4 ms·

ADHD chiming in. That approach just doesn’t work when you have to actively spend nontrivial brain energy to even brush your teeth, every day. There is no such t

ADHD chiming in. That approach just doesn’t work when you have to actively spend nontrivial brain energy to even brush your teeth, every day. There is no such thing as a hackable routine, atomic/keystone habits, or „too lazy to stay on track“.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
I have ADHD and I choose not to make excuses.
- tonyarkles 3y ago
  I'm having a hard time not saying something really snarky here, but that's not particularly productive. Your comment isn't going to bring any good into the world, it just serves to shame someone who's struggling. We've got enough of that already.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    I disagree. It was extremely productive and liberating for me to view my ADHD this way. I don't allow it to be an excuse.
- compscigirl 3y ago
  While I agree that it’s quite common these days for people to use ADHD as an excuse for why they can’t do X, in this case I don’t think your dismissal of others’ symptoms is fair. It’s generally true that people with ADHD are unable to form and maintain routines without significant external incentives and that maintaining those incentives is a precarious and exhausting endeavour. As many others in this thread have noted, they lack habit forming momentum and end up quickly depleting their “willpower” since it’s constantly necessary for even the smallest of everyday tasks. Their routines are also easily disrupted by a change in external input and it can be quite hard to recover. That said, different people experience more or less severe symptoms and if you are able to tolerate ADHD medication it can significantly reduce the effort required.
tonyarkles 3y ago
Also ADHD here, with a thought that might be useful for you. I am not even a little bit refuting the "non-trivial brain energy to even brush your teeth" bit. That 100% takes brain energy for me. But I would challenge the assertion that we don't have habits. They're just not necessarily the habits we want, but they do get made and broken and exist. As an example, if there's a project I want to work on (getting that motivation is a different problem), I will feel vaguely uncomfortable unless I grab my bag and laptop and drive to a particular coffee shop that's a non-trivial distance from my house. And once I get there, I am generally quite productive. After I eat a meal (remembering to eat is a struggle sometimes, of course), I don't feel "at ease" until I have a cigarette. I've found it slightly useful to not think about habits in the way that the positive-thinking motivational speakers talk about habits, but rather at least spending a bit of time reflecting the things I do when I'm in "autopilot mode". I'm not very good at changing the things I see, but recognizing that they're there has been a bit helpful in tweaking them or at least figuring out why/how they work.
JohnBooty 3y ago
ADHD chiming in. That approach just doesn’t work [when you have ADHD] Professionally diagnosed ADHD here as well. Extremely aware of the hurtful and unfair "lazy" stigma. Positive thinking, an improvement mindset, and life hacks are not cure for ADHD. There's no cure! I'm not one of those people who's trying to tell you that the cure to your ADHD is "just try harder" or some bullshit. I know we have all heard that too many times in our lives. But our brains are still hackable. Our habits are still improvable. I'm in middle age and I'm still finding improvements and workarounds.
skygazer 3y ago
I have ADHD. My intended habits are very fragile, and if a single visual cue goes missing, I'll skip a step -- if my wife removes my antiperspirant from the counter, then I just unwittingly skip that step that day. I rely on rube Goldberg machinations. I have one trick that works, but I hate it. I build checklists with routine tasks, like morning and evening routines, or packing for a trip, etc, and automate sending them to the relentlessly annoying iOS Due.app, which can send reminder notifications about a timed task every minute once due and syncs with watch, so I can dismiss them once complete -- I have them scheduled spaced out enough to generally allow completion of one task before the next one comes due. I turn on Announce Notifications for the Due.app so the phone speaks the tasks aloud, and just wear airpods so I alone hear the announcements. I used this successfully for 6 months to emulate being a conventional person, and it was successful, but it didn't end up building any very strong habits that could stand alone outside this system. It felt like an oppressive dystopian crutch that I was embarrassed to need. However, one situation where I do love it is "before I leave the house to go to X" checklists, if I schedule backward from the time to leave, I end up not forgetting anything and leaving on time, which is not normally easy for me, otherwise. That reduces a common stress. Oh, and outside of habits, I do really like dictating a stream of consciousness list of things I have to do to my phone, and have a shortcut run it by GPT3.5 to extract task names, estimate on task durations, and order tasks in a reasonable way, which it is surprisingly able to do with a good prompt, and then automatically feed the results into Due.app. I haven't figured out the psychology of when I do and don't like nagging reminders.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > However, one situation where I do love it is "before I leave the house to go to X" checklists Not diagnosed with anything, but I put things in my shoes, such as the occasional paper envelope that needs sending. The computer chair is another "an item is physically obstructing me I must deal with it before I continue" destination. (Example: Some dirty laundry, indicating I need to start the washing-machine I loaded earlier.)
  - JohnBooty 3y ago
    I love it! This is a great habit. ADHD or not, it's all about reducing cognitive load.
zaat 3y ago
Not only it is not working, believing it does work with regards to other people, especially one's children or pupils (with or without ADHD) can be toxic and harmful. I have been too lazy to stay on track on many things, yet on others I wasn't to lazy to fight day after day til I won. I surely am happy I didn't keep putting effort in the hopeless efforts to improve my penmanship skills.
JohnBooty 3y ago
Just a thought. I am diagnosed with ADHD as well and struggle at times. actively spend nontrivial brain energy to even brush your teeth I doubt you'll see this but this statement has really stuck in my mind. Do you think that neurotypicals aren't spending non-trivial brain energy to build and maintain habits? I agree that this kind of thing is harder for those of us with ADHD. It is not just a discipline issue. But, I don't know. I think people who aren't good at _____ often see people who are good at _____ and think it's just some kind of magical innate thing they didn't put any work into.
- anonyfox 3y ago
  Oh, I totally get your point. And of course habits require energy spending (but less and less over time). But with adhd it’s kind of different game. Like a mental „erectile dysfunction“ - if you *really* are in the mood it can be done, but if not there is no way to force it. (Except for some pills.) it’s not a willpower issue to begin with.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

