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That’s a great way to put a positive spin on it, but be realistic. ADHD is not a super power, it’s not all sunshine and roses, it is a disorder. You can sometimes harness parts of it for positive outcomes but it has a lot of negative results too.
Another thing to remember: your ADHD is not everybody’s ADHD. Some people have less severe cases, others have more severe cases.
For every time you can hyperfocus on work, imagine every time you’ve hyperfocused on ants walking by, or a speck of dust, or literally anything other than what you actually need to do.
Hyperfocus is an amazing tool, unfortunately we have no fucking control over it.
Yeah, like I dunno, I think a lot of things I do by accident with my ADHD are super cool. But it definitely hurts more than it helps, and I don’t think that’s just because “we live in a society”. This post feels like huffing a suffocating dose of copium.
- “Oh, sorry, I heard literally every word of what you just said, but my brain encoded nothing.”
- “My sleep schedule is casually off by like five hours because I lost track of time hyperfocusing on learning about competitive Jenga until 4 AM.”
- “I know I could have been doing things, but I had this thing I needed to be at in 8 hours, so I just couldn’t focus on them.”
- “I either lose everything or create an intricate, tedious framework for where I keep everything at all times.”
- “I struggle immensely to cope with stress in a healthy way and have issues with my temper.”
- “If I can focus at all, it will be on exactly one thing, either for unhealthily long periods of time to the detriment of everything else or for so briefly that I accomplish nothing before moving on to the next dopamine rush.”
- “I have a much higher risk of substance abuse because my body is starving for dopamine.”
- “I have trouble keeping promises I’ve made to other people because they vanish out of my mind.”
- “I constantly miss small details and need to quintuple check everything I do.”
- “My priorities are constantly fucked, and I consistently put off everything until the last minute.”
- “It often feels physically painful for me to focus when it’s not on the first thing my brain decides it wants to do.”
An awful lot of those bullets hit me
I think I can relate to literally all of them. Not competitive Jenga, but some other niche topic that I will be hyper interested for a consecutive 4 hours after midnight. I spent a whole night one time learning about roller derby and watching replays of the women’s final for the past few years. I had never watched it before in my life and went all in. The men’s version is not as good. They are too fast and strong, so it’s more boring and less nuanced.
I have a coworker on my team who does roller derby! We should talk about this in depth for several hours.
/s
“I constantly miss small details and need to quintuple check everything do.”
This one is the opposite for me. I’m great at detail work. The stuff I miss is the glaringly obvious giant thing right in front of me.
I went to a wedding this weekend, and bought four drinks from the bar before I noticed half of the bartop was covered in two liter pop bottles I could have been pouring drinks from for free the whole time…
I think we’re describing the same tendency lol. I have a knack for recognizing problems i expect to see. There was this one job where i was like rain man, scanning qnd noting imperfections that needed to be fixed before the next process could start.
But i also can have a very hard time with complicated interlocking processes. Many times i end up overthinking the problems i do see to the detriment of something simple.
To extend the metaphor of this brain i(we?) inhabit, i am exceptional at finding things in difficult places but have the hardest time finding something right in front of me
It’s SUPER hard to parse the different flavors of logical problem solving challenges. Some I can see the pattern almost immediately, others not so much. Thanks to Adderall though, I can now at least recognize this problem and begin to analyze what characteristics of the situation or problem in particular are causing my brain fog response.
I’ve had a similar experience too. One time I couldn’t find my phone, so I start looking high and low. Not in my bedroom, not in the bathroom, the kitchen… At this point, I’m turning over every stone, looking through cabinets and drawers, running out to my car to see if it’s in there. Come back in and decide that it must’ve fallen under my bed and I just didn’t hear it. Can’t see under there really well, so I pull out the flashlight on my phone. Start looking under there, still not turning up. The panic is really starting to kick in.
An embarrassing amount of time passes before I realize that I’m holding and using the thing I’m looking for.
The Apple Watch ability to instantly ping my phone has been a godsend. Wish I had gotten one sooner.
Crap, now I need to know about competitive Jenga …
Yeeeeeep
Like watching into mirror
ffs literally every single bullet point applies to me (not that this is news)
Yep it sucks ass
I know this is in response to a post saying your ADHD is not other people’s ADHD, but I’m pretty sure your ADHD is my ADHD.
