A small disclaimer: I don&#x27;t actually believe I have any diagnoseable disorder. I just could not find a better shorthand for this behaviour.<p>I have a lot of difficulty moving from one task to another, without reaching some arbitrary milestone, which means I view it as stable (I never really view anything as complete). I&#x27;m good at focusing on one thing for a long time. Often, though, there is clearly a very good reason to move on to another task. Sometimes, I&#x27;m even aware that I will be able to quickly resolve something if I can just step away from it for a while and do something else...but I continue to beat my brains out over it, until sleep or some other external force (that&#x27;s Mrs External Force to you) intervenes.<p>This behaviour also has medium term consequences. For example I often bury myself in coding for several weeks, ignoring client communication and even billing. Often, I can&#x27;t even face typing up an invoice until a project reaches a designated milestone. But the milestone is completely of my own making and often includes a host of things that are not even visible to the end client. So why not take a coffee break, write and email the invoice? Looking on from the outside there&#x27;s something mildly insane about it.<p>One thing I&#x27;ve observed is that I feel anxiety that I&#x27;m going to lose control of what I&#x27;m doing - as if I might lose my mental picture of the thing I&#x27;m working on as a whole. I feel like if I stop and come back to it, I&#x27;ll be starting from scratch. Which is nonsense really.<p>This both is and is not about context-switching. I think that&#x27;s been thrashed out at great length on HN. I know focus brings great benefits: I finish things to a reasonable standard, I can learn new things, I can work quickly. Maybe this is just the trade off I&#x27;m made with. But I would like to hear whether other people have developed techniques to take command of when they focus and when they switch.
Ask HN: To what extent should I control my completion disorder?