Thoughts & Asides
Technology should exist for our convenience, not for the convenience of anyone who wants to interrupt us.
from #Hyperfocus by #ChrisBailey
This resonates deeply with me. I loathe constant phone buzzing or browser notifications. Sometimes it feels like we’re slaves to the technology instead of us being the boss.
FYI the #book is not aimed at the #neurodiverse at all; my goal in reading it is to find #research-backed information that can help me understand and handle my distractions and maybe – just maybe – he’ll have some #tips that will be useful for *my* brain.
For example, knowing that it takes 29 minutes to get back on track after distracting ourselves (vs 6 minutes when distracted by someone else) quantifies the consequences of distractions. Thinking that a distraction = losing half an hour feels much more tangible.
#Bookstodon #Quotes #ADHD #AdultADHD #POSSE #Indieweb #ADHDer #Neurodiversity
Q: How do you stay focused on one project or idea at a time?
A: I stop myself from doing too much in one day, or over multiple days (ie #hyperfocus), because it results in mild burnout, which means I have to stop & distract myself; days become weeks become months and re-starting *always* feels worse than starting.
So I limit myself to X hours/day, with flexibility to stop a little sooner if a stopping point presents itself, or a little later if I have to complete something. (This also accounts for Y hours/day for work.)
The biggest thing is to be easy on myself because my inner critic is a harsh MF. Being able to let it go (thx to #Stoicism) and think that I’ll do better tomorrow is much more helpful than beating myself up. It makes getting back on the horse easier.
What about you?
Posts
I’m looking for a way to automate creating & filling out products, ideally from a Google Sheet. Zapier does not seem to work with any fields aside from title & body (maybe featured image too but it’s unclear from Zapier’s forums). I’m building out a WooCommerce store where I’m sticking to a boilerplate of sorts for the product description and a set of tags that are similar but customized depending on the product & niche. For example: Title: [niche name] [product type] Description: each product type has a description boilerplate, with the niche name & a couple of niche related details added (this is not ideal for SEO but I am not interested in SEO advice atm) Category: based on product & niche Tags: a set number based on niche & product type Photos: already uploaded to WP, with a predefined naming convention Maybe this requires a custom plugin? In an ideal world I’m imagining a spreadsheet with each cell in a row providing the variables for niche, product, tags, etc.
Complaints about Merchize
I’m starting a print-on-demand merch business I’ve previously used #Printful, which has a brilliant and easy user experience. But they don’t have some products I’m interested in designing, specifically hooded blankets (see Exhibit A). My kids walk around the house dragging blankets around so this product just makes sense. After finding a bunch of vendors that sold hooded blankets, I settled on Vietnam & US-based Merchize due to product selection, shipping times, prices, and most importantly integration with WooCommerce. The prices are the most important factor, followed by shipping times. Merchize fulfills hooded blankets for $29 while other vendors (not based out of China) charge $35-50 plus shipping. WooCommerce integration is my #1 requirement – and Merchize sucks at it WooCommerce integration is a deciding factor for me because I work exclusively with WordPress and I can do almost anything I want in WP and with WooCommerce. And this “integration” is where Merchize is making me think really hard about whether they are worth the effort or not. Their sync with WooCommerce is limited, to put it kindly. And their entire backend interface is frustrating and poorly conceived. If I – someone who is a geek, a web dev, and has prior experience with POD integration in WooCommerce – finds their system frustrating, I wonder how many less tech-y customers they lost because their system was too hard to navigate. To me it’s obvious that their system is made by developers with barely any lip service to the user experience (UX). And they are losing money due to this, despite excellent print quality and better shipping times than Chinese vendors. Note: the rest of this post is specific and to the point, otherwise