Are…are you me?
Imagine how many things that you have to do that only exist because of ridiculous social expectations on what someone else thinks is important.
Being different in a way that would work if conformity was less important shouldn’t be a disability.
exist because of ridiculous social expectations
This is called “taking other people’s opinions into account”. That’s what a society is. If you want your opinions listened to and acted on by others, you have to reciprocate.
Do you think “neurotypical” people love dealing with random people’s opinions and needs? No, but they see the value in cooperating with others to get what they want. You are “expected” to wear clothes in public because I don’t know how often you bathe yourself. You are “expected” to not yell in public because if every rando yelled whenever they wanted, life would be more stressful.
It puts on the colorful noose and heavy black coat in summer, or else it gets the hose again.
“How we’ve always done it” is stupid without reviewing why on occasion.
Please re-read:
Do you think “neurotypical” people love dealing with random people’s opinions and needs?
Disliking a suit and tie isn’t some revelation to “normies”. You are not a radical for thinking that. In fact, all the little things that annoy you probably annoy other people too.
This is a clue to easy small talk. Just say that something annoys you. “Oh man, this suit is murder in this heat.” It’s easy.
Either the answer will be “Yeah man, heh” or “nah, I like it”. You have now successfully engaged in small talk.
Disliking a suit and tie isn’t some revelation to “normies”. You are not a radical for thinking that. In fact, all the little things that annoy you probably annoy other people too.
So why do we need to go along with it?
You know the answer to this. Because the CEO at your company sucks but you still need the money. Many people, even those in your industry, do not wear suits at work. I guarantee it.
You are expected to slave away for corporate oligarchs so they can continue to in reward the rate at which their unspendable horde of dragon gold increases? You are expected to rollover and take it whilst the SJC strips away our rights and protections? I’m not trying to be an asshole or bring politics into it. I just think it might be important to point out that blanket statements about following societal “rules” might not be such a great idea.
What do you mean? I’m totally supposed to be on Lemmy instead of working …
That’s called practice.
All totally true! It’s definitely not great, but I try to find the silver linings rather than beat myself up about the hard parts. Good point about my ADHD being different than others’
Implying you can control or induce these hyperfixations in a productive way is disingenuous at best, measurably harmful at worst.
If you work in a job that can use use the chaos in a productive way that’s great, but I’m willing to bet you still face abnormally high difficulty with general life tasks, and consistently struggle to enforce a work/life balance.
You’re not helping people with ADHD by posting this. You’re establishing an unattainable standard for people that are already doing everything in their power just to get by.
It’s also pretty cringe “mom says I’m a genius” shit
Every parent should be gassing their kid up though. Most of our “successful” people are just normal kids that never hit a wall or had help getting around walls. Realistic expectations are what keeps people from jumping jobs for a raise; applying for positions they don’t fully qualify for; moving for better job market access; retraining for management roles; and so much more.
Note, I’m not talking about rags to riches, success can be a first generation college graduate getting a professional job; a homeless kid getting a steady job and pulling their family off the streets; a burnt out delivery guy getting a union warehouse job. The point is people with low expectations don’t look for new opportunities.
It’s so weird that we have a culture that treats teaching pride to children as a bad thing.
https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/why-reactionaries-hate-pride-and-narcissists-938d39261f13
Oh that’s just for normal kids. Like half of what a private school does is teach kids to have pride and confidence. The other half is introduce them to a network of wealthy people so they can get a VP job after their dirt easy business degree that also teaches them they’re now experts in becoming experts at whatever their team does
Which is why they’re so insufferable and why they think they can micromanage someone who’s bringing literal decades of experience and learning to a situation.
As to why conservatives go so hard on it? It’s their ideology. If they thought the Walmart greeters had any intrinsic worth then they would feel bad about how they treat them. So nobody’s special until they’ve proven themselves and that just happens to coincide with going to private school where they tell the kids they earned their spot because they did an interview and wrote an essay.
I am so fucked up in part because I was taught that pride is the root of all evil and that it’s better to be humble.
I struggle to accept compliments, I struggle to not be intensely critical of myself, and I feel like I have very little drive for just about any form of competition.
I felt like you my whole life. All that shame, embarrassment and guilt. I literally assumed it was just because I was in fact a shitty human.
