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> They found that youth with ADHD had heightened connectivity between structures deep in the brain involved in learning, movement, reward, and emotion (caudate,

> They found that youth with ADHD had heightened connectivity between structures deep in the brain involved in learning, movement, reward, and emotion (caudate, putamen, and nucleus accumbens seeds) and structures in the frontal area of the brain involved in attention and control of unwanted behaviors (superior temporal gyri, insula, inferior parietal lobe, and inferior frontal gyri). So... ADHD is a symptom of an overly integrated brain. Not going to lie - I've always been kind of fond of my mild ADHD. There's something enjoyable about being interested in everything going on around you (or in your head). It just happens to be a liability in schools or jobs where you're only supposed to be doing "just this one thing".

qpingo 3y ago
All quirky fun and games until you realize you can't do high-paying jobs that requires consistent focus. Which is not really a problem unless you want a family or to live in nice parts of cities.
- techcode 3y ago
  There's a lot of high-paying tech jobs that can be playing into ADHD (and other not neuro typical brains) strengths and focus thats more like running 42 1km "sprints" than mostly consistent pace 42km marathon. Things that come to mind are data science/analysis, debugging and fixing outages (finalizing follow up RFO might be hardest part ), security/hacking (hopefully white hat)... And basically whatever else one personally finds interesting to dig into deep and/or wide.
  - qpingo 3y ago
    [dead]
  - andenacitelli 3y ago
    I’m a SWE at a Series A startup with predominantly inattentive ADHD. The need for me to jump around a bunch of things rather than just tunnel on the same area is a godsend. I struggle to really go deep or commit to long-running efforts, but if I can just jump into each thing for a few hours and constantly rotate things, I get an insane amount of work done. Most jobs would not afford me this, but I lucked into a great role that plays into it rather than fights it.
    - techcode 3y ago
      Isn't that called proactive procrastination? Where you intentionally have more than 1 thing/project going on, so you can procrastinate on nr1 while you work on nr2 ...etc. And for going in deep and long - it really needs to be something personally interesting. Or someone else has a better was to get into hyperfocus flow/zone?
- whoknowsidont 3y ago
  >All quirky fun and games until you realize you can't do high-paying jobs that requires consistent focus. This is not a good understanding of ADHD. People with ADHD have hyperfocus tendencies, and this in fact can apply to their job while they ignore everything else. That is to say extremely successful people might be that way BECAUSE of their ADHD, not in spite of it. A programmer who devotes the majority of their life to learning their craft, or an artist who spends all their attention on their next (or first) hit album. But it's an even worse understanding of what high-paying jobs actually require.
  - TalEs 3y ago
    The thing with ADHD(maybe I am a special case) is that my focus tends to shift quickly and freely. What I might enjoy for a few months will no longer be fun, and I will move onto another subject that catches my attention, preventing me from fully delving into learning a craft, to the fullest extent. I envy people who can dedicate a majority of their time and focus into one particular thing, like programming or art. I've done both, enjoyed them, but moved on again. I still do enjoy them, but I would leave them for months, and when I come back, I am back to square one.
    - ChainOfFools 3y ago
      I find a similar pattern at work for myself. Although I think I've finally accepted that I lose interest in whatever I'm hyper focused on right around the time additional progress can no longer be made merely by what I would describe as the advanced dabbling, DIY pattern recognition and puzzle solving reward cycles delivered by straight ADHD style hyperfocus, but instead only happens by applied and sustained structured learning techniques as well. A mathematical example would be right around the point where one finds that the delightfully focused exploration/experimentation afforded by ADHD which carried you to self-discovery of, say, why SIN relates to COS through their derivatives, or through the Pythagorean theorem, doesn't actually get you very far in calculus unless you intend to re-invent, at great personal cost and to no practical advantage, a lot of very well-known wheels. Instead you need that hard-won scaffolding of rote memorization, the almost muscle-memory capacity for sight-recognition of a couple dozen identities and theorems and familiar problem forms, to get much further. Spontaneous yawning when you're wide awake and actively interested in what you're reading or learning is for me a telltale sign that I have reached the point where I'll I have to tack a frustrating zigzag course _against_ the ADHD winds instead of sailing with them.
oldstrangers 3y ago
This tracks with my own theory on ADHD. It often times feels like a super power when it isn't ruining your life. If you manage it, it's remarkable. Left to its own devices, it's debilitating. When I was younger I tried to medicate the issue away, and then eventually came to the realization that I was doing more harm than good. So I learned to appreciate myself as just "different" as opposed to "dysfunctional". Perhaps there's some evolutionary advantage to these 'mental disorders' that'll make sense when they're more fully formed in another few hundred years.
- el_benhameen 3y ago
  Have you found a good method for self-management?
  - Mkengine 3y ago
    Not OP, but for me the following combination works great: - Obsidian for knowledge management to help with the forgetfulness - Todoist to get the daily stuff done and personal project management - Timetree to coordinate with my wife and be able to plan ahead more than a week - any alarm app for the critical stuff the next day
- ekanes 3y ago
  Seems like if you go back in time, someone who is impulsive + easily bored etc would be an evolutionary advantage to their tribe (what's over that hill? let's go see!) if not themselves.