this post will take hours to write and I won’t get anything else done today. I just tested syncing new products to WooCommerce as they said that proper photo sync was added – but it works the same as before. And possibly worse. Regular products Regular products do not sync with any photos at all, like before; this is expected behavior. But while it included product sizes as attributes, it also did not create any variations for the product sizes, nor did it sync prices for each variation. The only things that synced were the product name and description. And I learned that their WYSIWYG editor adds a shit-ton of needless html & styling so it’s better to leave the description blank and add it in WordPress. So when creating a ‘regular’ product, you make the product in Merchize, sync it to Woo, and then you have to For comparison, Printful does 1, 2, and 3 as part of their WooCommerce integration and thus saves a LOT of time. I’ll have to factor in the cost of hiring someone to make mockups into the product cost because making mockups is time-consuming af. Campaigns I made a single product in the Campaign and it was an improvement over the Regular product: in addition to the product name & … Read more
#UX, #UXUI, 1, merch, merch business, Merchize, print on demand, print on demand companies, Printful, webhooks, WooCommerce
Motivation & Follow-Through with ADHD
One upside of realizing that all the neurotypical advice on #productivity is being able to ignore it all. But there’s a downside too: difficulty finding advice that really does work since us #neurodiverse individuals are all so different. Gone are the days of reading some NT productivity tip and having that OMG THIS MIGHT SOLVE ALL MY PROBLEMS rush & subsequent attempted change of habits. And the majority if ND advice is stuff I know (break things down into manageable steps, yada yada yada). Now if I see a post with productivity tips, I ignore them completely. This has manifested in me struggling to figure out why I get bogged down in projects that feel like they take forever, to the point of wondering if it’s time to switch to a new focus or not. But this morning a post from #CreativeHackers got my attention, with this quote in particular: When we procrastinate over one thing, it tends to overspill into other things. Jake, Creative Hackers 🤯🤯🤯 THAT makes sense. Every single project I’ve ever struggled with has been because One Thing Caused A Problem and that stopped progress completely. And since most things to my ND brain are pointless unless they are immediately relevant to me, this hits home because I’ve been struggling to build a #merch biz despite taking the time to plan and research instead of just starting with no goals or planning. I’ve mentioned this biz before in a short post on visual project planning; that visual planning was my attempt to get over a similar roadblock (in that case trying to figure out what I really needed to work on, and how Y needed to be done before X)(story of our lives, amirite?). Now I learned something about identifying what the roadblock is, and brainstorming/experimenting with ideas to resolve it. I’ll report back, since I’ve been pondering sharing my entire experience with trying to plan & build this business (if you’re interested LET ME KNOW, otherwise the lack of dopamine will relegate this idea to rubbish bin). Now this one line that blew my mind is part of a post focused on the idea that Our actions create our identities. It’s a simple concept that makes sense for my brain – and he’s got a step by step process: 👉 We face a challenge/ problem👉 We have too many options, so we experiment👉 Experimenting provides clarity👉 Clarity provides dopamine👉 Dopamine creates the motivation to take more action👉 And we have the momentum to face more challenges successfully Jake, Creative Hackers Go read the entire post here and let me know if it unlocks anything for you. And subscribe to him while you’re at it because he talks all the time about being #creative multipotentialites & getting stuff done. PS I see that the text in my featured image has janky edges. It’s low on my list of things to figure out, I got other stuff to do.
adhd, ADHDer, AdultADHD, creative, CreativeHackers, merch, Mindblown, neurodiverse, Productivity, YMMV
Will this post post to #Mastodon?
This is a Post, and not a Note. A spokesman for Notes said he was glad no Notes were involved. Published 20240417 10:52AM EST.