Then I read this: https://www.additudemag.com/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria-and-adhd/amp/
Holy shit. What a revelation. I told my psychiatrist about this and sent him the article. He prescribed Clonidine. Clonidine is amazing! It got rid of all that shame and allowed me to realize that I do not suck, that everyone does not hate me, and that those horrible emotions were basically fictions created by my shitty brain chemistry.
What a weird thing to call pride and narcissism the same. Being prideful is nothing to do with being narcissistic. One is an external thing, the other an internal. The prideful person cares about things other than themselves and shows that. The narcissistic person cares about no one but themselves, and their actions reflect that.
This comment deserves increased visibility
That’s not true at all. I have Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and I care about others very deeply. And My actions reflect that. For example, recently I shut down a cult discord server run by a pedophile who’s dating kids from the cult. This is because I think adults dating kids is bad.
I agree to an extent, but also that the parents need to take time to understand how to “gas them up” appropriately. It’s not everyone’s case, but it became very apparent to me when I was young that my parents would cheer me on over anything, and never take any time to learn about the things they were cheering me on over, and that led to disbelieving pretty much any positive feedback from anyone long-term. The only feedback of substance growing up was the very rare negative feedback, because they would only pull it out when they understood it enough to know it needed improving. That, and emphasizing their efforts as the thing to cheer on, not just the end results.
I’ve learned to work through that, and maybe it goes without saying for most people, but being a genuine and substantive cheerleader is important.
Yep, kids idolize their parents. So disinterest is devastating.
Thank you. That’s exactly right.
There are so many, countless disadvantages people with ADHD suffer from. And this post just suggests they’re hidden geniuses with no problems at al…
Right, not once have I fixated on something by choice.
You think I want to be googling and playing pokemon go at work home and in bed for the past 3 weeks despite only playing it for a week 8 years ago?
Just once I want the fixation on house work or something like the gym
This swerves way into “ADHD is a superpower” territory which is bullshit.
edit: For example, while I have a lot of these traits, I also can’t remember to put a new trash bag in the trash bin when I take the full bag out to the garage, which is a 1 minute task. Despite reminding myself AS I’m removing the full bag. Twice a week. For years now. Because I will see something in the garage or think of something while doing the mundane task that completely derails my train of thought.
I do similar things when a task has two physically separate locations like taking out the trash.
While walking out with the trash I will repeat constantly “put in new bag” all the way to the garbage and all the way back, otherwise the task doesn’t get completed.
I would be lying if I said I hadn’t done the same thing. “New bag new bag new bag new ba… hey why did I leave that camp chair over there. Man I miss camping. Well trash is done, back to the computer!”
I put a new bag in before I leave the room to avoid that. Not ADHD just a terrible memory. Bag is in plain sight so it’s hard to forget the task between steps.
Not saying this will work for you, but I’ve had some success with convincing my self conscious to do things without me thinking. Then I can shut down the thinking part of my brain for periods of time in between tasks. I’ve done this through meditation since I was a kid. It has helped me to “just know” what needs to be done and I do it.
The simplehuman line of trash cans has a step that keeps the internal trash can liner out of the trash can so you can easily see that you didn’t replace the bag. It’s very helpful for this.
if it’s immediately rewarding
Hell of a caveat there.
Thinking about it, a manager who knows how to trick adhd workers to hyper focus on stuff could make a killer department 🤔
In my experience all it takes is a reasonable manager who can make progressive goals that are easily achievable which help build and develop a person while getting them engaged and acknowledging their hard work at each stage. It’s much easier than tricking i feel
Someone close to me has struggled forever with ADHD. A heroic effort got her through med school. They are an ER doc. Their life outside the ER would not work at all without an amazing partner, but at work, it’s kind of perfect. Fix it, it goes away. Everything is different all the time. Fix shiny thing, send it home, find next shiny thing.
It is a very unique situation though.
If more workplaces incorporated performance based snacks it wouldn’t be!
Sure, if you want an even greater obesity epidemic.
Burn it off pacing around the office.
Cucumbers are a good snack. And peanut butter celery, but that takes more work than just throwing a cucumber in the fridge.
It means I’m definitely good at sex.
If anybody here is an engineer, I’d highly recommend applying for jobs at tech startups. It’s very chaotic and disorganized; you’ll be constantly putting out fires. But you know where you’re at when you’re putting out fires? Flow state.
