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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

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.

rtpg 7y ago
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
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  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...
  - jordanbeiber 7y ago
    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. The work never stops, so force it! Just do it.
  - throwaway743 7y ago
    >> 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 :)
    - jordanbeiber 7y ago
kv0 7y ago
As someone who has ADD and is going to have to run a family on ADD I'd totally read that.
- vdwijngaert 7y ago
  As soon as I get the left border color of this button just right.
  - jordanbeiber 7y ago
    I was thinking, "as soon as I find the _perfect_ domain name". It could take a while. =)
    - mercer 7y ago
      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.
      - jordanbeiber 7y ago
        Oh, the CMS race. Done it a few times already. Many nights spent building custom WP plugins and trying out static site generators. 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.
      - 7y ago
blotter_paper 7y ago
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-daughter-asked-me-stop-writing-about-motherhood-heres-why-i-cant-do-that/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/01/03/my-daugh...
- dkersten 7y ago
  > I don’t agree with her at all Who is “her” in this case — the writer or the daughter?
  - lilbobbytables 7y ago
    Judging by his general recommendations, the writer.
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    lilbobbytables was spot on, sorry for the ambiguity!
    - dkersten 7y ago
      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).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
schappim 7y ago
>> just such a bad idea when someone jumps on your face at 6. I second this!
cshimmin 7y ago
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!
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  One thing that actually was important in kicking things off was reading/hearing this quote somewhere, probably the interweb. 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.
Mirioron 7y ago
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. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/diagnosis.html https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/diagnosis.html
- joshuak 7y ago
  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.
- andai 7y ago
  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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzhbAK1pdPM&list=PLzBixSjmbc8eFl6UX5_wWGP8i0mAs-cvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzhbAK1pdPM&list=PLzBixSjmbc...
  - jordanbeiber 7y ago
    Have to second the emotional and relationship aspect of it. 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”
amelius 7y ago
Are there techniques to trick your mind into thinking that something is interesting?
- blue4 7y ago
  Rewarding yourself after a boring activity is kind of cliche?, but it works. Eating a piece of candy after going to the gym for example.
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  For me personally, no. 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”?
  - bridanp 7y ago
    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.
kuzimoto 7y ago
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?
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  Made a short-list in a comment below!
ycombinete 7y ago
> 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.
- beat 7y ago
  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.
  - jordanbeiber 7y ago
    I hear my partner is not the only one that worries? :) I’m constantly playing the “no ones died yet on my watch” card. It somehow doesn’t make her feel any better.
    - beat 7y ago
      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.
  - _1100 7y ago
    I strongly second the use of a bullet journal. 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...
bpyne 7y ago
Yes to everything, especially about having kids! 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.
- athenot 7y ago
  > The thought of one more trivial task in my day completely paralyzed me for weeks, but I felt increasing anxiety and the depression worsened. Wow, this describes a few recent events for me. Thanks for sharing!
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > 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.
beat 7y ago
I can relate on the family stuff. 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.
Hendrikto 7y ago
> I have ADD and pretty much recognize myself in a lot of this. 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.
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  Yes of course. 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.
scruple 7y ago
I see a lot of myself and my own behavior in this comment and I'd love to hear about your experiences on running your family!
simonebrunozzi 7y ago
> 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.
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  > many of us 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.
JabavuAdams 7y ago
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.
jackninja1 7y ago
Could you please write about this! Sounds very interesting!

rtpg 7y ago

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

jordanbeiber 7y ago
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...
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  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. The work never stops, so force it! Just do it.
- throwaway743 7y ago
  >> 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 :)
  - jordanbeiber 7y ago

kv0 7y ago

As someone who has ADD and is going to have to run a family on ADD I'd totally read that.

vdwijngaert 7y ago
As soon as I get the left border color of this button just right.
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  I was thinking, "as soon as I find the _perfect_ domain name". It could take a while. =)
  - mercer 7y ago
    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.
    - jordanbeiber 7y ago
      Oh, the CMS race. Done it a few times already. Many nights spent building custom WP plugins and trying out static site generators. 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.
    - 7y ago

blotter_paper 7y ago

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-daughter-asked-me-stop-writing-about-motherhood-heres-why-i-cant-do-that/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/01/03/my-daugh...

dkersten 7y ago
> I don’t agree with her at all Who is “her” in this case — the writer or the daughter?
- lilbobbytables 7y ago
  Judging by his general recommendations, the writer.
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  lilbobbytables was spot on, sorry for the ambiguity!
  - dkersten 7y ago
    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).

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

schappim 7y ago

>> just such a bad idea when someone jumps on your face at 6. I second this!

cshimmin 7y ago

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!

jordanbeiber 7y ago
One thing that actually was important in kicking things off was reading/hearing this quote somewhere, probably the interweb. 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.

Mirioron 7y ago

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. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/diagnosis.html https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/diagnosis.html

joshuak 7y ago
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.
andai 7y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzhbAK1pdPM&list=PLzBixSjmbc8eFl6UX5_wWGP8i0mAs-cvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzhbAK1pdPM&list=PLzBixSjmbc...
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  Have to second the emotional and relationship aspect of it. 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”

amelius 7y ago

Are there techniques to trick your mind into thinking that something is interesting?

blue4 7y ago
Rewarding yourself after a boring activity is kind of cliche?, but it works. Eating a piece of candy after going to the gym for example.
jordanbeiber 7y ago
For me personally, no. 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”?
- bridanp 7y ago
  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.

kuzimoto 7y ago

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?

jordanbeiber 7y ago
Made a short-list in a comment below!

ycombinete 7y ago

> 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.

beat 7y ago
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.
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  I hear my partner is not the only one that worries? :) I’m constantly playing the “no ones died yet on my watch” card. It somehow doesn’t make her feel any better.
  - beat 7y ago
    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.
- _1100 7y ago
  I strongly second the use of a bullet journal. 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...

bpyne 7y ago

Yes to everything, especially about having kids! 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.

athenot 7y ago
> The thought of one more trivial task in my day completely paralyzed me for weeks, but I felt increasing anxiety and the depression worsened. Wow, this describes a few recent events for me. Thanks for sharing!
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> 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.

beat 7y ago

I can relate on the family stuff. 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.

Hendrikto 7y ago

> I have ADD and pretty much recognize myself in a lot of this. 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.

jordanbeiber 7y ago
Yes of course. 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.

scruple 7y ago

I see a lot of myself and my own behavior in this comment and I'd love to hear about your experiences on running your family!

simonebrunozzi 7y ago

> 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.

jordanbeiber 7y ago
> many of us 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.

JabavuAdams 7y ago

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.

jackninja1 7y ago

Could you please write about this! Sounds very interesting!