ADHD sucks. I mean, it ain't cancer, but it sucks. I was never officially diagnosed, but when my son was at 7 is when I realized what ADHD really is, and that I'm an ADHD guy. Some how I made it through 40+ years with it and never knew it. I struggled though college, took me 9 years to get my BA. Somehow got a masters. Somehow managed to get a series of better jobs after my degrees. And I've somehow succeeded in life (my definition of succeeded) with ADHD and without any help or anything. I struggle with it every day still. ADHD sucks, I have no idea how I got to where I am, but I know I'm lucky. It's also made me a better parent to my ADHD kid, I know what he's going through, it's taught me patience and kindness that I never had growing up. If you don't know much about ADHD , it's not what you think it is.
I don't have the research handy, but Adderall has been proven very safe for long-term use when taken at "normal" dosages and with oversight by a doctor.
I've been on it for 20 years and with the oversight of responsible doctors, and I have never had to increase my dosage (in fact I've reduced it 25% in the last 5 years). All my heart/blood/* tests come back good and I'm not a particularly health-conscious person. I regularly take week-long breaks to assess if it's still the right regimen for me. (Like the parent post says, the days off of it can be brutal but avoiding tolerance and assessing its true impact are invaluable.) I don't "like" Adderall but it is the only way I feel sane.
My point: don't be afraid to seek meds that help just because you may fear some long-term effects. A doctor can help you decide if the long-term effects are worth the gain, and there may not in fact even be the long-term effects you're worried about, especially if you talk about those worries with your doctor.
Work with a psychiatrist to try other meds. There are non-stimulant meds that work with ADD too.
Adderall is not the only option; it didn’t work for me. It took a bit, and I ended up with Dextroamphetemine. The physical side effects dulled down to the occasional restless leg, and the mental effects work well.
Personally, I was on methylphenidate (generic for Concerta) from eighth grade until very recently, when I switched to an Adderal ER. The difference for me was more what happened when I came off of it- on methylphenidate, I got super irritable right around the same time I got home, which was not good.
I haven't noticed anything weird with this one, but for anyone reading this, I would highly recommend "shopping around" for ADHD medicine if you can.
Try Vyvanse or one of the other high grade, extended release alternatives to Adderall. Lots of people have had issues with Adderall, especially after the patents expired and it started being made almost exclusively overseas as a generic.
How long is long term? I have a friend that had problems with GERD until he started taking Adderall. It seems that he is not alone. Something about stimulants seem to help digestive problems for some people.
I think nearly all of us that aren't secretly abusing medication feel that ambivalence.
For me and I assume for others, it is not a fully adequate treatment. Some symptoms it fixes, some it helps with, some it does nothing for, some it actually makes worse. (In particular, impulsivity and inability to task switch accurately.)
Then there are the side effects, and the comedowns after tolerance builds.
Nevertheless you must still learn coping skills, still pursue other treatment (exercise, decent diet, sleep, CBT if needed), still struggle as the square peg.
I have used medication for roughly 5 years ish of 30 some years of life, intermittently. I'd say taking it is better treatment than not, but honestly, like you, I feel a deep ambivalence towards it. (Even resentment, sometimes.)
I have ADD and sleep apnea, a double whammy of conditions that society likes to mislabel as 'character flaws'. I took ADD for a few years; it helped at first but after a year or so I had to stop because I was becoming very angry when on it. I believe the exhaustion/constant jet lag of the apnea (even with CPAP treatment) and work/kids entirely depleted my patience and self-control and the adderall then exacerbated my temper. I'd much rather be foggy/forgetful than angry.
I was diagnosed with sleep apnea. I no longer need my machine
Here are some of the things I tried: cut out wheat, cut out refined sugars, lift heavy things 3 to 5 times a week, do an elimination diet (whole 30 is a good one), get a good supplement stack (Standard Process has good stuff)...
I'm not sure what else I tried. I think the changes in my diet made the biggest difference.
I've never had Adderall because it's not for sale in .au for some reason. I've tried Ritalin and Modafinil and Dexamphetamines. Ritalin didn't help much and gave me headaches, but Modafinil is much better. It doesn't help with the ADHD quite as well as Dex does, but all the annoying side effects are far less pronounced as well. Unfortunately in .au you can't get it subsidised for ADHD, only narcolepsy, so I've stuck with Dex just because it's so much cheaper, despite it being way worse for you.
Yes, you pretty much summed up all. Don't forget sleepless nights if you took it after 11 am or later. Also: Heartburn, dry mouth, and severe dehydration, loss of appetite (yay for this one actually). And flushing (pee pee pee all day).
IF you are working from home with minimal contact, it works. Never EVER answer a phone call when you are on it (this is to whoever planning to use it in the future). God knows, how many times I argued with a client just because of Adderall.
It forces anyone using it to keep the communication to a minimum. And when a client calls (usually oblivious, but demanding), you will end up arguing at some point.
Adderall = never do anything social including phone calls. I am serious.
My prescription is 30mg of Elvanse daily, which corresponds to 12mg of Adderall _spread through the day_ (Elvanse/Vyvanse is an extended release form). Taking it all at once would surely lead to all that effects.
Obviously. On the other hand, if you didn't take it before 11am for reasons (some of which may be bullshit!) you then get to make a Sophie's choice between being productive and sleeping.
Depends on the dosage, while he mentioned Adderall those are the exact side-effects I had with Ritalin, and that comes in all forms: "normal" (4 hours), long-last (8 hours), slow-release (also 8 hours-ish, different chemical implementation), and more I don't remember/know.
The shorter durations (4 hours) are more effective than the longer, but also require taking it several times a day. And I think neither 4 nor the 8 keep you awake for 16 hours. Occasionally I'd even get the side effect of making me drowsy, and I had to take a nap right there. Thankfully that usually happened when I would take Ritalin for studying at home later in the day, rather than at school.
True, 16 hours was over the top. I think my concerta bottle (methylphenidate, same ingredient as ritalin but extended release) says something around 12 hours.
My point however was that if you take medication which can keep you awake for X hours less than X hours before bed, you could have a bad time.
> Occasionally I'd even get the side effect of making me drowsy, and I had to take a nap right there.
I've read about this, for some taking ritalin actually helps them sleep since it makes the brain shut up and be quiet, instead of racing all the time
> Some how I made it through 40+ years with it and never knew it.
I can relate to this, and I think there's a potentially large underbelly of society, that many (most?) of us are walking around with undiagnosed personality "disorders" (let's say, traits) like ADHD, the autistic spectrum, agoraphobia, narcissism, sociopathy, and so on - maybe even ones we haven't discovered or classified yet.
The infamous DSMMD (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is a massive tome, where pretty much every member of human society can find a matching category..
In a nutshell, the DSM say anything that sucks is a disease.
What is exciting is that the wandering-in-the-dark of psychology is being usurped by neurology actually understanding how the brain works on gradually higher and higher levels.
I found out this year, at 32, that I have a mostly-anxious/sometimes-avoidant insecure attachment style.
Some of the bumps I’ve experienced in life probably would have gone smoother if this was made apparent to me years ago and I had the tools I have now to work with it.
ADHD doesn't suck. Forty years of 9-5 jobs, mortgages, university degrees, and elementary school sucks when you're the type of person who can get diagnosed as ADHD. The world discriminates against people who don't have the temperament to fit in to its patterns of society.
We don't quite know how to pursue ἀρετή, virtue, eudemonia, excellence, whatever you want to call it in life because modern life was built for another kind of person and the animal life we left behind is far gone. Advice about "fixing" ourselves is mostly about finding effective ways to fit square pegs into round holes (like Adderall)
ADHD is objectively a bundle of true deficits, not just a set of traits society frowns on. Certainly these deficits weren't as much of a disadvantage in early human evolution, but if you can create metrics and show that people with ADHD perform worse at some generic tasks vs. average human beings-- and you can, we have-- this is not just a world that has been created that is inhospitable to them.
The ugly thing I've found, which accords with what you have said here, is that the best treatment for me is as many hours of sunshine as possible and several hours of vigorous exercise a day. (Thanks for teaching that, Marine Corps.)
But of course there are very few jobs with security, brain exercise, and mobility that give me this, and essentially no jobs that are compatible with it (that it is, where I could take this time off per day and still retain a job).
So of course I use medication and stick with jobs that drive me nuts, jobs that are terrible for me but pay well. I feel for the ADHD people who weren't gifted as decent a brain as mine, as if it weren't for that I doubt my employers would have been as indulgent of my other flaws from ADHD.
There is doubt that a set of behaviors which is so prevalent in the population is just an accident and a disease. Evolutionary pressures exist to optimize gene expression ratios in a population. Put differently, when a certain gene becomes rare in a population individuals with that gene have a significant advantage in life and reproduce more – when the same gene becomes over prevalent individuals with that gene have a significant disadvantage and reproduce less. There are traits which have pressure to be a certain proportion of a population.
ADHD or whatever else you may call it could very well be that. Ancient societies which had a small proportion of a certain kind of person thrived because their different behavior made them successful. It doesn't have to be a disease to not fit in to a certain society.
I can think society is deficient all I want (I do, but not for any lack of consideration for my ADD). It doesn’t change the fact that I need to work, and that to work, I need the ability to control my concentration. To do that, I take meds.
I can’t be anything but thrilled that society has given me a tool that gives me some control of my concentration.
These sorts of arguments tend to fail to result in a meeting of the minds.
Some people manage to make lifestyle changes and/or dietary changes and/or ditch people who were part of the problem and see substantial improvements in how they function and in quality of life. They try to spread the good news and people feel like they are being told they don't have a real problem or something and both sides get mad.
I used to see this a lot on parenting lists. People would suggest homeschooling because it had made their lives so much better. People who didn't want to consider homeschooling would feel judged rather than feeling like they were being given options and hope.
Aah, yes, that round hole called “work”. All the creativity, all the beauty of being a square peg is absolutely useless in the face of having to make money to survive.
PTSD. Constant stress. Having trouble just keeping promises to friends. Failing to even keep up a hobby. The inability to control your own concentration.
What I'm trying to say is that there's nothing wrong with being what you are.
Instead there is something wrong with a society that discriminates against it (and living in that society sucks). Trying to fit in to it is what sucks and the solution is not being better at fitting in.
I am not. I experience them and suffered the consequences.
ADHD people suffer because we don't meet expectations. Either there is something wrong with us or something wrong with the expectations and I choose the latter and want to help fix it. Saying "something is wrong with me" and wanting to fit in, for me, is the problem. Constantly not meeting expectations is the problem but I deny that not meeting them is the fault.
The world and I do not get along. I do not want to shape myself for the world, I want to shape the world for people like me. Fuck everyone who wants me to be different.
Saying ADHD is a disease is just as offensive to me as saying homosexuality is a disease to be cured.
Its not about other peoples expectations though, its also about our own.
Maybe you are okay with never finishing any project you start. I am not. It feels awful to me to start 10 Projects a month and never finishing any. It feels awful to me to be very sensitive to rejection, even though I realize the other person did not mean it like that.
> Saying ADHD is a disease is just as offensive to me as saying homosexuality is a disease to be cured.
You can not compare these like this. One is a sexual orientation, and the other is a inability to regulate yourself the way you want.
Inability to sustain concentration is not a temperament. It's a neurological impairement.
Adderall isn't going to do anything unless you are actually functioning suboptimally. It will, however, most certainly decrease your attentional/executive performance if you are at an optimal state. Look up the U-shaped response curve.
If you've got great executive function you're probably doing productive work instead of chasing black-market Adderall and reading a thread on How I Run a Company with ADHD...
ADHD does suck. It's not about fitting the patterns of society, it's about being able keep your shit together and get things done.
No matter how you live with ADHD there will always be distractions pulling you away from what you need to do. There will always be things you should remember but don't, things you should have done at a specific time but were distracted and forgot.
It doesn't matter what society you live in or what the cultural norms are, those of us with ADHD are lacking some basic functions that makes life harder. And it sucks.
Inability to sustain attention/concentration is just one of the most common facets of ADHD.
Yes, you could have more/others impairments in your executive function than just attention. Impulsivity is commonly measured as well. ADHD is really an umbrella term for several syndromes.
I disagree with the notion that "inability to choose" is necessarily a definitive part of ADHD . It often is, and is common, but it's not unique to ADHD at all.
It can also be due to anxiety, PTSD, all sorts of other issues, and people with those issues improve on anxiolytics/tranquilizers, instead of stimulants.
In these comments you could see anything from people that think it's not an illness to people who have secondary impairments due to obstructed airway at night.
And they are all probably right to some degree.
This stuff - attention, executive function, ability to self regulate and direct your own attention - meta-cognition, if you will - is very poorly understood. Treatments are very crude, we will eventually see them as barbaric.
It probably is one of the youngest developments, evolution-wise.
> It can also be due to anxiety, PTSD, all sorts of other issues, and people with those issues improve on anxiolytics/tranquilizers, instead of stimulants.
Is this true? What sort of anxiolytics? I’m pretty sure I’m diagnosable adhd-pi but I have anxiety that decreases with low dosage adderall.
Read up the studies. I'd say it's probably best studied in schizophrenia, they have all kinds of cognitive improvements on antipsychotics, rather very unpleasant drugs.
Dopaminergics like amphetamines, ritalin or bromantane do help with anxiety, it's common knowledge, but I don't think the effect is sustainable long term, at least not that I've heard. More common for that effect to fade away with time on chronic dosages and more of a jitterness surface later on.
I don't want to speak for others but that is exactly the way I experience it. I can sink deep into an unimportant but complex analytical problem after lunch and the next time I take note of time passing, it's 3AM and I forgot to drink, eat, go home, exercise, love, and sleep.
The amount of focus I'm capable of is not the problem. The problem is putting it to use where I want to, rather than where it, by pure chance, happens to end up for the day.
It also applies to the small stuff. Someone asks me to bake a cake and I think it's probably best if I know what temperature it should bake at. An hour later they ask me how the cake is coming along and I realise I know a lot about the chemistry of baking but I haven't brought out the flour yet, and I no longer have time to shower, shave, send that important email, and clean up after baking.
I go back and forth between viewing it as an inability to perceive time and an affliction of directing behaviour. Perhaps they're two lenses through which to view the same thing, and I haven't yet discovered their symmetries. (Only vaguely aware of them -- directing behaviour to achieve future goals requires the ability to perceive time acutely.)
As someone that was diagnosed with ADHD at 37, ADHD is what society calls it when somebody has very little tolerance for paying attention to stuff they find boring.
But seriously, I agree with the square peg / round hole comments. I don't believe ADHD to be an illness because there are plenty of environments where I could thrive, the trick was it had to involve doing something I loved. Fortunately for me, I loved computer programming.
It a literal brain development impairment. We can look at the bright side, I do too, but it is a biological difference in our brain construction from the norm, and it has wide ranging impacts that go far beyond our ability to do work.
Do you have extreme bouts of emotional distress? Emotional / angry outbursts? Blurt things out that get you into trouble? Experience difficulty with dating? Lose shit constantly? Participate in risky / dangerous / mid-guided behaviors?
I wonder how common this is among HNers. I felt like I could relate to many of the feelings in the article and I certainly have trouble keeping track of time (w.r.t. rabbit holes and whatnot) and do better with some external motivation. In particular, I can be “hyperfocused” when it comes to interesting technical challenges for many hours, but I get distracted instantly when doing my email, the laundry, or taxes. I’m not sure if the magnitude might be what sets me apart from people who have genuinely been diagnosed with ADHD or if no one ever suspected it because I did well in school and at work.
For me the difference is that the feelings of distraction and inattentiveness aren't just with things I don't want to do, they are always there, and are sometimes worse with things I enjoy doing. And the hyperfocus happens when it happens, and sometimes it will be on stuff I don't enjoy doing but can't seem to stop thinking about.
Without my medicine I have trouble watching a tv show or movie I really like, I can't play some videogames because they can't keep my attention even though I'm having a great time. I'll normally listen to an hour long podcast over a few days because every 5 minutes I need to pause it to "focus" on something else (like I just did to write this comment), and often I don't come back to it (like I probably won't tonight!)
You may or may not have some ADHD tendencies, but it’s not uncommon for people to miss out on diagnosis as children.
I wasn't diagnosed until I was 19 or 20 because my perfectionism (which was/is directly tied to the anxiety/major depression I was diagnosed with at 14, but self-diagnosed at 9) sort of overrode the traditional symptoms. I did well in school (because I couldn’t NOT have perfect grades). I excelled at work. For many years, I was compulsively neat. (I’m not really sure what happened to the neatness).
When I was 17, I was put on ADHD meds as a way to treat side-effects of an antidepressant, but I found it had a ridiculously positive impact on my life. In college, I was formally diagnosed, and my psychiatrist posits that the fact that I appeared to be “fine” is what kept me under the radar. According to my doctor, it’s not uncommon for that to happen, especially if the individual is of above-average intelligence (I was given the “gifted” label before entering kindergarten).
I always “joke” (except, it’s not a joke an I’m 100% serious), that I’m a high-functioning ADHD person. And it’s true; over the last 15 years or so, I’ve learned to augment my behavior and recognize when the disease is impeding on my life. For clarification: being able to recognize something != always being able to change what is happening. I’ve also been fortunate to find work in fields where my ability to do multiple things at once is useful.
But I tell people I’m in meetings with frequently about the stuff I do to help quell my worst tendencies (I play puzzle games on my phone, for instance, so that I can pay attention to what people are saying. It looks rude, but the alternative is me literally not being able to focus on what is being said. And when I explain it, I’ve never found someone to be unsupportive), and I try to plan and make adjustments for my own time clock.
Like you, if it’s something I’m interested in, I can be hyper focused for hours. But the second something is born for even just not that compelling, it’s a struggle.
Yeah, people will sometimes judge, but I try to explain the why.
“I’m doing this so that I can pay attention. It sounds counterintuitive but it is not.”
I had an editor once (I should note, he went on to become my mentor), get really frustrated that I wasn’t “paying attention” and he quizzed me like we were in school and I just rattled off a complete list of everything that had been discussed, as well as some ideas that hadn’t — and he kind of looked stunned. I told him (again), dude, there’s a method to my madness.
He never got mad at me for “playing on my phone” in an editors meeting again.
The author didn't really delve into whether he uses meds to cope with ADHD.
How do other people who have ADHD cope with it as startup founders? Do meds like Adderall, Ritalin or Concerta work? What about Nootropics?
Asking cos this situation seems to be very common in our profession i.e. starting some side project, getting overwhelmed with perfectionism, distractions and never shipping. Is that ADHD or just plain procrastination?
I noticed the omission too. Even if he's not using any medication, that seems like something worth mentioning.
Incidentally, I've had really good experiences with modafinil (aka Provigil). It's not approved for ADHD treatment in the US, but studies suggest it is effective, and it's widely prescribed off label.
Modafinil is awesome for ADHD, but I've found its effects tend to plateau after a few months. Traiditional, do one thing well stimulants were my magic bullet. Currently (for the past several years) using Dexedrine.
Yes the meds work. Stimulants and ADHD are one clear cut medical win. Stimulants have a >90% success rate, and the instances where they don’t work are often more along the lines of the side effects not being worth it. The only difficulty is in finding a doctor that will prescribe, and a personal regimen that works.
> The author didn't really delve into whether he uses meds to cope with ADHD.
This note is toward the end of the article:
A note on medication: When I take medication I feel these skills being dulled. I can't think as quickly, I'm not as outgoing. ADHD medication also contributes to an increase in anxiety, and so for me it's not worth it. If you're struggling you should absolutely try it. For some people, medication is a must. Don't ever feel bad about taking it if it helps you.
The other thing you have to realize about medicine, is that effects can car drastically person to person. For some, it makes them think quicker and makes them much more social.
Coaching does almost zilch to address ADHD needs. There’s some initial benefits, but it’s the same sort of benefit anyone would get from coaching. Coaching does not and cannot address anything specific to ADHD symptoms that manifest themselves in the moment.
It does to some extent, because once you have some improvements from stimulants, newly found ability to concentrate and follow through will allow you to create new feedback loops/circuits/patterns in your brain that didn't exist before, very much a biological change.
I disagree with his list of upsides -- there is no upside to ADHD. It is a disability. I've been able to manage it without using stimulants, through very careful planning and trial and error (step #1 is avoiding useless wastes of time such as reading HN). But it just sucks.
I don't know. I can't write a CRUD app anymore to save my life, but I can dive into the middle of a foreign code base and quickly understand it and solve issues that stump the primary developers. I struggle with normal daily activities like paying bills or putting away laundry, but in an emergency or high stress situation when others are freaking out I feel comfortable and in control. I struggle with conventional learning, but can pick up things which align with my interests (which are wide and diverse) extremely quickly. The negatives are there, and they can be severe... but I do still see some upsides. I'm currently unmedicated, but have been on Adderall in the past. I've been able to manage it mostly by changing jobs when they become stable and boring or taking on roles where I'm constantly working on new projects for short amounts of time. I suspect at some point this will stop working and I'll have to change careers entirely and end up as a chef, or woodworker or something else completely different than what I do now. Maybe by that time I'll agree with your position, but I feel like I'm able to use ADHD to my advantage for the time being.
I feel the same way. I've never been diagnosed with ADHD but can relate to all the descriptions of it here.
In the past I jokingly said I need the stress and I think it holds true. In high pressure/thight deadline situations I can work with a high focus for hours but struggle working on projects which are going smooth.
I am diagnosed, and ADHD sucks of course, but I feel there are many upsides. Immunity to the “existential terror” is one (due to inability to comprehend life time as a whole). When hyperfocus turns on on something relevant (which rarely happens of course), magic things could happen.
To the writer (if looking on this board), thank you for this piece.
Have you ever come across this article in the Economist, summarizing research providing evidence that ADHD is a legacy of our nomadic past when ADHD traits conferred an evolutionary advantage?
Not OP, but as a sufferer, I boldly disagree. There may be some benefits related to brainstorming and "out of the box" thinking but they are overshadowed by the disastrous consequences of being unable to organize and execute.
Have you been able to find hacks and/or work arounds? Reading the article, I wondered if ADHD might manifest with a range of severities. I have heard of ADHD sufferers for whom it is a serious disability, and other sufferers who claim it’s their super power. I can see that you would find the latter claim to be very irritating.
> Have you been able to find hacks and/or work arounds?
The only way I have found it working is to outsource my scheduling to someone else. I believe that explains why many people are diagnosed during college. College is much less restrictive than school and as a consequence people have to do their own planning.
Organizing and executing sucks with ADHD, but it helps in executing without much organization.
It could be a good thing in the right environment like a startup.
Trying to organize then execute something could take a month of back and forth and planning. If you skip that step, you can get it done in a week then plan afterwards.
Wow! My story resonates with that of the author's.
Although I did relatively well at school I struggled in collage. I skipped classes and my grades were far lower compared to my school years. In the second
year of college I was finally diagnosed with ADHD. Not that I haven't seen it coming. Some of my teachers have long suspected it even during school. I knew I was special as I couldn't stick to the topic I was talking about during conversations, and even when writing essays!
That my sound a bit elitist, but my belief is that the biggest factor that made me get through this is my self-perceive above-than-average intelligence. I couldn't let me fail. I managed to get in the second most prestigious electrical engineering college in the relatively small country I live.
Running a startup is not easy, let alone if you suffer with ADHD. Me, having plans for the future, was relieved to see other like-minded people sharing their experience! Thank you.
Throughout all of my years of schooling, I was never a strong student, but I made it to a position in life where I hold a very good career as a Facilities Director for a large hospitality group in NYC. I've had a few desk based "Operations" jobs that I struggled to be able to focus on. Being in this Facilities role is great because it's hands on which keeps me active but it's also very dynamic and evokes feelings of letting people down if I don't resolve time sensitive issues, fast. One of the worst feelings is that what I do is never enough. I always feel like I do a good job but can't seem to shake the feeling that I will somehow get fired because I am not good enough. Lots of anxiety. I do a good job at work, get compliments, but I can't go on a two week vacation w/o wondering if my job is on the line because I'm not there. How do those with ADHD shake the constant feeling of anxiety and of "not being good enough"?
