With ADHD, for many it's nigh on impossible to get focused, no mater how high the stakes are - to the point where it seems extremely irresponsible and downright irrational to normal observers.
Imagine that almost everything in your life, is the equivalent of starting on a test/exam 2 hours before the deadline, even though you've had a week or two to finish it.
The problem with ADHD is that it applies to everything in your life, not just work. You're equally unable to do chores, hobbies, have fun, or even finish watching a TV series. Actually, they're even harder to do than work because there's no pressure on you to keep up with it.
>You're equally unable to do chores, hobbies, have fun, or even finish watching a TV series.
ADHD does affect everything in my life, but I don't relate to this part. For me, it primarily manifests as there being an immense amount of inertia required to do things I don't want to do. I have no issue doing things I intrinsically want to do.
If it's a TV show, hobby, or fun-having activity that I really like, then I'm perfectly able to do them. If I don't like them, then, yeah, they're probably never getting done, or only getting done in a very pathological way. Procrastinating 3 months of work until the day before the deadline, procrastinating cleaning something for a year until someone has to come over to visit, procrastinating taxes until an hour before midnight on tax day. It's the same story every time.
If it's a hobby or TV show I don't like, then I have no reason to continue it. My ADHD and motivation signal to me what what I actually do and don't want to do during my fleeting period of existence. I feel no guilt about dropping something like that if it can't hold my attention. I only feel guilt when it's something I really should be doing, like work, paperwork, etc., and especially things where I know I'm losing lots of money by not doing it.
There are plenty of things I want to want to do, and those things will never get done. But if I actually want to do something, with no meta-layers, then there's no issue for me.
Your experience matches mine, apart from that I find that if I'm procrastinating on important/severe enough things, then my ability to do even things I enjoy diminishes too.
Personally I think the reason is that the cognitive dissonance gets in the way... I know that I absolutely should urgently do X (important thing I'm putting off) and all the time I don't, I cannot reconcile a deliberate decision to do Y (trivial thing I'd really enjoy). So with the inability to do either X or Y, I just end up being fully stuck and in total deadlock.
Most of the time this situation is preceded by many days, weeks or months of me DOING all those things I enjoy while blissfully neglecting the things I should be doing. It's the end result of this behaviour that eventually leads to the deadlock.
Actually, yeah, I relate to that 100%, too. (Even doing it right this second.) I just spend a lot more of my time in the neglect phase than the "caught up to me" phase.
Yes the deadlock phase is front of mind for me right now because I’ve been in it for a couple of weeks.
But you’re right that the “neglect phase” accounts for the vast majority of time. And when I’m in that, I forget all about the existence of the “deadlock phase” even though I’ll be hurtling towards another one.
Good to know that this self-destructive behaviour is common at least :)
Both of your accounts match my experience, even down to the forgetting. ADHD people are generally bad at self-reflection, and I know I definitely am, despite having gotten better at it over the years.
I’m so happy to see this discussion happening on HN
It's actually seeing such discussions about ADHD over the years on HN that led me to seek an assessment and to ultimately be diagnosed myself only a few weeks ago.
It was a massive paradigm shift for me which I'm only still coming to terms with. The various discussions that pop up on HN about this topic have been hugely helpful. More so than many other places on the internet.
I hate to be this condescending but why is this not just ordinary laziness? Do we really need to go to a doctor so that we hear that we have a problem, and we might need medicine, to focus?
Isn't it more likely that a constant stream of never ending notifications and interruptions decrease our attention span to seconds? You can't read a book because you can't read an article, and you can't read and article because you read 6 line long hackernews or reddit comment that "might" contain some knowledge. Your brain evolved to adapt and it adapted to a world where everything might take your attention elsewhere. You can work to fix this.
ADHD is a very well studied medical phenomenon, which results from physical differences from the brain. When it does apply, getting the right kind of help can be life changing.
And even if it is "ordinary laziness", that doesn't mean that seeking confirmation of it something is ADHD or not is a bad exercise, if you can afford it. The lack of motivation also is a very good sign that the OP is heavily disconnected from their work, and needs to find another job or lifestyle, especially if it's this bad and they don't have ADHD.
If it is ADHD, then you have confirmation of a very helpful community and set of medical and psychological tools that you can apply, and you can ignore vast
amounts of advice that just doesn't work for people with ADHD.
