adhd folk are natural risk takers... so this result is unsurprising.
One thing I've always wondered is how adhd folks didn't get selected out through their risky behaviour. Their existence could certainly confer some group benefits - but I thought group selection was no longer well regarded in the evo biol community.
I feel likes there's a middle ground between acting like a 'pussy' and barreling headfirst into something.
I mean, the guy who takes the time to make a spear and plan an attack is probably gonna live a better life than the dude that charges right into a slap-fight with a lion and the other dude cowering inside the cave.
Because they only have to live long enough to reproduce. There are studies showing people with adhd have a much higher risk of accidental (and non accidental) death.
Adhd is not a superpower. It's an incurable brain disorder. It fucking sucks.
I don't like to view it as an disorder, because that says there is a correct way that your brain should function. I think it's just different. Viewing it disorder is self-defeating for people with ADHD, it's like saying they think there is something wrong with them at all times, but there really isn't. They just find different ways to do things.
It is starting to aggravate me that every time we have articles like this come up that people keep trotting out the crap explanations of "it's just another way of thinking", because they saw it in some TED talk.
No, it isn't. It's a fucking neurological disorder which affects dopamine production, which interferes with normal brain function.
Imagine sitting down to work on something you really want to finish, but you can't. You're reading reddit instead, because that gives you a quick dose of entertainment. You keep yelling at yourself to do the work, because it's your job on the line. But no, you'll end up looking at cat pictures, because, hey, cats. That's what ADHD is like.
Have you been to an ADD conference where you are surrounded by hundreds of similarly-wired brains? Neurotypical is defined by the local majority. In a hunter-gatherer society, slow reaction time means no dinner. Don't be fooled by labels which originate in specific social contexts. Environmental impedance mismatches can be addressed by changing the human or changing the environment.
You know what else means no dinner in a hunter society? Your spear breaking because you forgot to fire harden it. Scaring away the pretty because you inadvertently bumped into a tree (inadvertently bumping into things on a regular basis is an indicator of ADHD). In a gathering society: not gathering because a butterfly distracted you. That's the effect of ADHD.
ADHD doesn't make you some magical hunter, patience does. Reaction time has nothing to do with ADHD, it comes from paying attention when the stimuli comes about, something a person with ADHD can't do.
As for "normal", I base it off the figure of 95%. That is, our brains are different from 95% of humanity. That strikes me as a good definition of abnormal, better than "I surround myself with th those like me, so I'm totally normal".
If everyone has a spear-hardening "problem", there will be external structure and rituals to ensure that this activity is not forgotten. Reaction time is explicitly measured by one clinical test which diagnoses ADHD.
There is no normal, that's the main point. If you get enough people with "AD(H)D" in a room, and ask a few questions about preferred cognitive styles (sound, light, touch, motor movement) you will discover clusters of preferences and a wide range of differences.
The label ADHD is most useful as a search term for a vocabulary of common challenges. Naming any problem is necessary to develop shared solutions. Prior to the advent of this term, non-neurotypical people independently named their logistical challenges and independently re-invented solutions.
Are you familiar with the term hyperfocus? Is that a strength or weakness?
If you want to be really correct it's a simple label for what is otherwise a spectrum of symptomatic severity due to underlying neurological issues.
I've met plenty of people who are 100% ADHD, both parents, all their children, it is inheritable, and the degree to which each person needed treatment for their personal ADHD symptoms tends to vary a lot. ADHD isn't a binary condition, you can have ADHD tendencies, mild ADHD, severe ADHD, etc.
The frustration felt by those suffering with the worst symptoms when people fail to appreciate their condition is hard to fix. While Autism has been the subject of the decade thanks to a particularly disgusting pustule of a human being publishing a particular fraudulent paper in a medical journal, ADHD is quietly toyed with now and then. Most improvements to treatment for ADHD have been accidental and is further hampered by the usual concerns regarding psychoactive pharmacology, what is a legal treatment in one jurisdiction is an illicit narcotic in others.
We're all human, I like lots of other people, have ADHD. Consequently I'm going to post this as written rather than try to edit away the lack of a clear direction or good summation. I've learned to cut my losses on tangential trains of thought, this one has already lead to a rather mushy breakfast :-/
I've definitely known a few people who have used their diagnosis for a mild cognitive disorder as an excuse to exhibit it's negative symptoms. Knowing how to and proactively managing emotional and motivational responses is one thing, saying "I have ADD" and using that to be perfectly happy watching Netflix all day instead of doing your homework is entirely something else.