I also can relate to the entire ADHD <> entrepreneurship affinity because I come up with so many "niche", interesting business ideas but I struggle to exceute. Some of these ideas could make me a lot of money too with minimal investment.
Bah! Another article about ADHD. ADHD's over diagnosed and not not as big a problem as people make it out to be. But, I'm curious all of a sudden, so I might as well read it.
> For the first 19 years of my life I knew I was lazy.
Yeah, I'm pretty lazy too. That's just who I am, though. I don't have ADHD...
> So what, you can't stop bouncing your leg at the restaurant?
I thought I was the only one that did that. It drives my aunt crazy.
> I'll be halfway through a team meeting and realize I haven't heard anything that was said. That's ADHD.
THAT'S ADHD? I do that all the time. I can't listen to podcasts either. But I just have difficulty processing the spoken word. I'm much more of a book learner anyway.
> I was happiest with my nose in the book
I'm seeing a disturbing pattern take shape.
> I'll take a break to read an article and hours will go by before I realize what's happened. Not minutes, hours. That's ADHD.
Wat.
> I'm horrible at completing simple, repetitive tasks. I'm terrible at time management, and conceptualizing time in general.
Uh oh.
Other comments here have mentioned that stimulants help ADHD sufferers focus. I recently cut back to 2 20oz cans of red bull a day, but I was up to 4 a few years ago. I just thought caffeine was my drug of choice. Everyone's addicted to something, right?
I currently have 52 open tabs on my laptop and another 37 open on my desktop.
I'm not quite sure what to do with all of this. I just thought I was lazy.
Honestly I had/have many similar symptoms (of course there is more than can be written in a short comment) and was diagnosed and started medication over a year ago. It has been very positive for me. YMMV.
An ADHD diagnosis is based roughly on a 5-percentile standard[0]. In other words, if you are a hardworking, industrious person, but the rest of society is harder-working and more industrious, then you automatically become ADHD-diagnosed by virtue of being on the left side of the bell curve.
It's also worth noting that in France, ADHD is seen as a problem with a child's environment instead of a medical issue[1].
France also generally views autism this way and fails to diagnose and properly treat autistic children. It’s a huge problem and probably ruins many families and children’s lives. I would not be surprised if in a couple decades we are talking about the “shame” of France’s approach to ADHD as well.
A lot of Twice Exceptional* people get labeled lazy. It may not be ADHD. It may be some other hidden issue. In the vast majority of cases, people who get identified as an adult seem to be tremendously relieved and empowered by having a better label than lazy.
There are other axes by which to assess humans than "acheivement". There are even other axes for value! Someone can be "exceptional" along any of them.
Goal oriented self-directed behavior is what distinguishes us from apes.
Underachieving is just inability to deploy your efforts effectively, or even inability to muster an effort in the worst cases. That translates to every domain and aspect of human life from scholastic to social to friendships etc etc etc.
I know literally no one who isn't quite lazy. My friends have no ADHD and they suck at time management, hate finishing projects and have a hard time focusing on boring shit.
Well, particularly with ADHD, if it’s harder to power through life tasks or remain focused on topics that are not mentally stimulating, it typically means you can hyper focus when you do stumble into something that is mentally stimulating. I think people with ADHD have a high propensity to large successes, or tragic failure because if you don’t find your true interest or calling, it’s harder to carry through something that you find is just ok.
My handicap is medical. If I can't focus, it's usually because I'm miserably sick or feverish.
Having the correct label helps some people get their uncooperative body to be productive enough to make life suck less. Just calling it "laziness" generally suggests zero real remedies and often leads to the beatings shall continue until morale improves.
That's a label I've never heard of before. My younger self checks every single one of the boxes in the strength/weaknesses table. I graduated college with a 2.2GPA entirely on my ability to score really well on all the exams I managed to show up to.
I failed freshman composition 3 times in a row since it was the only class where tests were not part of the grade.
As an adult, I find that laziness had become a learned behavior. I was smart and generally easy-going meant that none of my K-12 teachers were willing to flunk me, but getting an A seemed out-of-reach. This meant that I could "get by" with minimal effort, while intense efforts didn't result in obviously visibly better outcomes.
I eventually found a good therapist (though Sturgeons law[1] definitely holds for therapists) and have been sorting things out since.
Holy crap, that sounds almost exactly like my college experience except I dropped out after my major/department was cut from the university.
As far as "getting by" and laziness as a learned behavior, I always worked hardest on my hobbies throughout K-12, so as an adult I've gotten to the point where my hobbies have become my careers. I started building PCs and running Linux on my own in High School, along with playing music, so now I'm a software engineer/musician. Software is one of the few careers where you can go on an insane research binge on a whim and actually be praised for it, and performing music is one of the only things that I've ever done that fully quiets my mind. Something about the adrenaline of being on a stage really helps with my ADHD-Inattentive type; guess it's just like a stimulant.
"Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life", etc
I went the other direction. I had no problem with being called lazy or calling myself lazy. It was a familiar and comforting crutch, like slipping into an old pair of sneakers. I only got B+ on the test? No worries. I could have gotten an A had I actually tried and wasn't so lazy. But, I couldn't be bothered, because I'm lazy.
The fact I may have an incurable mental illness (and that I could be branded as such) terrifies me.
Don't consider it an incurable mental illness. It's not a sickness, it's just a genetic variation in how the brain is wired. Having a certain percentage of the population with ADHD was probably an advantage in our evolutionary past. There are a lot of good things that come alongside it, like hyperfocus, greater creative thinking, and an increased ability to multitask. It's only really a big problem in our modern society, that values people's abilities to be super-productive cogs in a machine and values consistent output over anything else (like creative solutions), that ADHD becomes a huge problem.
I appreciate what you're trying to do, but it's not about what I think. It's about what the rest of society thinks, especially the legal system and people hiring programmers for jobs. I don't imagine judges look kindly on someone who is officially diagnosed with a mental illness deciding not to take any medication for said mental illness.
Well, true. I have not disclosed to my job that I was diagnosed with ADHD, and I don't particularly plan to (I wouldn't deny it if it came up, but I'm not going to volunteer the information either). There are more downsides than upsides to disclosure. It's generally recommended to not disclose, especially during the hiring process, unless you truly cannot cope in your job without some sort of ADA accommodation, in which case you must disclose for the ADA to kick in.
Plenty of people with ADHD choose not to take medication though, and I'm having trouble coming up with a situation in which a judge would order you to take it. As long as you're not blaming your ADHD as a reason you broke the law (which you shouldn't, ADHDers may have poor impulse control and bad executive function, but we still need to hold ourselves accountable for our actions), I don't see where it's the law's business if you have it or don't, or medicate it or don't. There are plenty of non-medication coping strategies, including therapy and coaching.
I have ADHD. There are other serious neurological issues connected to ADHD. It's a very misunderstood disorder with a broad spectrum of identifiable symptoms that could indicate ADHD.
If you are heavily medicating with caffeine, then that can be a signal. I was using Pseudoephedrine and caffeine to self medicate and stabilise my moods and behaviours. That was before I got prescribed Ritalin.
But as the article says, I find Ritalin dulls my creative thinking and pattern matching that is required for insightful realisations.
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is big problem for me. I over think things, the slightest misread comment can ruin my day.
I also have a problem with cyclical depression and euphoric highs that are a bit like bi-polar but not as severe.
So yeah - It's hell. I hate having ADHD. I never looked for a diagnosis, but when I got one it was a light-bulb moment. Life still sucks. It's not a super-power and I'm not blessed.
My "coping" mechanism, annoying for some, I am sure, but I just bluntly immediately ask for feedback and try to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible. I am fortunate enough to have a manager that understands my condition and he offers me plenty of "spot" feedback which I cannot appreciate more.
I totally relate to that! I do it as well - I often cant leave something alone. It drives my wife insane as I'll just keep on about it when she wants to move on and let it go. I do it at work sometimes too, and it can come across as a bit intimidating, especially with people who dont like up front confrontation.
Have you found any support groups or any that were affective? I have taken a cursory glance at some support groups available to me in the past, plus some internet circles, but found them not personal enough to be effective or I felt too detached from the people involved from their day to day problems. But I feel like I, as well as other ADHD folk would benefit from some sort of HN "accountability" partner or group that understands the condition but also the type of work we do.
I had no idea it was a thing. I thought I had ADHD-PI with a side of anxiety, but I’m blown away to find that RSD has a super strong link to ADHD.
I think it’s treatable. Anecdote: I knocked doors for the Hillary campaign in Denver in 2016 at the request of a friend. While this initially terrified me, something changed over the week I was there.
I found that when I went home, my social anxiety was damn near nonexistent. I’d inadvertently done exposure therapy for rejection, and goddamn it felt great. It wore off eventually, but I’m still trying to get back there, now that I know where “there” is.
> Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is big problem for me. I over think things, the slightest misread comment can ruin my day.
I am a recent adult ADHD diagnosis recipient, and I never knew that there was words to describe this but it describes me perfectly as well, so thank you for the knowledge kind stranger.
I ditched my Ritalin for similar reasons, although I do have a hunch Adderall would help me better since the one time I took it recreationally in college, rather than "get me high" like it was the other college kids, it sort of just made me well..normal. I got my homework done that day according to schedule!
I read his comment exactly as you meant, i.e.: "I may seek a proper prescription for Adderall since it helped me that one time I got a dosage from someone".
How, as an adult, did you get a doctor to diagnose ADHD? Every time I've brought it up with a healthcare provider, I lay out my difficulties and coping mechanisms, and the conversation ends with them saying "Well, it sounds like it's not much trouble for you. Anything else?"
I just don't know how to make them get it. I feel like I have so much potential for success, but I can't harness it.
I feel you. When I was first trying to get diagnosed (in small-town Virginia) it was really hard finding someone who could help.
You'll probably want to figure out if it makes sense to convince one of your existing doctors to consider it, or if it makes sense to find a new doctor who can help you. Odds are good that you'll need to do the latter anyway, as your primary care doctor is going to refer you to a psychiatrist for an actual diagnosis. So one thing to think about is just asking for a referral.
One way to shortcut the actual finding-of-a-doctor would be to do a search for "adult ADHD" on Yelp for your area. Hopefully, someone's reviewed a doctor and used that phrase, and you can figure out if the review is for a doctor who'd be good to connect with.
Schedule an appointment with a clinical psychologist who specializes in ADHD and ask to be evaluated. It may take some looking to find someone who is accepting adult patients.
If you can’t find and ADHD specialist someone who does IQ exams can also help. My personal route included going to a clinical psychologist who specialized in IQ testing. Thought I might have mild dyslexia or similar. Turns out IQ exams (properly administered ones) show significant patterns related to working memory issues in ADHD.
I had to go to a psychiatrists who specialised in ADHD to get a diagnosis.
GPs would tell me to stop being lazy when I would asked for a referral to one, so I paid top price and went direct.
I found this doctor _did_ get it, it was worth it, so now navigating treatment. It was a huge relief as it's like someone has finally listened to what I have been saying for over a decade.
I first saw a GP for my cyclical depression issues. She suggested I might have ADHD. I then got referred to a neurologist.
An Adult ADHD diagnosis can be hard as many Dr's work on the basis that ADHD is something that 'goes away' in adult hood. Which isnt really the case, and wasnt the case for me.
I was able to demonstrate childhood patterns that matched the disorder diagnosis; despite having a high IQ (for want of a better way to describe it), I have zero qualifications, failed at school, never went to uni and bounce from job to job. Always starting well, but then going off the rails. Where as my siblings are all exceptional performers in their careers. I was also the eldest, and suffered a high degree of stress in the womb and early childhood (for reasons I wont go into), which are contributing factors.
Glad the ADHD was recognised with depression symptoms; my girlfriend had the same diagnosis and was fobbed off with antidepressants, which made it even worse.
That sounds like my GP. I struggle with anxiety, depression and obesity among other things.
Every time I go to an appointment with them I hear "Well, it's all in the head you know."
I hate this and it's the case with most GPs, at least in my country. I genuinely just wish my therapist was also my GP.
It's particularly malicious as it's using a phrase that is literally true and accurate description of the problem to dismiss the existence of the problem!
Can you opt for a second opinion? Like, is that legally possible to be enforced? If yes, I'd go for that. If you have trouble functioning in society, a diagnosis plus therapy or medication can really direct you in the right way. You still have to put in effort, of course, but basically less because these aid you.
When it comes to getting an assessment for any sort of mental health issue the best advice I've heard is to answer all the questions from the perspective of your worst day because that's the situation you're trying to avoid. Coping mechanisms are great but they don't work all the time, and at least in my experience once they fail I end up in a downward spiral that can be really hard to get back out of.
Best of luck to you - I made an appointment to go and actually finish the assessment process off the back of reading this article this morning. I wonder if having started it and got distracted twice previously will count as a point in my favour?
I was just diagnosed about a year ago, at age 38. I'd suspected for years, but was mired too deep in depression to do anything about it. Finally I had my depression under control, and with the help of my wife (I'm terrible at making appointments!), made an appointment to see a psychologist who specialized in ADHD.
He interviewed me about my symptom history for an hour. Pro tip! Make yourself a list of all the things you want to mention to the psych. I wish I had brought a list, because after I left I thought of so many more examples I had wanted to bring up.
Despite my not bringing a list, he said near the end of the hour that if he had to make an immediate diagnosis, then yes, he would say I had ADHD. I took home a test (it was around 350 true/false questions) that he wanted me to take to rule out any other diagnoses that might be an issue.
I took the test and returned to him in a week. We went over the test results (nothing unexpected) and he diagnosed me with moderate ADHD-PI (primarily inattentive). He wrote me a letter to take back to my GP to try medication, and my GP handles my Adderall prescription now.
ADHD is a lifetime condition, and having symptoms since childhood is part of the diagnostic criteria, so when you're making your list, make sure you're including your childhood. I was very smart, and coasted through grade school with excellent grades, but there were still signs even then. Like when in 5th grade I just stopped doing any work for an entire semester. They threatened to hold me back from 6th grade, and I made up all the work in a single afternoon, sitting in the teacher's office while the rest of my class was on a field trip. Or all the times I would get in trouble for "not listening to the teacher" because I was hyperfocused on reading a book and literally was not even aware that I was being spoken to.
> with the help of my wife (I'm terrible at making appointments!)
It's so, so helpful to have a partner who can help with actually getting an appointment set up. I found it to be one of the hardest parts of the process of getting diagnosed, and probably wouldn't have gotten through it without help from my wife.
It really is! There's so much I couldn't do without her. We both have our own mental and physical health struggles (Me: depression, ADHD, fibromylgia, and T2 diabetes, Her: Sensory Processing Disorder, anxiety, and bipolar 2), and we like to joke that between the two of us, we make up one whole neurotypical person.
When one of us is struggling, the other helps pick up the pieces. When both of us are struggling, we work together to prioritize what actually has to be done (ex: we have to acquire something for dinner tonight, but we can do the dishes tomorrow), and do the necessary things together.
"Well, it sounds like it's not much trouble for you. Anything else?"
Best advice I've heard here is that you need to talk less about how you're coping, and more about how it's still impairing you despite that.
After all, so the doctor reasons, if you've built coping skills that handle it without medication, then why not just stick with those? What you have to do is give them an answer to that unspoken question.
Interesting symptoms. The coffee consumption, mood swings and cyclical depression and also symptoms other commenters described like needing lists for everything or overthinking things are a perfect match for someone close to me. The only thing missing is some-kind of uneasiness within crowds.
But that person was actually diagnosed with "Sensory Processing Disorder".
I'm glad that people are more aware of ADHD and because of that receive proper medication. On the other hand the symptoms of ADHD can be very similar to other disorders. Many neurological problems overlap and someone having a dysfunction in one area could also have a dysfunction in others.
So to all commenters in here, be aware that a label of ADHD may only be a part of the full picture.
After my diagnosis with ADHD, we wondered if my wife might also have it, albeit milder than mine, as she struggled with a lot of the same things I do. She went for the full neuropsych eval, and was actually diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder, not ADHD. So I'm not surprised to see some overlap there.
I have adhd too and got my diagnosis when I was 25 because someone here in hackernews pointed out what I was fighting with isn’t normal or just laziness. It was eye opening for me too because all of a sudden a lot of things made sense.
Adhd is absolutely widely misunderstood. It fucks up and affects so many parts of my life, from inhibition, impulsiveness to emotions and motivation. I overthink everything, my mind gets trapped focusing on completely wrong thoughts and don’t even get me started with RSD (Intuniv / guanfacine treats RSD by the way but it’s not available for adults where I live. Look into it!) . The more I myself learn about it, the more I realize how completely mislabeled the name “adhd” for it is.
I agree with you, adhd is hell. I would pay a lot to get rid of it it if I could. Stimulants somewhat help with the focus part but that’s about it. I’m even self experimenting a lot with other medication like MAOIs and antidepressants that have some studies related to adhd done on them them in the hope to find something that works better than my Ritalin.
TSM is another thing that has a 50% success rate in “treating adhd” but it’s not enough evidence for me to shell out this much money.
> I have adhd too and got my diagnosis when I was 25 because someone here in hackernews pointed out what I was fighting with isn’t normal or just laziness.
Same here, about a year ago I came across a thread here on hackernews pointing out symptoms. Then I remembered that there was some testing done in my childhood (but didnt remember what for). Got properly diagnosed some time later.
I wish I remembered that thread and who pointed out the symptoms, they very much deserve a beer on me.
My girlfriend was diagnosed with ADHD as well a few years ago, after her son was. She's on Concerta in a special delivery mechanism that gives her a 'boost' after a few hours; it's not an all day thing but it gets her through most of it. Same with her son. Ritalin is described over here as a short-working medication; you should look into other medication as well. My girlfriend mentions that her medication is subtle, but effective - it helps with mood swings and all that.
However, I can imagine that some aspects of ADHD - notably the hyperfocus - can be considered a positive trait, something that is hard to let go of. And that's fine, if you want to have it you can skip the medication just fine.
However, you also mentioned RSD; my girlfriend described that the medication she's on helps a lot with daily mood swings. She seems a lot more patient and resilient about small things in the day now that she's on the medication. Do consider it if you find yourself struggling in e.g. the workplace.
Interestingly, I find that medication does not affect my hyperfocus in a negative way. If anything, it's even easier for me to achieve hyperfocus on a task when my Adderall is "on". I find that what medication helps me most with is the initial hurdle of starting a task. Once I actually get going, I'll usually hyperfocus on it (if it's the type of task I hyperfocus on, which includes programming, but sadly does not include housework). I procrastinate at work far far less when I'm medicated. Without medication, I struggle hard with starting new tasks.
> If you are heavily medicating with caffeine, then that can be a signal. I was using Pseudoephedrine and caffeine to self medicate and stabilise my moods and behaviours. That was before I got prescribed Ritalin.
Does tea count? I dislike coffee; I only drink some when I absolutely need to stay awake (caffeine in energy drinks is another thing, this I like). But ever since I was a kid, I've been drinking ridiculous amounts of black teas every day, on the order of 10-15 cups. I ask because I keep hearing that the stuff in tea is pretty much the same thing as caffeine...
Meds aside (which do help, and not all will trigger personality or physical changes), there are some coping mechanisms which you can pick up. Even with meds, you’re really only given a bit more control over your attention, so having coping mechanisms are still useful.
I was referred to a psychiatrist who had me fill out a questionnaire, and we spent about an hour iterating through my life beginning from childhood. The questions they asked, individually, felt meaningless, but trends emerged fast.
I get that these questions can be gamed if you're just seeking a prescription, but in my case I'm generally quite hesitant to take these sorts of drugs. I have close friends who had many very messed up years due to struggles with ADHD medication.
Now I feel like I'm living life with my eyes open. Far from perfect, but I am able to have ownership of my issues.
Yeah. I don't want to be somebody who jumps on the bandwagon and self-diagnoses themselves with ADHD, but I also fall into all of these categories, have developed a bunch of his coping mechanisms on my own (the lists part really hit home, I cannot get shit done without making multiple lists and sub-lists throughout the day so that I have an anchor to fall back on when I'm getting distracted), and consume gratuitous amounts of caffeine to keep focused. I've gone through a gallon and a half of Monster in a single day on many occasions, though my normal daily consumption peaked at about 3/4 of a gallon. I've had other people suggest that I might have ADHD as well, but I have no desire to get a diagnosis even if the doc would agree. I'm doing alright with myself and making improvements over time. I do appreciate articles like this because whether or not I have "ADHD" I do have a bunch of overlapping symptoms/patterns-of-behavior, and reading about how other people cope with similar experiences seems useful.
I'm certainly not arguing that anybody else should avoid diagnosis. I don't expect this to be a popular opinion, but I tend to stay away from medical practitioners in general. The last time I broke a bone I did some googling and treated it at home; I generally feel like the time and money needed to access professional medical advice isn't worth the knowledge which is already available at my fingertips faster and cheaper. If I were to get diagnosed at some point, it would be because society won't let me buy kiddie-meth (Ritalin/Vivance) over the counter. I've tried kiddie-meth four times illicitly, and it did wonders for me, but I'm not yet ready to incorporate it into my regular drug stack. I worry about potential effects from prolonged use (the "dulling" some people describe), and it makes me prone to giving <i>all</i> of my effort to the task at hand even when that isn't actually clever. I'm not ready to burn that filament yet. If I were throwing everything I had into a startup, I could totally see getting on the stuff. I'm about a decade from that point in life by my best approximations. As a side note, I accidentally smoked a little bit of actual-meth once (the guy who packed the bowl didn't tell me there was meth in it -- long story), and the effects were very similar. I didn't realise why I had been in such a great flow-state until it was revealed to me about a week later.
it sound like your argument is essentially that medical professionals cost too much money and have too low availability to make it worth your effort, is that correct? if so, may I ask where in the world you live?
Midwest US. If I felt like they were good at what they're for, I would probably use them more. My experiences have been bad. We're veering quite a bit off-topic here, but the last time I went to a doctor it was because I was shitting blood. I figured it was probably hemorrhoids based on googling, but was worried of an off-chance of cancer and decided to get it checked out. They had me collect a stool sample and come back two weeks later. I did, and the first thing they did was throw the sample away without examining it -- they said they shouldn't have even asked for me to collect a stool sample to begin with and apologized. Cool doc, thanks for having me scoop my shit into a cup for no reason. Then they charged me ~$300, had me get naked, and the doctor asked why I wasn't circumcised without me bringing it up and encouraged me to get circumcised multiple times (in my 20s) while I repeatedly said I wasn't interested and that it's supposed to harm sensitivity, and then he finally proceeded to stick a camera up my ass. The results were ultimately inconclusive, he said it was probably hemorrhoids but that he couldn't see them with the camera and verify that. So I'm out ~$300, my collecting-my-own-shit-in-a-little-cup virginity, my arguing-with-a-doctor-about-circumcision virginity, and my having-a-camera-shoved-up-my-ass virginity, and I don't know anything more than my free google searches told me two weeks earlier. 0/10, would not visit again. YMMV.
No, it's not lost on me that I admitted to previously consuming 3/4 of a gallon of Monster a day two comments ago and now I'm posting about shitting blood, but I think there were other contributing factors (notably bad lifting technique).
Edit: More on topic, if I don't care about the yes/no checkbox of whether they think I have "ADHD," and I don't want to get on the medication (which I've tried, informally researched, and made a fairly informed decision about), what can professional advice provide me that internet research about symptoms and ways of coping with them can't?
> it's not lost on me that I admitted to previously consuming 3/4 of a gallon of Monster a day two comments ago and now I'm posting about shitting blood
May be pure coincidence, but in my case the former was causing the latter. Through trial and error I discovered that zero caffeine intake completely eliminates my symptoms.
