Avoidance
I've noticed myself avoiding hard or overwhelming tasks, particularly at work. I'll spend the whole day trying and failing to hype myself up to even start on a project by writing a relatively simple piece of code. I feel too overwhelmed (or sometimes lost) to get the thing done though, so I avoid it by scrolling on Lobsters, Reddit, or Bear's Discovery page - anything for a distraction and a hit of dopamine. Then some time passes, I realize that I'm falling behind schedule on the project, and I only feel more overwhelmed and anxious. This feeds my paralysis, continuing the cycle.
I don't have a solution right now, though I have cut down significantly on my scrolling. It's hard for me to tell whether the issue is that I am simply not interested in or motivated by the work I am doing, or if I just don't have the same work ethic developed that I imagine a lot of other people have. Or maybe it is a more intrinsic mental health barrier like anxiety that could be alleviated by medication. Or I just need to pull myself up by my bootstraps and get this shit done. I somehow doubt that that last strategy works particularly well though.
I do suspect that having a team who speak the same technical language as me that I could bounce ideas off of would be helpful. However, at the moment, I am the lone wolf at work who handles all thing IT, programming, and troubleshooting. Maybe that could change, or maybe it won't. I suppose that only time will tell.
I don't know if I will leave this post up for very long, but it feels good to write it down and put it somewhere.