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0 pointsbeaconstudios5y ago0 comments

I'm familiar with the experience - not directly from ADHD, but from my own issues. Trying desperately to keep on top of things, running as fast as you can just to stay in the same place. I'm not saying that "ADHD is easy, just don't be lazy lol", but that you may still be able to do a little better than yesterday if you practice the right skills. I'm in no position to hold someone with ADHD to baseline standards, but I would encourage anyone to just try to be a little better than yesterday, every day.

There's also an awful lot of people, as the parent said, who don't have ADHD but still struggle with {focus, attention, willpower} from just not having used it. Those people should definitely be trying to focus harder and shouldn't be led down the path of "focus is innate/unchangeable".

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nullsense5y ago· 2 in thread

You might, and you might not.

The incentives for me to be better are already as strong as they can possibly be. Not to screw up my health worse, not to lose my marriage, not to lose my job, not to make rash financial decisions. The amount of effort I put into this already is just exhausting.

I'm glad I recognise these days the times when the car is out of gas and people are telling me "if you just turned the key a little harder, maybe the car would turn on" and ignore them.

beaconstudiosOP5y ago

At the end of the day, every individual knows themselves better than anybody else does. I'm just relaying that it helped me, even though I was trying really hard to stay afloat and struggling to focus on most aspects of my life, to just practice focusing - working harder wouldn't have done anything because I didn't have the focus to apply to hard work in the first place. I have no idea whether people with ADHD can improve their focus, but there's people out there who think they might be because they can't focus but aren't, and don't realise that focus is a skill you can practice.

nullsense5y ago

The flipside being there are people who are, and it doesn't cross their mind that they might be, and they're spinning their wheels consuming productivity porn in the hopes of finally cracking the code.

I do agree with what you're saying btw. I think you can and should try to improve things, no matter which side of the coin you're on. The crux of the issue is that it's very, very important to understand which side you're on because the advice and strategies are fundamentally very different.

I'm not at all worried about the people who think they might be ADHD. They fall into 3 camps. 1) people who suspect they have it and it's a life changing revelation and they seek treatment ASAP, 2) people who suspect they have it for a long time and are right but for some reason or other never do anything about it and 3) people who don't have it, and don't understand it well enough to realise they actually don't have it

Group 1 sorts itself pretty quick. The trouble is realising you're in group 1!!!! This is why from time to time I talk about it here if its mentioned. Once it clicks it's unbelievable. I'm very interested in helping those people as it's pretty life changing.

Group 2 I mourn for. But at least they can recognise what advice and strategies apply and understanding why their life is how it is. Knowing is half the battle.

Group 3 I'm not worried about at all. It can be such a devastating problem that when it clicks and you can finally connect the dots, you sort of know. For this group the dots will be too few and far between though naturally for everyone there will be some and they'll hum and haw about it and mull it over in their mind before forgetting about it altogether. If you genuinely think you have then you must feel as if there is and always has been something quite wrong with your life. Though you may simply identify with the list of symptoms because it's somewhat vague, and just be unsure as to what it really means. If you actually think it could be an answer to solving a problem in your life you will go for an evaluation. If you don't think it's an answer to solving a problem in your life then almost certainly you don't have it and will just forget about it. You may go for an evaluation and it comes back negative but unearthed a different problem at the cause of some real troubles for you, and that's ok, as it's a differential diagnosis for exactly that reason.

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