I think caffeine was a contributing factor, but not the sole cause. I imagine the niacin wasn't helping either. I'm totally off energy drinks now, but still strung out on caffeine pills. I intend to introduce some of the other ingredients of energy drinks back into my drug stack eventually, but I'm out of the niacin game (mostly due to worries about liver damage). FWIW, with better lifting habits and some other dietary changes I haven't shat blood in years despite only cutting the energy drinks out fairly recently.
Yeah, I have about the same opinion of the medical profession. Except for fixing mechanical problems (e.g., fractures) they seem pretty much worthless. Prescriptions that do fck all to fix anything and inconclusive diagnoses after you waited WAY past your appointment time leave a pretty sour taste. If a remodeling contractor operated the way most doctors do, they’d be skewered on the 6 o’clock news.
I know you didn't ask me, but as somebody who just realized he could have a mental illness, the thing that terrifies me most is being branded. Technically, on the books, ADHD is an incurable mental illness. That means, once diagnosed, you're forever mentally unstable in the eyes of both the law and potential business partners.
I doubt I'll bother to get officially diagnosed. The risk is too great and the upside too small. I've been coping this long with it and now that I know what I'm dealing with I can find ways to cope with it even better.
I fall into alot of the list but I will say I do not suffer from ADHD.
When I was at school I was told I had ADHD and put on Ritalin. But I couldn't tell the difference between taking ritalin and not taking it, I didn't focus any better, didn't get in trouble any less.
I always figured I wasn't challenged enough in school, or wasn't doing something I enjoyed.
If I was doing technical drawing I always got top of the class and helped the other kids with their work. In History class we learned about NZ history which is like 150 years of nothing, so I couldn't focus, yet you give me a book about Egypt and I'm fascinated and sit for hours reading.
ADHD is a real thing, but I recon majority of people 'diagnosed' with ADHD, don't actually suffer from it. And I don't believe the Author suffers from it.
My partner went to a Waldorf school grade 1 through 12, and whenever we discuss what school was like it blows my mind that she has no idea about just how horribly "regular" schools are at fostering creativity and interest. She has been diagnosed with ADHD as an adult because she has a REALLY hard time with handling everyday life, but for her school was never a problem because of the "fluid" philosophy of Waldorf.
While I like Sir Robinson's talk, for me The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher is what really struck a cord: http://www.swaraj.org/multiversity/gatto_7lesson.htm. I always felt like the school system (in Sweden at least) mainly wanted to students to fit into it, rather than the other way around. So as someone who is gifted according to WISC and WAIS, but who lacks the executive functioning and skill to do anything except whatever happens to be the most interesting at the moment, it was just hell. Even now at age 36 my body goes stiff whenever someone mentions homework O_O
I don't think that you can or should try to armchair-diagnose or armchair-undiagnose someone with from a single blog post. You can't know what the author has struggled with in their life.
I was officially diagnosed at age 32. This wasn’t some pill mill diagnosis either. I worked with my psych for 3 months before we tried any meds, it would’ve been longer but I had accidentally discovered most of the practical methods for dealing with it on my own.
Two great reliefs came from the diagnosis:
1. I’m not a lazy, unmotivated person
2. Meds, at the right dose, are amazing. When my Vyvanse kicks in, it’s like walking away from an outdoor block party in my brain and getting into a sound proof booth where I can hear only the noise I want (or have) to.
Things I lived with my whole life that were both positive and negative depending on the circumstances:
- I can’t even stand the thought of a task, class, or activity I’m not interested in, but if I’m even slightly interested I can go deep fast and keep going with no loss of zeal until I’m satisfied. Basically, I can get super obsessed with stuff for short or long periods of time. My hobby background is ridiculously all over the place.
- I think and iterate my thoughts faster than most people can keep up, and I iterate my thoughts externally, if I’m on a roll good luck getting a word in between breaths. My psych “classified” me as a second order thinker and I run lots of what-if permutations and shave and shape creative solutions very fast. It also means I must be extremely cognizant of letting other be heard, especially those that like to ruminate on an idea and bring it to light more fully formed.
- My leg never stopped bouncing, helpful when I played music to keep time, annoying to anyone near me.
- I’m quick to temper and just as fast back to moving on.
- Little to no patience for bullshit or things I just am not interested in. Don’t tell me a detailed story of how to get there, just give me the highlights. I do t care about how you feel about some objective thing, just give me the facts and let’s keep moving.
Lots of other stuff, but basically I coped, unknowingly by creating rituals that allowed me to not forget or have to waste time finding things:
- Get home, keys and wallet go in the exact same place every time
- Todo list for next week created at the end of every Friday, revised at the end of every week day, and reviewed every morning
- The thing I want to do least is the thing I force myself to do first, and nothing else until it’s done
- Organize my schedule in a calendar, if it’s not in there it doesn’t exist and I won’t remember
- Just remembered to put that thing in the car for tomorrow and I’m laying in bed? Get up RIGHT NOW and go do it.
- Can’t forget your coat if your car keys are always in them
- My working area is spotless. No bobble heads on the desk or stacks of papers. Desk is completely clear, cables neatly organized, zip tied, and hidden.
Here’s the thing, maybe you do have ADHD. Maybe you don’t. The rituals you focus on and make so habitual you don’t even have to think about them will still work for you.
I have suspected for years that I may have ADHD, and the thread is slowly confirming my suspicions. (ofc, it can only truly be confirmed by an authorized professional)
1. Lazy - CHECK
2. can’t even stand the thought of a task, class, or activity I’m not interested - CHECK
3. My hobby background is ridiculously all over the place - CHECK
4. My leg never stopped bouncing, helpful when I played music to keep time - CHECK. Literally air double-bass drumming to some really high tempo progmetal as I type this.
5. I’m quick to temper and just as fast back to moving on. - 1st NEGATIVE
6. Don’t tell me a detailed story of how to get there, just give me the highlights - 2nd NEGATIVE
7. I'll take a break to read an article and hours will go by before I realize what's happened - CHECK
8. I'm horrible at completing simple, repetitive tasks. I'm terrible at time management - CHECK
9. Lost hours / while day at a time when I was doing something interesting - CHECK
10. creating rituals - Literally follow 90% of the rituals you already mentioned.
At this point if I was diagnosed with ADHD, I don't know if I'd be annoyed or relieved at the revelation.
> can’t even stand the thought of a task, class, or activity I’m not interested
But who is?
This is one of the problems in modern society, the concept that if you're not interested in something then you can skip it and find a medical excuse.
No-one ( generalising ) likes doing tax returns or washing dishes, but you need to look beyond the immediate discomfort to the longer-term benefits. That is self-discipline, not some magical superpower.
> but you need to look beyond the immediate discomfort to the longer-term benefits. That is self-discipline, not some magical superpower.
And that is _exactly_ what someone with ADHD struggles with. Long term consequences be damned, I want something that excites me and gives me a benefit _now_.
My brain wanders off to the point of literally not being able to pay attention. To the point, that I would routinely get barely passing grades in a boring course but ace interesting courses. Very few other students had that level of variance in their grades.
I also just can't do anything that has to do with data entry. I start, and in 2 minutes I realize the number are all wrong. I get double vision on the screen and am either yawning/daydreaming/thinking of the interesting things within that small time.
I believe it has to do with vyvanse and the enzymes required to break it down. I suspect its taxing on the liver and eventually it cant make the required amount of enzymes to activate it
At some point, you just can't fix it with more amphetamine because the side effects become stronger than the desired effect. See the post below for more info.
The main issue is that tolerance to all the effects of the drug doesn't increase uniformly. Originally I was on 70mg for about 5 years but started to notice that it wouldn't last the whole day anymore. My doctor gave me a booster which worked well for about a year but slowly I started to realize that the side effects were becoming worse than the desired effects.
My main issue was that originally it gave me a calm and relaxing feeling but over time I began to feel more an more anxiety. I'm not normally an anxious person, and the first time I an anxiety attack I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the ER. Magnesium, L-tyrosine, and good sleep can help but eventually, it would just make me feel jittery and unfocused. The anxiety also caused me to subconsciously swallow air and combined with the increased water I would drink it started to cause me stomach issues. I suspect the excess water diluted my stomach acid causing my stomach to make more. The swallowed air put pressure on my esophagus and eventually, I developed a hiatal hernia. This allowed my stomach acid to start damaging my esophagus and would result in constant burping / GERD.
The worst part is that the GERD was anxiety induced and things like Tums or even Zantac or Nexium did nothing. The only thing that worked was Xanax. However, Xanax is an incredibly powerful drug that can cause bizarre behavior because sometimes you speak without a normal filter. I didn't like the concept of having to take another powerful drug to counter the side effects of the first powerful drug, nor was I comfortable with medication effecting my personality. Furthermore, because of the stomach issues, I began to feel like I needed to make a change because it wasn't sustainable. I began a regiment to taper off by reducing the dosage and stopped taking it daily.
It wasn't as bad as I thought because what I realized is that the original effect that helped me just didn't work anymore and I really hadn't felt it in a long time. In many ways, that slow reduction of effect over time trained me to be able to do work without it. By the end, I was more productive without it because I wouldn't have the stomach/anxiety issues. Furthermore, my sleep has never been better.
Would a holiday have helped? If you went somewhere else you didn't need the help, and stopped taking it for two weeks would the tolerance have dropped to the point where it didn't cause issues?
I think the best description of ADHD I heard was that it has more to do with an "attention-switching" deficit. People with ADHD are capable of intense focus on highly stimulating things like a good book. The intensity of focus drowns out everything else, making it hard to deal with other important tasks until the book is finished.
It's also much more difficult to maintain their attention on things that are no longer stimulating.
So ADHD folks are great at starting interesting projects, but once the space of possibilities has been narrowed down and all that's left is hammering it out, it becomes intensely difficult to maintain attention on that due to lack of stimulation.
The attention switching idea seems consistent with my own experiences. I dated a girl with pretty severe ADHD; whenever she watched Arrested Development (a very fast paced sitcom with a lot happening) she would turn into a zombie and be almost entirely oblivious to any outside stimuli.
I have ADHD and have literally trained myself to use Arrested Development to put myself to sleep. Always the same episode. Even with the most crowded mind, I lay down with one earbud in, and I can’t make it 3 minutes without passing out.
The rapid dialogue means there’s no opportunity for intrusive thoughts to enter, but I know it all by heart, so there’s zero intrigue in any of it.
I have a similar situation, but it's a daydream. If I lie down and think about it and let my mind wander I usually find myself waking up many hours later.
I also like the idea that it would be better labeled, “intention deficit disorder”.
Dr. Barkley’s talk completely altered my understanding of the disorder. I always knew I had it. My life roughly paralleled the author’s. After failing out of school, I found workarounds that got me through the second time (thanks to extremely supportive parents).
This video, combined with my wife’s urging, caused me to find a legitimate doctor who specialized in it (he’s ADHD too), and get treatment. I was already doing well with my coping mechanisms, but my life took off like a rocket with treatment.
Any insight on how you went about finding a competent doctor for this?
After watching this video, and almost being moved to tears with how accurately everything in it described my life, and seeing your comment about being better off with treatment, I am convinced I should finally try something.
I too have been able to cope, but I would love to live beyond just coping and I am realizing it is only shame and pride stopping me from getting help, and fear that meds could make me worse or I couldn't find a good doctor.
I literally just googled ADHD doctor, tried to find reviewed, and then scheduled some appointments. You can tell a lot from how they handle the appointment and evaluate you.
If they’re cavalier about just throwing meds at you, I’d probably keep looking. My doctor always counsels that the ideal is to work myself into a position in life where I no longer need to take medication. He encouraged me to bail on it during vacations, if that’s my preference. He interviews and is constantly looking for signs that I should adjust my dosage. If you’re in SF, shoot me another reply and I’ll send you his info.
This sounds familiar to me. I've been trying to launch a blog for years. It goes in cycles. I start building a site, learning a web framework or static site generator, writing CSS and JavaScript, coming up with topic ideas, etc. Then, when the interesting learning part is over, I get bored and it just sits there for a few months until I start again with a different idea for the design or typography. It's a pattern I observe in several areas of my life.
(It's not that I'm not suited or capable of doing the writing part of blogging; I make a living ghost writing other people's blog articles and ebooks.)
Maybe, but only being able to focus on things that happen to grab your attention/interest is one of the major pain points of having ADHD.
It's not a matter of preferring to work on more interesting things. It's more along the lines of not realizing uninteresting things need to be dealt with (or even exist at all, sometimes) until they bite you in the ass.
Keeping up the theme of starting a blog... you'll have a rational understanding that a blog needs content. But you'll get wrapped up in solving the more interesting design/engineering problems. Once those parts of the project have been sorted out well enough that you are no longer actively solving a problem (note, I didn't say they were completed), something unrelated, but more interesting, will cross your mind and steal your attention away.
> So ADHD folks are great at starting interesting projects, but once the space of possibilities has been narrowed down and all that's left is hammering it out, it becomes intensely difficult to maintain attention on that due to lack of stimulation.
This is not something that most people have problems with?
Not to the degree people with ADHD seem to have this problem. A recent study looked at whether people with ADHD were more likely to repeat a grade. Here's what they found:
>28% of individuals with ADHD repeated a grade compared with 7% of controls (p< .001).
You can find many such studies about ADHD that find that people with ADHD just do worse in situations that require sustained attention and persistence.
And absent minded. And flighty. Thats why the homework never got done. Can binge on a video game for hours and hours, with a singular, obsessive focus. Therefore, no attention problem, right? (WRONG!)
Talk to a doctor. Do be wary of the temptation to explain away all these failings that you presume are choices... thats always a very attractive scenario... but get a professional opinion.
> Can binge on a video game for hours and hours, with a singular, obsessive focus. Therefore, no attention problem, right? (WRONG!)
Can you elaborate on that? Why is it wrong?
I've thought about this topic a lot in the past. I remember back in the day I had massive gaming sessions (like 10 hours a day for weeks). Games that are competitive and "skillful" too, not just lounging around playing them 1 handed. It required tremendous focus.
But when playing a game, you often have only 1 task happening which is "play the game", there's nothing distracting you and it requires your brain to actively be engaged.
However if you replace gaming with writing a 5,000 word blog post or creating some web app suddenly that focus isn't there. If you can focus during the game, why can't you focus outside of it?
> I remember back in the day I had massive gaming sessions (like 10 hours a day for weeks). Games that are competitive and "skillful" too, not just lounging around playing them 1 handed. It required tremendous focus.
It's deceptive; from the outside games seem like a single task that you can just focus on, unlike those other single tasks. But games are usually made up of a lot of things to keep track of, remember, etc. and it oddly works well for ADD/ADHD since you repeatedly switch focus between them all, something we're actually great at doing.
Take a competitive game like Overwatch: there's the general things to focus that any FPS has, but you also have to keep other things in mind like: map layout, your own positioning, ability cooldowns, enemy positioning (where you remember them and where they're likely to be next), the objective, whatever strategy you or your team have, etc. Instead of being distracted off the single task of "playing Overwatch", you're actively switching between the different phases that make up "what am I going to do next", even if you don't notice it.
Conversely, if a game is going slowly, you might get distracted and wander off looking for something more intense to do -- like killing an enemy -- and get yourself caught out of position.
Or in a PvE-multiplayer/single-player sense, consider raids (10-20man group vs. 1 boss) in MMOs: you have your own character's attack rotation to do, but also the flow of the current boss to think about: incoming spells, curses/debuffs to watch for, positioning, next objective (if the boss is more phase-based rather than just repetitive attacking), etc. If you're a melee character positioning and moving might be a constant thing to focus on, too. Even if you're already used to it and it's automatic to you, it's still something your mind actively thinks about and switches focus between.
Even in a game that has much less mechanics going on, your ADD/ADHD might just switch focus between the game's visuals, just as you physically get distracted by things around you (except this time they're the in-game environment and not distractions, but things the devs intended for you to interact with).
TL;DR: A video game isn't a single, coherent task that goes from A-Z, it's a giant collection of many tiny repeating (but not necessarily repetitive) tasks that you constantly switch between, like a processor context-switching between processes. And that plays into ADD/ADHD's pros rather than cons.
Those are all totally valid points (and I 100% agree) but don't you do the same thing when coding a project?
You have writing docs, writing tests, working on the user auth work flow / any app features, researching features / inspiration, designing a page, writing a bit of CSS, tinkering with the ops side of things (deployment / infra code), thinking about how you're going to generate traffic to it, writing blog posts or making videos surrounding your project idea and the list goes on.
You could bounce around all of that and could think "ok, what's next?" after completing any one of those things but for some reason it's not the same.
Although I guess another difference is games tend to have a lot of immediate rewards, or even more strongly, "potential" rewards. Like in your PvE MMO example. There's always a chance something might drop that will make your character better. Especially useful in games like path of exile (action RPG where your items / loot play a big factor) and even if the items you want don't drop, you're still gaining experience to level up your character which gives you ancillary rewards, and since it's a multiplayer game you could trade them with other people for things you want in return.
Where as with the coding project, there's really no rewards until it's done and even then there's no guarantee. You have to be content with just patting yourself on the back with a "hey good job, you finished writing tests for the user sign up work flow, now move onto X".
The same thing applies to writing to a lesser extent. There's research, coming up with a good example, writing sections / paragraphs, creating associated images, etc.. None of that really has immediate effects until it's fully done and you publish it, and even then, the publishing aspect might not even be the thing that motivates you to write it. Like, I've written 230ish blog posts but I write them with 0 expectations. I write them because they help me materialize what I'm learning or have learned, but sometimes it's difficult to write even if I think to myself that I want to.
At first glance, it would seem like ADHD might help with multitasking - and maybe it can to a certain extent, but generally only by coincidence. They aren't jumping from task to task in a structured way. Instead, they are failing to keep their attention on activities with low levels of stimulation, and constantly bouncing to activities with higher levels of stimulation.
Most people can relate to that experience, of course. Its just a much bigger struggle for ADHD folks (hence, the self-image of laziness, lacking discipline, etc), and often takes medication to manage.
In a fast paced action game, everything tends to stimulating. In software development... its mixed bag for most of us!
> In a fast paced action game, everything tends to stimulating. In software development... its mixed bag for most of us!
Yes, this was indeed my point (alongside the micro-tasks point in my other reply): games are made to be flashy, stimulating and exciting. They're made to pull your attention, which makes them easier to focus on for someone with ADHD.
Those are all "small" tasks for programming but monumental tasks compared to competitive gaming "tasks". For example, thinking about enemy positioning is likened to a mathematical function having the input of "enemy character" + "enemy team composition", sometimes accounting for the current map or where they were before. (Or their strategy if you've deduced it by now) It's a sub-second calculation likened to predicting where a ball thrown at you will land, and running there. On the other hand, writing a user auth flow is a minimum total of minutes with many things to remember at the same time. You can get distracted (even for a brief period of time) pretty easily in a time span of minutes.
The idea of loot and reward is a good theory but I meant it only in the sense of gameplay, and I can prove it by "loot lockout": in World of Warcraft you can only get loot from a raid boss in a specific difficulty once a week. The next successes give you no reward (and you can't trade loot with someone who did get loot when you couldn't). However, I've still cleared the same bosses several times a week because they were also fun. It was guaranteed that I wouldn't get immediate -- or any -- rewards for my success but it was still fun and focusable.
Maybe it just boils down to people are really different haha.
Your experience is interesting because I played Diablo 3 when it first came out and shortly afterwards got bored because the loot wasn't interesting. Once I finished all of the difficulties in hardcore mode (before everything got nerfed beyond its initial release) I uninstalled. But, I somehow managed to put thousands of hours into Diablo 2 and Path of Exile, both of which have much more interesting items (at least to me). Maybe the reward aspect is more important to me in those types of games.
I get what you mean by the gaming tasks though. I used to play moba style games. Every second had something to think about, and really it's almost like you have to turn off your brain and just let your brain take over if that makes any sense. If you tried to explain the exact work flow of what you had to think about in 5 seconds it almost seems impossible, but somehow with enough practice it's effortless. Maybe when your brain is in that state, it's not possible to get distracted.
Video games tend to be highly stimulating activities - many people with ADHD can keep their attention fixated on a singular activity, so long as that activity is stimulating enough. Video games, sports, or whatever.
Hyper-focus like that doesn't mean you have ADHD - but people often use it to rule out ADHD as a possibility, and never get tested, when maybe they should.
I'm considering it after reading this. I have considered it in the past, but you know... I find it hard to start and finish tasks once something else catches my fancy.
I don't know if it's me or modern culture but my brain needs instant feedback. Video games are nearly unparalleled for that. Programming is similar, exams and homework (unlike a lot of people posting here) do it for me too, because I get that feedback in a solid, concrete number.
One of the ways that stimulants treat ADHD is by raising dopamine and norepinephrine levels. Also, one of the big problems with ADHD is time-blindness. Basically, to the ADHD person, there are only two times: Now and Not Now.
Video games are highly stimulating and full of immediate feedback when you do well or poorly. This gives you the dopamine hit that your brain is searching for. And the immediate feedback means that the results of your doing well or poorly are felt right away, instead of in a nebulous future.
So you can focus during the game because you're getting a constant stream of dopamine and you always know how well you're doing. Get to the blog post though and... where'd the dopamine go? If you don't write this blog post right now when will you feel the pain? If it's not for a while, then it's too far away for the ADHD brain to put it into perspective because of the time-blindness. It's one of the reasons ADHDers are famous for procrastinating til the last moment, then suddenly cranking out that paper the night before. Once you finally get that sense of urgency of the impending deadline, you can focus.
Whenever I have more than 10 tabs open, I add all of them except the one I'm actually reading right now into a 'to read' bookmark. I have hundreds of such bookmarks and sometimes when I'm in the mood (ie. bored and distracted) I'll rummage through it.
Haha! I have I think 800+ tabs open (not loaded) in firefox on my personal laptop, and who knows how many on my phone. This is with 27mg of Concerta and 40mg of Strattera every day. Caffeine's next to useless for me. I get a 15-45 minute energy burst on it in followed by a few hours of extreme drowsiness, which is usually not worth it.
"I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined.
Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff.
The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties.
Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions.
One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief."
Great quote. How is laziness defined in this? I am wondering if I am lazy or not. Sometimes I think I am, sometimes I am sure I am not. What's a good quick test for this?
I image that a simple test for "clever and lazy" is if you'd rather come up wit6h valid and constructive ways of or reasons for not having to do something rather than actually doing it.
Logistics. Finding the simplest and least resource-intensive way of accomplishing something. The laziest (and cheapest) and most clever person will come up with a solution that satisfies both requirements.
Additionally, a lazy person will take any chance at delegating even important tasks to subordinates. This is a good thing, because without delegation, the leader is the bottleneck. If someone else can do it, delegate. "Clever and diligent" people will try to complete the most important tasks themselves to ensure they get done right, thus creating a bottleneck.
>"Clever and diligent" people will try to complete the most important tasks themselves to ensure they get done right, thus creating a bottleneck.
This is the difference between me and my mom. She'll put off something for ages because she could theoretically do it herself, but I'll just hire someone else to do it after calculating the value of my time/opportunity cost vs hiring someone.
I guess I constantly flip between diligent and lazy. That is, I consider myself lazy and love finding tricks to get the job done much faster or automate it away, but I have extreme problems with delegation. For some reason I'm pretty much incapable of asking other people to do something for me. I think it may have come from a mix of empathy and being extremely overprotective of my tinkering/thinking time as a kid. Whenever I consider asking someone for help, I feel like asking them to take the extra workload is infringing on their personal time, which is sacred.
Recently, I got 3 tasks. I quickly redefined one task to be esentially equal to an other and one task beeing low priority. Got everything approved and found a library which could do the one remaining task. I wrote zero lines of code :P
I believe laziness in this situation should be defined as having adequate alone time to process your thoughts, rather than always being busy doing something all the time.
People whose work involves mainly analytical thinking tasks are often mistakenly perceived by public society as lazy while in fact they have always been working all this time, probably harder than most. It's only because the nature of their work is not physically visible to the naked eyes.