> Do we really need to go to a doctor so that we hear that we have a problem, and we might need medicine, to focus?
Modern society can be very inflexible if you're in the wrong spot, and don't have the ability to explain why the fit is so bad.
Lastly, many people who do have ADHD have been told that they are lazy or haven't lived to their potential their entire lives. They know they don't fit in. They pick over their brains, looking for ways to do better, trying ways to do better. They are, as a population, far more self-examined than the norm. They don't need your doubt, they have plenty of their own.
Consider how people like to say they have OCD because they think it’s just “liking to be clean”. Most people like things to be clean, right? So anyone could be diagnosed with OCD on a bad day, couldn’t they? No, because OCD is caused by underlying physical problems with the brain that cause very specific symptoms that interfere greatly with your life. When you see a person who is actually diagnosed with OCD, it becomes really clear that none of these other jokers have it.
The problem with ADHD is that instead of hand washing or checking doors or other very unusual rituals, it mostly just looks like laziness to a casual observer.
> No, because OCD is caused by underlying physical problems with the brain that cause very specific symptoms that interfere greatly with your life.
OCD is merely a label for a cluster of symptoms. It says nothing about the cause. The same can be said for the majority of psychiatric diagnoses afaik.
While we don’t know the exact cause of OCD or ADHD, physically, we do have research that describes correlations. Particularly for ADHD, we know certain areas of the brain that control executive function are generally smaller in people with ADHD. We also know that they generally have lower levels of certain brain chemicals, and we have learned far more about it through radioactive isotope examination of the brain as well.
For OCD: Research suggests that OCD involves problems in communication between the front part of the brain and deeper structures of the brain. These brain structures use a neurotransmitter (basically, a chemical messenger) called serotonin. Pictures of the brain at work also show that, in some people, the brain circuits involved in OCD become more normal with either medications that affect serotonin levels (serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SRIs) or cognitive behavior therapy (CBT).
Just because we don’t know the precise cause doesn’t mean we cannot, in the meantime, help alleviate the symptoms for someone suffering from the syndrome (since we don’t know the precise cause).
Please don’t get in the way of this by implying people are “making it up,” because, simply, they are not. Both of these are extremely well studied syndromes, but really only in the last few decades.
> Just because we don’t know the precise cause doesn’t mean we cannot, in the meantime, help alleviate the symptoms for someone suffering from the syndrome (since we don’t know the precise cause).
I didn’t imply anything contrary to that.
> Please don’t get in the way of this by implying people are “making it up,” because, simply, they are not. Both of these are extremely well studied syndromes, but really only in the last few decades.
I didn’t imply people are making it up.
HN guidelines are “Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”.
I understand that you find it natural to jump to conclusions about what others think, but it really damages good discussion.
> correlations
Exactly - for many psychiatric symptoms the causes are not actually known -instead we just measure a bunch of complicated things and try to read the tea leaves.
Sorry, I really did not mean to give that impression, and I do not trivialise mental health issues.
There is a hell of a lot of bullshit in psychology and psychiatry, sometimes to the point of abusing those they are supposed to help.
I do think that the beliefs like "my brain is wired wrong" or "it's a brain chemistry problem" are usually wrong for some conditions, and that those beliefs can be harmful because they discourage seeking less obvious solutions or solutions particular to the person.
Also you do not want unrealistic expectations of a "cure", or to encourage seeking of dangerous interventions.
The friends I have with mental health issues usually have another layer of strange personal beliefs, which doesn't help either!
It is a difficult topic to comment on, because people tend to be sensitive about it, for valid reasons.
Thanks for clarifying. I agree with everything you've said and I realise that I may have misinterpreted what you were trying to say in your previous comment.
> It is a difficult topic to comment on, because people tend to be sensitive about it, for valid reasons.
It definitely is.
Having been recently diagnosed (via medical professionals) with ADHD, I've suddenly encountered for the first time what it's like to be on the other side of this.
I previously had a very misinformed idea of what ADHD (and related things like OCD) actually were. I wouldn't have trivialised them necessarily in words or conversation, but I definitely had a completely wrong understanding of the seriousness of these conditions. I didn't know what I didn't know.
