Interviewer
Tell me something surprising about ADHD.
ADHD
I’m going to be a little verbose here. I’m glad you’re asking about my ADHD, I’m so happy to talk about it and want to write this up as the next book I write after I’m done with this one. So washing dishes. This was my nemesis before I was medicated. The problem with ADHD is that I have an infinite discounting factor between now and in the future. So basically, the idea that “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Well to me a bird in the hand is worth an infinite number of birds in the bush. Another way of looking at ADHD is that there are two times for people with ADHD, now and “not now.”
So why does this matter for washing dishes. When I would wash dishes it was very much a feeling of “Why am I doing this.” I would be complaining about every single dish that I washed to myself. It was like jumping into a cold pool every time that I had to wash another dish. It was so painful. So I had to distract myself. I tried watching TV or listening to a podcast and that kind of worked. But the best thing to keep me getting my dishes done is to talk to someone on the phone. Then I was able to just focus on the phone call and just wash the dishes. Presto, the pain of doing the dishes went away.
Interviewer
Because you were distracted ? Or because you were getting something else done that took up hours primary attention ? Or just because you were doing multiple things ? This is fascinating.
ADHD
So on the topic of getting distracted while washing dishes, it was that I could convince myself that I was doing something “important.” Washing dishes has no real value in the time you’re doing it. The value is in having clean dishes. It’s highly uninteresting and in the immediate term feels like a waste of time. So here’s the interesting part of it. ADHD people are distracted because they think “I should be doing something else” In our minds the word “important” is messed up. We believe that something is important because it’s interesting. And if washing dishes isn’t interesting, then it’s not worth doing. So every time I think about picking up a dish to wash my brain is saying, “isn’t there something more interesting you should be doing?”Normal people might feel this way but they can turn on their brain and say, “I know, but doing the dishes is important. if I do this I’ll have clean dishes.” But what’s horrible in ADHD brain is that the brain doesn’t say that. It says, “This isn’t important. Why are you making me do this!” ADHD could be understood as a type of addiction. It’s an addiction to new and interesting stimuli. I thought about it this way when I met an anorexic who described anorexia as being “addicted” to not eating.
Also, in a pragmatic way, ADHD could be thought of as a type of pathology. ADHD in some ways is having pathologically bad executive function skills. Everyone has work they can do with executive functions and could plan better. But ADHD brings this to a whole new level. Take procrastination. Normal people procrastinate by saying, “I’m going to watch some TV now instead of doing my homework.” ADHD people by contrast might say, “I can’t do my homework right now. I just can’t. This essay is 10 pages long which means that I will need a whole lot of stuff to write. What topic should I choose? There’s so man options? And I need to read the books. Maybe I’ll read the books first. But I’m not sure what books to read. I don’t even want to think about this now so I’ll do something else.” It’s actually hard (and painful) for me to get in this mindset because I start to break the problem down into pieces. Executive Skills. But earlier in the week I got through a whole bunch of stuff and had an hour of time. I was a bit terrified of not having anything to do. So I started to just start writing about not having anything to do and all of a sudden, lots of ideas of what I would do started coming out. It was so weird but I could imagine previously having said that I needed to “waste an hour because there was nothing to do.” That’s the horrible thing, I spent a lot of time figuring out how to “burn time” because I couldn’t focus on anything rather than “finding time” to get things done, or relax, or do whatever I wanted to do.
I think of it like the new weight loss drugs to some extent. I hear women talk about how they can’t lose weight because their brain keeps telling them that they’re hungry. Even when they try to diet so much and starve themselves, they’re still overweight or obese. There is a little voice in their heads that say “Don’t you want to eat this now?” It’s the bane of their existence. When they take the drug, the little voice in their head goes away. I totally understand that feeling. Before I got treated for ADHD, I would look at the dishes and come up with a million reasons not to do the dishes. The little voice in my head is quite creative. But then after I started taking the drugs, I realized that the voices went away and I said, Oh, I can just do the dishes. Or “Why don’t I just do the dishes.”
Interviewer
Tell me more about your relationship to time.
ADHD
On arriving early: Because of the invite discounting, there was this idea that I needed to do something “useful” with my time RIGHT NOW. Because time of right now was so much more important than future time. So if I could watch another YouTube video now, it was more important than being 5 minutes early. And if was more important than being 5 minutes early, then I was likely to be 5 minutes late because I wouldn’t leave on time. Also, say I had to be somewhere at 7:00 awouldt was 5:30 now and there was a train leaving at 6:00. And It took 20 minutes to get to the train. I would think, “I have plenty of time, the train leaves at 7:00” What I should have said was, “OK, let’s get everything together right now and get out the door because as I leave I’m probably going to remember that I need something else.” But I have the 7:00 stuck in my head and can forget about the other intermediary steps.
On ADHD in General: There was this inability to prioritize. There’s this weird ADHD thing where relaxing and doing stuff doesn’t work right. Relaxing normally puts your head into a “default state” where you don’t do anything. When you do stuff it turns off the default state and you enter “task mode.” This doesn’t work right in ADHD so I get into this state of “I don’t know what to do right now and give up.” It’s the ultimate state of paralysis when you can’t relax enough to just “Do Something” even if it’s not perfect. It’s really a case of the perfect preventing me working on the good enough…
Interviewer
What are some other issues with ADHD?
