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Primarily: medication Secondarily: being able to have a short hand category for looking up strategies to handle my own challenges and finding a sympathetic comm

by zhynn 5y ago

Primarily: medication Secondarily: being able to have a short hand category for looking up strategies to handle my own challenges and finding a sympathetic community of people with eerily similar challenges. The medication has been surprising. I have all my life thought that I had anxiety. So I did various compensating behaviors to manage the anxiety. I now know that I was anxious because of my ADHD behaviors, and addressing the anxiety made things tolerable, but didn't really deal with the underlying problem. I am a curious person. I will hyper-focus on rabbit holes, which is a super power when you are hooked on a relevant problem. But if I should be doing work, but I am hyper focused on something interesting but irrelevant (like, for example, the history and usage of the Shopsmith woodworking multi-tool), it creates anxiety because I should be working. The drugs are helping me control my focus better, which is something I have never been able to do. I just had to ride the current before, but now I feel like I have some control of the current. It's not perfect, I am still sorting things out, I have only been on this path for a few months. I think that "ADHD" is poorly named, because I don't think of my hyper-focus as "hyperactivity". And I don't really think I have "Attention Deficit", so much as difficulty controlling where my attention is directed.

300bps 5y ago
Thank you for the interesting perspective! You and I sound fairly similar in terms of symptoms. For the anxiety I went with a book that someone recommended to me on HN called, "Learned Optimism". I went from having moderate to severe anxiety for decades to pretty much zero. It's work, but was tremendously worth it. I have spent time on solving procrastination with less success. Most notable was reading, "Solving the Procrastination Puzzle". For me the most successful technique is "Just get started". I think I have two issues that cause me to not start on things: 1) before it's started, it's a perfect little idea. after starting, it leads to imperfect compromises to get it done. 2) I fear it will be harder than it actually is. "Just get started" pushes through both of these for me.

by zhynn 5y ago

300bps 5y ago

Thank you for the interesting perspective! You and I sound fairly similar in terms of symptoms. For the anxiety I went with a book that someone recommended to me on HN called, "Learned Optimism". I went from having moderate to severe anxiety for decades to pretty much zero. It's work, but was tremendously worth it. I have spent time on solving procrastination with less success. Most notable was reading, "Solving the Procrastination Puzzle". For me the most successful technique is "Just get started". I think I have two issues that cause me to not start on things: 1) before it's started, it's a perfect little idea. after starting, it leads to imperfect compromises to get it done. 2) I fear it will be harder than it actually is. "Just get started" pushes through both of these for me.