5 ms·

My take - note taking is a symtom of ADHD. The fact these topics are popular on HN suggests there are quite a lot of ADHD people here. The counter intuitive th

My take - note taking is a symtom of ADHD. The fact these topics are popular on HN suggests there are quite a lot of ADHD people here. The counter intuitive thing is that these apps are thought of as something that helps with attention disorders. But wanting to "organize life", "track thoughts and ideas", "never forget what you learned", etc, are symptoms, not cures.

MattGaiser 5y ago
Do you not have a need to regularly record information in your life for later (genuine question)? I am curious how you avoid note taking without forgetting a ton of things.
- Fuzzwah 5y ago
  I'm not the person you're directing the question to, but I actively have to self medicate so I don't remember every thing. I also need to take notes to raise the important things above the useless things that I remember.
- tgaj 5y ago
  I am not sure if I understood this question but with unmedicated ADHD you really have to write everything down, even the smallest, simplest tasks, and a lot of information for "future me". I even have to write about things that I do every day. Nothing really sticks in your mind. Notetaking is not a choice but a neccesity. When you are medicated you still want to take notes it you want to be even more organized but you can choose not too and probably be fine like a lot of other people without ADHD.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    As far as I know I do not have ADHD. I still find it quite useful to write everything down and make sure that I completed everything I needed to do that day. Very easy to forget to reply to someone or that some small thing has a deadline upcoming. If I really care about the meetings I attended being useful (not often), I will take notes on what is discussed and decided.
fredrikholm 5y ago
Having recently started medication for ADHD, this applied to me. Now that my brain operates more closely to my neurotypical peers, I've found myself not needing to take constant notes and review my day in order to remember things.
1_player 5y ago
I have ADHD and for me note taking has always been a novelty; like todo lists. I get excited about it, I forget about it the next day. Most days I kept thinking "I should write this down", and then didn't. But now that I am _diagnosed_ with the thing, I will try and make more use of note taking, since I'm made aware my memory isn't great.
- tgaj 5y ago
  I have ADHD too and for some reasons sometimes even an idea to write sth down is painful. But I still try and I think that's something that you can train yourself to do. But you really have to do that every day or even every hour.
WA 5y ago
Funny, but nah. Writing it down is a way to structure thoughts and get it out of your system. But I use a simple text editor (Sublime) for this and I write them in a braindump-kind-of-way. There's really only one thing you gotta know about note-taking: you either optimize for fast writing or for fast information retrieval. Since I rarely read my notes, I optimize for fast dumping them. All apps and organizational schemes like Zettelkasten try to optimize the information retrieval aspect, which imho, is probably not that important for many people.
- sputr 5y ago
  > Writing it down is a way to structure thoughts and get it out of your system. Why do you feel the need to "structure thoughts" and "get it out of your system"? Asking as a way to point out that feeling the need to do it is not a forgone conclusion.
  - kragen 5y ago
    > Why do you feel the need to "structure thoughts" Well, because the alternative is for your thoughts to be unstructured. Lots of people live their lives that way: reminiscing about that time they got so drunk or really told that guy off, repeating funny lines they heard on some TV series, rehearsing ethnic or religious stereotypes, complaining about the neighbors' loud music, trying to get laid, and heating up some hamburgers at dinnertime. Lots of people are content to be consumers and to repeat what they've heard. Then they die. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can structure your thoughts. You can be a creator, not just a consumer, and to a significant extent you can direct your life to a goal rather than simply floating at random. Notetaking is helpful for doing that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30098854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30098854
  - WA 5y ago
    > Why do you feel the need to "structure thoughts" and "get it out of your system"? I give you a simple example. If you play Wordle and you stop to think about your next guess, you can make all the possible permutations in your brain. This is possible with the downside that you might start to think in loops and consider the same word-pattern over and over again. Or you write them down and solve the next guess by doing all permutations on paper (or a text editor). Note-taking is somewhat similar. Structuring thoughts for me means that I write them down to avoid looping around the same thing all the time. I get it out of my system, because my brain isn't stuck in the same loop. Note-taking helps to speed up the passive brain processing task in some cases. Not always. Not for everything.
odiroot 5y ago
> My take - note taking is a symtom of ADHD It's not a symptom of ADHD. It's one of the coping strategies for people with ADHD who have problems memorising things.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- iqanq 5y ago
- kkoncevicius 5y ago
  If note taking is used to help with memory, it should be done under rules or supervision, in my opinion. The usual way to track knowledge and tasks is within a project. You come to a road block, do research, overcome, and continue. But many of those note taking posts talk about personal "wiki" projects and tracking _everything_. I suspect that with ADHD its hard to filter out the important things from background. And based on my observation wth these apps people start organizing and remembering this "background". When background noise is reduced the need for complex apps is no longer there - there are a lot fewer things left that are worth remembering. (exceptions apply, of course)
  - medstrom 5y ago
  - carschno 5y ago
    I think the parent's implication was that not taking is a coping strategy for ADHD, but it does not mean that note taking indicates ADHD. Meaning that you are probably right that ADHD patient should be supervised or guided in note taking, but that does not necessarily apply to other note takers.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >The usual way to track knowledge and tasks is within a project. You come to a road block, do research, overcome, and continue. That might be your personal experience/bias speaking. For many creative endeavours there's not a "single project" where you do research, finish, wrap up and that's it. You need to track lots of pieces of information across many projects, domains, and across time.
sm_ts 5y ago
Absolutely "not necessarily". SWE requires an extensive amount of learning (if you're lucky :)). Unless one has extraordinary mnemonic capabilities, note taking is a way to structure and store concepts. Even if this wasn't the case, personal notes are still a more efficient/effective way than googling, for two reasons: 1. on the notes, one puts the processed version of a concept, so that it's safer/more stable/improved/cleaner/adapted etc. 2. personal notes follow the mind of who writes them, so the concepts are faster to find.
_xnmw 5y ago
Are you implying that note-taking is an unhealthy obsession, or coping mechanism? Pretty much every famous and successful inventor, artist, writer, or leader, from Winston Churchill to Leonardo Da Vinci left behind a copious, almost obsessive amount of notes/diaries/sketches/lists.
coldtea 5y ago
>But wanting to "organize life", "track thoughts and ideas", "never forget what you learned", etc, are symptoms, not cures. It's the inverse. Note-taking might be a symptom of OCD or autism disorders (that can make people compulsively take notes or enjoying collecting information in itself), but they are cures (or, rather, coping strategies) for ADHD. ADHD is not manifested as "tendency to take notes" for note-taking to be a symptom. It's manifested as tendency to be disorganized, to have trouble tracking thoughts, forgetting, etc - which makes note-taking a way to manage symptoms. It's looks like you fell for the "correlation equals causation" fallacy, not in a study, but in a simple real life observation that should have been trivial to see the right casual direction!
- unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  Note-taking is a really reliable route out of OCD rumination, actually. My day can be ruined by positive and negative ruminations. Writing stuff down really helps me let go of them.
unfocussed_mike 5y ago
For me, note-taking is: 1) a symptom of being a freelancer with multiple clients who revisits projects sometimes a decade after doing them. It is the only way to proceed -- even if you were to assert that persistent "documentation" of a project is distinct from "notes" about it, those notes are still essential. 2) a route towards making that documentation; it's easier to assemble documentation from things you've noted than to start with a blank page. 3) a way to know, deeply, what it is I actually think about something. Not just what I think right now in that moment, but why. What facts I took into account; what facts I disregarded, why I disregarded them, and why I might need to revisit that next time.