The misconceptions about some of these conditions are so widespread that in my case, I've found it actively unhelpful in some cases to talk to many people in my life about it. Having done the research, I now understand much more about how my brain works and why some things are much harder for me than others, but trying to bridge the gap in this knowledge with others is really hard. Even those closest to me either view the diagnosis with suspicion (and I don't blame them for that if they have the same misconcieved idea about the condition that I did). Others just listen to me describing the problems I have and dismiss them (not intentionally) by saying things like "everyone has those problems"!
I've heard (perhaps even read on HN) that after being diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood you go through a bit of a grieving phase, in denial, then angry at medical professionals who didn't it spot it before, and then sadness at how your life might have been had you realised you had this condition much earlier. I'm in that phase now, and so the lack of understanding from others (which again, I don't blame them for) makes this all the more harder. I'm trying to reincorporate this new understanding into the "model" of myself that I've constructed over many years (without this important information) - it's tough and rather isolating.
So all of that said. I guess I'm likely to view a lot of discussion on this topic through my own specific lens, which is likely to make me overly sensitive to perceived "trivialisation".
It's interesting to recognise that I wouldn't have had this sensitivity at all only just a matter of weeks ago. It's funny how your outlook on things can change so significantly in a short space of time.
Only if your only criteria for validity for a psychiatric evaluation is having a clear correlation between brain chemistry and the diagnosis. I think the parent comment is just trying to explore where the boundary lies between mental disorder and personality trait. Maybe some psychiatrists here on HN could help add to the discussion and we could all learn more from it.
> Do we really need to go to a doctor so that we hear that we have a problem, and we might need medicine, to focus?
> You can work to fix this.
Going to a doctor is "working to fix it", and it's a lot of work to keep the prescriptions filled since nobody will give you more than 30 days supply of the useful medicines. There is plenty of other stuff you can do. It's just none of it works unless you do the medication first.
If you don't have the physical causes of ADHD, the medication won't help much, but other things like therapy or going on vacation will. With ADHD it's the opposite.
There's a growing group of psychologists who say laziness is a myth. It doesn't exist. When someone is being what we would call lazy, there is almost always something else going on.
I don't mind this take. I'm lazy as hell. I can't make myself care about doing things enough to do them. I would love to magically change that, but no luck so far. Meds help but they don't help enough that I remember to take them or get them refilled. Behavioral interventions have been shown to help, i.e. get off the damn screen and meditate, get outside.
It's not that I can't read a book, I just forget that I wanted to read it. Then by the time I remember I already have my phone out and hn pulled up. Call it laziness, call it ADHD. I don't care, and I don't expect sympathy just like someone who can't do calculus doesn't need sympathy. Some things just seem harder for me than they are for some people.
Hmm. Could that be why I fail to be a completionist in games? I play computer games, but don't give a rip about achievements or multiple playthroughs... They are fun, but as soon as I beat it, I move on.
You're joking right? You move on from a fun activity when it stops being fun you so think you may have a disorder? I don't want to seem insensitive to genuinely troubled individuals but there seems to be a pattern on HN where every single topic about productivity is now swamped with people claiming that "ADHD" is the cause of not caring about things that aren't worth caring about and not trying hard when you don't need to, etc., all of this being completely rational. It seems like a collective delusion or something akin to a dysmorphia.
In internet culture, self-diagnosing Asperger's syndrome was a huge trend in the mid to late 2000's. Skeptics often claimed it was an excuse to cover up for social deficiencies and awkwardness.
There are similar phenomena of people doing that with all sorts of maladies or abstract identities, from chronic fatigue syndrome to being an introvert. I find ADHD to be an odd choice though, relatively. It seems like it's been at least a decade or two where over-diagnosis of ADD/ADHD was highly criticized, albeit when it comes to diagnosing children (mostly boys) and giving them Ritalin and not adults.
I self-diagnosed Aspergers in the mid 2000s. The primarily inattentive subtype of ADHD is a better match for my symptoms, particularly the social ones, but both my psychiatrist and neuropsychologist agreed that my self-diagnosis made sense and I have traits of both disorders. They are very often comorbid. I just wasn't familiar enough with the diagnostic criteria of ADHD to realize I had it. (A roommate with ADHD that I had at the time suggested it, though.)
Also, ADHD is in fact under-diagnosed, particularly in adults and especially in women.