Quality decision can only be made after it has been given sufficient time to carefully analyze all the information and its available options. This can only be achieved successfully when people have plenty of quiet moments alone to really think about the specific problem. Those who are always busy doing something all the time rarely have this opportunity, they are always in a rush and don't have the habit to utilize the process or pattern required for analytical thinking. Just like how everything in life is a trade off, if you don't dedicate adequate time for thinking tasks, you cannot expect to formulate quality decisions.
> must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief
Well, hard-working but not clever people will do useless work and create extra work overloading everyone else. BUT, this happens when they don't have good management and leadership above them, to prioritize and handle them bite-sized pieces, and to set their frame of mind to focus on "results in the bigger picture".
Probably putting "clever and lazy" and leadership roles is the cause for bad management and leadership which makes his "stupid and diligent" underperform in ways that drag everyone down.
Sayin' this as a "clever and lazy" person myself - I know that if I don't have someone I am responsible to (doesn't matter if it's a managers, partner, peer etc.) that is truly hard working and diligent is a recipe for total disaster. I'd rather be accountable to people way less creative, and even lower both IQ and EQ, as long as they come with a solid work ethic and focus to detail and they manage to drag me in this direction to! If the world would have only of people like myself in all leadership positions, nothing would ever get done, and the "diligent / hard-working" people will probably go crazy and either kill themselves or start wars.
> Well, hard-working but not clever people will do useless work and create extra work overloading everyone else. BUT, this happens when they don't have good management and leadership above them, to prioritize and handle them bite-sized pieces, and to set their frame of mind to focus on "results in the bigger picture".
I've always thought of "stupid" as different from "not smart". I can't fault people for not having the experience or knowledge that I or others have. I tend to think more of an "active stupid" as a lack of common sense, and making actually poor choices as opposed not making good ones.
To me, it's more the difference of "My laptop is overheating and I can't figure out why" versus "My laptop is overheating so I poured water on it to cool it off."
Stupid is consistently making poor choices and not listening to advice from others when those poor choices run amok.
Not smart is not intuitively knowing what to do in a given situation - this can be learned away - it won't give you the intuitive answer, but at least you'll know not to do something in a given circumstance.
I like the definition of stupid vs. intelligent from there - intelligent person consistently makes win-win decisions. Stupid person consistently makes lose-lose decisions, inflicting loss on other people for no gain for themselves.
I have a couple hundred tabs open across a few machines... It's a horrible cycle and every now and then Firefox feels sorry for me and corrupts my session so that I lose it all.
Yes, all of those things are classic ADHD... But they barely even scratch the surface. That's just the "haha" relatable stuff. Time management issues are real.
ADHD is, in essence, making a list of all the things you need to get done, placing the list in all areas you frequent as visible as possible, and then wondering how 16 hours went by and you're still on item #1 but now you know a whole lot about lizards that you didn't before.
ADHD is also the reason you can get work done for 16 hours straight without distractions.
The overdiagnosing of ADHD is only making things worse because it prevents some people from understanding when they need to make real lifestyle adjustments... both people who hide behind the diagnosis and people who refuse to take it seriously.
In today's world of hyper-distraction this is becoming all the more pertinent. ADHD can affect people of all walks of life and level of intellect, and it can be paralyzing as an adult with the amount of sensory information present in today's society. And we still aren't even sure what environmental factors if any can cause ADHD... for all we know modern society is contributing.
> ...even short-term engagement with an extensively hyperlinked online environment (i.e., online shopping for 15 minutes) reduces attentional scope for a sustained duration after coming offline, whereas reading a magazine does not produce these deficits
Overdiagnosis is real -- being a developmental disorder, ADHD people present age-inappropriate behavior -- "you're too old for this." A lot of people simply grow out of it (although, the ADHD brain typically reaches maturity around the age of 35, so, it can take a while). But many people never grow out of it, so underdiagnosis of ADULT ADHD is real.
In most countries, however, underdiagnosis is the real issue in most countries. I'm in the Netherlands and I went to a school for special children and talked to half a dozen therapists over ten years, and not one of them even considered it, while it's one of the most common disabilities, and considered one of the easiest to treat. I went to my GP and she had no idea about it, I basically had to explain the diagnostic criteria to her myself. It's possible I've just been really unlucky with the last 10 professionals I went to, but I think it's representative of the attitude in Europe -- especially the farther you go south and east.
These items pretty accurately described me before I started taking meds for ADHD, about 15 years ago. Over that time, I've taken a moderate dose of either Concerta (Ritalin extended release) or Adderall XR most days I work. I very rarely take the meds on weekends or holidays, and occasionally don't take them on work days. I've been doing tech work since the early 1990s, so a big chunk of my career was while I was untreated.
For me, the meds have a simple to describe effect: the amount of mental energy I use to concentrate goes down greatly when the meds are in my system.
I did some of my most innovative, creative work early in my career, before the meds. This was due to a number of factors, and I've done some pretty innovative stuff since, but not on that same level. (A big part was being in the right place at the right time.)
But there was cost: even though I was in my 20s, coming home after concentrating for 8 or 9 hours, even after a full night's sleep, I would need to take a nap before finishing my evening. Many hours of concentration just drained me, because it took so much energy.
The meds have changed little, for me, except allowing that focus to cost less.
Quick question, and this is really for everyone else out there and although directed at you, it isn’t really about you.
How do you KNOW that adhd is “overdiagnosed?” Are you a clinical psychiatrist? Or a clinical researcher?
Probably not. You just saw some article written by a person who doesn’t specialize in the area. Who doesn’t have access to the full data, nor have any exposure to what’s REALLY going on out there.
You don’t know. You just think you know because you saw some Netflix documentary about teenagers selling adderall pills.
Remember selection bias: the narrative comes first and then we filter data to fit our idea of how the world “is.”
Nominally what this means is people avoid getting treatment that could make a real difference to their life.
Practically speaking any disorder that impairs executive functioning and uses Schedule II drugs in treatment is going to be over diagnosed because of malingering by people who want the drugs and under diagnosed in the population of individuals with the disorder because of impaired executive functioning and self awareness.
My parents followed the “ADHD is overdiagnosed these other kids just need discipline” script.
My brother as an adult was able to self diagnose and just try adderall(or was it ritalin) since even non-ADHD people get benefits concentrating with it, and yeah that worked out well for him, he doesnt continue using it and can approach professional work more holistically. I would attribute a lot of his academia challenges and underperformance to undiagnosed ADD/ADHD. Works great for the coked out party scene though. Got to swim in the right environment.
I dont have the above experience, but I did take an in person class at a college recently. Havent otherwise done formal education in almost a decade. The first couple of sessions I was fidgeting and couldnt stand sitting still, which was shocking to me but I got acclimated after that. I cant imagine what children are going through, I think our environment isnt helping
It's not that you realize halfway through a meeting you haven't heard anything -- everybody does that from time to time -- it's when you CONSTANTLY struggle to follow what others are saying in a meeting, even when it's an important meeting; most of your peers have no trouble doing that; sure, some will also phase out, but they normally don't.
It's on the level of the pot head in your team telling you "Dude, you're my hero, I've never seen someone not give a fuck like you" because he noticed you were not paying attention during a meeting.
Everybody is losing focus in school, sure, everybody is losing their school items, sure, but not everybody sits on a test and then goes home with the test in his backpack, instead of submitting it, right?
How many times have you boarded the wrong train or buss?
How many times have you booked and airplane ticket with the wrong dates?
Does everybody mess up their invoices on a regular basis, until it stresses you out enough that you triple check it every time?
Do you only perform while anxious?
Have you ever tried stimulants? I have and it was a HUGE "AA-HAAA, so I guess the chatter in my head is gone, I can sit at my desk for 2 hours straight, my pulse has gone from 90bpm to 60bpm, I'm completely calm, I guess this is how normal people feel everyday? "
Isn't the chatter associated with other disorders such as depersonalization / anxiety / racing thoughts ? Asking because I experienced it under some stress & anxiety lately.
When I'm anxious, for sure the racing-thought/chatter is more pronounced; I've also been diagnosed with BPD and that psychiatrist actually asked me to do and ADD/ADHD test because these go hand-in-hand (I've scored 6/9 for ADD, which was apparently sub-threshold for ADD in adults).
Depersonalization/feelings of emptiness -- I do experience those occasionally because those are part of BPD, but they've gone down significantly over the years and I have a pretty stable life right now.
The bad thing for me is if I'm well rested/not anxious I'm usually not interested in doing anything at all; it's just my hypothesis that anxiety is my high-functioning mechanism for my ADD.
While on certain stimulants (they're not all the same) things just click and I am very calm, zero chatter in my head, I feel a bit dumber than usual, but I also can just focus and do meaningful things. Other stimulants make me euphoric and while I can focus I can easily end up focusing on the wrong things; on other stimulants I'm more anxious than usual, more driven and still better able to focus; unfortunately I live in a country where adults cannot receive stimulants period, let alone find a psychiatrist who's willing to play with stimulants/non-stimulants, dosages and so on.
This like a checklist of things that I do. I've been known to sit there looking like I've been listening to a conversation, and then when someone asks me a question have no idea what anybody was talking about, and that will be the first point at which I notice I wasn't listening to anything going on around me. Thankfully I've got colleagues who are understanding about it, but damn is it embarrassing having to answer with "I'm sorry, I wasn't listening at all".
> it's when you CONSTANTLY struggle to follow what others are saying in a meeting, even when it's an important meeting
Sort of. I have no problem paying attention in a meeting in which I might be called on because of the terror of getting called on and not knowing what was asked (that happens to me a lot).
I find it very difficult to listen to podcasts. My mind drifts off and I realize I haven't heard the last 20 minutes, so I rewind. On good days, I can make it about an hour before I start drifting off. On bad days, I'm lucky to make it through 10 minutes.
> How many times have you booked and airplane ticket with the wrong dates?
Never. I'm hypervigilant when traveling by air. I only board the wrong bus if I'm really distracted, like I'm in a conversation either in person or online and I'm focusing on that instead of where I'm going. I'm the kind of person that really has to focus on where he's going. Even when I'm driving, I'll miss turns if my passenger is talking to me.
> It's on the level of the pot head in your team telling you "Dude, you're my hero, I've never seen someone not give a fuck like you" because he noticed you were not paying attention during a meeting.
I've had people tell me that after meetings before.
> Have you ever tried stimulants?
I've never tried stimulants stronger than red bull. I have noticed that large doses of caffeine calms me down. It's a fairly common occurrence for me to drink an espresso or red bull before bed and having no problems sleeping.
Btw, I'm not implying that stimulants calming one down is a must or that just/all people with ADHD get that effect; in fact, after the effects wear off, I wouldn't be able to sleep for hours.
I wonder how to judge answers to these questions if you take into account coping mechanisms.
I've boarded a wrong tram a few times. I never did book an airplane ticket wrong because it's a high-stakes thing that I check 20 times (and then few more times next day) just to be sure I didn't screw up. Whenever I feel there's a chance to make a mistake that would be inconvenient, I'm fixating on it and doing it really extra careful - therefore not making the mistake. Same with invoices; I wrote myself software to calculate and I still check everything with a calculator before sending the PDF off.
Hahaha. Just the two computers for me, plus maybe 1 tab open on my phone. Luckily, my phone isn't as addictive to me as it is for other people. I type at 120wpm and having to slow all the way down to 30wpm on a phone stabs me to my very soul.
My evernote and bookmarks are overflowing, though.
No source. It's stream of thought. That's literally what was going through my mind when I read the title. I have no idea if it's true or if I just read a clickbait headline once and it stuck in my head.
First thing to do... close those tabs. They are the enemy.
The human mind can only concentrate on a few things at a time even when "multitasking", and it cannot concentrate on anything else when working on a complex, concentration-oriented problem. Respect how your brain works, even if it goes against your ADD instincts. (Example, from a book on how thought works... you can concentrate on multiple things while driving, but you can't concentrate on multiple things while computing 57 x 432.61 in your head. There are two modes to thinking; one allows multitasking but limits complexity of individual tasks. The other allows deep complexity, but at the exclusion of thinking of anything else.
So those 52 tabs? If you try to think about all of them, you can't think about any of them in a meaningful way. Pushing things off your plate is the most fundamental defense mechanism the ADD mind can have. Have one tab open. Or two or three. Finish what you're doing before trying to do something else. Don't let the squirrel do the thinking for you. You can outthink the squirrel.
I think maybe the best way to tell if you fall in this category is the subjective experiences. And like many things it can be a spectrum so you can have it to some degree.
I know for me, I went to my dream college and studied exactly what I wanted to study, yet I couldn’t keep up. I went from getting mostly As in high school to eventually failing out (later to return). I was under immense psychological stress and couldn’t get myself to do basic things. I was always overwhelmed. I couldn’t and still can’t be in social situations when loud music is nearby. I’ve essentially had to reshape my life to work around this. It made me nearly non-functional.
And years later, now that I’ve built my life in a way where it works with my ADD, I can be incredibly productive and imaginative and innovative.
It doesn’t work this way. E.g. obesity is a major problem in the major segments of population, and even if 100% of population would be obese, it would still be a disorder.
I also have ADHD (and felt the irony of watching my leg shake while reading about the author's leg shaking). I tend to do a lot of what the author is saying. "Planned distractions" help. I try to work in blocks of time (sometimes about 20 minutes) but when my mind starts to wander I let it and use that time to check my e-mail (or HN) then go back to the task.
Keeping a task list is definitely key. I have a plain text file called "tasks.txt" open at all times and in the morning I'll list the stuff. I live by the "if it takes under 5 minutes do it right away" mantra.
Sometimes I'll end up working on a task, that while it does need to get done, is not necessarily the first task on my list (or on the list at all). So after a "distraction break", I check my task list again so I don't forget.
I am extremely good at figuring out issues. I'm a technical architect (programmer) and I often find myself going around and fixing others' issues quickly, but time management and attention to detail are definitely issues - issues that have been thankfully solved by technology and forethought.
Cool. You've implemented your own form of the pomodoro technique, the 2-minute rule and most important tasks (MIT's) to get yourself organized. I think this is one way I've managed with a lot of the issues the author mentions... I'm just now hesitant to seek help for some reason, even though I know there might be something more besides methodology that can help me.
If by chance you have ADHD symptoms and you haven't been to a sleep clinic, please visit one. Not getting enough sleep can be a major contributing cause.
I've always found it interesting that the effects I get from not getting enough sleep seem extremely similar to the effects people describe from ADHD.
When I tried to look up whether ADHD could actually be a sleep disorder, I only found a lot of the reverse: Articles saying that people with ADHD often also get a bad sleep. But I certainly wondered whether the causation might be the other way around.
From what you're saying, sounds like there's evidence that it can be, at least partially?
Yeah. There's a study referenced in "why we sleep". I'll have to find it. IIRC, the number given there was that about 50% of ADHD could be traced back to bad sleep.
I have a friend who knows a dentist. The dentist said that when he sees signs of sleep issues (apnea, but he might have seem more) in his patient's mouth, he recommends they get treated. And very often, if the patient had ADHD symptoms, the symptoms went away after getting the sleep apnea treated.
And lastly, yeah. I Also get a lot of ADHD symtpoms depending on my sleep quality/quantity.
Not contributing, but worsening for sure. Yes, so what? It’s not that I can fix that; my sleep patterns is incompatible with my family’s sleep patterns, no matter what I do, I will be woken up in the early morning anyway. It’s not like there is a fix for that.
Part of the challenge I have with reading is that I'll be interested in something for a few hours and then my brain will be triggered with something I'm reading and my brain will switch contexts.
Then I'll want to read about some other topic.
With Polar I can jump around easier and take notes directly in the source material.
It supports incremental reading such that you can mark the portions of a document you've read and jump right back to them when you open the document a second time.
It's really a lifesaver for me honestly. I've definitely been able to get a lot more reading done.
They went to a psychologist for a diagnosis, after grades started to slip, and received it. The author also mentions that they dislike ADHD medications.
My curiosities when reading this article :
Did the psychologist actually fix the slipping grades in any meaningful way? If so, was it through pharmacological methods, or some other technique? If it was dealt with through prescriptions, and the grades improved at the sake of anxiety, is that (graduating college with better grades) worth it? If it's worth it, should that behavior be drug into life as a founder -- presumably due to some sort of advantage that those pharmaceuticals may provide, and the anxiety just dealt with somehow else?
These are all honest questions, if anyone cares to share their take on the situation with me. I've been in similar situations.
I thought on initially reading the title he was claiming the company had ADHD, which seemed like carrying corporate personhood a bit far. Though it could be briefly diverting to diagnose the disorders of major tech companies.
Andrew, you need to read the book "Driven" by Douglas Brackmann and Randy Kelley. You will quite likely find out that the book describes you well. If I'm guessing right, you are one of the "driven", people with certain genes expressed differently from 90% of the population. ADHD is just one of the possible visible symptoms, there are certain other markers that are important (some of which you exhibit: you are a founder/entrepreneur for example).
Give the book a try. It changed my life (and I don't say that lightly). If I'm right, it might change yours.
Just read it, awesome book, I pass DR. Brackmanns office in San Diego almost every day. Didn't find out till after I finished the book and looked him up. Wild, thanks for the recommendation!
AD(H)D is a complicated and commonly misunderstood condition. Despite its name, it does not mean people with it have a deficit of attention. It involves (amongst other things): atypical dopamine production/regulation, and issues in the Prefrontal Cortex (where executive functions are handled).
Because of this, it's not unusual for other conditions to cause people to experience similar symptoms to those with AD(H)D. The main difference, is that for people with AD(H)D, the symptoms are chronic and disruptive.
Many symptoms caused by the executive function component can also be experienced by those who have theirs inhibited. This can be because they are: tired, stressed, drunk etc.
When reading this or other articles on AD(H)D, if you resonate with the symptoms I urge you to read up and potentially get diagnosed.
Just please don't assume that "everyone has some kind of ADHD" or that "ADHD is't real" because some symptoms are shared by other conditions, and can often seem like regular parts of the human condition.
Why do we separate ADHD from other abnormality with similar symptoms, when ADHD itself seems symptom-based diagnosis?
I have my own personal hypothesis that some types of ADHD are caused by persistent stress due to sensitive sensory reactions. Also, another hypothesis of mine is that some may just develop similar symptoms with enormous stress factors (e.g. no proper caregiving at early age, or PTSD). Is there any literature that corroborates or disproves such hypothesis?
> Why do we separate ADHD from other abnormality with similar symptoms, when ADHD itself seems symptom-based diagnosis?
What do you mean by symptom-based diagnosis? Most ailments are diagnosed by their symptoms. If you mean diagnosis by measurement of specific chemicals/etc in the brain, I've heard of some studies that show that you can diagnose ADHD through brain scans[1]. Just because there's symptom overlap doesn't make the diagnosis moot. Both allergies and the common cold can result in similar symptoms, yet we still diagnose them separately because they are not the same thing. Yes, depression and ADHD might have some similar symptoms caused by their own unique effects on dopamine in the brain, but they are both much more complex than that.
> I have my own personal hypothesis that some types of ADHD are caused by persistent stress due to sensitive sensory reactions
Given that ADHD has a very heavy genetic component, I am inclined to disagree. However, I did find a paper[2] that indicated a link between socio-economic factors and ADHD. The causation/correlation is not particularly clear in the paper, but it could be interesting to look at.
Best descirption I've heard that sidesteps the "oh yeah I can't read a book either" is that ADHD is about a deficit in intention.
Things that aren't "can't focus" that are symptoms of ADHD:
- bad temper
- speaking before thinking (followed by immediate regret)
- often making spur of the moment decisions without thinking of long-term consequences
The overarching thing being that lots of people with ADHD do things _despite knowing on a rational level that it's not a good idea_, because that thought usually isn't loud enough to actually stop your actions (at least not fast enough anyways).
There's always a bit of "yeah everyone has that" when you talk about laziness and lack of focus, making it feel a bit like an unfalsifiable diagnosis. But there's a lot of people who most definitely don't have bad temper issues or go binge drinking all the time (Though this isn't everyone with ADHD either of course).
The symptoms you describe are impacted by the two elements I described (executive function issues and dopamine regulation).
People with AD(H)D have issues with regulation and executive function, which can lead to issues in how one controls themselves. This can lead to the issues of controlling oneself that you describe.
On top of that, dopamine (which is more accurately a "motivation hormone", which creates the desire to do things) is different in AD(H)D brains. Basically, people with AD(H)D will get a dopamine kick from certain types of behaviours, and not from others. This can result in the relative importance of tasks being very different from neuro-typical ordering. As a result, addictive behaviours can be more common (especially for things like video-games), or also the prevalence of hyper-focus that people with AD(H)D experience.
I agree with your last paragraph fully. The lack of understanding around the condition can lead many to make uninformed actions and opinions that can be harmful to those with AD(H)D, diagnosed or not. This can have negative impacts on patient mental health, and is the reason why people should be more aware of this oft misunderstood condition.
> Many symptoms caused by the executive function component can also be experienced by those who have theirs inhibited. This can be because they are: tired, stressed, drunk etc.
This. When I am highly stressed I look like I have AD(H)D. Or ASD. When I'm not, I don't.
It’s interesting to see how hard if is to separate ADD from ADHD by a description of traits or behaviors.
I have ADD and pretty much recognize myself in a lot of this.
It’s almost impossible to focus on anything that is not interesting “right now” and what is “interesting” changes in cycles spanning a few weeks.
During a cycle I become completely absorbed, you know, not eat, not sleep and not being communicative, absorbed.
For a long time this worked out both personally (depending on who you ask) and with my employers/employees that so far have had no issues with my rather irregular rhythm (thank you tech!).
Oh, the storytelling and talking... I feel sorry for my brain and, in retrospect, people that had to listen (I’m sorry! And I didn’t mean to be rude and offensive, it was just my thoughts at that very second!).
As life have changed mainly through becoming a dad it has also become a lot more difficult —- not everything about kids is “interesting”, and staying up to 4 to tinker with something “interesting” is just such a bad idea when someone jumps on your face at 6.
Everyone needs food? And it’s my responsibility? Today again?! Phew... etc.
Spending energy on “non-interesting” things really is draining and seem to lead to kind of mini depressions.
I’m happy that I’ve come to a point where I at least can see some of this behavior which allows me to work on some changes.
Hard work though!
Perhaps I should write about how I run(?) a family with ADD? It would make for a lot of laughs and a some sad stuff.
I remember hearing something about how ADD is now not considered qualitatively different from ADHD in terms of what it does to you, and that it's just "ADHD with a bit less hyperactivity".
Would definitely be interested in hearing your wins running a family and managing this
Just had to cut out a long digression in true ADD fashion. I'll save it for my future blog!
So in short list format, just sharing some methods I employ, sans digressions:
0. Awareness. Took way too long for me to reach it.
1. What is mentioned in the article: prioritisation! That needs to lead to routine. Hard work this, but most important, as I have to be able to engage auto-pilot for "non-interesting" tasks.
2. Sleep. Just do it. I have found out that lack of sleep takes me down hyper-focus lane. Great when you are alone and is tinkering along for a weekend. Not at all in basically all other scenarios. Hit bed before 11.
3. Eat and drink. Healthy and just enough. The effects are similar to #2 if I don't.
4. Physical activities. Go for a 20 min run. It is boring, but reach the point of proper sweating and keep going for another 10-20 min. The effects on me are amazing and in many ways resemble #5, only even better.
5. Breathe. Honestly, I have started practicing mindfulness and it just works for me. It takes me down into myself and allows me to spread focus.
On the bus right now, and this is what I can think of at the moment. Always a work in progress. I'll see about that blog...
Ok, so basically forcing yourself to live like a normal, healthy person.
It gets easier with routines and practice and will eventually start a positive spiral if you stick to it for a few weeks.
If you “lose” it (you will) and end up out of the spiral or going backwards, remind yourself of how good your brain felt after that 30 min run or 15 minute of focused breathing.
You probably have a hyper-sensitive brain of sorts, and you will know what I mean.
It sensitive in a way that it behaves like a sponge. Feed it good stuff and it will behave better.