qpingo 3y ago

All quirky fun and games until you realize you can't do high-paying jobs that requires consistent focus. Which is not really a problem unless you want a family or to live in nice parts of cities.

techcode 3y ago
There's a lot of high-paying tech jobs that can be playing into ADHD (and other not neuro typical brains) strengths and focus thats more like running 42 1km "sprints" than mostly consistent pace 42km marathon. Things that come to mind are data science/analysis, debugging and fixing outages (finalizing follow up RFO might be hardest part ), security/hacking (hopefully white hat)... And basically whatever else one personally finds interesting to dig into deep and/or wide.
- qpingo 3y ago
  [dead]
- andenacitelli 3y ago
  I’m a SWE at a Series A startup with predominantly inattentive ADHD. The need for me to jump around a bunch of things rather than just tunnel on the same area is a godsend. I struggle to really go deep or commit to long-running efforts, but if I can just jump into each thing for a few hours and constantly rotate things, I get an insane amount of work done. Most jobs would not afford me this, but I lucked into a great role that plays into it rather than fights it.
  - techcode 3y ago
    Isn't that called proactive procrastination? Where you intentionally have more than 1 thing/project going on, so you can procrastinate on nr1 while you work on nr2 ...etc. And for going in deep and long - it really needs to be something personally interesting. Or someone else has a better was to get into hyperfocus flow/zone?
whoknowsidont 3y ago
>All quirky fun and games until you realize you can't do high-paying jobs that requires consistent focus. This is not a good understanding of ADHD. People with ADHD have hyperfocus tendencies, and this in fact can apply to their job while they ignore everything else. That is to say extremely successful people might be that way BECAUSE of their ADHD, not in spite of it. A programmer who devotes the majority of their life to learning their craft, or an artist who spends all their attention on their next (or first) hit album. But it's an even worse understanding of what high-paying jobs actually require.
- TalEs 3y ago
  The thing with ADHD(maybe I am a special case) is that my focus tends to shift quickly and freely. What I might enjoy for a few months will no longer be fun, and I will move onto another subject that catches my attention, preventing me from fully delving into learning a craft, to the fullest extent. I envy people who can dedicate a majority of their time and focus into one particular thing, like programming or art. I've done both, enjoyed them, but moved on again. I still do enjoy them, but I would leave them for months, and when I come back, I am back to square one.
  - ChainOfFools 3y ago
    I find a similar pattern at work for myself. Although I think I've finally accepted that I lose interest in whatever I'm hyper focused on right around the time additional progress can no longer be made merely by what I would describe as the advanced dabbling, DIY pattern recognition and puzzle solving reward cycles delivered by straight ADHD style hyperfocus, but instead only happens by applied and sustained structured learning techniques as well. A mathematical example would be right around the point where one finds that the delightfully focused exploration/experimentation afforded by ADHD which carried you to self-discovery of, say, why SIN relates to COS through their derivatives, or through the Pythagorean theorem, doesn't actually get you very far in calculus unless you intend to re-invent, at great personal cost and to no practical advantage, a lot of very well-known wheels. Instead you need that hard-won scaffolding of rote memorization, the almost muscle-memory capacity for sight-recognition of a couple dozen identities and theorems and familiar problem forms, to get much further. Spontaneous yawning when you're wide awake and actively interested in what you're reading or learning is for me a telltale sign that I have reached the point where I'll I have to tack a frustrating zigzag course _against_ the ADHD winds instead of sailing with them.

oldstrangers 3y ago

This tracks with my own theory on ADHD. It often times feels like a super power when it isn't ruining your life. If you manage it, it's remarkable. Left to its own devices, it's debilitating. When I was younger I tried to medicate the issue away, and then eventually came to the realization that I was doing more harm than good. So I learned to appreciate myself as just "different" as opposed to "dysfunctional". Perhaps there's some evolutionary advantage to these 'mental disorders' that'll make sense when they're more fully formed in another few hundred years.

el_benhameen 3y ago
Have you found a good method for self-management?
- Mkengine 3y ago
  Not OP, but for me the following combination works great: - Obsidian for knowledge management to help with the forgetfulness - Todoist to get the daily stuff done and personal project management - Timetree to coordinate with my wife and be able to plan ahead more than a week - any alarm app for the critical stuff the next day
ekanes 3y ago
Seems like if you go back in time, someone who is impulsive + easily bored etc would be an evolutionary advantage to their tribe (what's over that hill? let's go see!) if not themselves.