I have ADHD and I choose not to make excuses.

tonyarkles 3y ago
I'm having a hard time not saying something really snarky here, but that's not particularly productive. Your comment isn't going to bring any good into the world, it just serves to shame someone who's struggling. We've got enough of that already.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  I disagree. It was extremely productive and liberating for me to view my ADHD this way. I don't allow it to be an excuse.
compscigirl 3y ago
While I agree that it’s quite common these days for people to use ADHD as an excuse for why they can’t do X, in this case I don’t think your dismissal of others’ symptoms is fair. It’s generally true that people with ADHD are unable to form and maintain routines without significant external incentives and that maintaining those incentives is a precarious and exhausting endeavour. As many others in this thread have noted, they lack habit forming momentum and end up quickly depleting their “willpower” since it’s constantly necessary for even the smallest of everyday tasks. Their routines are also easily disrupted by a change in external input and it can be quite hard to recover. That said, different people experience more or less severe symptoms and if you are able to tolerate ADHD medication it can significantly reduce the effort required.

tonyarkles 3y ago

Also ADHD here, with a thought that might be useful for you. I am not even a little bit refuting the "non-trivial brain energy to even brush your teeth" bit. That 100% takes brain energy for me. But I would challenge the assertion that we don't have habits. They're just not necessarily the habits we want, but they do get made and broken and exist. As an example, if there's a project I want to work on (getting that motivation is a different problem), I will feel vaguely uncomfortable unless I grab my bag and laptop and drive to a particular coffee shop that's a non-trivial distance from my house. And once I get there, I am generally quite productive. After I eat a meal (remembering to eat is a struggle sometimes, of course), I don't feel "at ease" until I have a cigarette. I've found it slightly useful to not think about habits in the way that the positive-thinking motivational speakers talk about habits, but rather at least spending a bit of time reflecting the things I do when I'm in "autopilot mode". I'm not very good at changing the things I see, but recognizing that they're there has been a bit helpful in tweaking them or at least figuring out why/how they work.