It’s so true, but i also get tired and burn out fast
This went from engaging to utter burnout and misery very quickly for me.
The problem is that they are horrifically toxic places.
Where are these high functioning ADHD people? The adhd person I know I’m my life can’t really get things done in a reliable way.
Hello it’s me, high functioning non medicated adhd (or some form of) person.
I do extremely well in my tech-centric job because of exactly what the post is talking about. I do fall short on longer term projects (forget about them until last minute) but most of my job is more in the moment, which works well for me and my skillset.
Edit: I guess that’s ultimately the thing right, it’s possible for the work or job to fit with an ADHD mind, but many jobs do not.
Imagine being a Financial Auditor / Accountant with ADHD.
I’m willing to bet they don’t exist.
I can tell you that it’s it’s very difficult when operating within a stable, established framework.
But working on a revamp / redevelopment of a system or solving novel problems definitely engages the gears.
I did alright for a while. Changing up clients worked when I started to get bored.
It’s not going so great now. Considering a career change but also not wanting to throw away years of experience and a professional license. But yeah, I’m at “this is all bullshit and I don’t wanna”.
Also work in finance and feel similarly, I oddly would feel really bad about leaving though, I have a wealth of intimate knowledge of how our systems work and answers for oddball questions no one else at my level at least would know, so… I feel guilty even wanting to leave. I know it’s not good but… Can’t help it lol
Right here with you after seven years at this company Not finance but still
Just thinking about that makes my dopamine receptors shrivel up.
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I do work with numbers a fair bit, excel helps a lot with keeping it all organized… ish
Me. Am engineer. Make great money essentially being empowered to ask why the work people are doing exists. Not necessarily to automate it either. Lot of what I do these days is process simplification. Turns out having someone who thinks meanial tasks are bullshit is a fantastic skill in my field.
Once I got Adderall, this became me. I was astounded
It’s an interesting juxtaposition. I did politics and governance in Afghanistan and was extremely knowledgeable about it. But remembering to shave every morning was hard. I’d come back from lunch and my sergeant would be like, “great work, now when’s the last time you washed your coffee cup? Did you remember to empty your desk trash last night?”
To be fair, I also have a TBI and nobody’s sure how much of this is TBI and how much is ADHD.
Pretending it doesnt have downsides is disingenuous.
Just like non-adhd brains do.
I think the issue brought forward here is the lack of ahdh friendly work environments compared to the advantages that can be just as brutally exploited.
But your average manager is an extroverted neuronormie achiever & to such adhd work processes are really not intuitive. Not to mention how much less work they have if there is less individuality among the workers & everyone behaves the same-ish.It’s like morning people vs evening/night people. The morning chickens just have to “trust” that the lazy owls really do have energy later in the day & not judge (perceived) others evening productivity by their own.
ADHD, great for exploring, hunting and making it back home. Not so great for cubicle work…
I’ve made it work surprisingly well in software development - I work in the architecture field and as long as I’m truly diligent about note taking (or am lucky enough to have a trusted coworker to lean on) I’m able to make it work.
Also, micromanagers are your fucking bane if you have ADHD - sometimes I’m not working, I accept that and do house shit when I can’t focus… I still produce more output than most of my coworkers but I absolutely do need full brain breaks.
I will never return to office. I’ll manage a Wendy’s first.
ITT:
“it’s not a superpower! i cant even do a boring and monotonous task!”
and
“I love that I found a place where I’m able to utilize the benefits of the way that my brain functions!”🤔
It’s a super power in the same way that being able to mentally move yourself while not being affected by gravity is a super power. In specific circumstances it’s awesome. The rest of the time you’re just trying to not float away.
To put a finer point on it: OG Quicksilver (don’t even get me started on the historic Marvel v DC handjobbery) ended up so “super powered” that his inborn celerity transcended the very laws of physics — having little to no frictional effect on the reality he was moving through. Thus, much like Jean Grey, Magneto, Legion, and a few others, his powers were not only beyond “super”, but recognized as equal parts boon and curse to the entire species. Thanks, 90s.
You mean my heat vision is not appropriate in all situations?!
Don’t post that publicly! We’re getting to convince the normies we don’t have super powers. Although I must say I do enjoy this invisibility thing.
