Day 4 and 5, that I can recall, Ritalin was also helpful. I take it as coffee : on a per-need basis.

Last I two days I took it, the effects were not as obvious, perhaps because I’m already on adrenaline from planning my trip. I guess taking it helps me focus while planning it.

Today, I took it before a workout (woke up 5 min. before the trainer showed up).

And also just now, it makes me jittery like coffee. I couldn’t do a mindfulness meditation exercise and was very unfocused. 11 months ago

Ran around town all morning and definitely felt spacey and sleepy brained.

When I took it late at 2 h p.m., I managed to fall asleep right after due to another late night. It just didn’t work.

When I took it again at 6 h 00 p.m., it must have taken… maybe 20 min. ish to kick in? Then felt more focused again.

The best way to describe the effects are:
- less of a feeling of being brain dead;
- eyes wide open
- more energy
- effects last about 3 hours on a 5 mg pill. But you can still function after the effects have tapered off, in contrast to not taking the Ritalin at all like in the morning, where the brain never gets a chance to get a kick start.
- better focus at doing simple, boring tasks, the brain doesn’t slowly break during menial work like opening a file (looking for the path than, forgetting what I was doing, even what file I was looking for, why and what to do with it + getting distracted by other elements on the way…)

Side effects:

- so far, only insomnia, but it could just be the stimulation of being deeply invested in the commenced tasks.

The real test:

- when travelling, will I space out during the tour guide’s instructions?
- when I go back to work, how will I handle focus groups? 12 months ago

Interesting. Due to insomnia last night, woke up tired but relatively early… Still got a 6 solid hours of (bad) sleep.

After 1 pill of Ritalin, felt focused enough to sort through my work inbox (shhhh! covertly working) and put a few documents together for my box (who has to train another analyst to take over an account).

Managed to not lose sight of my tasks while doing boring, mundane work. I don’t know if it’s because I had a more specific goal in mind, a specific time by which I had to leave home or if it’s the Ritalin, but felt more productive than on a normal work day.

The brain doesn’t feel like mush. It doesn’t struggle and go under when I do simple clerical things like archiving or the worst, going through the maze of the company repertoire to locate a document.

Only downside is, feeling tired from bad sleeping yesterday. 12 months ago

Insomnia last night. Just couldn’t sleep.

Apparently, it’s not the Ritalin, which would have only lasted me about 3 hours! I felt the effects way after that… Hmm… 12 months ago

Actually, I also took a B-vitamin which is supposed to help with stress and energy.

I’ll skip the B-vitamin tomorrow to see how that goes. 12 months ago

Very interesting day…

I took one pill at around 10 h .a.m before an activity that requires focus. And the effects are supposed to last 5-6 hours.

Nothing I did is very demanding but these days, even cleaning the apartment gets me all scatter-brained.

So interestingly, today was one of the more productive days I’ve had in a while! Cleaned the kitchen, went to the doctor’s, sorted boxes at my parents’ home… Bit of research And I still have the energy for more, 12 hours later.

I wonder if it’s a placebo effect… No matter, it turned out well and I’m hopeful.

Tomorrow, I’ll try another doctor’s appointment + appointment with counsellor + more travel research and see how that goes… 12 months ago

- inability to focus (brain completely overstimulated) due to being be easily overwhelmed by emotions (this time, upset by a rude and inefficient coworker).

- overfocused (Moby Dick syndrome) on upsetting things (in this case, my coworker).

Decided to be different this time and voiced my dissatisfaction to her boss. I just asked for a few things…

For the coworker to…

- not interrupt me
- not dismiss my instructions
- listen to instructions better

Decided to let go of her arrogance and rudenesss… I should learn to handle that better anyway…

I’m working with her tomorrow, we’ll see if that goes better… 13 months ago