And I totally agree. Some people are given wrenches, other people hammers. The solution isn't to make people really good at tightening bolts with hammers.
Yeah - living long enough to reproduce in modern times is easy enough now - but it wasn't back in the day.
I do wonder if survival back in the day actually required the level of risk taking that adhd people are capable of. If you stayed in one place - maybe you ran out of food - things like that.
An important factor is the age of the mother at the time of her first child. If this age is earlier than the general population, there will be more generations in a given calendar time period. E.g. risk-seeking behavior among females could lead to early motherhood, which could be repeated in the child.
Really? I think it gives me an advantage with respect to my peers.
Can we really say that it is a brain disorder? All that we know is that people with ADHD don't fit into the cultural definition of normal, but that doesn't mean that the definition of normal is correct or that not being normal is a "disorder". How do you know it isn't just a slightly different model of cognition that suffers at some tasks but excels in others. Humans are very good at detecting errors, such as ADHD caused impairment, but not very good at quantifying or detecting potentially positive effects of something like ADHD.
After 35 years undiagnosed, I feel quite confident when I say there is no upside. Only lots of "if only I had known, I could have finished college", or "if only I had known, I would be the person running this company"...
I didn't know, and so I struggled mightily against myself to get to where I am today. In the few months during which time I have been medicated, I have made more career progress than any 5 other years prior.
"I took a drug and it had a nootropic effect" does not mean you had a brain disorder. What they give you to treat your "disorder" is amphetamines. Lots of people on Wall Street are enhancing their performance with cocaine. I'm sure this results in plenty of career progress - more energy, more confidence, etc. This does not mean they had a disorder beforehand.
This is like saying not knowing group theory or being a loud asshole who people have trouble getting along with is a disorder. These are also things that can be improved, possibly with the help of drugs. They are not disorders.
I don't. I often feel very bound to the 'operating hours' of the medication while friends can just start working at seemingly any time they want. If i take another pill there's no way i'm getting any sleep, but i still want to finish something up before calling it a night. It's just a constant struggle.
At this point i'm writing up my thesis, where tracking down, interpreting, and coherently organizing old notepads/napkins, papers, and result files is a full time job. If i want to keep my health (to actually sleep) i really only get 9-10 hours while the remaining 8 are anxiety that it's not getting done or frustration that i can't push out pages at any reasonable pace.
Your right. There are a lot of things that I struggle with, but over the years I have constructed a way to live which helps to minimise any difficulties I may face. I own very few things, I keep all my essential daily items in the same place every day and I have chosen a career where I don't have to deal with things that I struggle with.
The best advice I can offer is to accept your lack of control over some things. If I don't listen to my body and mind I will suffer. Like what you mentioned with sleep, I actually find it more beneficial to sleep than to work through the tiredness. That way I can come to the subject with a fresh mind.
Want to know why they're risk takers? Lack of ability to form long temporal associations. When you have trouble connecting effect to action when separated by more than a few hours, it's hard to realistically identify risk.
From personal experience, it's easy to spend money when you don't associate how it will impact your ability to pay rent in 15 days.
"Tulving's research has emphasized the importance of episodic memory for our experience of consciousness and our understanding of time. For example, he conducted studies with the amnesic patient KC, who had relatively normal semantic memory but severely impaired episodic memory due to brain damage from a motorcycle accident. Tulving's work with KC highlighted the central importance of episodic memory for the subjective experience of one's self in time, an ability he dubbed "autonoetic consciousness." KC lacked this ability, failing to remember prior events and also failing to imagine or plan for the future."
Possibly because they just breed more. Women with ADHD suffer more unplanned pregnancy. Men with ADHD use protection less often. Both are more promiscuous.
Sometimes it seems like a gift but other times... not so much. I am working on a couple of projects right now, and it feels like every time I hit a tough spot, the urge to do/think of something else really saps my ability to just power through.
I can't make claims about anyone else's experience, but the really frustrating thing for me is that these new tangents might actually be truly good ideas worth pursuing[1]-- maybe even better things to work on than what I'm doing currently.