Drain it with no good sleep, bad food, sugar and intense focus without rest? Setting of a bad spiral. Learn to feel when this kicks in.
>> 4. Physical activities. Go for a 20 min run. It is boring, but reach the point of proper sweating and keep going for another 10-20 min.
Long time skateboarder, hung up in a 9-5, knees are starting to shit the bed at 30, and don't skate much any more as a result. Realized, fairly recently, that over the years my mental state was declining/flatlining largely in part to not exercising. Skating is just fun, provides a sense of freedom, used to be a huge part of my social life, and the physical activity kept my body and mind in shape, and it's totally left a negative impact not having that involved in 50%+ of my daily activities.
Going on a tangent, but I recently purchased a recumbent bike as a means of remaining stimulated/keeping boredom at bay while exercising, and it's hands down one of the best purchases I've ever made. It's a matter of going to YouTube and popping on a walkthrough on a framework/library/etc, the news, documentary, or anything of interest, and just peddling away for the next hour... Only problem is, it's hard to stop going once you start :/
Anyways, read through this thread and your mentions, as someone else has mentioned, are the most articulate descriptions of the struggles that one faces with ADD. Personally, I'm in an environment where many don't consider it "real" and look down upon those who have sought medical help as "meth addicts", and my only wish is for them to understand and also to be able to distinguish the medications from one another and not group them with illicit/highly toxic drugs.
Glad to have come across yours and many other's comments on the topic. Made my morning :)
I used to play handball at elite level, and exactly as you say, years after quiting I noticed these effects of not managing life properly.
It’s two sides to it as I see, as going all in with athletics obviously gives you the physical bit “for free”. Well not for free, really, but you know what I mean.
The other part is the strict routine you have to keep.
It’s not ever a problem as life revolves around an interest!
Rather, I used to get annoyed if something disrupted my routine regarding food, rest and practice.
To get better and stonger (interest) I have to eat, sleep and turn up ready for practice two times, every day.
Ah... good times! But also severely limiting. But also great... But... :)
Awesome that I could help make your day! Inspiring even.
Strength training with barbells fixed all those aches and pains in my knees and joints that braces and doctors and physical therapy couldn't. When I started squatting, I suddenly stopped being afraid to walk down stairs. My posture improved. I noticed I had way more endurance when riding, and it made ever part of that, from carving to pumping, easier and better and more powerful.
For me personally, resistance training with weights is better than almost any other exercise for managing ADHD. I don't know what it is, but something about lifting keeps me focused and calm for a few days after a workout. Cardio never really did that for me.
I’ve been following this program for six months. Love it for its simplicity. Great official app. I am sure the book is great, but the app makes getting to the gym and just getting started and staying on track so easy.
> 0. Awareness. Took way too long for me to reach it.
My 11 year old son was diagnosed with ADHD-PI over a year ago, and we've had great success with with all of the above areas for him. 0, 1, 2, and 4 especially. We've gotten things running pretty well at home by recognizing he needs a break from homework to "run around in circles (as he calls it)" for a bit, setting up physical activities like shooting hoops that are easy to start/stop, having a strong routine in the morning before school, and making sure we don't slip at bed times. Another key to his success is his teacher. She's been simply amazing at letting him sit, stand, take 5 to go run up/down stairs, etc. when he needs it. Most importantly, he recognizes that she genuinely cares and it makes him want to do well, unlike a past teacher or two that simply treated him like a nuisance.
The morning routine is probably the biggest win, though. We went from barely able to get out the door in time for school to our son often getting up early and getting fully ready (dressed, bed made, breakfast eaten, lunch packed, showered, etc) before mom or I even get out of bed. He's always so proud of himself when that happens, too.
Routine is useful. My life is full of mini routines, although not necessarily making as cohesive as a picture as they could, there are certainly plenty of gaps.
I have a bad problem where things go to shit if a normal "auto-pilot" task of mine has to changed.
Simple example, I always have my keys in my pocket, I feel for them as I walk out the door. They're there, I continue. Same thing with my truck (it has manual locks) - I feel for the big plastic on the key, then close the locked door.
However, when leaving the house without pockets (in dirtbike gear), there is room for things to go wrong for me.
I can't just check that pocket. So I either have to replay putting the keys in my bag or not be lazy and check the bag.
I've had to learn to not be lazy and require physical proof... because last time it turns out they were indeed in the bag, _but the bag was in the house_.
Don't forget find the perfect static site generator, realize you might as well use Wordpress with a nice theme, try out a plugin that does <x> badly, write <x> manually, decide to make it a plugin, learn how Wordpress does plugins (it's not great!), get annoyed by theme so build one yourself, find out what this 'css grid' thing is all about, sprinkle in some JS for something cool, use the fancy new features despite not needing them so choose a build tool that is simpler than Webpack, learn that tool and run into a weird issue so go for Webpack anyways, find out Webpack has changed completely, get everything working and decide that maybe you should just use that static site generator after all. Or maybe that new LiveView thing, but you'd have to learn a new language and framework for that. Would look good on your CV maybe? Then your RPi arrives and you start tinkering with that.
I've been out of web dev for a while and am supposed to be doing a site today, check my comment history for how well that's going. My design process has resembled your comment quite closely.
> and am supposed to be doing a site today, check my comment history for how well that's going
I burst into laughter when I read this, holy shit if I'm not doing the exact same thing right now. You could probably graph my mood by HN comments frequency.
While I do still run into this exact problem, I do think I've learned something along the way.
Basically, it boils down to: commit to either doing most of it yourself, with carefully considered bits of outsourced help, or go for an outsourced solution and deal with the bits you need to change.
The former usually is more fun, and probably works best for stuff you need to work on (as in, alter) over time.
The latter is less fun, but if you can handle working within the boundaries presented and if the thing you're doing is throwaway or relatively unchanging, it's probably the best way to go.
When it comes to CRUD web stuff, for example, I find that Wordpress is often the best way to go, even though I hate most of it with a passion. But the fact is that with just a few plugins (Advanced Custom Fields primarily!), it's often one of the best solutions available for a typical website, especially if it has news/blog type stuff and if it's not mission-critical to yourself or the client.
The same applies to smaller 'units' of code. Every time you add code that isn't your own, you add limitations and risks, but in practice it's often worth it. The skill I'm trying to improve is to know when to make what choice in this regard.
(to be clear, when I choose Wordpress, I'm basically accepting that almost the whole thing is a dumpster fire. Most of my work then involves isolating myself from the resulting mess, whether by avoiding WP's templating/querying system, or making sure a site runs on its own server. And yet it's still worth it at times)
Sounds like potentially interesting content. Just a thought, I'm glad that I'm the one who gets to decide which embarrassing stories about my childhood go on the internet as my parents have never used social media for anything other than connecting with old friends. It looks like your username might be your real name, and if it is you might consider posting this proposed content under a pseudonym instead. A while back I read an article by a writer who actively refuses to honor her daughter's request to not be written about, and it caused me to consider this issue a bit (I don't agree with her at all): https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/01/03/my-daugh...
I agree with you. I'm with the daughter on this one and am super glad that I didn't grow up in a time when my parents could have posted things about me online (photos or text).
Wow. I have never heard someone articulate so clearly my own experience with ADD. Would love to read more about how you've managed your shifting responsibility/lifestyle!
ADD is now under the umbrella of ADHD. ADHD just has 3 types:[0]
1. ADHD Predominantly Inattentive (ADHD-PI)
2. ADHD Predominantly Hyperactive (ADHD-PH?)
3. ADHD Combined (ADHD-C)
ADD falls under the first one. It makes sense that you'd recognize yourself in that. They're now considered to be the same disorder, but just presenting in a different way.
One of the things that's usually not discussed, but what you should watch out for is emotional control. Apparently it's easier for people with ADHD to have their emotions flip. Russell Barkley has an amazing series of lectures about it. You can find various bits on YouTube. You could see if maybe you'll discover even more about yourself.
Perhaps more to the point than the diagnostic criteria, is Dr. Barkley's observation that ADHD is a general impairment of executive function. Inability to direct attention is over emphasized being just one of the symptoms of that impairment.
I too highly recommend Russel Barkley's videos about ADHD. They taught me so much. The most striking thing was learning how it's a primarily emotional disorder, and how this has harmed my relationships.
Here's a fantastic lecture (split into ~5 minute segments -- this guy gets it :) by Dr. Barkley:
ADHD - The 30 Essential Ideas Everyone Needs to Know
Yeah, this is called emotional disregulation. I have it to some extent, but am an adult with lots of experience noticing and regulating it. One of my kids is super kind but often responds to minor annoyances with an extremely irritated tone, or will collapse into an incoherent puddle at minor obstacles.
ADHD can be a huuuuge problem in relationships. Especially if you're going out with someone who would score very high on conscientiousness. They won't understand that things that are easy for them are hard for you, and will assume that you're just trying to piss them off, or are incorrigibly lazy. This is exacerbated because it's not like you can't do those things, it's just that you will inconsistently do them, and average towards not doing them.
At the time I was going out with the mother of my to be first child, my father (a psychiatrist) gave me a preliminary test just to see where the land was, so to speak.
On my partners request I should add.
For fun my then partner took the test as well.
My score 80% or whatever: “severe autistic traits”. WTF?! Ouch...
Hers? A clean 0. Zero?! You’re kidding. Sure she’s probably the most compassionate human being I’ve ever met, but come on!
Eventually we got a daughter and split up a year later.
Best thing that could have happened for anyone of us, daughter included, and we have a great relationship where we hang out all the time.
I believe in part this is because she doesn’t expect “normal” from me when we’re no longer together.
It also gave me a wake-up call telling me I had shit to properly sort out.
I'll never understand how we name things. It's weird to have "Hyperactive" in the umbrella term when only two of the three categories have it as a trait.
But having had an intake of decent energy during the day, and a 30 min run in the evening allows my brain to brush the teeth and put three beasts to bed at night without collapsing into apathy.
I have to constantly interrupt what I’m doing during the day and “check the sensors” so to speak.
Hands up if you’ve been so consumed you missed lunch more than one instance this last month!
Keep doing that, and the deterioration is in progress.
If not of oneself perhaps relationships? And what is “self”?
Hands up to that! It totally aggravates my wife that I can just forget about lunchtime or dinner or whatever meal is coming next because I've become so involved in something.
Right now is the worst. I made a list of work I need to do today, but none of it was very stimulating. So I opened up Hacker News, saw this article, and have been on this for close to an hour now. In that time, I've read it and a lot of comments (Jordan's comments being my favorite so far). I've decided to try Todoist as suggested by the author, so I've set that up. I already know that I'm going to fall away from it like I do every other organizational method (Evernote, Keep, Kanban varieties, physical notebooks), so a little mini bit of negativity has set in. And now all I want to do is get up from my desk, and run around to see how my employees are doing. I have 60 of them, so that could take awhile. And before I know it, I've done nothing but read about ADHD and talk about the weekend all day.
I really bash myself for these periods of the day. I feel like I'm wearing a sign on my forehead that says "Brian hasn't done anything for 4 hours!" And that sign would be true. On the flip-side when a problem comes along, I'm all over it. I'll work night and day to get it done. I'll do so to the short term detriment of relationships, but I'll solve it. If I have constant interesting problems flowing in, I look like a working machine. If I just have boring redundant work like dealing with employee "time cards" or invoices, it takes all day to get to it, and I look like I'm day-dreaming or lazy.
It's now an hour and 15 into this sidetrack. So I think I'll go get some water, walk around, and maybe sit back down and get some work done before 9am. I'll have to or else I won't get anything done. I have to attend 3 meetings in a row where I'm listening and not speaking. If you are ADHD, you know how that's going to go.
> I have to attend 3 meetings in a row where I'm listening and not speaking. If you are ADHD, you know how that's going to go.
So about 30 minutes of active listening and 150 minutes of some of the deepest problem solving time where you can miraculously focus on all the problems you couldn't before? (The hard part is if somebody talks directly to you during the latter and not the former. You'll never know, though, unless somebody tells you about it later.)
No, you can't trick your mind into things. It's too smart for that.
The best thing I've found is to just accept you have the ADHD and work around it. If I know I'm going to do a tedious task that is going to be boring and require concentration, I usually give myself a 2-3 minute break every 20 minutes just to get up and walk around. It's very important to have discipline to make sure the break doesn't turn into a huge 45 minute sidetrack.
Actually I've found that for my mind at least this works. Do the sort of motivational tricks that your mom/dad/teacher used on you 20 years ago. At this point we go get icecream. At this point we stop for a game. At this point we go for a bike ride. If you get here you get a small lego toy. If you get at X we go to that restaurant ...
I am fully aware of the trick and I could just choose right now to violate the thing entirely. It still works.
I don't suppose that counts as tricking your mind into thinking something is interesting. Still works.
Huh that sounds a little bit like me, though I don't think it's as strong. I definitely have those cycles of things that are interesting to me and anything else is just so hard to focus on.
Just wondering, what sort of things are you trying to combat that?
> Perhaps I should write about how I run(?) a family with ADD? It would make for a lot of laughs and a some sad stuff.
Given how poignantly you expressed my own experience of living with ADHD Primarily Inattentive (what you called ADD above), and as someone on the cusp of becoming a father, I would appreciate this more than I can express.
As a random suggestion from someone who did manage to not get his children killed despite ADD... look into bullet journaling as an organizational system for parenting duties. Ignore the endless art-project nonsense on the internet, read the book, and focus on using it for task management and scheduling.
As an adult with ADD, it was a miraculous new perspective on tracking all the things I used to fail to do. I so, so wish I'd had it when I was dealing with small children.
Amanda Palmer covered this well, in her song A Mother's Confession (which should make any parent cringe). It starts with her baby, whom she thought couldn't roll yet, rolling off a changing-table shelf and landing on the floor. "At least the baby didn't die" becomes her mantra, as the song details terrible parenting mistake after terrible parenting mistake.
I can't count the number of times while talking to my psychologist, in the middle of a breakdown thinking "If only there were a system that I could offload all of the dumb things I can't remember to do..."
...and then laughing my way out of the room because my wife told me weeks earlier that she wishes I were using my journal. She notices that I'm happier when I use it, she is much happier because she doesn't have to ask me to do something 4 times...
Using OrgMode for keeping my work-life in order has been a life-changer. But perhaps a bullet journal is more suited for keeping personal, and family life. I've never looked into them properly, but will definitely do so today.
Many responsibilities in family life are uninteresting. Often I have to be patient for weeks in order to work on something I find interesting. Months ago I found a great programming project to work on. However, I'm caught in a period in which my wife is working a lot of extra hours, leaving me to deal with cooking, house repair, running my daughter to activities, finances, etc. I also work full-time as a developer. On top of it, I'm the president for my daughter's basketball league, which requires a lot of attention to administrative tasks. I'm perpetually at odds with my desire to work on the interesting project and getting done what needs to be done.
I'm coming out of a mini-depression now. As an example of what it's like, several weeks ago I was sent a link to post to our league's FB page. The link pertains to an event next weekend. Posting would have taken under 5 minutes, but I shied away from it until yesterday. The thought of one more trivial task in my day completely paralyzed me for weeks, but I felt increasing anxiety and the depression worsened.
In my younger days, I would have ignored needs to focus on what made me feel happy at the time. Nowadays I feel too anxious when I do so.
> The thought of one more trivial task in my day completely paralyzed me for weeks, but I felt increasing anxiety and the depression worsened.
Same. It's subsided to a large extent, but I spent years in that state. I'm not even angry at my brain, but just a little sad about how much time and opportunities this wasted for me.
> In my younger days, I would have ignored needs to focus on what made me feel happy at the time. Nowadays I feel too anxious when I do so.
Same. Except I do wish I got back to that "younger days" state. Literally nothing ended up badly from doing that; hell, I owe my whole programming career to it. Between doing what you want instead of what you have to vs. the other way around, the worst is really the third option: being paralyzed by an internal conflict and doing neither.
My (adult) daughter inherited ADD from me. Which means she and I understand each other in a way that her mother and her twin brother do not understand us. At least they've learned to just let us do the grocery shopping and not try to help.
The question is always: does it impede a “normal” life and is anyone constantly suffering?
I thought my so called issues were perfectly manageable until I got my second child.
I described it in a different post as being stuck in development.
Remaining a child in many ways, and constantly fighting overwhelming emotions or, almost worse, non at all.
I decided I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing, and it’s been a struggle ever since.
Mostly I make it work, but my partner might have a word or two about these things:
Going to the grocery store with a long list of items, only to be overwhelmed by the astounding number of types of coffee.
Spending 45 minutes looking online for anything regarding beans and grounds. Fascinating stuff! Animals eating from the trees and pooing the beans out?! Wow.
Leaving after one hour with a bag of potatoes — cause’ couldn't handle it.
You can probably see that if this is a repeating pattern someone’s bound to suffer.
Anxiety is just around the corner with depression right behind it, stemming from these issues.
Yes, kids are difficult -- not to mention kids with ADHD!
I often used to regret having kids, and still get anxious about taking care of them. And then all of a sudden I see pictures of their sweet faces, or imagine their laughter, and all is good in the world. My place is a shitty mess, because I've been doing physics/biology/machine learning/tennis instead of chores? It's okay. Let it go and just love them.
I'm separated and co-parenting and realized that I would freak out every Thursday because clearly my place is too shitty for the kids to arrive, and obviously I'm a terrible father. Once I could name the "Thursday freakout", it became a lot easier to manage and to reduce the intensity from wanting to bail on everyone to just laughing it off.
It gets easier (before it gets harder?, don't know yet.) A former colleague put it best -- the highs are higher, and the lows are lower. It's just no one really tells you how low the lows can be.
> Perhaps I should write about how I run(?) a family with ADD? It would make for a lot of laughs and a some sad stuff.
I would really like to read that - and I hope this doesn't come out as cynical or heartless, I can understand that having ADD comes with challenges. I am simply intellectually curious to hear how someone lives with such a condition.
I also feel/think - but I might be 100% wrong - that many of us have "some" light form of ADD, perhaps driven by our use of mobile devices. Curious to hear if you have any thought about it.
514 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 328 ms ] threadI’m so torn on it. On one hand, it makes me so productive, but on the other, it makes me so unemotional and cold and abrasive.
It also makes me sweat, increases my heart rate, and has a terrible comedown when taken often.
I was diagnosed at 16 and was on it for years, eventually moving up to 4x the dosage as my body grew resistance.
I’ve stopped it for the past couple years, and now am back to the lowest dosage on rare occasions I take it, but still unsure how to feel about it.
I've been on it for 20 years and with the oversight of responsible doctors, and I have never had to increase my dosage (in fact I've reduced it 25% in the last 5 years). All my heart/blood/* tests come back good and I'm not a particularly health-conscious person. I regularly take week-long breaks to assess if it's still the right regimen for me. (Like the parent post says, the days off of it can be brutal but avoiding tolerance and assessing its true impact are invaluable.) I don't "like" Adderall but it is the only way I feel sane.
My point: don't be afraid to seek meds that help just because you may fear some long-term effects. A doctor can help you decide if the long-term effects are worth the gain, and there may not in fact even be the long-term effects you're worried about, especially if you talk about those worries with your doctor.
Even as much as fully resetting tolerance in some cases.
Adderall is not the only option; it didn’t work for me. It took a bit, and I ended up with Dextroamphetemine. The physical side effects dulled down to the occasional restless leg, and the mental effects work well.
I haven't noticed anything weird with this one, but for anyone reading this, I would highly recommend "shopping around" for ADHD medicine if you can.
For me and I assume for others, it is not a fully adequate treatment. Some symptoms it fixes, some it helps with, some it does nothing for, some it actually makes worse. (In particular, impulsivity and inability to task switch accurately.)
Then there are the side effects, and the comedowns after tolerance builds.
Nevertheless you must still learn coping skills, still pursue other treatment (exercise, decent diet, sleep, CBT if needed), still struggle as the square peg.
I have used medication for roughly 5 years ish of 30 some years of life, intermittently. I'd say taking it is better treatment than not, but honestly, like you, I feel a deep ambivalence towards it. (Even resentment, sometimes.)
I'm not sure what else I tried. I think the changes in my diet made the biggest difference.
Look up titration. The right doctor will help you dial this in and interview you to make the right call.
IF you are working from home with minimal contact, it works. Never EVER answer a phone call when you are on it (this is to whoever planning to use it in the future). God knows, how many times I argued with a client just because of Adderall.
It forces anyone using it to keep the communication to a minimum. And when a client calls (usually oblivious, but demanding), you will end up arguing at some point.
Adderall = never do anything social including phone calls. I am serious.
Medication that keeps you awake for 16 hours leads to sleepless nights if taken late into the day, more news at 2.
The shorter durations (4 hours) are more effective than the longer, but also require taking it several times a day. And I think neither 4 nor the 8 keep you awake for 16 hours. Occasionally I'd even get the side effect of making me drowsy, and I had to take a nap right there. Thankfully that usually happened when I would take Ritalin for studying at home later in the day, rather than at school.
My point however was that if you take medication which can keep you awake for X hours less than X hours before bed, you could have a bad time.
> Occasionally I'd even get the side effect of making me drowsy, and I had to take a nap right there.
I've read about this, for some taking ritalin actually helps them sleep since it makes the brain shut up and be quiet, instead of racing all the time
I can relate to this, and I think there's a potentially large underbelly of society, that many (most?) of us are walking around with undiagnosed personality "disorders" (let's say, traits) like ADHD, the autistic spectrum, agoraphobia, narcissism, sociopathy, and so on - maybe even ones we haven't discovered or classified yet.
The infamous DSMMD (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is a massive tome, where pretty much every member of human society can find a matching category..
What is exciting is that the wandering-in-the-dark of psychology is being usurped by neurology actually understanding how the brain works on gradually higher and higher levels.
Some of the bumps I’ve experienced in life probably would have gone smoother if this was made apparent to me years ago and I had the tools I have now to work with it.
We don't quite know how to pursue ἀρετή, virtue, eudemonia, excellence, whatever you want to call it in life because modern life was built for another kind of person and the animal life we left behind is far gone. Advice about "fixing" ourselves is mostly about finding effective ways to fit square pegs into round holes (like Adderall)
The ugly thing I've found, which accords with what you have said here, is that the best treatment for me is as many hours of sunshine as possible and several hours of vigorous exercise a day. (Thanks for teaching that, Marine Corps.)
But of course there are very few jobs with security, brain exercise, and mobility that give me this, and essentially no jobs that are compatible with it (that it is, where I could take this time off per day and still retain a job).
So of course I use medication and stick with jobs that drive me nuts, jobs that are terrible for me but pay well. I feel for the ADHD people who weren't gifted as decent a brain as mine, as if it weren't for that I doubt my employers would have been as indulgent of my other flaws from ADHD.
There is doubt that a set of behaviors which is so prevalent in the population is just an accident and a disease. Evolutionary pressures exist to optimize gene expression ratios in a population. Put differently, when a certain gene becomes rare in a population individuals with that gene have a significant advantage in life and reproduce more – when the same gene becomes over prevalent individuals with that gene have a significant disadvantage and reproduce less. There are traits which have pressure to be a certain proportion of a population.
ADHD or whatever else you may call it could very well be that. Ancient societies which had a small proportion of a certain kind of person thrived because their different behavior made them successful. It doesn't have to be a disease to not fit in to a certain society.
Not to mention, not all traits that survive evolution are positive.
I can’t be anything but thrilled that society has given me a tool that gives me some control of my concentration.
There is the person I am and the person I have to pretend to be.
Some people manage to make lifestyle changes and/or dietary changes and/or ditch people who were part of the problem and see substantial improvements in how they function and in quality of life. They try to spread the good news and people feel like they are being told they don't have a real problem or something and both sides get mad.
I used to see this a lot on parenting lists. People would suggest homeschooling because it had made their lives so much better. People who didn't want to consider homeschooling would feel judged rather than feeling like they were being given options and hope.
Cue everyone getting hot under the collar.
Evolution is blind.
