Anytime. I figured that since my field is Industrial-Organizational Psychology that I'd have at least some helpful advice to give so as to counteract the rather nonconstructive ones.

I understand what you're going through OP, of course through my own experiences. I'm now going back to college in 4 days. This is after being absent from schooling for over a year due to lack of motivation and other issues.

I have been climbing out of the hole I dug myself into (I slowly destroyed everything around me by simply giving up on life) this past year. I've dealt with all the legal problems, gained trust back from people important to while keeping myself sane and motivated myself. I feel much better now that I can finally continue pursuing my dreams.

Just keep your head up and stay on track, don't give up because in the end you will just be letting yourself down. Only you know what it takes to get to where you want to go, so do it.

As for the ADD thing all I can say is it's just yourself making up excuses on why you haven't accomplished your goals. It makes you feel more comfortable believing you have ADD. You could go to a shrink and tell him that you think you have ADD but ADD is over-diagnosed, so he/she could end up prescribing you medication that would mess things up even further.

I'm not saying you don't have ADD, it's a possibility that you do.

One day when your bored read some books on learning, not everyone learns at the same rate, some people pick things up easily others dont, some learn better one way than another, the way you describe how you learnt C++ is a good example, but dont jump to a conclusion that its an attention deficit problem, one piece of good advice earlier is stop playing games, they are time hogs and you end up setting your concentration on a game rather than the subject your trying to learn. One piece of advice i can personally give is get some good rest a tired brain is just that, and being tired and frustrated wont help you.

This is my prescription.

(1) Give up weed and alcohol

(2) Give up chatting on the internet. Delete your login cookies and all your bookmarks (back up & email to yourself for later)

(3) Give up anything else that lets you be in an alternate reality

(4) Stop cycles of negative thoughts. The basic technique goes like this
(a) Be aware of these chains of thought that make you feel bad
(b) Forget trying to find a solution to these things that you are thinking about
(c ) When you notice such a chain of bad thoughts, break it off and focus on your current physical environment
(d) Repeat (c ) as often as needed, even if it is every minute. These thoughts will come up less and less.

(5) When you have done this, you will (probably) find underneath that you have a strong sense of fear. This is the basic problem. The depression is just a symptom. Try to calm down by clearing your mind and letting go of tension in your muscles

(6) In the morning, get up and have breakfast and go for a walk for about half an hour. Think about how great you are going to feel when you have your certification. Don't let any negative thoughts come up.

(7) Sit down at your desk and open your books. Work all day long and don't give yourself any rewards or distractions for doing that.

Oh, ok. I see what you're saying.

That practice test will probably be a good idea because it sounds like you might need some guidance. I can probably guess on one of the reasons you might be holding off and hesitating on it. You're probably worried about failing your test since they cost so much and you're really relying on these certiifcates. When I'm under that much pressure with something really important like this it makes me hesitate doing whatever needs to be done because I want to do it right and I'm afraid I won't do it correctly. This kind of mentality completely puts a halt to what needs to be done. As strange as that sounds it does happen to me and this might be what you're going through since so much is riding on the tests and the certs. I'm not saying that's you're whole problem but I'm just speculating on what might be making you stall.


I don't know how you go about your daily life but to become self motivated it really starts with doing basic things involving your overall life. For example, start with waking up early at a specific time every morning and go to bed at a decent time at night. Doing a bunch of little changes you'll eventually have changed all sorts of aspect and be more ambitious when it comes to things like studying. That's really the best advice I can give you regarding motivation.

As for possibly having ADD, have you told your parents or firends or a family member about this? If you think something is really going on then you should tell someone and get it checked out.