But I've been through this process before, and so I just write down whatever this amazing new thought was in a notebook, and then convince myself I'll follow up on it later.
I almost never do.
Still, the fact that I can't trust myself to switch tasks really bothers me, and even the strategy of writing things down and pretending I'll handle it later is not 100% effective[2].
So it's a mixed bag, where you might think of it as a gift because new and exciting thoughts are always popping in, ready to distract you, but in my case it is definitely also a disorder since a lot of the things I want to do require a certain degree of focus and commitment, and if I abandon them when I first start to feel bored I'd likely be unable to get through to the really worthwhile stuff.
---
1. The key is of course that they seem to be good ideas, but that might just be my brain fooling itself in order to persuade me to goof off.
2. I currently have something like 800 tabs open, the results of thinking "oh I'll just read a little about this", getting distracted/having to sleep, and now they sit across my various browser windows, preserved in the amber of my virtual memory.
Look at how writers, filmmakers and magazine publishers handle large quantities of research topics and editorial content candidates. There is usually some form of physical storyboard which clusters related material in a physical location (e.g. vision board, very large binder) that can be referenced by motor memory rather than symbolic memory. ADHD and dyslexia can co-occur.
People with ADHD can also be found in professions like accounting and law – which provide compensatory external structure.
Some people would find it easier to locate objects if all containers (boxes, closets, drawers, fridges) could be made transparent on demand. Until then, we have vertical surfaces, metal wires + strong magnets, foamcore, whiteboard paint, mesh drawers and transparent plastic containers.
I experience the same difficulty focusing. Often the new ideas are in fact great ideas, and sometimes they become crucial parts of my work. Progress for me is very organic and sometimes seems random. It is also very difficult to force progress - even when I have specific work to do, sometimes I just can't focus on it no matter how hard I try. That usually means I haven't figured out how to do it, but it also happens when the task is related to things I'm worried about, like failure.
When I need to describe to people where it will go, it rarely works well. I seem to have determined that the direction my mind takes me tends to be good though, and I should trust it. Some things didn't make sense for a year and then finally clicked once other things fell into place.
I'm speaking as an entrepreneur. The article describes me well. I also keep many, many tabs open.
That's where teams come into play. Highly creative people won't be able to finish unchallenging work. They need their counterparts. That lesson is one I still need to accept. I often think quite arrogantly "They all don't get it.", but the skill of finalizing is as an important skill as seeing, understanding and finding creative solutions.
To others, do not be intimidated by the length. If you have or know someone with ADHD you've got to watch this and get the friends and family to watch too.
After a few decades in field of ADHD treatment the big lesson is adult ADHD presents in numerous ways, it's risky to generalize and easy to misconstrue the impact of having the real, full-blown form of the condition.
The article speaks of entrepreneurial tendencies among ADHD individuals, but I admit evaluating the claim based on the data given was difficult. I didn't have the time required to make sense of the opaque presentation. However, does appear sampling biases were likely since subjects were obtained from ADHD support groups, where attendees are likely not representative of the entire ADHD population. Furthermore, it's not clear what, if any, diagnostic processes were used to determine ADHD status, thus the sample probably a "mixed bag" and hard to know which populations conclusions apply to.
There is a major difference between vernacular usage of "ADD", and the plight of seriously affected individuals that come to clinical attention. As I apply the term, ADHD is not a minor or trivial condition, the data show it's associated with increased health risks, comorbid psychiatric disorders, as well as worse outcomes in social and occupational achievement.
Certainly it's worth pointing out that having ADHD does not mean lack of abilities or talents. It's always the goal to enable developing talents, including in the entrepreneurial realm. In reality, the problem is having ADHD is more likely than not to impede reaching that goal.
The science literature on ADHD has repeatedly shown decreased success in important quality-of-life arenas, e.g., greater rates of divorce, less educational achievement, higher rates of unemployment, poorer driving records.
OTOH when the right treatment is provided, ADHD individuals can have a better outcome. The "gold standard" is functioning in a way that's "indistinguishable from normal". It may not be easy to achieve, though I've seen it happen in, well, a lot of cases.
I consider myself a amateur entrepreneur (and a bit successful) with ADHD.
Personally, I believe ADHD is a gift and a problem(s). And the problems need to be solved to receive the gift.. And I read these workarounds or solutions are basics of successful entrepreneurship.
