There is a third type of blocker. Being too sick or fatigued. Knowing when to push through but risk having less energy later or the next day, or hold back can be a challenge.

If you don’t get fatigue think of t like the decision to do an all nighter: you can’t do one every night!

Awesome article, I definitely relate to a lot of the things mentioned. Wondering if I have ADHD as well. I was always smart enough to make it through school without applying much effort, so perhaps it went undiagnosed..

Thanks for creating your web page and thanks posting both!

These are brilliant, both of them it seems !

I read your writeup on ADHD. I really appreciated the advice that you give (seeking help, finding ways to commit, etc), but you (as any other existing resource on ADHD) could not convince me that ADHD is a thing.

The symptoms you described, you explicitly say, are rather unique. If I think about most of the people I know, I would instead say that they are quite common. Either everyone around me, me included, has ADHD, or the definition for this disorder is quite fuzzy.

Just think about the astonishing number of people that buy books, watch videos, read threads - like this very one - that propose solutions to procrastination. All these people have similar symptoms, but I wouldn't say they are ill (even though they all have problems, and they all would greatly benefit from help, don't get me wrong). Nor I would be satisfied with the simplicistic way of classifying some of those as "sick and allowed to legally do amphetamines" and the rest in the negative set.

I read the official set of symptoms to diagnose ADHD that you linked in the article. I found that embarassing. Lacking in scientific soundness. Please pardon my bias as a data scientist, and allow me to distort a quote for an increased dramatic effect, but a thing like "if you have at least 6 symptoms among: moving too much, not wanting to do your homework since before you were 12, etc. - > then you have ADHD. But if you are more than 17, you only need 5 symptoms. Because you know, 5 is the magic number" doesn't strike me as a sound classification method.

I'll add that the sole fact that there are significant differences in the percentages of diagnosed ADHD cases among different continents should convince anybody that believes in science (=statistics/scientific method) that the model "if you check these boxes, then you have ADHD" is a horrible one to fit a very complex reality. Symptoms are like a mixture of mostly independent gaussians, and we are trying to force a binary classification on it, clumping variables together and imposing arbitrary thesholds. But we'll never get a decent representation of reality in this way. Having only a few classes, if having classes at all, is conceptually wrong in this case.

I think this simplified way of doing things can be ok for doctors that want an easy life (tick some boxes, get paid, feel you helped somebody) and for people that want a quick improve in performance and/or that want to feel relieved/justified by being labeled as ill (it may be adults wanting this for themselves, or anxious parents for their children. And both could be not fully aware about their drives. Therefore I'm not attacking anyone here. I'm highlighting a diffuse social problem and trying to raise awareness).

But this cannot be accepted by people that care about grasping all the nuances of complex phenomena, and that want to sensibly improve people's lives (by reducing the stigma around psychological problems, which we all have, by pushing for a culture with less simplification - especially in medicine and psychology - and that acknowledges observables as being continuous, by fighting for more equality around the world in the access to drugs and nootropics and for more education on drugs and mental hygene).

Pardon my English (it's not my first language) and pardon my tones (I may sound salty but I am really just looking for a high quality discussion in a beautiful place like HN, and I would love to be proven wrong on the ADHD existance). (((And pardon all my lispy parentheses.)))

TL;DR I rant about ADHD just being a label attached with poor criteria. It does not capture the complexity of reality, which is made of all shades of unsatisfaction, lazyness and interconnected psychological issues.

I'm prepared to bet folding money that the folks who worked on the 5th Diagnostic & Statistical Manual (DSM-5) have given at least as much thought as you have to these matters.

The implication that research and practicing psychologists and psychiatrists, as a profession, are unaware of the profound variability of human beings is just silly.

I'm not saying that all psychologists and psychiatrists are unaware of mind's complexity and are sloppy/mechanical when applying diagnoses. But I would definitely say that some of them are.

However, my main point was not to attack a profession, but rather to point out that the claim that "ADHD exists" is somewhat weak, given some evidence (like differences in percentage of diagnosed cases among continents, official guidelines that seem arbitrary on some points and open to various interpretations on other points, and the fact that some of the symptoms typically assigned to ADHD are present in all sorts of mixes and magnitudes in almost every human being).

I would rather see the medical community substitute this claim with a more saner "there exist a lot of diverse psychological symptoms, and they all have roots in problems that people have".

Therefore, we need more psychology (as in "let's talk, see what's wrong, and get to the causes, to the roots, and try to solve them") and less "medicine done wrong" (i.e. "let's see what symptoms you have, let's see in what box you fit, and let's stuff you with pills for the rest of your life without ever getting to the root of your problems").

And I would like a society which is more aware of the importance of mental hygiene, of introspection and communication as ways to solve problems (which should almost never be solved with pills), and that is more educated and mature on drugs (I would love to see less kids being stuffed with Ritalin and other meths, and more adults instead experimenting with these drugs for productivity and psychological self-exploration, aware that they are doing amphetamines and aware of the risks and benefits involved).

Your objections are based on spending a few minutes looking at guides intended for the general public. May I suggest spending some time with the professional literature? These issues are canvassed by researchers and practitioners in enormous depth.

But if you'd like to know the broad conclusion so far from decades of research with multiple lines of evidence: ADHD exists.