ADHD
With undiagnosed ADHD the world is very binary. It’s like Yoda says, “Do or not do, there is no try.” So in their mind, it’s about “Do I take the class or do I not take the class.” In reality, there are a lot of other things going on. If they had been diagnosed with ADHD at this time they could have taken a more reasonable approach. They could have looked at this problem not as a binary problem of “Do I do this or not do this?” but of “If I do this I can’t do something else.” They would have realized that taking the class would have meant a lot more work. Or, they could have taken the class and done a ton of work. Either way, they would have needed to look at this as a trade-off in time and effort vs. the other things that they want to do. Being a college freshman has a lot of fun opportunities and things to try. They couldn’t conceive that having “unplanned” time could be a “good” thing. But having ADHD meant that they didn’t have the skills to make that trade-off.
Interviewer
There is a concept called yak shaving (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0 ). ADHD sounds a bit like yak shaving on steroids.
The description if “addicted to the novel “ is a great descriptor. Being ripped out of “the zone” by your thoughts sounds very difficult.
When you started taking meds – was it a binary effect ? Or did the urge lose intensity ?
ADHD
Ha! So that’s a funny video you chose. I’ve seen that video as describing ADHD. With ADHD it’s as you said, this really happens. Procrastination is a thing but ADHD brings this to a whole new level. In that example pin the video, each little thing he sees he feels compelled to do. In my ADHD groups people describe their actual mornings in this way so it becomes sad. The best example of how far ADHD can is in the ADHD Reddit group where people come up with hacks on how to deal with things that other people might describe as minor issues.
Like the question, “What do you do when you forget to turn off your lights in your car?” Most people would come up with little hacks to remember. Maybe post-its or something like that. But the ADHD group has those plus “industrial strength solutions like, “I always keep an extra battery in my car because this happens so often.” My favorite is “What happens when you forget that you’ve put your laundry in the wash but didn’t take it out to put in the dryer?” You’d think this would be an easy solution but, the poster continues, “It’s been in the washer for 2 days and now there’s mildew over everything,” There’s an answer for this. Veterans in the group know about Lysol sanitizing solution to get the mildew off.
So on the idea of getting rips from my thoughts it’s really horrible. With ADHD the typical thing you think about is the kid in elementary school running around the room. Before I was treated, I would sit down and have an hour or two to do work. I’d sit down ready to go, and immediately feel uncomfortable, like I should be doing something else. Right at the point I should be able to get into deep work, I’d feel the compulsion to do something else. It’s the idea of not being comfortable in my own skin.
As for medication, I don’t take the meds on weekends and they don’t work perfectly. They help me understand what it means to be “normal” though. It helps give me that feeling of space that I don’t “always have to be doing something” which is great. But even on weekdays or weekends I need to feel like I have 30 minutes or an hour in the morning to just breathe, that’s my time, to just churn on something. That’s what I’m doing right now. It’s like a mentally exhausting sprint…
Taking meds for the first time it doesn’t feel like it works. It just lays there. I didn’t know that I could sit and plan for an hour so I didn’t really try. But it helped me to open up the different mental pathways so I could do this. But now I can plan better so that I don’t feel like I’m always behind the 8 ball. ADHD is kind of horrible because you only do “critical and urgent” things — if you’ve read the 7 habits of highly effective people.
By the way, the best thing I’ve seen on ADHD is the Youtube series How to ADHD. And the most powerful thing she said, and the thing that literally made me cry when going for treatment is, “The most common thing people say when getting treated for ADHD is ‘What if I don’t have ADHD and I’m just lazy’”
Interviewer
This has been eye opening.
I didn’t realize just how debilitating ADHD can be in adult hood. And how much work is involved in covering. The “everything is a firedrill” mode for years sounds exhausting – and I think I understand when you’re on that kind of energy rush all the time normal tasks must have seemed less important t.
You didn’t mention it above – did you crash when forced into a long period of inactivity ? Like a 10 hour flight?
I think media’s depiction of ADHD didn’t do it justice at all.
ADHD
So about the 10 hour flight. That can be oddly freeing. On a train or plane I feel like the time is already spoken for and can relax and get stuff done. Not always but a fair amount of the time. Going to a coffee shop to get work done worked as well, I’m not sure why. On the train I remember how I had a time box of about an hour and that time limit that was pushed on me with no way to get out (especially before phones) was just wonderful. Though I do have an awful train story. Because I could never prepare for getting off the train before it got into the station (part of me not a able to be early) I would get up just as the train was coming in the station.I forgot my bag on the train. Not only that, but there were about 10 library books. As this was a university library, they were going to charge me $100 a book. Luckily we found it soon after.
Interviewer
By the way, the thought “ maybe I’m just lazy” comes from a society authority figures do not care to listen(teachers, Police. Managers, etc). But in the same society. We are taught that everything is a problem that we can fix, if we just apply ourselves.