But what can you actually DO?
Anything that is more about talking to different parties rather than documenting and being the one to deliver. the more specialised people the better you connect, the bwtter. They will love your ability to see the patterns of the work place, your helicopter perspective. That will help them to test their ideas, to understand the concepts and what their task is all about. They will also love that you will not micro manage (as long as you dont end up hyperfocusing on their topic) and let them do their thing.
Don’t be the specialist. Don’t be the one that tries to have an eye on all the details, all the numbers. I tried to be an accountant for a while…
Ooh this is good. Yes I can see my ability to absorb wikipedia coming in useful here.
How do you think I should prepare myself for a role like this qualification-wise? I’m interested in STEM but the thought of picking one niche (say, chemical engineering) and devoting myself to it really hurts.
Also I can see this being useful in startups, right?
I was gonna ask this too. I’ve heard that some employers in the UK (perhaps in the Netherlands too) are actually explicitly asking for ND people in their job listings.
I heard (but haven’t actually checked because squirrel) GCHQ in the UK were actively recruiting ND people.
They always have done this, even before there was a wider understanding / acceptance of neurodiversity (e.g. at Bletchley Park)
Yeah, this is the example I heard too
What’s GCHQ?
Govt Communications Headquarters. One of the branches of military intelligence in the UK.
yeah. Turns out the economy is fake. who knew?
I know you’re (at least partially) joking but wtf are you talking about?
Which comment are you referring to?
Yours, about the economy being fake.
One girl at the same time.
Try starting with not blaming muslims for all of your problems
I cannot read this sentence. I have tried 3 times but nothing is reaching my brain.
It’s definitely too long of a sentence just to say ‘ADHD is a superpower and society is bad.’
Maybe it’s time to put on some tunes and take a brain break.
Me nodding in somber agreement. And yet, at the same time, also reaching for the trap-door lever. you tried and that’s what matters.
It seems we’ve been taught strict expectations about “functioning.” When a machine doesn’t get the resources it needs to do its function, it does not function, and it is not expected to function, if the mechanics are understood. We know a lot about what people need (still more to discover) but we’re expected to “function” without having our needs met.
I need you to email this to my director at work immediately
But you don’t understand, Mr… Sandbag Tiara, was it? Can I call you Sandbag?
Sandbag, what we’re really looking for in this position is someone who’s really a people person, you know? Somebody who’s a team player, ready to go the extra mile, fit in with our company culture because we’re a “”“”“family”“”“” here. Really shine in our three pointless but mandatory department-wide meetings per day, smile on demand, have a very firm handshake, and really help us close those KPI numbers.
The job in question is a backend software dev position, where the employee will theoretically never have to interact with anyone except their immediate boss, and has no reason whatsoever to emerge from their dungeon. But never mind that.
The
childrenIT professionals yearn for theminesbasement… the cool, dark basement with soft lighting…Software development is very collaborative and often involves daily and/or weekly meetings and frequent calls with coworkers.
I develop software for a huge company that everyone has heard of, and work by myself on my own projects with no collaboration required and incredibly small amount of oversight. I get to do it my way. Living the dream.
Many of my friends work in the scenario you described and do not like the whole collaboration thing!
makes me want to break out the old suspenders and palm pilot.
Employers wants slaves and servants, not mentats. Yes, its fucked up
Are there things we can do to take advantage of this? Even on my meds I struggle to write my documentation, but the initial period of trying to find a solution and making a working POC is so great
Spend weeks automating your documentation
You will surely not regret spending that much time on something that probably wont be used
Assign it as a research collection task to a junior dev and forget to follow up.
(Fr tho, auto doc frameworks and related instrumentation are easily worth weeks. I will fight your manager.)
I am generating markdown tables with a Json file and a GitHub action that builds a markdown table for me lol I just learned today that I have to upskill on QA more and lead some organizational change. Reading tense technical manuals on testing is my nightmare
I use copilot to draft all my initial copy. It’s FAR too time consuming for me to try to produce original copy myself. Once I have the copilot results though, then I can analyze and optimize from there. That said, I fucking hate writing documentation and I procrastinate too much.
I use chatgpt for most of my non technical copy. It didn’t a decent job on my resume too, though it lied… A lot. So had to clean it up
