Why have you chosen to attack me so personally on this fine day? Give me some warning before you completely demolish me like that. Even just a countdown from 3 or something.
I have to know if all these memes really describe adhd. Aren’t these all just normal Human behaviours? I feel like most memes here describe me perfectly. Do I have ADHD?
I understand completely, and you’re right to question it. The answer is that a lot of these behaviours are pretty normal, and it is very possible to identify with some of the memes even if you don’t have ADHD. It’s when they just keep resonating with you on a really fundamental level, across your entire lifetime, that you should maybe be suspicious. ADHD has a genetic component too, so it might help think about your parents’ behaviours and if they also match.
My psych had me complete this self assessment quiz (ASRS v1.1) before my first appointment for evaluation. It might help you too: https://psychology-tools.com/test/adult-adhd-self-report-scale
That’s interesting - thanks for sharing. I got 6/6 for the first section and 9/12 for the first section. I have a follow up question too - is there any benefit to being diagnosed as an adult? Not sure if it’s actually worthwhile or makes a difference. Looking back I’ve had numerous people comment to me that I seem ADHD, but I just assumed that’s a (bad) joke.
Medication has opened up a whole new world to me, I wish I had known decades prior. It has also given me a better understanding of my body and the way it works, and very importantly: what I need to watch out for. It also made a bunch of old life experiences make sense for the first time.
ADHD is one of the few neuro conditions they have found reliable and useful medication for, with very few negatives, including my favourite: no withdrawals. I think it’s worth exploring, even if you decide you’re fine the way you are afterwards with no intervention.
Good luck, it is a trip!
Yep, getting decent medication has helped me tremendously! My wife can tell when I don’t take my meds just by how much .pre scatter brained I am or when I am endlessly going back and forth between rooms because I forgot what I planned on doing.
this is how I became a software developer
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Dude, you can’t just type all that out and not include a plug to your app/music/video lol
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Yea, I feel you. The combination of my first and last name will also point you to me 100% of the time - I’m pretty sure I’m the only person on earth with this name, even if it sounds implausible.
Well, you wanted to try something new and you did, and it probably helped you learn a bunch of stuff along the way. So even if it didn’t turn out as good as you intended it to do, it’s still a win in my books.
Good luck with your music! And your apps if you are going to make others in the future.
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Add in a dash of autistic hyperfocus and you can in fact teach yourself enough to get the project done.
Doesn’t mean you WILL get it done of course.
Once I learn enough to feel like whatever it is is achievable I lose all interest in actually doing it… I have the same problem with finishing video games once I get to the point that Im skilled enough or have enough shit built or whatever that beating the game is inevitable I just move on to the next one.
I could have written this comment.
Re the video games, yes absolutely I’ve done this. I don’t think I’ve 100% finished a game, at least not in the last 20 years. Playing through the latest Zelda game I had to pick my moment when to go take on the final boss carefully, I know that once I beat a game I’m a lot less inclined to keep going on side quests and finding shrines/korok seeds/whatever collectibles that particular game has. So I wanted to do as much of that as I could before going after Ganondorf, but I also didn’t want to wait too long because if I make myself do ALL the side quests and get ALL the collectibles I’ll burn and not even bother finishing the game.
That’s where I’m at with RDR2. I’m forcing myself to finish everything I can before I go forward any more in the story.
Enjoying games is so difficult because of this. I love open world games that let you do everything, but it’s so hard focusing.
I want to finish all side quests first, but I’m forced to do parts of the main quest at some point to progress. Then I’m sad when it’s already over just when I thought I’m ready to start.
And when I try to focus only on the main quest, I don’t enjoy the game that much anymore after finishing because it feels unnecessary and boring.
I still somehow managed to play all 6 Assassin’s Creed games up to Black Flag + Origins 100% through sheer willpower.
narrative driven games work a LOT better for me for that reason. I’ve played through the entire halo master chief collection and titanfall 2 campaign without much issue. Never got very far in factorio on the other hand.
Yea same here, if there aren’t a lot of things to get distracted with my chances of finishing it go way up. I completed both the Subnautica games, Jedi Fallen order, and 3 of the Arkham games. Skyrim on the other hand I’ve had since it came out and never beat the main quest.