Focus - Staying focused requires significantly more effort (even not doing anything is an effort). This is stressful. When I am working on X, my brain wants to switch to Y, and it goes on with multiple tasks. This used to drive me crazy in early days and had to find a solution early on. For me the solution was a bit change in work schedule, exercise and one ginseng based multivit a day.
Passion - I can work 100+ hour week consistently without burn out - only if I have do some creative work. For a repetitive or not-creative task - it gets boring soon and even 15 hrs a week is a struggle. This makes it very difficult to keep up with processes and discipline. This forces early delegation/automation of boring work and forces me to find out areas I like to work on. (Clearly this doesn't work as an employee).
Attention to detail is deficient naturally, we have to work around this with discipline and practice even in non-entrepreneurial jobs. After some time we get pretty good at it (because of practice).
ADHD folks are likely to have failed a lot in early life. And I believe they are better equipped to tackle failure as adults.
People with ADHD may have a very diverse experience, they know something about everything - probably because they cannot focus/disregard in a natural way. Gaining expertise is more than just hard work for us.
When one cannot remember a lot of things, it forces you to keep it simple. Being a bit forgetful was a bad thing, but now it feels like a good thing - I am a programmer, and I tend to forget my own code if I do not work on it for couple of weeks. However that limitation forces me to write modularised intuitive code. I would consistently forget syntaxes of a language I worked for 5 years - but I would forever remember the patterns/designs I followed. I think, the world to us is more about patterns and behaviours rather than facts and figures. And it is easier to learn with the glass half-full.
After viewing this video, it seems like many people diagnosed for ADHD could be in the CDD/SCT like. This distinction was not made few years back. In fact ADHD sounds seriously scary after looking at this video.
I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child. That is partially why I created this webapp: http://focusr.co/. It helps you focus on one thing at a time, which can be hard enough for people even w/o this diagnosis.
51 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threadOne thing I've always wondered is how adhd folks didn't get selected out through their risky behaviour. Their existence could certainly confer some group benefits - but I thought group selection was no longer well regarded in the evo biol community.
Best relationship ever was with a ADHD risk-taking person. Would do again.
I mean, the guy who takes the time to make a spear and plan an attack is probably gonna live a better life than the dude that charges right into a slap-fight with a lion and the other dude cowering inside the cave.
Adhd is not a superpower. It's an incurable brain disorder. It fucking sucks.
No, it isn't. It's a fucking neurological disorder which affects dopamine production, which interferes with normal brain function.
Imagine sitting down to work on something you really want to finish, but you can't. You're reading reddit instead, because that gives you a quick dose of entertainment. You keep yelling at yourself to do the work, because it's your job on the line. But no, you'll end up looking at cat pictures, because, hey, cats. That's what ADHD is like.
Tapes from older conferences: http://www.audiotapes.com/browse.asp?Topic=3
There is useful practical information buried among clinical studies and pathology discussions.
ADHD doesn't make you some magical hunter, patience does. Reaction time has nothing to do with ADHD, it comes from paying attention when the stimuli comes about, something a person with ADHD can't do.
As for "normal", I base it off the figure of 95%. That is, our brains are different from 95% of humanity. That strikes me as a good definition of abnormal, better than "I surround myself with th those like me, so I'm totally normal".
There is no normal, that's the main point. If you get enough people with "AD(H)D" in a room, and ask a few questions about preferred cognitive styles (sound, light, touch, motor movement) you will discover clusters of preferences and a wide range of differences.
The label ADHD is most useful as a search term for a vocabulary of common challenges. Naming any problem is necessary to develop shared solutions. Prior to the advent of this term, non-neurotypical people independently named their logistical challenges and independently re-invented solutions.
Are you familiar with the term hyperfocus? Is that a strength or weakness?
I've met plenty of people who are 100% ADHD, both parents, all their children, it is inheritable, and the degree to which each person needed treatment for their personal ADHD symptoms tends to vary a lot. ADHD isn't a binary condition, you can have ADHD tendencies, mild ADHD, severe ADHD, etc.
The frustration felt by those suffering with the worst symptoms when people fail to appreciate their condition is hard to fix. While Autism has been the subject of the decade thanks to a particularly disgusting pustule of a human being publishing a particular fraudulent paper in a medical journal, ADHD is quietly toyed with now and then. Most improvements to treatment for ADHD have been accidental and is further hampered by the usual concerns regarding psychoactive pharmacology, what is a legal treatment in one jurisdiction is an illicit narcotic in others.