I cannot stand to be in corporate offices - it's a hell for me - but what choices do I have to earn a decent salary and feed my family? Not many :-(
I've just quit my 3rd job in five years because it got too much.
PTSD. Constant stress. Having trouble just keeping promises to friends. Failing to even keep up a hobby. The inability to control your own concentration.
ADHD most definitely sucks.
Instead there is something wrong with a society that discriminates against it (and living in that society sucks). Trying to fit in to it is what sucks and the solution is not being better at fitting in.
ADHD people suffer because we don't meet expectations. Either there is something wrong with us or something wrong with the expectations and I choose the latter and want to help fix it. Saying "something is wrong with me" and wanting to fit in, for me, is the problem. Constantly not meeting expectations is the problem but I deny that not meeting them is the fault.
The world and I do not get along. I do not want to shape myself for the world, I want to shape the world for people like me. Fuck everyone who wants me to be different.
Saying ADHD is a disease is just as offensive to me as saying homosexuality is a disease to be cured.
Maybe you are okay with never finishing any project you start. I am not. It feels awful to me to start 10 Projects a month and never finishing any. It feels awful to me to be very sensitive to rejection, even though I realize the other person did not mean it like that.
> Saying ADHD is a disease is just as offensive to me as saying homosexuality is a disease to be cured.
You can not compare these like this. One is a sexual orientation, and the other is a inability to regulate yourself the way you want.
Adderall isn't going to do anything unless you are actually functioning suboptimally. It will, however, most certainly decrease your attentional/executive performance if you are at an optimal state. Look up the U-shaped response curve.
Just reading this thread should be sufficient.
No matter how you live with ADHD there will always be distractions pulling you away from what you need to do. There will always be things you should remember but don't, things you should have done at a specific time but were distracted and forgot.
It doesn't matter what society you live in or what the cultural norms are, those of us with ADHD are lacking some basic functions that makes life harder. And it sucks.
Honest question, I don't know much about ADHD. What's ADHD actually is?
> Inability to sustain concentration is not a temperament. It's a neurological impairement.
The impression the article gave me is that ADHD is more the inability to choose what you focus on, not an inability to sustain concentration?
Yes, you could have more/others impairments in your executive function than just attention. Impulsivity is commonly measured as well. ADHD is really an umbrella term for several syndromes.
I disagree with the notion that "inability to choose" is necessarily a definitive part of ADHD . It often is, and is common, but it's not unique to ADHD at all.
It can also be due to anxiety, PTSD, all sorts of other issues, and people with those issues improve on anxiolytics/tranquilizers, instead of stimulants.
That does seem to muddy the water a bit, doesn't it? Thanks for the detailed response!
In these comments you could see anything from people that think it's not an illness to people who have secondary impairments due to obstructed airway at night.
And they are all probably right to some degree.
This stuff - attention, executive function, ability to self regulate and direct your own attention - meta-cognition, if you will - is very poorly understood. Treatments are very crude, we will eventually see them as barbaric.
It probably is one of the youngest developments, evolution-wise.
Fascinating stuff.
Is this true? What sort of anxiolytics? I’m pretty sure I’m diagnosable adhd-pi but I have anxiety that decreases with low dosage adderall.
Dopaminergics like amphetamines, ritalin or bromantane do help with anxiety, it's common knowledge, but I don't think the effect is sustainable long term, at least not that I've heard. More common for that effect to fade away with time on chronic dosages and more of a jitterness surface later on.
This aligns pretty well with the definition of executive function.
The amount of focus I'm capable of is not the problem. The problem is putting it to use where I want to, rather than where it, by pure chance, happens to end up for the day.
It also applies to the small stuff. Someone asks me to bake a cake and I think it's probably best if I know what temperature it should bake at. An hour later they ask me how the cake is coming along and I realise I know a lot about the chemistry of baking but I haven't brought out the flour yet, and I no longer have time to shower, shave, send that important email, and clean up after baking.
I go back and forth between viewing it as an inability to perceive time and an affliction of directing behaviour. Perhaps they're two lenses through which to view the same thing, and I haven't yet discovered their symmetries. (Only vaguely aware of them -- directing behaviour to achieve future goals requires the ability to perceive time acutely.)
https://psychscenehub.com/psychinsights/neurobiology-of-adhd...
But seriously, I agree with the square peg / round hole comments. I don't believe ADHD to be an illness because there are plenty of environments where I could thrive, the trick was it had to involve doing something I loved. Fortunately for me, I loved computer programming.
Do you have extreme bouts of emotional distress? Emotional / angry outbursts? Blurt things out that get you into trouble? Experience difficulty with dating? Lose shit constantly? Participate in risky / dangerous / mid-guided behaviors?
ADHD is a big disorder. Look into it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo
Without my medicine I have trouble watching a tv show or movie I really like, I can't play some videogames because they can't keep my attention even though I'm having a great time. I'll normally listen to an hour long podcast over a few days because every 5 minutes I need to pause it to "focus" on something else (like I just did to write this comment), and often I don't come back to it (like I probably won't tonight!)
I wasn't diagnosed until I was 19 or 20 because my perfectionism (which was/is directly tied to the anxiety/major depression I was diagnosed with at 14, but self-diagnosed at 9) sort of overrode the traditional symptoms. I did well in school (because I couldn’t NOT have perfect grades). I excelled at work. For many years, I was compulsively neat. (I’m not really sure what happened to the neatness).
When I was 17, I was put on ADHD meds as a way to treat side-effects of an antidepressant, but I found it had a ridiculously positive impact on my life. In college, I was formally diagnosed, and my psychiatrist posits that the fact that I appeared to be “fine” is what kept me under the radar. According to my doctor, it’s not uncommon for that to happen, especially if the individual is of above-average intelligence (I was given the “gifted” label before entering kindergarten).
I always “joke” (except, it’s not a joke an I’m 100% serious), that I’m a high-functioning ADHD person. And it’s true; over the last 15 years or so, I’ve learned to augment my behavior and recognize when the disease is impeding on my life. For clarification: being able to recognize something != always being able to change what is happening. I’ve also been fortunate to find work in fields where my ability to do multiple things at once is useful.
But I tell people I’m in meetings with frequently about the stuff I do to help quell my worst tendencies (I play puzzle games on my phone, for instance, so that I can pay attention to what people are saying. It looks rude, but the alternative is me literally not being able to focus on what is being said. And when I explain it, I’ve never found someone to be unsupportive), and I try to plan and make adjustments for my own time clock.
Like you, if it’s something I’m interested in, I can be hyper focused for hours. But the second something is born for even just not that compelling, it’s a struggle.
Jesus, I did this a lot in my previous job, and couldn't explain it to my colleagues. Always felt so judged.
“I’m doing this so that I can pay attention. It sounds counterintuitive but it is not.”
I had an editor once (I should note, he went on to become my mentor), get really frustrated that I wasn’t “paying attention” and he quizzed me like we were in school and I just rattled off a complete list of everything that had been discussed, as well as some ideas that hadn’t — and he kind of looked stunned. I told him (again), dude, there’s a method to my madness.
He never got mad at me for “playing on my phone” in an editors meeting again.
The author didn't really delve into whether he uses meds to cope with ADHD.
How do other people who have ADHD cope with it as startup founders? Do meds like Adderall, Ritalin or Concerta work? What about Nootropics?
Asking cos this situation seems to be very common in our profession i.e. starting some side project, getting overwhelmed with perfectionism, distractions and never shipping. Is that ADHD or just plain procrastination?
Incidentally, I've had really good experiences with modafinil (aka Provigil). It's not approved for ADHD treatment in the US, but studies suggest it is effective, and it's widely prescribed off label.
This note is toward the end of the article:
A note on medication: When I take medication I feel these skills being dulled. I can't think as quickly, I'm not as outgoing. ADHD medication also contributes to an increase in anxiety, and so for me it's not worth it. If you're struggling you should absolutely try it. For some people, medication is a must. Don't ever feel bad about taking it if it helps you.
It will not fix an organic brain issue, of course, but to understand and have a feedback loop on your own behavior - is very helpful.
In the past I jokingly said I need the stress and I think it holds true. In high pressure/thight deadline situations I can work with a high focus for hours but struggle working on projects which are going smooth.
Have you ever come across this article in the Economist, summarizing research providing evidence that ADHD is a legacy of our nomadic past when ADHD traits conferred an evolutionary advantage?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/science-and-t...
My takeaway is that entrepreneurship is one of the few areas of modern life where ADHD might actually be a help rather than a hindrance.
The only way I have found it working is to outsource my scheduling to someone else. I believe that explains why many people are diagnosed during college. College is much less restrictive than school and as a consequence people have to do their own planning.
It could be a good thing in the right environment like a startup.
Trying to organize then execute something could take a month of back and forth and planning. If you skip that step, you can get it done in a week then plan afterwards.
I also can relate to the entire ADHD <> entrepreneurship affinity because I come up with so many "niche", interesting business ideas but I struggle to exceute. Some of these ideas could make me a lot of money too with minimal investment.
-----
Bah! Another article about ADHD. ADHD's over diagnosed and not not as big a problem as people make it out to be. But, I'm curious all of a sudden, so I might as well read it.
> For the first 19 years of my life I knew I was lazy.
Yeah, I'm pretty lazy too. That's just who I am, though. I don't have ADHD...
> So what, you can't stop bouncing your leg at the restaurant?
I thought I was the only one that did that. It drives my aunt crazy.
> I'll be halfway through a team meeting and realize I haven't heard anything that was said. That's ADHD.
THAT'S ADHD? I do that all the time. I can't listen to podcasts either. But I just have difficulty processing the spoken word. I'm much more of a book learner anyway.
> I was happiest with my nose in the book
I'm seeing a disturbing pattern take shape.
> I'll take a break to read an article and hours will go by before I realize what's happened. Not minutes, hours. That's ADHD.
Wat.
> I'm horrible at completing simple, repetitive tasks. I'm terrible at time management, and conceptualizing time in general.
Uh oh.
Other comments here have mentioned that stimulants help ADHD sufferers focus. I recently cut back to 2 20oz cans of red bull a day, but I was up to 4 a few years ago. I just thought caffeine was my drug of choice. Everyone's addicted to something, right?
I currently have 52 open tabs on my laptop and another 37 open on my desktop.
I'm not quite sure what to do with all of this. I just thought I was lazy.
However, actual ADHD, and other similar attentional or executive function impairments are very likely to be under diagnosed BIG TIME.
It's also worth noting that in France, ADHD is seen as a problem with a child's environment instead of a medical issue[1].
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-much-mo...
[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/suffer-the-children/...
Context and history is just as important.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17583123
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/08/france-is-50-y...
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twice_exceptional
How is that in any way exceptional?
* Executive function is affected by all those disorders you mention in the wiki. And the best proxy we know of and can measure is attention.
Underachieving is just inability to deploy your efforts effectively, or even inability to muster an effort in the worst cases. That translates to every domain and aspect of human life from scholastic to social to friendships etc etc etc.
Value is not entirely subjective.
Welcome. We call it, life.
Having the correct label helps some people get their uncooperative body to be productive enough to make life suck less. Just calling it "laziness" generally suggests zero real remedies and often leads to the beatings shall continue until morale improves.
I failed freshman composition 3 times in a row since it was the only class where tests were not part of the grade.
As an adult, I find that laziness had become a learned behavior. I was smart and generally easy-going meant that none of my K-12 teachers were willing to flunk me, but getting an A seemed out-of-reach. This meant that I could "get by" with minimal effort, while intense efforts didn't result in obviously visibly better outcomes.
I eventually found a good therapist (though Sturgeons law[1] definitely holds for therapists) and have been sorting things out since.
As far as "getting by" and laziness as a learned behavior, I always worked hardest on my hobbies throughout K-12, so as an adult I've gotten to the point where my hobbies have become my careers. I started building PCs and running Linux on my own in High School, along with playing music, so now I'm a software engineer/musician. Software is one of the few careers where you can go on an insane research binge on a whim and actually be praised for it, and performing music is one of the only things that I've ever done that fully quiets my mind. Something about the adrenaline of being on a stage really helps with my ADHD-Inattentive type; guess it's just like a stimulant.
"Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life", etc
The fact I may have an incurable mental illness (and that I could be branded as such) terrifies me.
Plenty of people with ADHD choose not to take medication though, and I'm having trouble coming up with a situation in which a judge would order you to take it. As long as you're not blaming your ADHD as a reason you broke the law (which you shouldn't, ADHDers may have poor impulse control and bad executive function, but we still need to hold ourselves accountable for our actions), I don't see where it's the law's business if you have it or don't, or medicate it or don't. There are plenty of non-medication coping strategies, including therapy and coaching.
If you are heavily medicating with caffeine, then that can be a signal. I was using Pseudoephedrine and caffeine to self medicate and stabilise my moods and behaviours. That was before I got prescribed Ritalin.
But as the article says, I find Ritalin dulls my creative thinking and pattern matching that is required for insightful realisations.
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is big problem for me. I over think things, the slightest misread comment can ruin my day.
I also have a problem with cyclical depression and euphoric highs that are a bit like bi-polar but not as severe.
So yeah - It's hell. I hate having ADHD. I never looked for a diagnosis, but when I got one it was a light-bulb moment. Life still sucks. It's not a super-power and I'm not blessed.
I think it’s treatable. Anecdote: I knocked doors for the Hillary campaign in Denver in 2016 at the request of a friend. While this initially terrified me, something changed over the week I was there.
I found that when I went home, my social anxiety was damn near nonexistent. I’d inadvertently done exposure therapy for rejection, and goddamn it felt great. It wore off eventually, but I’m still trying to get back there, now that I know where “there” is.
I am a recent adult ADHD diagnosis recipient, and I never knew that there was words to describe this but it describes me perfectly as well, so thank you for the knowledge kind stranger.
I ditched my Ritalin for similar reasons, although I do have a hunch Adderall would help me better since the one time I took it recreationally in college, rather than "get me high" like it was the other college kids, it sort of just made me well..normal. I got my homework done that day according to schedule!
I just don't know how to make them get it. I feel like I have so much potential for success, but I can't harness it.
You'll probably want to figure out if it makes sense to convince one of your existing doctors to consider it, or if it makes sense to find a new doctor who can help you. Odds are good that you'll need to do the latter anyway, as your primary care doctor is going to refer you to a psychiatrist for an actual diagnosis. So one thing to think about is just asking for a referral.
One way to shortcut the actual finding-of-a-doctor would be to do a search for "adult ADHD" on Yelp for your area. Hopefully, someone's reviewed a doctor and used that phrase, and you can figure out if the review is for a doctor who'd be good to connect with.
GPs would tell me to stop being lazy when I would asked for a referral to one, so I paid top price and went direct.
I found this doctor _did_ get it, it was worth it, so now navigating treatment. It was a huge relief as it's like someone has finally listened to what I have been saying for over a decade.
I first saw a GP for my cyclical depression issues. She suggested I might have ADHD. I then got referred to a neurologist.
An Adult ADHD diagnosis can be hard as many Dr's work on the basis that ADHD is something that 'goes away' in adult hood. Which isnt really the case, and wasnt the case for me.
I was able to demonstrate childhood patterns that matched the disorder diagnosis; despite having a high IQ (for want of a better way to describe it), I have zero qualifications, failed at school, never went to uni and bounce from job to job. Always starting well, but then going off the rails. Where as my siblings are all exceptional performers in their careers. I was also the eldest, and suffered a high degree of stress in the womb and early childhood (for reasons I wont go into), which are contributing factors.
I hate this and it's the case with most GPs, at least in my country. I genuinely just wish my therapist was also my GP.
Yes I know, thats exactly where the issue is.
Best of luck to you - I made an appointment to go and actually finish the assessment process off the back of reading this article this morning. I wonder if having started it and got distracted twice previously will count as a point in my favour?
He interviewed me about my symptom history for an hour. Pro tip! Make yourself a list of all the things you want to mention to the psych. I wish I had brought a list, because after I left I thought of so many more examples I had wanted to bring up.
Despite my not bringing a list, he said near the end of the hour that if he had to make an immediate diagnosis, then yes, he would say I had ADHD. I took home a test (it was around 350 true/false questions) that he wanted me to take to rule out any other diagnoses that might be an issue.
I took the test and returned to him in a week. We went over the test results (nothing unexpected) and he diagnosed me with moderate ADHD-PI (primarily inattentive). He wrote me a letter to take back to my GP to try medication, and my GP handles my Adderall prescription now.
ADHD is a lifetime condition, and having symptoms since childhood is part of the diagnostic criteria, so when you're making your list, make sure you're including your childhood. I was very smart, and coasted through grade school with excellent grades, but there were still signs even then. Like when in 5th grade I just stopped doing any work for an entire semester. They threatened to hold me back from 6th grade, and I made up all the work in a single afternoon, sitting in the teacher's office while the rest of my class was on a field trip. Or all the times I would get in trouble for "not listening to the teacher" because I was hyperfocused on reading a book and literally was not even aware that I was being spoken to.
It's so, so helpful to have a partner who can help with actually getting an appointment set up. I found it to be one of the hardest parts of the process of getting diagnosed, and probably wouldn't have gotten through it without help from my wife.
When one of us is struggling, the other helps pick up the pieces. When both of us are struggling, we work together to prioritize what actually has to be done (ex: we have to acquire something for dinner tonight, but we can do the dishes tomorrow), and do the necessary things together.
Best advice I've heard here is that you need to talk less about how you're coping, and more about how it's still impairing you despite that.
After all, so the doctor reasons, if you've built coping skills that handle it without medication, then why not just stick with those? What you have to do is give them an answer to that unspoken question.
Edit: Yikes! I took their little quiz, I ticked the 'often' choice to all those questions...
But that person was actually diagnosed with "Sensory Processing Disorder".
I'm glad that people are more aware of ADHD and because of that receive proper medication. On the other hand the symptoms of ADHD can be very similar to other disorders. Many neurological problems overlap and someone having a dysfunction in one area could also have a dysfunction in others.
So to all commenters in here, be aware that a label of ADHD may only be a part of the full picture.
Adhd is absolutely widely misunderstood. It fucks up and affects so many parts of my life, from inhibition, impulsiveness to emotions and motivation. I overthink everything, my mind gets trapped focusing on completely wrong thoughts and don’t even get me started with RSD (Intuniv / guanfacine treats RSD by the way but it’s not available for adults where I live. Look into it!) . The more I myself learn about it, the more I realize how completely mislabeled the name “adhd” for it is.
I agree with you, adhd is hell. I would pay a lot to get rid of it it if I could. Stimulants somewhat help with the focus part but that’s about it. I’m even self experimenting a lot with other medication like MAOIs and antidepressants that have some studies related to adhd done on them them in the hope to find something that works better than my Ritalin.
TSM is another thing that has a 50% success rate in “treating adhd” but it’s not enough evidence for me to shell out this much money.
Same here, about a year ago I came across a thread here on hackernews pointing out symptoms. Then I remembered that there was some testing done in my childhood (but didnt remember what for). Got properly diagnosed some time later.
I wish I remembered that thread and who pointed out the symptoms, they very much deserve a beer on me.
However, I can imagine that some aspects of ADHD - notably the hyperfocus - can be considered a positive trait, something that is hard to let go of. And that's fine, if you want to have it you can skip the medication just fine.
However, you also mentioned RSD; my girlfriend described that the medication she's on helps a lot with daily mood swings. She seems a lot more patient and resilient about small things in the day now that she's on the medication. Do consider it if you find yourself struggling in e.g. the workplace.
Does tea count? I dislike coffee; I only drink some when I absolutely need to stay awake (caffeine in energy drinks is another thing, this I like). But ever since I was a kid, I've been drinking ridiculous amounts of black teas every day, on the order of 10-15 cups. I ask because I keep hearing that the stuff in tea is pretty much the same thing as caffeine...
Talking to a medical professional was eye opening. It's worth having he conversation, at the very least. I was very skeptical after being diagnosed.
Then I forgot to renew my prescription the other week and it was utter chaos. I can't believe how much focus and discipline I used to lack.
I get that these questions can be gamed if you're just seeking a prescription, but in my case I'm generally quite hesitant to take these sorts of drugs. I have close friends who had many very messed up years due to struggles with ADHD medication.
Now I feel like I'm living life with my eyes open. Far from perfect, but I am able to have ownership of my issues.
No, it's not lost on me that I admitted to previously consuming 3/4 of a gallon of Monster a day two comments ago and now I'm posting about shitting blood, but I think there were other contributing factors (notably bad lifting technique).
Edit: More on topic, if I don't care about the yes/no checkbox of whether they think I have "ADHD," and I don't want to get on the medication (which I've tried, informally researched, and made a fairly informed decision about), what can professional advice provide me that internet research about symptoms and ways of coping with them can't?
May be pure coincidence, but in my case the former was causing the latter. Through trial and error I discovered that zero caffeine intake completely eliminates my symptoms.
I know you didn't ask me, but as somebody who just realized he could have a mental illness, the thing that terrifies me most is being branded. Technically, on the books, ADHD is an incurable mental illness. That means, once diagnosed, you're forever mentally unstable in the eyes of both the law and potential business partners.
I doubt I'll bother to get officially diagnosed. The risk is too great and the upside too small. I've been coping this long with it and now that I know what I'm dealing with I can find ways to cope with it even better.
> I'm seeing a disturbing pattern take shape.
I fall into alot of the list but I will say I do not suffer from ADHD.
When I was at school I was told I had ADHD and put on Ritalin. But I couldn't tell the difference between taking ritalin and not taking it, I didn't focus any better, didn't get in trouble any less.
I always figured I wasn't challenged enough in school, or wasn't doing something I enjoyed.
If I was doing technical drawing I always got top of the class and helped the other kids with their work. In History class we learned about NZ history which is like 150 years of nothing, so I couldn't focus, yet you give me a book about Egypt and I'm fascinated and sit for hours reading.
Fast forward many years and I watched: https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_cre...
ADHD is a real thing, but I recon majority of people 'diagnosed' with ADHD, don't actually suffer from it. And I don't believe the Author suffers from it.
While I like Sir Robinson's talk, for me The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher is what really struck a cord: http://www.swaraj.org/multiversity/gatto_7lesson.htm. I always felt like the school system (in Sweden at least) mainly wanted to students to fit into it, rather than the other way around. So as someone who is gifted according to WISC and WAIS, but who lacks the executive functioning and skill to do anything except whatever happens to be the most interesting at the moment, it was just hell. Even now at age 36 my body goes stiff whenever someone mentions homework O_O
The author was diagnosed after multiple sessions with a medical professional.
Yes, and we also know that medical professionals can also misdiagnose ADHD...
I were in ADHD tests but I was told I may just have "small_brain_clipboard", never heard anything back..
...........
Two great reliefs came from the diagnosis:
1. I’m not a lazy, unmotivated person
2. Meds, at the right dose, are amazing. When my Vyvanse kicks in, it’s like walking away from an outdoor block party in my brain and getting into a sound proof booth where I can hear only the noise I want (or have) to.
Things I lived with my whole life that were both positive and negative depending on the circumstances:
- I can’t even stand the thought of a task, class, or activity I’m not interested in, but if I’m even slightly interested I can go deep fast and keep going with no loss of zeal until I’m satisfied. Basically, I can get super obsessed with stuff for short or long periods of time. My hobby background is ridiculously all over the place.
- I think and iterate my thoughts faster than most people can keep up, and I iterate my thoughts externally, if I’m on a roll good luck getting a word in between breaths. My psych “classified” me as a second order thinker and I run lots of what-if permutations and shave and shape creative solutions very fast. It also means I must be extremely cognizant of letting other be heard, especially those that like to ruminate on an idea and bring it to light more fully formed.
- My leg never stopped bouncing, helpful when I played music to keep time, annoying to anyone near me.
- I’m quick to temper and just as fast back to moving on.
- Little to no patience for bullshit or things I just am not interested in. Don’t tell me a detailed story of how to get there, just give me the highlights. I do t care about how you feel about some objective thing, just give me the facts and let’s keep moving.