I don't mean to dismiss everyone who self-diagnoses. I was pointing out a known social phenomenon or trend of people doing so, possibly because of greater public awareness of the condition. Also see gluten intolerance for a non-psychological example.
Funnily enough, I chanced upon a random YouTube video yesterday and the very top comment was someone mentioning ADHD and others chiming in, while skeptics criticizing the self-diagnosing and likening it to those who self-diagnose other conditions such as depression:
Whether right or wrong, it definitely is a known internet social phenomenon. That's what the ancestral post in this current subthread was referring to by referring to ADHD as the new Asperger's.
> There are similar phenomena of people doing that with all sorts of maladies or abstract identities, from chronic fatigue syndrome to being an introvert
I don't discount this completely, but I think the argument could be equally strong that we have gained a lot of additional understanding over the last 20 years. There are plenty of conditions that used to be rarely diagnosed (or didn't even exist in medical science) but now are. Just because something didn't used to have a label or definition, but now does, doesn't make it any less valid.
For example we can see differences in ADHD brains with fMRI - something only _relatively_ recently possible. And as medical science gets better at defining and describing these things, more information gets shared, more people talk about their experiences, and the net effect is that unsurprisingly more people identify with that new information. Some self-diagnose rightly or wrongly and leave it at that, others (plenty others I think) use this recognition as a cue to go and speak to a medical expert, which often precedes a formal, valid diagnosis.
Maybe they actually were ADHD due to childhood lead exposure. ADHD treatments don't have many downsides (although I'm sure people thought they did at the time) except for reducing your appetite and doctor's bills, so it's not like it caused long term harm.
Aren't the medications amphetamines though? Certainly the backlash against over-diagnosis of ADHD in the '00s was fear of kids given drugs during their formative years for "being rambunctious." Very adults it's likely different though.
Not all the medications are amphetamines. The most popular medication, Ritalin, is not an amphetamine.
Even the ADHD prescribed amphetamine medication is dextroamphetamine, not the scary methamphetamine.
There are also several medications that are not stimulants. While I do believe that children should be prescribed the minimum medications during their formative years, I've talked to several teachers whose students now have a prescription because the children were doing school at home and finally followed the teacher's recommendation.
Asking if a commenter is joking goes kind of goes against the HN Guidelines regardless if you wanted to come off as insensitive or not:
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."
I mean, ADHD awareness has gone up a ton in the past year. I definitely agree that "isn't a video game completionist" is hardly a reason, on it's own, to question if one has ADHD, but it could very well be one part of a puzzle if someone has other patterns that line up.
You’re right; this fact alone does not diagnose someone with ADHD. Nobody is disputing that.
But we don’t have the parent’s full context - they may have had a dozen other symptoms that they have finally been made aware of, and in that context this may be a symptom.
I don’t play video games enough for it to be one for me, but if I did, I would almost certainly have trouble being a “completionist.” That doesn’t mean I have ADHD, but coupled with about two dozen other personality traits and symptoms, and tons of self-reflection and medical help, it could be a part of that.
Since ADHD is a neurobiological disorder that people are born with, and because undiagnosed ADHD can cause depression, it should be ruled out before diagnosing depression. Same with anxiety.
It's more of an issue of organizing and properly prioritizing one's thoughts, along with the irl output being misaligned. This usually results in an incredible amount frustration that gets fed back into the thought loop and frequently causes confusion, which that confusion contributes to the above and can lead to depression and/or anxiety (both in my case unfortunately).
The struggle is more than the simplistic description of "this is not interesting. It bores me", it's really "my brain is uncomfortably overwhelmed with coordinating my thoughts with the tasks at hand to the point of feeling angry/anxious/down/<fill in negative emotion>, but oooo I could just cook a familiar recipe which won't require much thinking and can relieve me of, and potentially help with, this mental situation". It's complicated and requires a lot of "tricks" to deal with it. This is the case whether there are tasks to do, if one is just reflecting in thought, thinking up ideas, conversing, reading, etc... even writing this has taken me 10-15 minutes tbh...
Yeah, I 100% relate to this, and I bet a lot of people do. I would wager that ADHD like most things exists along a spectrum, and that its symptoms in mild cases can be coped with. I'm sure there's a point at which they becomes impossible.
Imagine that almost everything in your life, is the equivalent of starting on a test/exam 2 hours before the deadline, even though you've had a week or two to finish it.