JohnBooty 3y ago

ADHD chiming in. That approach just doesn’t work [when you have ADHD] Professionally diagnosed ADHD here as well. Extremely aware of the hurtful and unfair "lazy" stigma. Positive thinking, an improvement mindset, and life hacks are not cure for ADHD. There's no cure! I'm not one of those people who's trying to tell you that the cure to your ADHD is "just try harder" or some bullshit. I know we have all heard that too many times in our lives. But our brains are still hackable. Our habits are still improvable. I'm in middle age and I'm still finding improvements and workarounds.

skygazer 3y ago

I have ADHD. My intended habits are very fragile, and if a single visual cue goes missing, I'll skip a step -- if my wife removes my antiperspirant from the counter, then I just unwittingly skip that step that day. I rely on rube Goldberg machinations. I have one trick that works, but I hate it. I build checklists with routine tasks, like morning and evening routines, or packing for a trip, etc, and automate sending them to the relentlessly annoying iOS Due.app, which can send reminder notifications about a timed task every minute once due and syncs with watch, so I can dismiss them once complete -- I have them scheduled spaced out enough to generally allow completion of one task before the next one comes due. I turn on Announce Notifications for the Due.app so the phone speaks the tasks aloud, and just wear airpods so I alone hear the announcements. I used this successfully for 6 months to emulate being a conventional person, and it was successful, but it didn't end up building any very strong habits that could stand alone outside this system. It felt like an oppressive dystopian crutch that I was embarrassed to need. However, one situation where I do love it is "before I leave the house to go to X" checklists, if I schedule backward from the time to leave, I end up not forgetting anything and leaving on time, which is not normally easy for me, otherwise. That reduces a common stress. Oh, and outside of habits, I do really like dictating a stream of consciousness list of things I have to do to my phone, and have a shortcut run it by GPT3.5 to extract task names, estimate on task durations, and order tasks in a reasonable way, which it is surprisingly able to do with a good prompt, and then automatically feed the results into Due.app. I haven't figured out the psychology of when I do and don't like nagging reminders.

Terr_ 3y ago
> However, one situation where I do love it is "before I leave the house to go to X" checklists Not diagnosed with anything, but I put things in my shoes, such as the occasional paper envelope that needs sending. The computer chair is another "an item is physically obstructing me I must deal with it before I continue" destination. (Example: Some dirty laundry, indicating I need to start the washing-machine I loaded earlier.)
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  I love it! This is a great habit. ADHD or not, it's all about reducing cognitive load.

zaat 3y ago

Not only it is not working, believing it does work with regards to other people, especially one's children or pupils (with or without ADHD) can be toxic and harmful. I have been too lazy to stay on track on many things, yet on others I wasn't to lazy to fight day after day til I won. I surely am happy I didn't keep putting effort in the hopeless efforts to improve my penmanship skills.

JohnBooty 3y ago

Just a thought. I am diagnosed with ADHD as well and struggle at times. actively spend nontrivial brain energy to even brush your teeth I doubt you'll see this but this statement has really stuck in my mind. Do you think that neurotypicals aren't spending non-trivial brain energy to build and maintain habits? I agree that this kind of thing is harder for those of us with ADHD. It is not just a discipline issue. But, I don't know. I think people who aren't good at _____ often see people who are good at _____ and think it's just some kind of magical innate thing they didn't put any work into.

anonyfox 3y ago
Oh, I totally get your point. And of course habits require energy spending (but less and less over time). But with adhd it’s kind of different game. Like a mental „erectile dysfunction“ - if you *really* are in the mood it can be done, but if not there is no way to force it. (Except for some pills.) it’s not a willpower issue to begin with.