It took me ages to realise this. People with ADHD are always portrayed as lazy but they don’t struggle with hard work, they struggle with boring work. Before I knew I had ADHD I always found I was getting in trouble for not finishing boring work so I always used to prioritise tasks by how much fun they were and start with the most boring. I just ended up getting nothing done.
Then they also get mad when you find an easier way to accomplish the same thing in a fraction of the time or even automating it.
“Why didn’t you show your work, so I can see how you think?”
Because I did it in my head and got the right answer. This isn’t about you.
The “show your work” is about checking if you understand the logic in getting the answer. We had lots of questions out of 5. Right answer was only worth 1 mark, the other 4 were the steps and reasoning. This type of setup punishes those that skip right to the answer, or have memorized answers. But rewards those that show they know the concepts
What part of what you said changes what I said?
That you need to show your work, so they can test if they taught you the principles.
Right, so nothing.
My brain didn’t go through the steps like that. It looked at the problem and found the answer.
It’s why they thought I was cheating: my scantron results were above 90% correct, and the written portion was scored abysmally for lack of work.
That’s a failure of Test Design, not of student ability.
It doesn’t matter if you use mental math or not, you just need to write what you did in your head on the paper.
I think you are missing the point about the goal of schooling, it is not to get correct answers but to teach people methods of problem solving, so when faced with a brand new problem you can extrapolate methods and find a solution. As acedemia progresses solutions are not possible in your head, so applying principles is the goal.
I deconstructed the underlying methodology of the creator of the system in order to understand their internalized blind spots or artificial limitations imposed on them by unrelated third parties at the time of the systems creation.
Literally every single damn math class I ever took
I had to retake an algebra 2 exam multiple times because they thought I was cheating- including sitting IN the principal’s office, yet the scores were all within points of each other.
They were so fucking salty about it too when there was no “gotcha.” I wish I could time travel back to advocate for myself, because I would have TORN THEM A NEW ONE. My parents were apathetic cowards.
Like all cutting injustices, it’s stuck with me.
Ok but forcing me to show my work was one of those things I hated until I was extremely grateful for it. I didn’t need to show my work to prove my answer was correct in elementary school, but it was a slow drift from “I can do it in my head with ease” to “I need to document my steps so I can check where the error occurred”. Also “it’s not enough to be correct, you need to be correct with evidence” is the reality for people who do math for a living
It’s funny, because in high school, I remember getting poor marks on proofs - and HATING them - because I was like “this is so fucking obvious jesus tap dancing christ” and just… skipped lots of steps.
Fast forward to college and logic theory: that ended up being one of my favorite classes, because machine theory and problem reduction is a fascinating domain, and FAR more interesting than “prove this shape is the shape we say it is” or whatever vapid bullshit they had us doing in high school.
This reminds me of a punishment homework thing I was given in my youth, I had to write out something a bunch of times, which was a shit punishment to begin with and only happened once in like, grade 3 or something. Maybe even grade 1 when we were learning to write, idk. Maybe it wasn’t a punishment (it felt like one).
Instead of writing the letter “i” at the start of every line like I was supposed to, I just put a long line down the page to be that letter on every line.
The only part of this that I remember to this day is that I got it back with that line circled in red and the word “lazy!” Written next to it, with points off of the assignment for it.
That’s literally the only thing I recall about it, that finding an “easy” way to write the same letter across multiple lines was lazy, therefore I’m lazy and worthless. I don’t even remember if I passed or failed it, because that was less important to my young mind than being called lazy for simply trying to optimize my working time.
I dunno, but at this point I kind feel like that teacher was a bit of an asshole.
You gotta try to make a perfectly spaced dashed line down the page, as fast as you can. It’s a bit of a challenge and get all the I’s out of the way. Then the teacher can’t say boo.
I basically don’t write anything anymore. So no matter how “lazy” it might be, a dashed line like you suggest is a skill issue that I couldn’t master at age… 7?
I still haven’t because I don’t put pen to paper often, if at all. If I need to write 100 lines of the same thing, that’s what copy/paste is for.
I will say though, I’ve found putting pencil/pen to paper and brain dumping to be rather therapeutic at times! In your secret notebook you can even trash that teacher that tried to dissuade you from writing. :D
(Got this idea from The Artist’s Way book. Lol)
Well, for me, it’s not that I don’t write because I can’t, or that I don’t want to; I just work with/on/around computers/devices so much that I usually find paper to be inconvenient.