Lots of other stuff, but basically I coped, unknowingly by creating rituals that allowed me to not forget or have to waste time finding things:
- Get home, keys and wallet go in the exact same place every time
- Todo list for next week created at the end of every Friday, revised at the end of every week day, and reviewed every morning
- The thing I want to do least is the thing I force myself to do first, and nothing else until it’s done
- Organize my schedule in a calendar, if it’s not in there it doesn’t exist and I won’t remember
- Just remembered to put that thing in the car for tomorrow and I’m laying in bed? Get up RIGHT NOW and go do it.
- Can’t forget your coat if your car keys are always in them
- My working area is spotless. No bobble heads on the desk or stacks of papers. Desk is completely clear, cables neatly organized, zip tied, and hidden.
Here’s the thing, maybe you do have ADHD. Maybe you don’t. The rituals you focus on and make so habitual you don’t even have to think about them will still work for you.
That can end really badly; I'm glad it's worked out for you.
1. Lazy - CHECK
2. can’t even stand the thought of a task, class, or activity I’m not interested - CHECK
3. My hobby background is ridiculously all over the place - CHECK
4. My leg never stopped bouncing, helpful when I played music to keep time - CHECK. Literally air double-bass drumming to some really high tempo progmetal as I type this.
5. I’m quick to temper and just as fast back to moving on. - 1st NEGATIVE
6. Don’t tell me a detailed story of how to get there, just give me the highlights - 2nd NEGATIVE
7. I'll take a break to read an article and hours will go by before I realize what's happened - CHECK
8. I'm horrible at completing simple, repetitive tasks. I'm terrible at time management - CHECK
9. Lost hours / while day at a time when I was doing something interesting - CHECK
10. creating rituals - Literally follow 90% of the rituals you already mentioned.
At this point if I was diagnosed with ADHD, I don't know if I'd be annoyed or relieved at the revelation.
But who is?
This is one of the problems in modern society, the concept that if you're not interested in something then you can skip it and find a medical excuse.
No-one ( generalising ) likes doing tax returns or washing dishes, but you need to look beyond the immediate discomfort to the longer-term benefits. That is self-discipline, not some magical superpower.
And that is _exactly_ what someone with ADHD struggles with. Long term consequences be damned, I want something that excites me and gives me a benefit _now_.
My brain wanders off to the point of literally not being able to pay attention. To the point, that I would routinely get barely passing grades in a boring course but ace interesting courses. Very few other students had that level of variance in their grades.
I also just can't do anything that has to do with data entry. I start, and in 2 minutes I realize the number are all wrong. I get double vision on the screen and am either yawning/daydreaming/thinking of the interesting things within that small time.
My main issue was that originally it gave me a calm and relaxing feeling but over time I began to feel more an more anxiety. I'm not normally an anxious person, and the first time I an anxiety attack I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the ER. Magnesium, L-tyrosine, and good sleep can help but eventually, it would just make me feel jittery and unfocused. The anxiety also caused me to subconsciously swallow air and combined with the increased water I would drink it started to cause me stomach issues. I suspect the excess water diluted my stomach acid causing my stomach to make more. The swallowed air put pressure on my esophagus and eventually, I developed a hiatal hernia. This allowed my stomach acid to start damaging my esophagus and would result in constant burping / GERD.
The worst part is that the GERD was anxiety induced and things like Tums or even Zantac or Nexium did nothing. The only thing that worked was Xanax. However, Xanax is an incredibly powerful drug that can cause bizarre behavior because sometimes you speak without a normal filter. I didn't like the concept of having to take another powerful drug to counter the side effects of the first powerful drug, nor was I comfortable with medication effecting my personality. Furthermore, because of the stomach issues, I began to feel like I needed to make a change because it wasn't sustainable. I began a regiment to taper off by reducing the dosage and stopped taking it daily.
It wasn't as bad as I thought because what I realized is that the original effect that helped me just didn't work anymore and I really hadn't felt it in a long time. In many ways, that slow reduction of effect over time trained me to be able to do work without it. By the end, I was more productive without it because I wouldn't have the stomach/anxiety issues. Furthermore, my sleep has never been better.
It's also much more difficult to maintain their attention on things that are no longer stimulating.
So ADHD folks are great at starting interesting projects, but once the space of possibilities has been narrowed down and all that's left is hammering it out, it becomes intensely difficult to maintain attention on that due to lack of stimulation.
The rapid dialogue means there’s no opportunity for intrusive thoughts to enter, but I know it all by heart, so there’s zero intrigue in any of it.
Dr. Barkley’s talk completely altered my understanding of the disorder. I always knew I had it. My life roughly paralleled the author’s. After failing out of school, I found workarounds that got me through the second time (thanks to extremely supportive parents).
This video, combined with my wife’s urging, caused me to find a legitimate doctor who specialized in it (he’s ADHD too), and get treatment. I was already doing well with my coping mechanisms, but my life took off like a rocket with treatment.
If anything in the article or the comments resonates, I would watch this ASAP: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo
After watching this video, and almost being moved to tears with how accurately everything in it described my life, and seeing your comment about being better off with treatment, I am convinced I should finally try something.
I too have been able to cope, but I would love to live beyond just coping and I am realizing it is only shame and pride stopping me from getting help, and fear that meds could make me worse or I couldn't find a good doctor.
If they’re cavalier about just throwing meds at you, I’d probably keep looking. My doctor always counsels that the ideal is to work myself into a position in life where I no longer need to take medication. He encouraged me to bail on it during vacations, if that’s my preference. He interviews and is constantly looking for signs that I should adjust my dosage. If you’re in SF, shoot me another reply and I’ll send you his info.
(It's not that I'm not suited or capable of doing the writing part of blogging; I make a living ghost writing other people's blog articles and ebooks.)
It's not a matter of preferring to work on more interesting things. It's more along the lines of not realizing uninteresting things need to be dealt with (or even exist at all, sometimes) until they bite you in the ass.
Keeping up the theme of starting a blog... you'll have a rational understanding that a blog needs content. But you'll get wrapped up in solving the more interesting design/engineering problems. Once those parts of the project have been sorted out well enough that you are no longer actively solving a problem (note, I didn't say they were completed), something unrelated, but more interesting, will cross your mind and steal your attention away.
This is not something that most people have problems with?
>28% of individuals with ADHD repeated a grade compared with 7% of controls (p< .001).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23382575/
You can find many such studies about ADHD that find that people with ADHD just do worse in situations that require sustained attention and persistence.
And absent minded. And flighty. Thats why the homework never got done. Can binge on a video game for hours and hours, with a singular, obsessive focus. Therefore, no attention problem, right? (WRONG!)
Talk to a doctor. Do be wary of the temptation to explain away all these failings that you presume are choices... thats always a very attractive scenario... but get a professional opinion.
Can you elaborate on that? Why is it wrong?
I've thought about this topic a lot in the past. I remember back in the day I had massive gaming sessions (like 10 hours a day for weeks). Games that are competitive and "skillful" too, not just lounging around playing them 1 handed. It required tremendous focus.
But when playing a game, you often have only 1 task happening which is "play the game", there's nothing distracting you and it requires your brain to actively be engaged.
However if you replace gaming with writing a 5,000 word blog post or creating some web app suddenly that focus isn't there. If you can focus during the game, why can't you focus outside of it?
It's deceptive; from the outside games seem like a single task that you can just focus on, unlike those other single tasks. But games are usually made up of a lot of things to keep track of, remember, etc. and it oddly works well for ADD/ADHD since you repeatedly switch focus between them all, something we're actually great at doing.
Take a competitive game like Overwatch: there's the general things to focus that any FPS has, but you also have to keep other things in mind like: map layout, your own positioning, ability cooldowns, enemy positioning (where you remember them and where they're likely to be next), the objective, whatever strategy you or your team have, etc. Instead of being distracted off the single task of "playing Overwatch", you're actively switching between the different phases that make up "what am I going to do next", even if you don't notice it.
Conversely, if a game is going slowly, you might get distracted and wander off looking for something more intense to do -- like killing an enemy -- and get yourself caught out of position.
Or in a PvE-multiplayer/single-player sense, consider raids (10-20man group vs. 1 boss) in MMOs: you have your own character's attack rotation to do, but also the flow of the current boss to think about: incoming spells, curses/debuffs to watch for, positioning, next objective (if the boss is more phase-based rather than just repetitive attacking), etc. If you're a melee character positioning and moving might be a constant thing to focus on, too. Even if you're already used to it and it's automatic to you, it's still something your mind actively thinks about and switches focus between.
Even in a game that has much less mechanics going on, your ADD/ADHD might just switch focus between the game's visuals, just as you physically get distracted by things around you (except this time they're the in-game environment and not distractions, but things the devs intended for you to interact with).
TL;DR: A video game isn't a single, coherent task that goes from A-Z, it's a giant collection of many tiny repeating (but not necessarily repetitive) tasks that you constantly switch between, like a processor context-switching between processes. And that plays into ADD/ADHD's pros rather than cons.
You have writing docs, writing tests, working on the user auth work flow / any app features, researching features / inspiration, designing a page, writing a bit of CSS, tinkering with the ops side of things (deployment / infra code), thinking about how you're going to generate traffic to it, writing blog posts or making videos surrounding your project idea and the list goes on.
You could bounce around all of that and could think "ok, what's next?" after completing any one of those things but for some reason it's not the same.
Although I guess another difference is games tend to have a lot of immediate rewards, or even more strongly, "potential" rewards. Like in your PvE MMO example. There's always a chance something might drop that will make your character better. Especially useful in games like path of exile (action RPG where your items / loot play a big factor) and even if the items you want don't drop, you're still gaining experience to level up your character which gives you ancillary rewards, and since it's a multiplayer game you could trade them with other people for things you want in return.
Where as with the coding project, there's really no rewards until it's done and even then there's no guarantee. You have to be content with just patting yourself on the back with a "hey good job, you finished writing tests for the user sign up work flow, now move onto X".
The same thing applies to writing to a lesser extent. There's research, coming up with a good example, writing sections / paragraphs, creating associated images, etc.. None of that really has immediate effects until it's fully done and you publish it, and even then, the publishing aspect might not even be the thing that motivates you to write it. Like, I've written 230ish blog posts but I write them with 0 expectations. I write them because they help me materialize what I'm learning or have learned, but sometimes it's difficult to write even if I think to myself that I want to.
Most people can relate to that experience, of course. Its just a much bigger struggle for ADHD folks (hence, the self-image of laziness, lacking discipline, etc), and often takes medication to manage.
In a fast paced action game, everything tends to stimulating. In software development... its mixed bag for most of us!
Yes, this was indeed my point (alongside the micro-tasks point in my other reply): games are made to be flashy, stimulating and exciting. They're made to pull your attention, which makes them easier to focus on for someone with ADHD.
The idea of loot and reward is a good theory but I meant it only in the sense of gameplay, and I can prove it by "loot lockout": in World of Warcraft you can only get loot from a raid boss in a specific difficulty once a week. The next successes give you no reward (and you can't trade loot with someone who did get loot when you couldn't). However, I've still cleared the same bosses several times a week because they were also fun. It was guaranteed that I wouldn't get immediate -- or any -- rewards for my success but it was still fun and focusable.
Your experience is interesting because I played Diablo 3 when it first came out and shortly afterwards got bored because the loot wasn't interesting. Once I finished all of the difficulties in hardcore mode (before everything got nerfed beyond its initial release) I uninstalled. But, I somehow managed to put thousands of hours into Diablo 2 and Path of Exile, both of which have much more interesting items (at least to me). Maybe the reward aspect is more important to me in those types of games.
I get what you mean by the gaming tasks though. I used to play moba style games. Every second had something to think about, and really it's almost like you have to turn off your brain and just let your brain take over if that makes any sense. If you tried to explain the exact work flow of what you had to think about in 5 seconds it almost seems impossible, but somehow with enough practice it's effortless. Maybe when your brain is in that state, it's not possible to get distracted.
Hyper-focus like that doesn't mean you have ADHD - but people often use it to rule out ADHD as a possibility, and never get tested, when maybe they should.
I don't know if it's me or modern culture but my brain needs instant feedback. Video games are nearly unparalleled for that. Programming is similar, exams and homework (unlike a lot of people posting here) do it for me too, because I get that feedback in a solid, concrete number.
Video games are highly stimulating and full of immediate feedback when you do well or poorly. This gives you the dopamine hit that your brain is searching for. And the immediate feedback means that the results of your doing well or poorly are felt right away, instead of in a nebulous future.
So you can focus during the game because you're getting a constant stream of dopamine and you always know how well you're doing. Get to the blog post though and... where'd the dopamine go? If you don't write this blog post right now when will you feel the pain? If it's not for a while, then it's too far away for the ADHD brain to put it into perspective because of the time-blindness. It's one of the reasons ADHDers are famous for procrastinating til the last moment, then suddenly cranking out that paper the night before. Once you finally get that sense of urgency of the impending deadline, you can focus.
Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff.
The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties.
Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions.
One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief."
-Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
This is the difference between me and my mom. She'll put off something for ages because she could theoretically do it herself, but I'll just hire someone else to do it after calculating the value of my time/opportunity cost vs hiring someone.
People whose work involves mainly analytical thinking tasks are often mistakenly perceived by public society as lazy while in fact they have always been working all this time, probably harder than most. It's only because the nature of their work is not physically visible to the naked eyes.
Quality decision can only be made after it has been given sufficient time to carefully analyze all the information and its available options. This can only be achieved successfully when people have plenty of quiet moments alone to really think about the specific problem. Those who are always busy doing something all the time rarely have this opportunity, they are always in a rush and don't have the habit to utilize the process or pattern required for analytical thinking. Just like how everything in life is a trade off, if you don't dedicate adequate time for thinking tasks, you cannot expect to formulate quality decisions.
Well, hard-working but not clever people will do useless work and create extra work overloading everyone else. BUT, this happens when they don't have good management and leadership above them, to prioritize and handle them bite-sized pieces, and to set their frame of mind to focus on "results in the bigger picture".
Probably putting "clever and lazy" and leadership roles is the cause for bad management and leadership which makes his "stupid and diligent" underperform in ways that drag everyone down.
Sayin' this as a "clever and lazy" person myself - I know that if I don't have someone I am responsible to (doesn't matter if it's a managers, partner, peer etc.) that is truly hard working and diligent is a recipe for total disaster. I'd rather be accountable to people way less creative, and even lower both IQ and EQ, as long as they come with a solid work ethic and focus to detail and they manage to drag me in this direction to! If the world would have only of people like myself in all leadership positions, nothing would ever get done, and the "diligent / hard-working" people will probably go crazy and either kill themselves or start wars.
I've always thought of "stupid" as different from "not smart". I can't fault people for not having the experience or knowledge that I or others have. I tend to think more of an "active stupid" as a lack of common sense, and making actually poor choices as opposed not making good ones.
To me, it's more the difference of "My laptop is overheating and I can't figure out why" versus "My laptop is overheating so I poured water on it to cool it off."
Not smart is not intuitively knowing what to do in a given situation - this can be learned away - it won't give you the intuitive answer, but at least you'll know not to do something in a given circumstance.
http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidit...
I like the definition of stupid vs. intelligent from there - intelligent person consistently makes win-win decisions. Stupid person consistently makes lose-lose decisions, inflicting loss on other people for no gain for themselves.
That's probably sugar, not caffeine. Sugar is a much stronger drug than caffeine. Try coffee, not red bull.
Yes, all of those things are classic ADHD... But they barely even scratch the surface. That's just the "haha" relatable stuff. Time management issues are real.
ADHD is, in essence, making a list of all the things you need to get done, placing the list in all areas you frequent as visible as possible, and then wondering how 16 hours went by and you're still on item #1 but now you know a whole lot about lizards that you didn't before.
ADHD is also the reason you can get work done for 16 hours straight without distractions.
The overdiagnosing of ADHD is only making things worse because it prevents some people from understanding when they need to make real lifestyle adjustments... both people who hide behind the diagnosis and people who refuse to take it seriously.
In today's world of hyper-distraction this is becoming all the more pertinent. ADHD can affect people of all walks of life and level of intellect, and it can be paralyzing as an adult with the amount of sensory information present in today's society. And we still aren't even sure what environmental factors if any can cause ADHD... for all we know modern society is contributing.
> ...even short-term engagement with an extensively hyperlinked online environment (i.e., online shopping for 15 minutes) reduces attentional scope for a sustained duration after coming offline, whereas reading a magazine does not produce these deficits
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wps.20617
Overdiagnosis is real -- being a developmental disorder, ADHD people present age-inappropriate behavior -- "you're too old for this." A lot of people simply grow out of it (although, the ADHD brain typically reaches maturity around the age of 35, so, it can take a while). But many people never grow out of it, so underdiagnosis of ADULT ADHD is real.
In most countries, however, underdiagnosis is the real issue in most countries. I'm in the Netherlands and I went to a school for special children and talked to half a dozen therapists over ten years, and not one of them even considered it, while it's one of the most common disabilities, and considered one of the easiest to treat. I went to my GP and she had no idea about it, I basically had to explain the diagnostic criteria to her myself. It's possible I've just been really unlucky with the last 10 professionals I went to, but I think it's representative of the attitude in Europe -- especially the farther you go south and east.
For me, the meds have a simple to describe effect: the amount of mental energy I use to concentrate goes down greatly when the meds are in my system.
I did some of my most innovative, creative work early in my career, before the meds. This was due to a number of factors, and I've done some pretty innovative stuff since, but not on that same level. (A big part was being in the right place at the right time.)
But there was cost: even though I was in my 20s, coming home after concentrating for 8 or 9 hours, even after a full night's sleep, I would need to take a nap before finishing my evening. Many hours of concentration just drained me, because it took so much energy.
The meds have changed little, for me, except allowing that focus to cost less.
wait, aren't we all like that?
How do you KNOW that adhd is “overdiagnosed?” Are you a clinical psychiatrist? Or a clinical researcher?
Probably not. You just saw some article written by a person who doesn’t specialize in the area. Who doesn’t have access to the full data, nor have any exposure to what’s REALLY going on out there.
You don’t know. You just think you know because you saw some Netflix documentary about teenagers selling adderall pills.
Remember selection bias: the narrative comes first and then we filter data to fit our idea of how the world “is.”
Nominally what this means is people avoid getting treatment that could make a real difference to their life.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/17/joint-over-and-underdi...
Practically speaking any disorder that impairs executive functioning and uses Schedule II drugs in treatment is going to be over diagnosed because of malingering by people who want the drugs and under diagnosed in the population of individuals with the disorder because of impaired executive functioning and self awareness.
My brother as an adult was able to self diagnose and just try adderall(or was it ritalin) since even non-ADHD people get benefits concentrating with it, and yeah that worked out well for him, he doesnt continue using it and can approach professional work more holistically. I would attribute a lot of his academia challenges and underperformance to undiagnosed ADD/ADHD. Works great for the coked out party scene though. Got to swim in the right environment.
I dont have the above experience, but I did take an in person class at a college recently. Havent otherwise done formal education in almost a decade. The first couple of sessions I was fidgeting and couldnt stand sitting still, which was shocking to me but I got acclimated after that. I cant imagine what children are going through, I think our environment isnt helping
I should probably see a psychologist someday.
It's on the level of the pot head in your team telling you "Dude, you're my hero, I've never seen someone not give a fuck like you" because he noticed you were not paying attention during a meeting.
Everybody is losing focus in school, sure, everybody is losing their school items, sure, but not everybody sits on a test and then goes home with the test in his backpack, instead of submitting it, right?
How many times have you boarded the wrong train or buss?
How many times have you booked and airplane ticket with the wrong dates?
Does everybody mess up their invoices on a regular basis, until it stresses you out enough that you triple check it every time?
Do you only perform while anxious?
Have you ever tried stimulants? I have and it was a HUGE "AA-HAAA, so I guess the chatter in my head is gone, I can sit at my desk for 2 hours straight, my pulse has gone from 90bpm to 60bpm, I'm completely calm, I guess this is how normal people feel everyday? "
Depersonalization/feelings of emptiness -- I do experience those occasionally because those are part of BPD, but they've gone down significantly over the years and I have a pretty stable life right now.
The bad thing for me is if I'm well rested/not anxious I'm usually not interested in doing anything at all; it's just my hypothesis that anxiety is my high-functioning mechanism for my ADD.
While on certain stimulants (they're not all the same) things just click and I am very calm, zero chatter in my head, I feel a bit dumber than usual, but I also can just focus and do meaningful things. Other stimulants make me euphoric and while I can focus I can easily end up focusing on the wrong things; on other stimulants I'm more anxious than usual, more driven and still better able to focus; unfortunately I live in a country where adults cannot receive stimulants period, let alone find a psychiatrist who's willing to play with stimulants/non-stimulants, dosages and so on.
Sort of. I have no problem paying attention in a meeting in which I might be called on because of the terror of getting called on and not knowing what was asked (that happens to me a lot).
I find it very difficult to listen to podcasts. My mind drifts off and I realize I haven't heard the last 20 minutes, so I rewind. On good days, I can make it about an hour before I start drifting off. On bad days, I'm lucky to make it through 10 minutes.
> How many times have you booked and airplane ticket with the wrong dates?
Never. I'm hypervigilant when traveling by air. I only board the wrong bus if I'm really distracted, like I'm in a conversation either in person or online and I'm focusing on that instead of where I'm going. I'm the kind of person that really has to focus on where he's going. Even when I'm driving, I'll miss turns if my passenger is talking to me.
> It's on the level of the pot head in your team telling you "Dude, you're my hero, I've never seen someone not give a fuck like you" because he noticed you were not paying attention during a meeting.
I've had people tell me that after meetings before.
> Have you ever tried stimulants?
I've never tried stimulants stronger than red bull. I have noticed that large doses of caffeine calms me down. It's a fairly common occurrence for me to drink an espresso or red bull before bed and having no problems sleeping.
I've boarded a wrong tram a few times. I never did book an airplane ticket wrong because it's a high-stakes thing that I check 20 times (and then few more times next day) just to be sure I didn't screw up. Whenever I feel there's a chance to make a mistake that would be inconvenient, I'm fixating on it and doing it really extra careful - therefore not making the mistake. Same with invoices; I wrote myself software to calculate and I still check everything with a calculator before sending the PDF off.
What about the second desktop?
My evernote and bookmarks are overflowing, though.
I feel your pain. I hate typing on phones; feels so inefficient. It is definitely good to not have the 50 tabs problem mobile too.
Source?
The human mind can only concentrate on a few things at a time even when "multitasking", and it cannot concentrate on anything else when working on a complex, concentration-oriented problem. Respect how your brain works, even if it goes against your ADD instincts. (Example, from a book on how thought works... you can concentrate on multiple things while driving, but you can't concentrate on multiple things while computing 57 x 432.61 in your head. There are two modes to thinking; one allows multitasking but limits complexity of individual tasks. The other allows deep complexity, but at the exclusion of thinking of anything else.
So those 52 tabs? If you try to think about all of them, you can't think about any of them in a meaningful way. Pushing things off your plate is the most fundamental defense mechanism the ADD mind can have. Have one tab open. Or two or three. Finish what you're doing before trying to do something else. Don't let the squirrel do the thinking for you. You can outthink the squirrel.
I know for me, I went to my dream college and studied exactly what I wanted to study, yet I couldn’t keep up. I went from getting mostly As in high school to eventually failing out (later to return). I was under immense psychological stress and couldn’t get myself to do basic things. I was always overwhelmed. I couldn’t and still can’t be in social situations when loud music is nearby. I’ve essentially had to reshape my life to work around this. It made me nearly non-functional.
And years later, now that I’ve built my life in a way where it works with my ADD, I can be incredibly productive and imaginative and innovative.
Keeping a task list is definitely key. I have a plain text file called "tasks.txt" open at all times and in the morning I'll list the stuff. I live by the "if it takes under 5 minutes do it right away" mantra.
Sometimes I'll end up working on a task, that while it does need to get done, is not necessarily the first task on my list (or on the list at all). So after a "distraction break", I check my task list again so I don't forget.
