.

I also had a lot of overdue logistics and chores, which I did *some* of, but some is still hanging over me and I want out of the way.

But I feel better for tracking how well I did, instead of just knowing I need to do all these things at some point. On the one hand, it's depressing to realise how few months I have, and how little time I'm managing to make. On the other hand, I'm clearly making MORE time than when I didn't really plan it.