I seem to have a major issue with my perception of time. Naturally, I should perceive it as flowing forward. Unfortunately, my temporal thought process gets stuck on the backlog of missed deadlines and tasks that have been on my 'to-do' list for literally years. Or my wacky brain goes shooting into the future, calculating future probabilities and prerequisites. I need to focus on the NOW, but I get caught in a whirlpool of review or a planning of sequences. When focusing on the past, I feel negative and when focusing on the future, I feel overwhelmed. Overloading myself with a cataloging of the past mixed with sequences of future contingencies. It's almost like my internal perception of time is broken, somehow. It's certainly very ineffective in terms of getting stuff done. Lots of mental churn.
How do I combat this? By actively forcing myself in the present. This is very hard for me to do! It's quite exhausting, to be brutally honest. But my best programming comes during a 'timeless' state of mind. I slip into The Zone and time fades away as a mental construct.
The net result is that I must separate my cognitive mind from the flow of time completely in order to produce output. This does awful things to my ability to come up with correct estimates! (I also fear that it projects an aura of uncaring or ignorance toward others.) I remain hopeful that I can find a new cognitive method someday, but thus far, I remain limited in my options. Which means there is more work to be done on myself.
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