Do some (reliable) self tests (there are some official ones, I’m sure someone can advise). It’s very quick and you’ll learn more about yourself.
I’m diagnosed now, but before that, the way I saw this was: even if I don’t actually have ADHD, if I know I have ADHD-like symptoms/behaviours, I can learn and use the coping strategies of ADHD individuals to make my life easier. (Which was right except for the fact that I, indeed, turned out to have not only the symptoms but actual ADHD).
I’ve seen this posted before, in fact so long ago that if it was an LLM it would have been GPT-1 at most.
I’m pretty sure this is human-flavoured stupidity, rather than LLM garbage.
…and this is what happens when you write bullshit without effort.
Seriously, an LLM could have done a better job than whoever wrote this.
Yes except for me “him” is now my partner and we’re getting married next year. I do have some friends with seemingly unlimited conversation topics too, but eventually I get socially exhausted and I need to finish the conversation and have a break.
You can do this with not that much setup:
And now what makes it magic for me:
Depending on how sophisticated your setup is, you might get the LLM to automatically pick up changes in your notes. I do this at work and it feels like magic.
You sort of can already. For text it’s definitely possible, and I’ve started doing it since my notes are mostly text rather than screenshots. (I use obsidian to take notes, and quick thoughts get their own note).
I don’t have a mega cohesive workflow yet but this is the list of things I do:
I have a script that combines all my notes into one. This runs automatically in my computer every few minutes, and synced to Google drive.
For work (we have a Gemini Pro subscription) this plus some rolling meetings notes gets added to a gemini “gem” (custom set of instructions/context) that has been instructed to answer from my notes, so that I can ask it “what recent ideas have I had” or “what’s the biggest problem right now with project XYZ”.
For my personal notes, I upload manually the combined notes to perplexity and do roughly the same.
And the one that might work for you, now I’ve opened my obsidian vault (I.e. the folder where my notes live) with Windsurf, an AI-enabled IDE. These things can do much more interesting things than vibe coding. I use this for tidying up: “help me find topics in my notes where I haven’t linked the notes between them”.
You could use this last one to open your screenshots folder, and your monthly credits might not last that long if you’re dealing with images, but I think that’d be a problem only at the beginning when you have a large number of unsorted files. You could ask it to put analyse them and put them into longer format notes, for example. Or go through them one by one, analyse them, and if they’re worth keeping, add the text to a single big text file and then move the screenshot to another folder that you could delete later.
This is how I used to think until I was shown that no, this is a problem that >80% of the population doesn’t have, and no, misplacing your coffee mug an average of 3 times during your workday is not typical.
I love my job (and I would say to an atypical amount), and I’m on meds… But this doesn’t change the fact that some days you just don’t have the energy or brainpower to do anything - especially if your job requires deep thought and concentration.
It’s taken me a good while to learn not to feel guilty about this, and also not to take it as a sign of me not liking my job.
I’ve just had to send this to a friend who always complains (jokingly, of course) about how I do exactly this.
My fiancé has combined type nominally, but other than racing thoughts and some stimming, he’s definitely the quiet type. I would say that’s probably the case for many (most even?) AuDHD people, as autism doesn’t usually go hand in hand with the endless social battery that the ADHD stereotype portrays.
Well the UK said they have no plans but now they have to actually debate it in Parliament. So it’s better than nothing - at least the proposal gets a chance to be heard.
I would say except “no thoughts, head empty” and “want to do nothing”, the rest of the moods are failures to regulate.
If you can regulate, you don’t get into a hyperfocus that lets you forget your own physical needs; or feel you want to do “all the things” but simultaneously none of them feels appealing/right.
I think this might be the first time I find the right words to say this. Also it’s probably not the right thread but if I try to make a post I’ll lose motivation and not write this, so… Since we’re in an ADHD sub, here we go.
It irks me when people say I physically can’t get off the sofa and do things. Because no, there’s nothing physical preventing us. There’s no barrier, there’s no muscle weakness, our neurons haven’t stopped telling our legs to work. We’re mentally blocked instead (as evidenced, for example, by the fact that we might be able to get up to go get more crisps, while moping and feeling useless all the way to the kitchen and back).
Our mind, and by this I’m talking about the area of the brain that controls executive function, it’s refusing to either put together a plan (10:04 am - get up, 10:05 am - clean kitchen) or might know the plan but refusing to execute it and send the commands to another part of the brain.
I think when people say “I physically can’t move”, neurotypicals roll their eyes and don’t understand, because there’s nothing at a physical level actually preventing an able-bodied individual to move, and they make the mental shortcut to “this person is lazy”.
Sorry about the rambling. TL;DR: I think we need better wording to explain this to people who don’t experience it, as we’re blocked mentally, not physically.
Not that it matters much, but I think these days it’s all called ADHD but with three subtypes: Inattentive (which would be ADD), Hyperactive, or Combined (which is the most common).
Are we seriously valuing this comic based on the quality of the drawings rather than the idea they convey?
IMHO this is all about the idea/text, which doesn’t look like AI slop to me.
I’d agree, I live in the typical ADHD chaos but this meme doesn’t feel relatable to me. I guess I’m lucky? Anyway, I’d totally say this is about anxiety, not ADHD.
Most people tend to develop coping mechanisms that help them pass as non-ADHD individuals, by lowering their standards for what they can achieve in life and by accepting the abnormally high amounts of stress that hiding their ADHD causes them.
Psychologists call this “growing out of ADHD”.
Even though there is a LOT more to a person than productivity and that can never be the thing that defines us, I’m going to focus exclusively on that because that’s what this post is about.
I had one of those days today. Absolutely awesome. I almost had no meetings and the software changes kept coming in. I nailed it. I’m still on a rush, I feel unstoppable!
However yesterday, I came home and I was almost crying to my partner because I couldn’t take the laundry off the rack and I felt useless.
But hey, so is the life of ADHDers. I accept it. Yesterday it took me a while to get out of that emotional state. I knew that rationally I’m not a useless person and I have a good handle on my life. However emotionally it was way harder. It took me a lot of processing to synthesise that knowledge into feelings.
So I know the rational part, and I lean on that and on a very understanding, loving partner (who is also neurodivergent) who helps me stay grounded when I panic. Our productivity is not constant. That is fine - on average, there’s nothing wrong with our output!
Over the past 5 years, I’ve installed ubuntu about 30 times on different computers. Not once has an install on an SSD taken me more than an hour, with it typically taking me 30 minutes or less except for rare occasions where I’ve messed something up.
My health insurance (Axa in the UK, through my employer) has a neurodivergent diagnosis/support service.
After doing a self assessment, I booked an appointment with a regular doctor and said I suspect I might have ADHD because of [assessment] and [list of symptoms].
They said something along the lines of “that’s enough evidence to at least suspect it”, then referred me onwards to the other service (ProblemShared) which did first a preliminary assessment and then a formal diagnosis.