Getting a thing signed by e-signature vs having to print, sign, and mail/deliver a document to someone is just a lot easier for me.
I absolutely can write, and I sometimes find putting pen to paper to be therapeutic, but ultimately I tend to use digital forms of record keeping and note taking, much more than physical copies.
What I would consider is a writing tablet where I can quickly scribble notes into, similar to writing on paper, that then get transcribed into text by OCR or something… I don’t have the money for that.
Oh yeah for productive purposes I totally get you. I haaaate paper ending up on my desk. Especially because it always seems to be things in that weird limbo of “Can I throw this away or do I need to keep it for some reason?” and it just starts piling up everywhere.
I run Paperless NGX on my server now so I can just scan, automatically sort, and shred a majority of mail now lol.
This is when you learn to just not tell anyone that you’re saving time and pretend it takes as long as everyone else lol
This applies so hard to programmers, as well. I love making things automated, but I never have the time to make them properly.
Come join us on the QA side! I’m an automation developer, so it’s my job to make things automated :)
Add the extra layer of my mother not appreciating my interests and thinking what I now do for a living was a waste of time… And a dash of expecting me to somehow just be able to perfectly do chores they never taught me how to do when I was young. Yes, this is the first time I’ve ever mopped a floor at 17 years old. How the fuck is that my fault?
Shit, sounds a lot like my mom. She always complained I never helped with chores, but she never asked or told me to do any. Worse, whenever I did anything, like washing the dishes, instead of saying “thanks”, she would tell me to stop because she’d do it.
As a child of Baby Boomers, they really never wanted an answer - they just wanted to complain about something. And they probably never wanted to be parents in the first place.
God, it sucks to be a child of parents that never wanted children
Like I get that it was the social expectation but c’mon, what the hell, you brought me into existence, and for what?
I did the opposite for the last part. I just went the “lazy” path of just doing hard things. As they were easy for me and rewarded more. If the hard things were rewarded less, why bother in the first place?
So I got based by teachers as “not precise enough” because they could clearly see I totally understood what the exercise wanted me to do, I just didn’t do “the easy part” of writing it properly.
I don’t have a diagnosis yet but this is extremely relatable to me and I hope it gets better when I get one
The only thing a diagnosis changes is external proof that you have ADHD. If that will help you then yes it will get better.
Personally I stopped taking ADHD meds. They changed me into a different person and I’d rather learn to live with myself.
Most of the drug users and smokers are above average intelligence. Most of the intelligent people are depressed.
Great job world.
I feel fucking seen by this post
It rings right to my core
Keep it up with these posts, if I share enough of them with my clearly very painfully obviously super adhd girlfriend I might eventually convince her to go see a therapist and seek a diagnosis someday
Call her doctor, make an appointment, save it in her calendar, remind her in the lead up, drive her there, get the referral. Walk her to the post box to send it off, sit next to her to phone the intake office to confirm they got the referral, set appointments on her phone for every 6 months to sit with her and call to check the cancellation list until you get an appointment. Drive her to that appointment.
If she has ADHD, the steps involved in getting a diagnosis are bigger than Mt Everest, she will need a neurotypical Sherpa.
Call her doctor
Agh, they usually say “The patient needs to be the one to make the appointment.” >:(
But, yeah OP, if you are right there with her every step of the way, she can do it, and I bet that would be very helpful, like bowling with guard rails! She can feel the empowerment of doing the work, but you’re there to bump away the possibility of falling off into failure. :)
Call her doctor
I should have been more specific. Find a time when she’s not doing anything urgent, tell her it’s time to call the doctor, pick up her phone and dial the doctor, put them on speaker and put the phone down next to you while you body double your partner as they gone through the motions of locking in the appointment.
While on the phone your partner can also give third party authorisation. It’s the first thing I do when I meet a new provider, I give third party authorisation to my partner and mother so they can make appointments on my behalf (they can’t get results for me, but they can schedule things for me)
There are lots of boring un stimulating tasks that are super important that’s the issue. I have adhd and I cope with my issues to be able to be a functional adult. Things like the dishes and the laundry and cleaning need to be done. Some task that seem repetitive for forcing a basic understanding of the subject. I’ve met so many people in my field who are adhd and say they are super productive on complex tasks but lack basic understanding on fundamental subjects in the field because they skip all the “boring stuff”. Life is not always exciting or stimulating sometimes you have to force yourself to do something. Neurotypicals do the same thing.