I am extremely good at figuring out issues. I'm a technical architect (programmer) and I often find myself going around and fixing others' issues quickly, but time management and attention to detail are definitely issues - issues that have been thankfully solved by technology and forethought.
When I tried to look up whether ADHD could actually be a sleep disorder, I only found a lot of the reverse: Articles saying that people with ADHD often also get a bad sleep. But I certainly wondered whether the causation might be the other way around.
From what you're saying, sounds like there's evidence that it can be, at least partially?
I have a friend who knows a dentist. The dentist said that when he sees signs of sleep issues (apnea, but he might have seem more) in his patient's mouth, he recommends they get treated. And very often, if the patient had ADHD symptoms, the symptoms went away after getting the sleep apnea treated.
And lastly, yeah. I Also get a lot of ADHD symtpoms depending on my sleep quality/quantity.
He explains it as not as much of an attention disorder as much as it is a time management disorder: we're nearsighted to time and all its constraints.
I actually created an app to help my workflow specifically around the way my brain likes to jump between topics:
https://getpolarized.io/
Part of the challenge I have with reading is that I'll be interested in something for a few hours and then my brain will be triggered with something I'm reading and my brain will switch contexts.
Then I'll want to read about some other topic.
With Polar I can jump around easier and take notes directly in the source material.
It supports incremental reading such that you can mark the portions of a document you've read and jump right back to them when you open the document a second time.
It's really a lifesaver for me honestly. I've definitely been able to get a lot more reading done.
My curiosities when reading this article :
Did the psychologist actually fix the slipping grades in any meaningful way? If so, was it through pharmacological methods, or some other technique? If it was dealt with through prescriptions, and the grades improved at the sake of anxiety, is that (graduating college with better grades) worth it? If it's worth it, should that behavior be drug into life as a founder -- presumably due to some sort of advantage that those pharmaceuticals may provide, and the anxiety just dealt with somehow else?
These are all honest questions, if anyone cares to share their take on the situation with me. I've been in similar situations.
Give the book a try. It changed my life (and I don't say that lightly). If I'm right, it might change yours.
Because of this, it's not unusual for other conditions to cause people to experience similar symptoms to those with AD(H)D. The main difference, is that for people with AD(H)D, the symptoms are chronic and disruptive.
Many symptoms caused by the executive function component can also be experienced by those who have theirs inhibited. This can be because they are: tired, stressed, drunk etc.
When reading this or other articles on AD(H)D, if you resonate with the symptoms I urge you to read up and potentially get diagnosed.
Just please don't assume that "everyone has some kind of ADHD" or that "ADHD is't real" because some symptoms are shared by other conditions, and can often seem like regular parts of the human condition.
I have my own personal hypothesis that some types of ADHD are caused by persistent stress due to sensitive sensory reactions. Also, another hypothesis of mine is that some may just develop similar symptoms with enormous stress factors (e.g. no proper caregiving at early age, or PTSD). Is there any literature that corroborates or disproves such hypothesis?
What do you mean by symptom-based diagnosis? Most ailments are diagnosed by their symptoms. If you mean diagnosis by measurement of specific chemicals/etc in the brain, I've heard of some studies that show that you can diagnose ADHD through brain scans[1]. Just because there's symptom overlap doesn't make the diagnosis moot. Both allergies and the common cold can result in similar symptoms, yet we still diagnose them separately because they are not the same thing. Yes, depression and ADHD might have some similar symptoms caused by their own unique effects on dopamine in the brain, but they are both much more complex than that.
> I have my own personal hypothesis that some types of ADHD are caused by persistent stress due to sensitive sensory reactions
Given that ADHD has a very heavy genetic component, I am inclined to disagree. However, I did find a paper[2] that indicated a link between socio-economic factors and ADHD. The causation/correlation is not particularly clear in the paper, but it could be interesting to look at.
[1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/315884.php [2] http://www.academicpedsjnl.net/pb/assets/raw/Health%20Advanc...
Things that aren't "can't focus" that are symptoms of ADHD:
- bad temper - speaking before thinking (followed by immediate regret) - often making spur of the moment decisions without thinking of long-term consequences
The overarching thing being that lots of people with ADHD do things _despite knowing on a rational level that it's not a good idea_, because that thought usually isn't loud enough to actually stop your actions (at least not fast enough anyways).
There's always a bit of "yeah everyone has that" when you talk about laziness and lack of focus, making it feel a bit like an unfalsifiable diagnosis. But there's a lot of people who most definitely don't have bad temper issues or go binge drinking all the time (Though this isn't everyone with ADHD either of course).
The symptoms you describe are impacted by the two elements I described (executive function issues and dopamine regulation).
People with AD(H)D have issues with regulation and executive function, which can lead to issues in how one controls themselves. This can lead to the issues of controlling oneself that you describe.
On top of that, dopamine (which is more accurately a "motivation hormone", which creates the desire to do things) is different in AD(H)D brains. Basically, people with AD(H)D will get a dopamine kick from certain types of behaviours, and not from others. This can result in the relative importance of tasks being very different from neuro-typical ordering. As a result, addictive behaviours can be more common (especially for things like video-games), or also the prevalence of hyper-focus that people with AD(H)D experience.
I agree with your last paragraph fully. The lack of understanding around the condition can lead many to make uninformed actions and opinions that can be harmful to those with AD(H)D, diagnosed or not. This can have negative impacts on patient mental health, and is the reason why people should be more aware of this oft misunderstood condition.
This. When I am highly stressed I look like I have AD(H)D. Or ASD. When I'm not, I don't.
Lots of room for weirdos to do great things in this world.
I have ADD and pretty much recognize myself in a lot of this.
It’s almost impossible to focus on anything that is not interesting “right now” and what is “interesting” changes in cycles spanning a few weeks.
During a cycle I become completely absorbed, you know, not eat, not sleep and not being communicative, absorbed.
For a long time this worked out both personally (depending on who you ask) and with my employers/employees that so far have had no issues with my rather irregular rhythm (thank you tech!).
Oh, the storytelling and talking... I feel sorry for my brain and, in retrospect, people that had to listen (I’m sorry! And I didn’t mean to be rude and offensive, it was just my thoughts at that very second!).
As life have changed mainly through becoming a dad it has also become a lot more difficult —- not everything about kids is “interesting”, and staying up to 4 to tinker with something “interesting” is just such a bad idea when someone jumps on your face at 6.
Everyone needs food? And it’s my responsibility? Today again?! Phew... etc.
Spending energy on “non-interesting” things really is draining and seem to lead to kind of mini depressions.
I’m happy that I’ve come to a point where I at least can see some of this behavior which allows me to work on some changes.
Hard work though!
Perhaps I should write about how I run(?) a family with ADD? It would make for a lot of laughs and a some sad stuff.
Would definitely be interested in hearing your wins running a family and managing this
So in short list format, just sharing some methods I employ, sans digressions:
0. Awareness. Took way too long for me to reach it.
1. What is mentioned in the article: prioritisation! That needs to lead to routine. Hard work this, but most important, as I have to be able to engage auto-pilot for "non-interesting" tasks.
2. Sleep. Just do it. I have found out that lack of sleep takes me down hyper-focus lane. Great when you are alone and is tinkering along for a weekend. Not at all in basically all other scenarios. Hit bed before 11.
3. Eat and drink. Healthy and just enough. The effects are similar to #2 if I don't.
4. Physical activities. Go for a 20 min run. It is boring, but reach the point of proper sweating and keep going for another 10-20 min. The effects on me are amazing and in many ways resemble #5, only even better.
5. Breathe. Honestly, I have started practicing mindfulness and it just works for me. It takes me down into myself and allows me to spread focus.
On the bus right now, and this is what I can think of at the moment. Always a work in progress. I'll see about that blog...
It gets easier with routines and practice and will eventually start a positive spiral if you stick to it for a few weeks.
If you “lose” it (you will) and end up out of the spiral or going backwards, remind yourself of how good your brain felt after that 30 min run or 15 minute of focused breathing.
You probably have a hyper-sensitive brain of sorts, and you will know what I mean. It sensitive in a way that it behaves like a sponge. Feed it good stuff and it will behave better.
Drain it with no good sleep, bad food, sugar and intense focus without rest? Setting of a bad spiral. Learn to feel when this kicks in.
The work never stops, so force it! Just do it.
Long time skateboarder, hung up in a 9-5, knees are starting to shit the bed at 30, and don't skate much any more as a result. Realized, fairly recently, that over the years my mental state was declining/flatlining largely in part to not exercising. Skating is just fun, provides a sense of freedom, used to be a huge part of my social life, and the physical activity kept my body and mind in shape, and it's totally left a negative impact not having that involved in 50%+ of my daily activities.
Going on a tangent, but I recently purchased a recumbent bike as a means of remaining stimulated/keeping boredom at bay while exercising, and it's hands down one of the best purchases I've ever made. It's a matter of going to YouTube and popping on a walkthrough on a framework/library/etc, the news, documentary, or anything of interest, and just peddling away for the next hour... Only problem is, it's hard to stop going once you start :/
Anyways, read through this thread and your mentions, as someone else has mentioned, are the most articulate descriptions of the struggles that one faces with ADD. Personally, I'm in an environment where many don't consider it "real" and look down upon those who have sought medical help as "meth addicts", and my only wish is for them to understand and also to be able to distinguish the medications from one another and not group them with illicit/highly toxic drugs.
Glad to have come across yours and many other's comments on the topic. Made my morning :)
It’s two sides to it as I see, as going all in with athletics obviously gives you the physical bit “for free”. Well not for free, really, but you know what I mean.
The other part is the strict routine you have to keep.
It’s not ever a problem as life revolves around an interest!
Rather, I used to get annoyed if something disrupted my routine regarding food, rest and practice.
To get better and stonger (interest) I have to eat, sleep and turn up ready for practice two times, every day.
Ah... good times! But also severely limiting. But also great... But... :)
Awesome that I could help make your day! Inspiring even.
Strength training with barbells fixed all those aches and pains in my knees and joints that braces and doctors and physical therapy couldn't. When I started squatting, I suddenly stopped being afraid to walk down stairs. My posture improved. I noticed I had way more endurance when riding, and it made ever part of that, from carving to pumping, easier and better and more powerful.
For me personally, resistance training with weights is better than almost any other exercise for managing ADHD. I don't know what it is, but something about lifting keeps me focused and calm for a few days after a workout. Cardio never really did that for me.
My 11 year old son was diagnosed with ADHD-PI over a year ago, and we've had great success with with all of the above areas for him. 0, 1, 2, and 4 especially. We've gotten things running pretty well at home by recognizing he needs a break from homework to "run around in circles (as he calls it)" for a bit, setting up physical activities like shooting hoops that are easy to start/stop, having a strong routine in the morning before school, and making sure we don't slip at bed times. Another key to his success is his teacher. She's been simply amazing at letting him sit, stand, take 5 to go run up/down stairs, etc. when he needs it. Most importantly, he recognizes that she genuinely cares and it makes him want to do well, unlike a past teacher or two that simply treated him like a nuisance.
The morning routine is probably the biggest win, though. We went from barely able to get out the door in time for school to our son often getting up early and getting fully ready (dressed, bed made, breakfast eaten, lunch packed, showered, etc) before mom or I even get out of bed. He's always so proud of himself when that happens, too.
Routine is useful. My life is full of mini routines, although not necessarily making as cohesive as a picture as they could, there are certainly plenty of gaps.
I have a bad problem where things go to shit if a normal "auto-pilot" task of mine has to changed.
Simple example, I always have my keys in my pocket, I feel for them as I walk out the door. They're there, I continue. Same thing with my truck (it has manual locks) - I feel for the big plastic on the key, then close the locked door.
However, when leaving the house without pockets (in dirtbike gear), there is room for things to go wrong for me.
I can't just check that pocket. So I either have to replay putting the keys in my bag or not be lazy and check the bag.
I've had to learn to not be lazy and require physical proof... because last time it turns out they were indeed in the bag, _but the bag was in the house_.
I actually use a pocket of a specific jacket whether I use it or not.
This is where I put them on entry, and this is where the check is on exit.
Without routines like these anything can and will happen, just ask my (soon to be) wife! :)
Not a single blog-post but a lot of potential knowledge.
I’ve landed in static. Either GH pages or through netlify CMS. For now.
Needs re-evaluation, I can tell. But when?! I have a family to run.
I burst into laughter when I read this, holy shit if I'm not doing the exact same thing right now. You could probably graph my mood by HN comments frequency.
Basically, it boils down to: commit to either doing most of it yourself, with carefully considered bits of outsourced help, or go for an outsourced solution and deal with the bits you need to change.
The former usually is more fun, and probably works best for stuff you need to work on (as in, alter) over time.
The latter is less fun, but if you can handle working within the boundaries presented and if the thing you're doing is throwaway or relatively unchanging, it's probably the best way to go.
When it comes to CRUD web stuff, for example, I find that Wordpress is often the best way to go, even though I hate most of it with a passion. But the fact is that with just a few plugins (Advanced Custom Fields primarily!), it's often one of the best solutions available for a typical website, especially if it has news/blog type stuff and if it's not mission-critical to yourself or the client.
The same applies to smaller 'units' of code. Every time you add code that isn't your own, you add limitations and risks, but in practice it's often worth it. The skill I'm trying to improve is to know when to make what choice in this regard.
(to be clear, when I choose Wordpress, I'm basically accepting that almost the whole thing is a dumpster fire. Most of my work then involves isolating myself from the resulting mess, whether by avoiding WP's templating/querying system, or making sure a site runs on its own server. And yet it's still worth it at times)
What is it now — cache invalidation and naming things? :)
Who is “her” in this case — the writer or the daughter?
I second this!
This was while sorting out the effects of neglecting loved and dear ones at a point in time.
It goes something like this:
—-
You met an a-hole one day. Yeah, it’s just another a-hole.
You meet a-holes everyday?
Well, maybe you’re the a-hole.
—-
Worth thinking about if you find yourself in bad spots all the time.
1. ADHD Predominantly Inattentive (ADHD-PI)
2. ADHD Predominantly Hyperactive (ADHD-PH?)
3. ADHD Combined (ADHD-C)
ADD falls under the first one. It makes sense that you'd recognize yourself in that. They're now considered to be the same disorder, but just presenting in a different way.
One of the things that's usually not discussed, but what you should watch out for is emotional control. Apparently it's easier for people with ADHD to have their emotions flip. Russell Barkley has an amazing series of lectures about it. You can find various bits on YouTube. You could see if maybe you'll discover even more about yourself.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/diagnosis.html
Here's a fantastic lecture (split into ~5 minute segments -- this guy gets it :) by Dr. Barkley:
ADHD - The 30 Essential Ideas Everyone Needs to Know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzhbAK1pdPM&list=PLzBixSjmbc...
The general physician I went to initially to kick of the quest for diagnosis obviously had an interest and gave me a book called “the answer” (edit).
If you are Swedish: “hemligheten”
In english the tag line (translated by me): “from moments to lasting relationships”
The Answer: How to start a relationship and make it last
https://www.amazon.com/Answer-start-relationship-make-last/d...
Why the same pattern I saw in how I had to be ”interested” to give something or someone my attention repeated over and over.
I’ve had many relationships over the years with a specific pattern: I lose interest in about a year.
One total burn-out after another. Extreme interest followed by absolutely nothing.
There’s a follow up book I can’t find in English called (my translation): ”The dark secret”, that treats what they call ”deorganized attachement”
This one’s actually more relevant for me personally as my youth and upbringing was... “interesting” and in several ways traumatic.
On the topic of books:
“Healing ADD” was really useful for my partner:
https://www.bookdepository.com/Healing-Add-Daniel-Amen/97804...
ADHD can be a huuuuge problem in relationships. Especially if you're going out with someone who would score very high on conscientiousness. They won't understand that things that are easy for them are hard for you, and will assume that you're just trying to piss them off, or are incorrigibly lazy. This is exacerbated because it's not like you can't do those things, it's just that you will inconsistently do them, and average towards not doing them.
On my partners request I should add.
For fun my then partner took the test as well.
My score 80% or whatever: “severe autistic traits”. WTF?! Ouch...
Hers? A clean 0. Zero?! You’re kidding. Sure she’s probably the most compassionate human being I’ve ever met, but come on!
Eventually we got a daughter and split up a year later.
Best thing that could have happened for anyone of us, daughter included, and we have a great relationship where we hang out all the time.
I believe in part this is because she doesn’t expect “normal” from me when we’re no longer together.
It also gave me a wake-up call telling me I had shit to properly sort out.
But having had an intake of decent energy during the day, and a 30 min run in the evening allows my brain to brush the teeth and put three beasts to bed at night without collapsing into apathy.
I have to constantly interrupt what I’m doing during the day and “check the sensors” so to speak.
Hands up if you’ve been so consumed you missed lunch more than one instance this last month!
Keep doing that, and the deterioration is in progress.
If not of oneself perhaps relationships? And what is “self”?
Right now is the worst. I made a list of work I need to do today, but none of it was very stimulating. So I opened up Hacker News, saw this article, and have been on this for close to an hour now. In that time, I've read it and a lot of comments (Jordan's comments being my favorite so far). I've decided to try Todoist as suggested by the author, so I've set that up. I already know that I'm going to fall away from it like I do every other organizational method (Evernote, Keep, Kanban varieties, physical notebooks), so a little mini bit of negativity has set in. And now all I want to do is get up from my desk, and run around to see how my employees are doing. I have 60 of them, so that could take awhile. And before I know it, I've done nothing but read about ADHD and talk about the weekend all day.
I really bash myself for these periods of the day. I feel like I'm wearing a sign on my forehead that says "Brian hasn't done anything for 4 hours!" And that sign would be true. On the flip-side when a problem comes along, I'm all over it. I'll work night and day to get it done. I'll do so to the short term detriment of relationships, but I'll solve it. If I have constant interesting problems flowing in, I look like a working machine. If I just have boring redundant work like dealing with employee "time cards" or invoices, it takes all day to get to it, and I look like I'm day-dreaming or lazy.
It's now an hour and 15 into this sidetrack. So I think I'll go get some water, walk around, and maybe sit back down and get some work done before 9am. I'll have to or else I won't get anything done. I have to attend 3 meetings in a row where I'm listening and not speaking. If you are ADHD, you know how that's going to go.
So about 30 minutes of active listening and 150 minutes of some of the deepest problem solving time where you can miraculously focus on all the problems you couldn't before? (The hard part is if somebody talks directly to you during the latter and not the former. You'll never know, though, unless somebody tells you about it later.)
The best thing I've found is to just accept you have the ADHD and work around it. If I know I'm going to do a tedious task that is going to be boring and require concentration, I usually give myself a 2-3 minute break every 20 minutes just to get up and walk around. It's very important to have discipline to make sure the break doesn't turn into a huge 45 minute sidetrack.
I am fully aware of the trick and I could just choose right now to violate the thing entirely. It still works.
I don't suppose that counts as tricking your mind into thinking something is interesting. Still works.
Just wondering, what sort of things are you trying to combat that?
Given how poignantly you expressed my own experience of living with ADHD Primarily Inattentive (what you called ADD above), and as someone on the cusp of becoming a father, I would appreciate this more than I can express.
As an adult with ADD, it was a miraculous new perspective on tracking all the things I used to fail to do. I so, so wish I'd had it when I was dealing with small children.
I’m constantly playing the “no ones died yet on my watch” card.
It somehow doesn’t make her feel any better.
I can't count the number of times while talking to my psychologist, in the middle of a breakdown thinking "If only there were a system that I could offload all of the dumb things I can't remember to do..."
...and then laughing my way out of the room because my wife told me weeks earlier that she wishes I were using my journal. She notices that I'm happier when I use it, she is much happier because she doesn't have to ask me to do something 4 times...
Using OrgMode for keeping my work-life in order has been a life-changer. But perhaps a bullet journal is more suited for keeping personal, and family life. I've never looked into them properly, but will definitely do so today.
Many responsibilities in family life are uninteresting. Often I have to be patient for weeks in order to work on something I find interesting. Months ago I found a great programming project to work on. However, I'm caught in a period in which my wife is working a lot of extra hours, leaving me to deal with cooking, house repair, running my daughter to activities, finances, etc. I also work full-time as a developer. On top of it, I'm the president for my daughter's basketball league, which requires a lot of attention to administrative tasks. I'm perpetually at odds with my desire to work on the interesting project and getting done what needs to be done.
I'm coming out of a mini-depression now. As an example of what it's like, several weeks ago I was sent a link to post to our league's FB page. The link pertains to an event next weekend. Posting would have taken under 5 minutes, but I shied away from it until yesterday. The thought of one more trivial task in my day completely paralyzed me for weeks, but I felt increasing anxiety and the depression worsened.
In my younger days, I would have ignored needs to focus on what made me feel happy at the time. Nowadays I feel too anxious when I do so.
Wow, this describes a few recent events for me. Thanks for sharing!
Same. It's subsided to a large extent, but I spent years in that state. I'm not even angry at my brain, but just a little sad about how much time and opportunities this wasted for me.
> In my younger days, I would have ignored needs to focus on what made me feel happy at the time. Nowadays I feel too anxious when I do so.
Same. Except I do wish I got back to that "younger days" state. Literally nothing ended up badly from doing that; hell, I owe my whole programming career to it. Between doing what you want instead of what you have to vs. the other way around, the worst is really the third option: being paralyzed by an internal conflict and doing neither.
My (adult) daughter inherited ADD from me. Which means she and I understand each other in a way that her mother and her twin brother do not understand us. At least they've learned to just let us do the grocery shopping and not try to help.
I do not have ADD (afaik), and I also recognize myself in a lot of this. I think many of these behaviors are very common in general.
The question is always: does it impede a “normal” life and is anyone constantly suffering?
I thought my so called issues were perfectly manageable until I got my second child.
I described it in a different post as being stuck in development.
Remaining a child in many ways, and constantly fighting overwhelming emotions or, almost worse, non at all.
I decided I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing, and it’s been a struggle ever since.
Mostly I make it work, but my partner might have a word or two about these things:
Going to the grocery store with a long list of items, only to be overwhelmed by the astounding number of types of coffee.
Spending 45 minutes looking online for anything regarding beans and grounds. Fascinating stuff! Animals eating from the trees and pooing the beans out?! Wow.
Leaving after one hour with a bag of potatoes — cause’ couldn't handle it.
You can probably see that if this is a repeating pattern someone’s bound to suffer.
Anxiety is just around the corner with depression right behind it, stemming from these issues.
I'm separated and co-parenting and realized that I would freak out every Thursday because clearly my place is too shitty for the kids to arrive, and obviously I'm a terrible father. Once I could name the "Thursday freakout", it became a lot easier to manage and to reduce the intensity from wanting to bail on everyone to just laughing it off.
It gets easier (before it gets harder?, don't know yet.) A former colleague put it best -- the highs are higher, and the lows are lower. It's just no one really tells you how low the lows can be.
I would really like to read that - and I hope this doesn't come out as cynical or heartless, I can understand that having ADD comes with challenges. I am simply intellectually curious to hear how someone lives with such a condition.
I also feel/think - but I might be 100% wrong - that many of us have "some" light form of ADD, perhaps driven by our use of mobile devices. Curious to hear if you have any thought about it.
Well, it’s a spectrum, isn’t it!
I’ve said it a couple of times already in this thread, all is well as long as daily suffering is at a minimal, for anyone that happens to be involved.
Mobile device (constant access to information specifically) is a big problem for me, that is for sure.
I remember playing computer games competitively impacted me in a really negative way when I was younger as well, much in the same way.
The “feeling” in my brain and mind is pretty similar (phone vs gaming) and it seems to create a really bad disconnect emotionally.
This “disconnect” leads to a kind of apathy and when in that state pretty much nothing of value can happen.
I’m currently making a routine of handing my phone to my partner when at home, as I’m unable to handle it.
There’s just so much interesting stuff all over and “interesting” trumps pretty much everything else, often at the expense of relationships.
For a concrete example I described a typical grocery store situation in another post.