ADHD
Not exactly. With minorities, they may not have the background they need or some of the skills. ADHD people just don’t get the work done. They spend too much time in this painful and pathological procrastination. They don’t plan. They are the kings of “You’re so smart, why can’t you just get this done.” My 11 year old before he was medicated couldn’t write a reading response because every idea he would shoot down and say, “That’s not what the teacher is asking for!” This would take HOURS. But there’s not really a word for “I spent 4 hours thinking of the best paragraph to write about Harry Potter chapter 4.” So it comes off as lazy.
It’s similar to this idea of “ADHD anxiety”— ADHD people just don’t get the work done sometimes. You can sugar coat it and say they are doing other things but it’s not true. It’s kind of like an alcoholic not being able to perform. Here’s a bit from and ADHD mag I put on my blog: “People with ADHD nervous systems are consistently inconsistent. The person is never sure that her abilities and intellect will show up when they are needed. Not being able to measure up at the job or at school, or in social circles is humiliating. It is understandable that people with ADHD live with persistent fear.”
Here’s another little bit about how the medication affected me. I’ve had very few side effects from Concerta or Vyvanse. However, I made my dose a little lower because I was using it like caffeine. I would use it to make me more stimulated and focused. However, it was harder to titrate and made me a little bit aggressive at some point. I realize that Coffee is easier to titrate and can use a little bit at a time.
But the weirdest side effect, which only happened a couple of times, because when I started taking it and then went and saw someone for coffee. It was right after Covid and for 30 seconds I became unbelievably happy to see this person. It was like a full fledged mania for 30 seconds, not the worst feeling in the world but an uncontrollable happiness. The other one was when I went on too many roller coasters after having taken some Concerta I got off the last roller coaster and just couldn’t get the adrenaline out of my body. I was shaking and not nauseous, but just felt incredibly over caffeinated. And I realized part of this is getting old and part of this is just realizing that I need to be careful about doing too many roller coasters because my body treats adrenaline kind of weird.
Another thing happens to me with ADHD on the weekends, and sometimes on the weekdays. Going to the grocery store without a list and just picking things can be a bit triggering. Especially if I don’t know where everything is, it becomes, “this is too hard.” And I just get overwhelmed. I woke up last week and decided to go to Trader Joe’s early on Sunday morning. Hadn’t had any drugs and thought we were out of groceries. I was there for like an hour and a half and for the last half hour I just said, “I’m totally overwhelmed, I shouldn’t have done this.“ I come home and tell my wife that I need to lie down because I’m totally overwhelmed. She wants to have a conversation with me and say, “I think you really need to work on your anxiety. Maybe you can get medicated for your anxiety. I said, “ instead of medication, why don’t I go to the grocery store less.”
Interviewer
What would be your unmediated reaction to being on a team with a person like me that would rather start a project than plan the project ? Was agile good or did you prefer waterfall ?
ADHD
Medicated just means that I can do what I know is the right thing to do. It’s more fun to just jump into things and get started without a plan. However, I’d tend to start lots and lots of things, and I never get them done. This causes a whole bunch of anxiety and End up being less fun than the long run. So it would be a lot of fun working with you, but it would be very hard to finish anything. I love
Working with people who finish things.
My tech lead at work is particularly wonderful. He’s a former business analyst, and he knows how to project plan and scope the hell out of everything.
So here’s the thing about my planning. I get very anxious around the unknown. Sitting down to plan it is terrifying in someways without medicine. It was so terrifying that I couldn’t do it now, I know that I can do it and that removes the terror. My favorite tool to do this is the Bullet Journal. This is a notebook where you need to copy what you want to do every day or a week. This allows me to put everything in its place and realize there’s not a huge amount to do, it’s just any matter of sitting down and figuring out what it is that I need to do versus want to do.
A lot of it has to do with how I view optional. Previously, I would view having many options as overwhelming. I thought they were all these things that I needed to pay attention to, and wasn’t doing. It was the whole, “if you have to eat apples, don’t take a bite out of each one“ however, I started to realize that having more options was actually a good thing, I was talking to my friend at work who is looking for a new job. When she told her current team about the new offer, they tried really hard to match it. She felt bad. I told her, this is actually a good thing having two good options is better than having one option. It’s obvious when you think about it but it doesn’t always feel that way.
Interviewer
How did vacations work for you ? My dad would always structure trips so we would maximize our time. At the result of being utterly exhausted. The last trip he took to India he literally had a heart attack on the plane back (took some nitro and got it checked after landing)
ADHD
The best trips for me were generally ski vacations. I can get up in the morning do a lot of exercise and feel like I accomplished something. The worst vacations for me was just sitting on the beach and relax. I would never feel comfortable relaxing and then just spent way too much time doing self-care, I realized that I spent a couple hours of writing in the morning working on my end of year letter. That made me feel really good. That got me focused on one specific frustration that I was moving forward with allowing me to relax more during the day. Now that I medicated, I need to spend less time working on my end of year letter because I realize there were other things I can focus on.