The difference with ADHD, especially untreated ADHD, and the idea of “sometimes you have to force yourself to do something” is that, as a person with ADHD, trying to force myself to do stuff, without the assistance of medication, can often be a bit like trying to nail jello to the wall.
It might work for a short time, but eventually, it’ll be laying on the floor, not doing what you want it to do… Much like me.
The paralysis is very real and very strong. The contrary feelings fighting eachother in your head, one voice saying how important it is and that you need to do it, another that’s breaking down the task into every motion required, so one job becomes a quintillion individual steps, which makes you feel overwhelmed and anxious at even the thought of trying to do the job, and another voice berating you for being a lazy fuck who can’t even do the most simple shit, like get off the couch and do the thing.
In the end you just feel horrible, both about the thing you should have done and about your worth as a person, leading to depression, which exacerbates the issue further.
It’s a cycle of violence that most ADHD people have suffered with for their entire life.
I know. I am diagnosed adhd and untreated training your willpower and your self control is possible. It requires dedication and finding what works right for you. For me I use extreme scheduling, I wake up at the same time every day and sleep at the same time, every meal same time. As soon as I know I need to do something I immediately right it down, dishes cleaning everything is scheduled. It took years but it’s also been working for years. Start small force yourself to do small things. It is harder than it is for a neurotypical but that’s the burden we bare. Best you can do is deal with it using medication, therapy and mindfulness. You are more then your serotonin levels you don’t need to enjoy something to do it. You don’t even need to be engaged. The neurotypical secret is most the things they do they half ass, don’t worry about perfection just do. Another thing I see adhd people have trouble with is trying to multi task all the time. Don’t it’s a trap your brain isn’t ment for context switching that much. You can modulate yourself a lot better then you think you can. It’s just hard but that’s doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing
My work doesn’t afford me to be focused on a single task until completion. That’s the nature of the job I have, and there’s nothing that I can do, nor anything my manager can do about that.
Forcing myself into rigorous scheduling is a trap for my mind. If a task takes longer than expected (which is frequent because I’m also very time blind), then I feel like I’m running behind and I have to rush to catch up. If something takes less time than expected, I end up in the mental trap of “I don’t need to do x until y time” so I go do something else, and that distraction usually puts me behind my schedule, back to the first problem.
I end up constantly panicked because I’m running behind all the time. At the end of the day, though I may have completed everything, and done so in a reasonable timeframe, the only emotion that lingers is the feeling of disappointment in myself, that I couldn’t keep up with the schedule.
That feeling leads to depression, which leads to me giving up on the entire system, after skipping it for several weeks and being “several weeks behind” on everything; and that leads to further depression.
If your scheduling thing works for you, awesome, I’m glad you found something that works for you, for the reasons I’ve stated and so many more, it does not work for me.
However, I recognise that you’re saying this because you found what works for you, and it’s brought so much order to the chaos that is normal for your mind from before; and you want to help others find the same happiness you have using this method. That’s fine, and I hope your comment helps someone. I’m not that someone. I appreciate what you’re trying to do here regardless.
I have my own solution now, and it’s working quite well for me. My doctor and I built the therapy that I use to maintain order in the chaos of my life and mind, and I recognize that my therapy isn’t going to work for others. Which is why I’m not saying what it specifically involves. I will say that medication is part of it. It works for me, and if anyone wants to pursue something similar, they should talk with their doctor about what therapy might be right for them.
I won’t tell you that your methodology doesn’t work, it clearly does. It works for you.
The only point I’m trying to make here is that, though it may work for you, it may not work for others, and they will have to find a different solution and/or therapy for themselves which works for them.
There is no universal solution for ADHD. For some it can be managed with mindfulness, scheduling, and a force of will, and little more. Others may need assistance in the form of gadgets, widgets, and thingamajigs (maybe fidget things? IDK)… Others may only need a small amount of medication to manage it, and others may need multiple medications before they see the results they’re after.
All of these methods of therapy are valid for the people that benefit from them. Most of them won’t work for most ADHD people, they’ll have to find which one is going to work for them, and it’s likely that one or more will work, they’ll just have to figure out which one is the best for them by working with their doctor to figure it out. Hopefully that doctor is a psychiatrist with a specialty in ADHD; but I digress.
