Hanging in there -- barely

To try to motivate myself to concentrate on work that doesn't inherently inspire me, I make up a lot of games and challenges. The most consistent one is to keep a daily count of the number of times I consciously shut down superfluous stuff like Web surfing and make myself focus on whatever I'm supposed to be doing, or at least what I think I'm supposed to be doing. Then I reward myself, presently at the tune of 20 cents per point, towards the purchase of some frivolity such as a poker book.

(I'll break in and say that to the non-ADHD this may sound childish, or like I'm lazy or undisciplined or have no compunction about getting paid to goof off. Hopefully by the fact that you're reading this blog, you realize that life isn't as simple as all that for some of us, and that it requires conscious effort for some of us to make ourselves concentrate.)

Some days I forget to keep score, but in general my nadir is something like 5 or 7 -- on days where I come in, do some productive stuff in the morning, then think, "Screw it," and stop making the effort to focus. (I still do some work after that, just that I don't make that same conscious effort.) Until recently my high score had been something like 15 to 20. Lately I've been racking up days of 25 or 30. That's not because I'm any more motivated or excited about my work. To the contrary, I have less and less idea why I'm even here. The higher scores are just because I've been trying hard to "brute force" my way through this lack of motivation. I don't think that approach will work forever, but at least it's getting me through another day at a time.

Question of the day: An eccentric billionaire has offered you a job digging a ditch in his back yard, then filling it back in. What salary would you require for such a quintessentially futile task?