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I relate to the personality type described in this series of articles and I can assure you that I am not afflicted with ADHD or any other related impairment. A
by brl 18y ago
I relate to the personality type described in this series of articles and I can assure you that I am not afflicted with ADHD or any other related impairment. Although I tend to be disorganized every other symptom of ADHD describes pretty much the opposite of who I am.
Impulsive and hyperactive are the last words that anybody would ever use to describe me.
I'm extremely introverted and tend to listen a lot more than speak. When I do speak, I almost never interrupt anybody except maybe during heated debates.
When I am focused on something I am sensitive to distractions such as noise or people trying to talk to me, but in the absence of external distractions I can stay concentrated and productive for many hours in a row.
The kind of distraction described in this series is not a momentary loss of attention but rather a tendency to divert energy to things other than what I am supposed to be doing.
I'll illustrate with an example:
Perhaps I have been assigned a task at work to investigate a database query which is performing poorly. I have a bad habit of ignoring the easy solutions and spending a lot of time 'distracted' by more interesting details. So I might start reading about b-trees and studying the source code for the database implementation, then maybe I'll decide to take a peek at the IO cache implementation in the Linux kernel, oh this is all weaved through the memory manager. I better learn that too. I think I'm going to need some more books! All this new knowledge about memory management internals is giving me a brilliant new idea for one of dozens of secret pet projects I have. I should implement it right now while the concepts are fresh in my mind! Oh wait, I'm supposed to be fixing that query, right? No problem, this new task will help me nail down what I've learned about Linux memory management and then I'll be able to understand the performance issue better....