I’ve tried most of what you suggest and it did not work for me. That’s fine. It works for you and I’m happy for that. The fact that I couldn’t use that method to overcome my challenges, doesn’t, and shouldn’t imply that I’m somehow worse for it, or that I lack willpower, or that I can’t make the hard choice or make the sacrifice to make it work. I’m easily one of the most willful people I know, even before I started my current therapy. The condition is simply more complex than a matter of having the willpower to overcome it. That may work for some, like yourself; or it may work for short periods of time, like it did for me; or it may not work at all for others. Everyone is different.
having grown up with ADD and ADHD being huge in schools and then reading countless studies over the past few decades about how inaccurate diagnoses and the understanding of ADD and ADHD are, I will be very cautious in administering any medication to my children for popular syndromes.
I grew up in such times, myself. I was diagnosed as likely ADHD as a child but never treated because of a mix of stigma and my parents taking that exact reasoning. This led to a childhood of anxiety, academic issues, depression, social awkwardness, and struggling in university, despite having no problems understanding the coursework. As an adult, it caused problems in work and relationships.
I received a diagnosis of “minor adult ADHD” about 5 years ago and received treatment for the first time in my life, which has been life-changing.
My point is: don’t underestimate the impact and trauma caused by living in this society without help to compensate for the challenges that neurodivergent brains have to deal with.
neurodivergence, adhd included, is actually widely underdiagnosed - some doctors estimate 1 in 5 people is neurodivergent. And those rates have been rising (though possibly because of increased acceptance)
right, and with that sort of prevalence, and so little detrimental effects to society, there isn’t good enough evidence for advocating “treatment” of most people who just think differently than other people.
largely, they notice or pay attention to different things, so “treatments” are unnecessary, obtrusive or damaging.
exception given to extreme cases, “treating” ADHD seems a lot like removing funding for arts courses because school administrators don’t value the arts.
Hi. I failed out of college, in no small part due to undiagnosed ADHD. I wanna offer a little pushback.
I can’t tell if you want to change society to be less punishing to neurodivergent people, or if your whole thesis is “People with ADHD have little to no trouble in society today”.
If it’s the former: not treating people who are struggling is not the way to change society. Accepting for the sake of argument that ADHD people “pay attention to different things”; paying attention to some things is critical to my ability to thrive. I would love to live in a world where I could just do what I thought was important and still have my needs taken care of, but unfortunately I’m stuck needing to pay attention to stupid bullshit I don’t care about in order to make a living, and that’s a tremendous struggle without medication.
If it’s the latter: Jesus Christ, talk to someone with ADHD.
And finally: I take issue with your metaphor at the end. What do you think is present in an unmedicated person with ADHD that is somehow missing in a medicated person?
“less punishing to neurodivergent people”
I mostly agree with this.
“People with ADHD have little to no trouble in society today”
i disagree, that is antithetical to my previous comment.
that said, neurotypical or divergent, if you don’t have trouble in society today, I want to know more about your society.
“not treating people who are struggling is not the way to change society”
yes, and neither is treating people who don’t wish to be treated or are treated unnecessarily.
are you sure you’re responding to the right comment? I haven’t said many of the things you are arguing against so far.
“and that’s a tremendous struggle without medication”
then according to my previous comment, you are one of the extreme cases that need and want intervention, and should receive it.
“I take issue with your metaphor at the end”
I gather from your preceding assumptions and arguments against things that I have not said, along with your general combative tone, that you have been quixoticaly swept up in an imagined narrative that you feel you must do battle with.
“What do you think is present in an unmedicated person with ADHD that is somehow missing in a medicated person?”
missing? nothing.
Combative? Take a look in the mirror pal.
I guess I’m ultimately confused about what you’re arguing for. My ADHD is by no means “extreme”; trouble focusing at work or school is one of the baseline things you’re unlikely to get diagnosed without. I can’t imagine any reasonable person advocating for medicating people who don’t stand to benefit from it, which seems to be the motte to your bailey.
It’s actually the normies who can’t even do laundry without a little neurotransmitter bottle from mommy frontal cortex. We fight demons every day.
"Your home is tidy because you anticipate getting a little dopamine reward for a job well done. (How cute)
My home is tidy through determination, anger, sheer force of will, to do the thing despite every fiber of my being desperately trying to pull me away from it. Knowing that it simply must be done has to suffice as its own reward.
We are not the same."
Couldn’t read the post because it’s blocked by a wall of arrogance. Suck it up, but treat people better than you were treated