RIP Shane MacGowan
I’m crushed. Not that it wasn’t expected; he just left the hospital last week after months. It’s a miracle he made it to 65 with all the drink & drugs. I have loved #ThePogues for decades; they’re the soundtrack for my life. Songs to celebrate the joys of life; songs where I related to another colonized people; & songs about our shared struggles. His #music will live on. But right now, it feels like part of me died. https://www.rte.ie/entertainment/2023/1130/1419329-pogues-frontman-shane-macgowan-dies-aged-65/
Project planning with ADHD
If you’re an #ADHDer like me, you are well aware that planning big #projects is a #struggle. I’m working on a #merch #business, and for the first time I’ve gone so far as creating a business plan and taking things step by step. Of course, I’m not taking everything step by step because there’s usually something that catches my attention (usually oriented around #design) and I run with that. But I’m not sure I’m making real progress; there’s tons of stuff that needs to be done but what’s most important to launching a business? Prioritizing is a struggle for me, and you know the deal: something’s really interesting or something’s really urgent, and everything else is out of mind. This is a pita in day to day life as it is, but for a large project with many tasks and dependencies, I don’t want to spend time on X only to realize late that I needed to do Y first. My solution is to write by hand, somehow I find it very helpful for thinking. In this case, I wrote down everything that needed to be done, in sections (I use the #NotabilityApp on my #iPad), and then drew arrows between things to show dependencies. But organizing it by hand threw me for a loop and I switched to #Obsidian and it’s kickass Canvas view. I’m visual and after some time I finally made the flow you see here, where the yellow arrows represent dependencies where certain tasks are better done after other tasks. This finally made sense to me. Now I need to figure out how to make this work in #Todoist. #PKM #ADHD #ADHDlife #AdultADHD #Productivity #TaskManagement #TheStruggleIsReal
Student loan forgiveness FTW
<sarcasm>File under: Both parties are the same</sarcasm> I got an email in August from my #studentLoans servicer with the subject ‘Your Student Loans Have Been Forgiven.’ I didn’t believe it, so I ignored the email. Not only have I had student loans since 1994, but in 00s my loans were sold multiple times to different servicers and keeping up with that was a pain. What I did notice each time they were sold was the principal getting higher and higher – for nothing. My total owed should have been around $60k, plus interest. But for the last decade it has been – I shit you not – $200k. I’d given up on trying to figure out which servicers jacked it up to ridiculous levels, and whether the effort was even worth it. I figured I’d die with $200k in loans. But with the #pandemic payment pause ending, I had to see what my repayment options were. I was surprised as hell that it was $0, and that was retroactive to 2016. I didn’t think I qualified for any of the special programs that #Biden had made, but I’m not arguing (though I did confirm that it was actually forgiven). Too many people like to think that Both Parties Are The Same, and that is completely and utterly FALSE. The media doesn’t help with their constant false equivalence for everything while spreading #conservatives lies in the form of ‘unbiased reporting.’ I’m surprised that this happened with all the obstruction the #GOP engages in, since they have no good ideas for governance but plenty of ideas for useless shitposting. But the Dems (despite their flaws because 1) they’re human and 2) they’re constrained by our not a real #Democracy system) have come through with policies, while I can’t think of a single policy from #Republicans that benefited anyone who wasn’t absurdly rich in at least 15 years. Be forewarned: any ‘yeah but’ responses will result in a block. If you can’t get on the bus to make some progress against the fascist billionaire party, you need to figure out how the fascists got you to do their bidding. #USPol #USPolitics #Politics #StudentLoanForgiveness #JoeBiden #Democrats
Cynical me: when your recent movies sucked and you ruined a franchise, you go back to your bread & butter. #ProWrestling fan me: OMFG HE’S BACK IT’S THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING IVE EVER SEEN 😭😭😭😭😭 #TheRock #Smackdown #WWE
The Thing with 2 Heads and the birth of Hip Hop
#TIL I learned that a song recorded for the soundtrack of this bizarro movie had one of the main breaks used by DJ Kool Herc for his ‘Merry Go Round’ technique. So this crazy-ass #movie played a part in the birth of #HipHop. Have you seen this, or even heard of it? I saw it once when I was like 7. The premise: “Doctors are forced to transplant the head of a dying, racist surgeon onto the body of a black death row inmate.” Someone prolly got really drunk and came up with the #WhatIf scenario: What if a racist ass MF got stuck with the body of a black man? And to make it more interesting, he can’t hide inside the body AND the black dude is there too. The social commentary went over my head. I’d watch anything that was remotely #ScienceFiction or just plain weird – and there’s not much weirder than this. It looked soooo fake. And since I LOVED #70s #Bollywood, I was fine with #movies that had logical & other inconsistencies. If you want to know more about the song, check out out the #video where I learned this #FunFact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBYiWbfv_Dw #Music #Breakbeats #BadMovies #Blaxploitation
