2 ms·
> There's no form of society in which ADHD is an advantage > I don't think there's any task in which someone with ADHD is more suited to than someone without;
by pwpw 3y ago
> There's no form of society in which ADHD is an advantage
> I don't think there's any task in which someone with ADHD is more suited to than someone without; there are tasks which are less difficult for the person with ADHD than other tasks, but ADHD doesn't bestow many, if any, advantages over a neurotypical person.
Your experience is totally valid! I can only speak for my own experience, but I find compared to my neurotypical peers, I am much more capable at learning a breadth of topics. My peers are significantly better at performing 40 three-way matches for invoices in a work day while I would totally fail at that. But let me make my own video game where I have to learn how to program it, design art, and create music, and I’m great at that! My power comes from the ability to bounce around things depending on what I want to focus on that day. I create an environment for myself where I have dozens of tasks I can do, so that I always have something that will grab my interest.
The way this usually plays out in the actual working world is that I struggle with boring, repetitive tasks, but now that my boss knows how I work, he has let me set a more friendly set up and now frequently sees me deliver major changes that would have taken another developer weeks to accomplish given the diversity of tasks I have solved. Meanwhile the other developer is delivering on certain types of tasks I would be much worse at accomplishing. Our team plays to our strengths.
I’m great at deeply learning various concepts then hyperfocusing and delivering significant code changes at work. Some days I’ll complete 3 major jira tickets complete with testing because I’m so focused. Now of course there are other days where it’s much harder to get things done. But setting up that environment where I have diverse things to work on lets that aspect of my ADHD shine.
I will note that I’m properly medicated and have a great diet that helped a lot. School was always really tough for me. Then I discovered when I was studying for the CPA exam, that I learn much better from books than from a teacher in a classroom. I experienced this again when I self-taught CS. These days, I view my ADHD as less of a hindrance and more of a different approach. It’s true that it has downsides compared to a neurotypical, but I feel that it absolutely has its upsides as well when in a healthy state.
- sersi 3y agoI was going to write the same thing you did. I've been diagnosed with ADHD and while it is a disadvantage for certain things (I've lost quite a bit of money due to invoices not being sent on time to clients as a contractor, fines for not submitting tax on time, etc...), it's also been hugely beneficial in other areas. When I was in university, I quickly realized that I had a hard time paying attention to lectures but that I would be passionate about reading the reference books on the various subjects. So I skipped a lot of classes (it was a French engineering school, attendance is not mandatory if your grades are good) and I read all the relevant textbooks. I was studying CS so I was passionate and very interested in what I was reading so I could easily hyperfocus on those books and did very well. On the other hand, if I had been forced to attend lectures instead, I would have not done nearly as well. In my work life, I've been the go to person who solves the hard problems because when I find an interesting problem to work on, I can completely focus on it until I solve it. On the other hand, I have a very hard time dealing with boring repetitive tasks but that's why an effective manager makes sure each people play to their strength. So I do take issue with this statement "As someone with diagnosed ADHD, I think this misrepresents ADHD. There's no form of society in which ADHD is an advantage; " and "ADHD is a disability, not a difference of ability". On the contrary, ADHD IS a difference of ability and effectively managing ADHD means finding ways to adapt your life and work life to take advantage of the good sides of ADHD and find workarounds around the problematic aspects of it. I'm honestly not sure if I'd have been as successful without ADHD, I would have lost less money for sure but maybe wouldn't have earned as much as I did. It would have been less stressful though for the first 36 years before I got diagnosed when I didn't understand why I couldn't just do certain tasks.