MattGaiser 5y ago

Do you not have a need to regularly record information in your life for later (genuine question)? I am curious how you avoid note taking without forgetting a ton of things.

Fuzzwah 5y ago
I'm not the person you're directing the question to, but I actively have to self medicate so I don't remember every thing. I also need to take notes to raise the important things above the useless things that I remember.
tgaj 5y ago
I am not sure if I understood this question but with unmedicated ADHD you really have to write everything down, even the smallest, simplest tasks, and a lot of information for "future me". I even have to write about things that I do every day. Nothing really sticks in your mind. Notetaking is not a choice but a neccesity. When you are medicated you still want to take notes it you want to be even more organized but you can choose not too and probably be fine like a lot of other people without ADHD.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  As far as I know I do not have ADHD. I still find it quite useful to write everything down and make sure that I completed everything I needed to do that day. Very easy to forget to reply to someone or that some small thing has a deadline upcoming. If I really care about the meetings I attended being useful (not often), I will take notes on what is discussed and decided.

fredrikholm 5y ago

Having recently started medication for ADHD, this applied to me. Now that my brain operates more closely to my neurotypical peers, I've found myself not needing to take constant notes and review my day in order to remember things.

1_player 5y ago

I have ADHD and for me note taking has always been a novelty; like todo lists. I get excited about it, I forget about it the next day. Most days I kept thinking "I should write this down", and then didn't. But now that I am _diagnosed_ with the thing, I will try and make more use of note taking, since I'm made aware my memory isn't great.

tgaj 5y ago
I have ADHD too and for some reasons sometimes even an idea to write sth down is painful. But I still try and I think that's something that you can train yourself to do. But you really have to do that every day or even every hour.