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I recently moved my wiki notes to a different platform and wanted to build a Python app to read each article and add a list of keywords and categories describing it, so things would be easier to find on the new site. I ended up attempting to create a natural language model, but literally every unique word in each article kept becoming a keyword and category. After hours of toil and StackOverflow, I realized that I was essentially trying to recreate ChatGPT or at least an aspect of what it could do seamlessly. Instead of just pivoting to its API’s, which would have only cost a few cents, I spent a few more hours trying to use a wrapper around Bard that was broken because the service didn’t want people to build free automation atop it. I finally wrote a script that used ChatGPT/OpenaAI API’s to feed the articles and it worked almost perfectly. Had to run some parsing, but it got where it needed to be. TL;DR: I tried to write an AI in a day that is difficult for seasoned experts, failed pretty gloriously, realized I should use an existing AI, then wasted a few more hours trying to save a few cents, then did it correctly. I hyper-focus when coding, which can lead to these rabbit holes.
You just described the entire cycle of discovering Linux… Starting with something simple like Mint or Ubuntu, hearing whispers from individuals with large gray beards that Gentoo and Arch are better, and then all of a sudden you’re learning about lithography processing and kernel development all because a fucking peripheral didn’t load properly.
“I’ll just figure it out”, he delusionally murmured as he typed out the 132nd acronym for the day… One day I won’t be stupid!
One day I won’t be stupid!
Yeah, about that… (Edit: This response may have came out as offensive, I meant to say that ADHD doesn’t really get better with age but quite the opposite.)
Built a 30-year career on this.
Still stupid.
Heh, reminds me of when I learned Linux. One day Windows 10 annoyed me so much that I swore never to use it as my main os again and started using Ubuntu. 2 days later I got so annoyed by it that I started to install Arch. I made lots of mistakes but had a working system which I ended up using for a year. Fun times. Nowadays I just use Fedora but I’m tempted to distro-hop again
That’s how I learned JavaScrpt Python and C++. Now I’m programming my own embedded project on a RP2040 with touchscreen, IMU and addressable LEDs. On top of that I learned thanks to my drone hobby how to solder and assemble circuits and with my 3D printing hobby I can print custom parts to hold the electronics I assembled and programmed. Now I’m reading component data sheet before bed and playing puzzles with i2c communication tables. Fun!
My background is filmmaking, I’m a camera operator. I don’t work in IT or engineering. I started these hobbies for fun and they have started to blend into something a loser to a job (that I really enjoy)
This is the sort of person I want to be until mid way through, my crisis begins, as I understand that there are people way better than me at insert current task because I must completely be good at it or it isn’t worth it, I just lose my will power at that point and get depressed, give up and repeat the cycle with something new.
Are you young? After a while you accept that making something functional, even if not perfect in execution, is better than not finishing a perfectly executed project.
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Pick something with a supportive community that will help you.
If you have ADHD then hyper focus kicks in and you bet your ass you will be the best person for the job in no time. Add on that imposter syndrome that makes you work double hard and however many decades of self loathing and self hate you have to make you want to over achieve. I somehow went from music degrees to managing a $40 million budget, but it makes sense, sorta.
Wanna be a baller
That’s why I keep doing that?!
It’s also a symptom of autism and mania.
Listen buddy, I know how to do a fuck load of things… A little bit.
Unfortunately, I think this is because pretty much every endeavour in life, if you have (severe) ADHD, feels like that. At that point it doesn’t really make a difference.
I have severe ADHD and exsisting is a pain. (I’m not suicidal, it’s just painful to do/achieve anything at all)
It’s hard to be constantly in improvise-mode. Really, that’s how it feels to me at least. As if everything consists of just trying to hold it together somehow.
That’s how a lot of ADHD folks experience it. And it’s really not that surprising when you learn what the ADHD does to your brain.
The amount of posts I relate with here are making me wonder again if I have ADHD to some degree lol
wow, this one is relatable. So far I keep succeeding so I haven’t been demotivated yet…
Meanwhile I failed all the times I tried.
well, I think some failures are successes too. If you learn from it in big ways that’s a win
I learned that I’m a failure. Soon I will be rediagnosed and hopefully learn more stuff about myself so I can better cope with it.
I hope your new diagnosis helps you. Learning more about how you think, what motivates you, and what holds you back can help a lot with choosing realistic and satisfying goals. If you keep at it, I think you’ll figure out how to achieve something you can call success.
And for what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s possible to be a failure, but I do understand the pain of defeat. Thinking more about it, defeat seems like the pain of wanting something, believing (correctly or otherwise) that it’s impossible, and then continuing to hold onto that desire. It’s the gap between what we believe to be possible and our expectations, not all that different from grief.
It’s worked out for me more than once. I have a lot of abandoned projects too though.
The fun part is accomplishing that but somehow forgetting all the stuff you learned down the line.
Me taking the hardest math class at community college when I suck at math… Yeah that wasn’t great
Same. Was funny though, because now I know how be an even more pedantic prick using propositional calculus
I did the same! But it made me realise that I don’t suck at math, I am just really bad at mental arithmetics and estimating.