We're all human, I like lots of other people, have ADHD. Consequently I'm going to post this as written rather than try to edit away the lack of a clear direction or good summation. I've learned to cut my losses on tangential trains of thought, this one has already lead to a rather mushy breakfast :-/
And I totally agree. Some people are given wrenches, other people hammers. The solution isn't to make people really good at tightening bolts with hammers.
I do wonder if survival back in the day actually required the level of risk taking that adhd people are capable of. If you stayed in one place - maybe you ran out of food - things like that.
Can we really say that it is a brain disorder? All that we know is that people with ADHD don't fit into the cultural definition of normal, but that doesn't mean that the definition of normal is correct or that not being normal is a "disorder". How do you know it isn't just a slightly different model of cognition that suffers at some tasks but excels in others. Humans are very good at detecting errors, such as ADHD caused impairment, but not very good at quantifying or detecting potentially positive effects of something like ADHD.
I didn't know, and so I struggled mightily against myself to get to where I am today. In the few months during which time I have been medicated, I have made more career progress than any 5 other years prior.
We only get half a decade of productive life, if something that makes us piss away that time is not a disorder, well then wtf is it?
At this point i'm writing up my thesis, where tracking down, interpreting, and coherently organizing old notepads/napkins, papers, and result files is a full time job. If i want to keep my health (to actually sleep) i really only get 9-10 hours while the remaining 8 are anxiety that it's not getting done or frustration that i can't push out pages at any reasonable pace.
The best advice I can offer is to accept your lack of control over some things. If I don't listen to my body and mind I will suffer. Like what you mentioned with sleep, I actually find it more beneficial to sleep than to work through the tiredness. That way I can come to the subject with a fresh mind.
From personal experience, it's easy to spend money when you don't associate how it will impact your ability to pay rent in 15 days.
I always wondered whether the former is predominant in people with ADHD...
And interestingly computers/smartphones allow us to easily turn the latter into the former.
"Tulving's research has emphasized the importance of episodic memory for our experience of consciousness and our understanding of time. For example, he conducted studies with the amnesic patient KC, who had relatively normal semantic memory but severely impaired episodic memory due to brain damage from a motorcycle accident. Tulving's work with KC highlighted the central importance of episodic memory for the subjective experience of one's self in time, an ability he dubbed "autonoetic consciousness." KC lacked this ability, failing to remember prior events and also failing to imagine or plan for the future."
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episodic_memory
I like to think of it as a gift of creativity.
I can't make claims about anyone else's experience, but the really frustrating thing for me is that these new tangents might actually be truly good ideas worth pursuing[1]-- maybe even better things to work on than what I'm doing currently. But I've been through this process before, and so I just write down whatever this amazing new thought was in a notebook, and then convince myself I'll follow up on it later.
I almost never do.
Still, the fact that I can't trust myself to switch tasks really bothers me, and even the strategy of writing things down and pretending I'll handle it later is not 100% effective[2]. So it's a mixed bag, where you might think of it as a gift because new and exciting thoughts are always popping in, ready to distract you, but in my case it is definitely also a disorder since a lot of the things I want to do require a certain degree of focus and commitment, and if I abandon them when I first start to feel bored I'd likely be unable to get through to the really worthwhile stuff.
---
1. The key is of course that they seem to be good ideas, but that might just be my brain fooling itself in order to persuade me to goof off.
2. I currently have something like 800 tabs open, the results of thinking "oh I'll just read a little about this", getting distracted/having to sleep, and now they sit across my various browser windows, preserved in the amber of my virtual memory.
Martin Scorsese's Notebook for The Godfather: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DJfJJogeOdo
People with ADHD can also be found in professions like accounting and law – which provide compensatory external structure.
Some people would find it easier to locate objects if all containers (boxes, closets, drawers, fridges) could be made transparent on demand. Until then, we have vertical surfaces, metal wires + strong magnets, foamcore, whiteboard paint, mesh drawers and transparent plastic containers.
When I need to describe to people where it will go, it rarely works well. I seem to have determined that the direction my mind takes me tends to be good though, and I should trust it. Some things didn't make sense for a year and then finally clicked once other things fell into place.