WA 5y ago

Funny, but nah. Writing it down is a way to structure thoughts and get it out of your system. But I use a simple text editor (Sublime) for this and I write them in a braindump-kind-of-way. There's really only one thing you gotta know about note-taking: you either optimize for fast writing or for fast information retrieval. Since I rarely read my notes, I optimize for fast dumping them. All apps and organizational schemes like Zettelkasten try to optimize the information retrieval aspect, which imho, is probably not that important for many people.

sputr 5y ago
> Writing it down is a way to structure thoughts and get it out of your system. Why do you feel the need to "structure thoughts" and "get it out of your system"? Asking as a way to point out that feeling the need to do it is not a forgone conclusion.
- kragen 5y ago
  > Why do you feel the need to "structure thoughts" Well, because the alternative is for your thoughts to be unstructured. Lots of people live their lives that way: reminiscing about that time they got so drunk or really told that guy off, repeating funny lines they heard on some TV series, rehearsing ethnic or religious stereotypes, complaining about the neighbors' loud music, trying to get laid, and heating up some hamburgers at dinnertime. Lots of people are content to be consumers and to repeat what they've heard. Then they die. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can structure your thoughts. You can be a creator, not just a consumer, and to a significant extent you can direct your life to a goal rather than simply floating at random. Notetaking is helpful for doing that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30098854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30098854
- WA 5y ago
  > Why do you feel the need to "structure thoughts" and "get it out of your system"? I give you a simple example. If you play Wordle and you stop to think about your next guess, you can make all the possible permutations in your brain. This is possible with the downside that you might start to think in loops and consider the same word-pattern over and over again. Or you write them down and solve the next guess by doing all permutations on paper (or a text editor). Note-taking is somewhat similar. Structuring thoughts for me means that I write them down to avoid looping around the same thing all the time. I get it out of my system, because my brain isn't stuck in the same loop. Note-taking helps to speed up the passive brain processing task in some cases. Not always. Not for everything.

odiroot 5y ago

> My take - note taking is a symtom of ADHD It's not a symptom of ADHD. It's one of the coping strategies for people with ADHD who have problems memorising things.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
iqanq 5y ago
kkoncevicius 5y ago
If note taking is used to help with memory, it should be done under rules or supervision, in my opinion. The usual way to track knowledge and tasks is within a project. You come to a road block, do research, overcome, and continue. But many of those note taking posts talk about personal "wiki" projects and tracking _everything_. I suspect that with ADHD its hard to filter out the important things from background. And based on my observation wth these apps people start organizing and remembering this "background". When background noise is reduced the need for complex apps is no longer there - there are a lot fewer things left that are worth remembering. (exceptions apply, of course)
- medstrom 5y ago
- carschno 5y ago
  I think the parent's implication was that not taking is a coping strategy for ADHD, but it does not mean that note taking indicates ADHD. Meaning that you are probably right that ADHD patient should be supervised or guided in note taking, but that does not necessarily apply to other note takers.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >The usual way to track knowledge and tasks is within a project. You come to a road block, do research, overcome, and continue. That might be your personal experience/bias speaking. For many creative endeavours there's not a "single project" where you do research, finish, wrap up and that's it. You need to track lots of pieces of information across many projects, domains, and across time.

sm_ts 5y ago

Absolutely "not necessarily". SWE requires an extensive amount of learning (if you're lucky :)). Unless one has extraordinary mnemonic capabilities, note taking is a way to structure and store concepts. Even if this wasn't the case, personal notes are still a more efficient/effective way than googling, for two reasons: 1. on the notes, one puts the processed version of a concept, so that it's safer/more stable/improved/cleaner/adapted etc. 2. personal notes follow the mind of who writes them, so the concepts are faster to find.

_xnmw 5y ago

Are you implying that note-taking is an unhealthy obsession, or coping mechanism? Pretty much every famous and successful inventor, artist, writer, or leader, from Winston Churchill to Leonardo Da Vinci left behind a copious, almost obsessive amount of notes/diaries/sketches/lists.

coldtea 5y ago

>But wanting to "organize life", "track thoughts and ideas", "never forget what you learned", etc, are symptoms, not cures. It's the inverse. Note-taking might be a symptom of OCD or autism disorders (that can make people compulsively take notes or enjoying collecting information in itself), but they are cures (or, rather, coping strategies) for ADHD. ADHD is not manifested as "tendency to take notes" for note-taking to be a symptom. It's manifested as tendency to be disorganized, to have trouble tracking thoughts, forgetting, etc - which makes note-taking a way to manage symptoms. It's looks like you fell for the "correlation equals causation" fallacy, not in a study, but in a simple real life observation that should have been trivial to see the right casual direction!

unfocussed_mike 5y ago
Note-taking is a really reliable route out of OCD rumination, actually. My day can be ruined by positive and negative ruminations. Writing stuff down really helps me let go of them.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago

For me, note-taking is: 1) a symptom of being a freelancer with multiple clients who revisits projects sometimes a decade after doing them. It is the only way to proceed -- even if you were to assert that persistent "documentation" of a project is distinct from "notes" about it, those notes are still essential. 2) a route towards making that documentation; it's easier to assemble documentation from things you've noted than to start with a blank page. 3) a way to know, deeply, what it is I actually think about something. Not just what I think right now in that moment, but why. What facts I took into account; what facts I disregarded, why I disregarded them, and why I might need to revisit that next time.