I'm speaking as an entrepreneur. The article describes me well. I also keep many, many tabs open.
HBO 2013 documentary on dyslexia, with Charles Schwab & Richard Branson: http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Picture-Rethinking-Dyslexia/dp...
Books with behavioral strategies:
Organizing for the Creative Person, http://www.amazon.com/Organizing-Creative-Person-Right-Brain...
Neurodiversity, http://www.amazon.com/Neurodiversity-Discovering-Extraordina...
Learning to Learn, http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Learn-Rosemary-Bowler/dp/0684...
Learning Outside the Lines, http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Outside-Lines-Disabilities-Ed...
ADD Success Stories, http://www.amazon.com/ADD-Success-Stories-Fulfillment-Attent...
Spark (exercise), http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-B...
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo
Can I get a summary, in text?
Thanks! :-)
1: https://youtu.be/_tpB-B8BXk0
To others, do not be intimidated by the length. If you have or know someone with ADHD you've got to watch this and get the friends and family to watch too.
The article speaks of entrepreneurial tendencies among ADHD individuals, but I admit evaluating the claim based on the data given was difficult. I didn't have the time required to make sense of the opaque presentation. However, does appear sampling biases were likely since subjects were obtained from ADHD support groups, where attendees are likely not representative of the entire ADHD population. Furthermore, it's not clear what, if any, diagnostic processes were used to determine ADHD status, thus the sample probably a "mixed bag" and hard to know which populations conclusions apply to.
There is a major difference between vernacular usage of "ADD", and the plight of seriously affected individuals that come to clinical attention. As I apply the term, ADHD is not a minor or trivial condition, the data show it's associated with increased health risks, comorbid psychiatric disorders, as well as worse outcomes in social and occupational achievement.
Certainly it's worth pointing out that having ADHD does not mean lack of abilities or talents. It's always the goal to enable developing talents, including in the entrepreneurial realm. In reality, the problem is having ADHD is more likely than not to impede reaching that goal.
The science literature on ADHD has repeatedly shown decreased success in important quality-of-life arenas, e.g., greater rates of divorce, less educational achievement, higher rates of unemployment, poorer driving records.
OTOH when the right treatment is provided, ADHD individuals can have a better outcome. The "gold standard" is functioning in a way that's "indistinguishable from normal". It may not be easy to achieve, though I've seen it happen in, well, a lot of cases.
Personally, I believe ADHD is a gift and a problem(s). And the problems need to be solved to receive the gift.. And I read these workarounds or solutions are basics of successful entrepreneurship.
Focus - Staying focused requires significantly more effort (even not doing anything is an effort). This is stressful. When I am working on X, my brain wants to switch to Y, and it goes on with multiple tasks. This used to drive me crazy in early days and had to find a solution early on. For me the solution was a bit change in work schedule, exercise and one ginseng based multivit a day.
Passion - I can work 100+ hour week consistently without burn out - only if I have do some creative work. For a repetitive or not-creative task - it gets boring soon and even 15 hrs a week is a struggle. This makes it very difficult to keep up with processes and discipline. This forces early delegation/automation of boring work and forces me to find out areas I like to work on. (Clearly this doesn't work as an employee).
Attention to detail is deficient naturally, we have to work around this with discipline and practice even in non-entrepreneurial jobs. After some time we get pretty good at it (because of practice).
ADHD folks are likely to have failed a lot in early life. And I believe they are better equipped to tackle failure as adults.
People with ADHD may have a very diverse experience, they know something about everything - probably because they cannot focus/disregard in a natural way. Gaining expertise is more than just hard work for us.
When one cannot remember a lot of things, it forces you to keep it simple. Being a bit forgetful was a bad thing, but now it feels like a good thing - I am a programmer, and I tend to forget my own code if I do not work on it for couple of weeks. However that limitation forces me to write modularised intuitive code. I would consistently forget syntaxes of a language I worked for 5 years - but I would forever remember the patterns/designs I followed. I think, the world to us is more about patterns and behaviours rather than facts and figures. And it is easier to learn with the glass half-full.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCAGc-rkIfo
After viewing this video, it seems like many people diagnosed for ADHD could be in the CDD/SCT like. This distinction was not made few years back. In fact ADHD sounds seriously scary after looking at this video.