> Expectations that other people can perform like you do if they just put their mind to it is so blind to the reality of human experience that it's hard to respond.

I never claimed that was the case. In fact, I specifically cited examples where no amount of hard work could close the gap to top performers.

I wasn't suggesting that everyone can perform equally if they just work hard enough. The point is that attention, focus, and work ethic are not static traits of an individual. Yes, we pivot around certain biological attributes, but that doesn't mean they're fixed.

We all benefit from putting in the work to improve our attention spans and other learned behaviors, regardless of our starting baseline.

It's also a mistake to think that people are static. We can improve ourselves through the expenditure of effort. The reality is like the parent said: there are limits to everybody's abilities, but you'll probably have to work hard as hell to reach yours (not targeting you personally, the general case "you"). If you believe that your present abilities are all you'll ever have then you're wasting what could be tremendous potential out of false self imposed limitations.

Who said anything about not improving, the parent comment believes the ADHD sufferer is simply not working hard enough.

He's trying to show him where his bootstraps are.

As someone who suffers from ADHD, the simplicity of this comment really cuts to the heart of it for me: many words are written by PragmaticPup tiptoeing around what is essentially a directive to "work harder".

Unless you're living with ADHD, you really have no business handing out such directives. I was a hardcore meditator for years, arguably the crucible of mind training -- spent months of silent, directed attention in monasteries -- and despite blowing open the doors to some peak states, complete equanimity with all phenomena, and insight into some of the fundamental mechanics of desire and resistance, I was unable to hold any kind of job at all before I bit the bullet and medicated.

The decades of suffering I experienced because everyone around me was pushing this toxic narrative that ADHD was overdiagnosed and most likely a schema of my own failures could have been avoided if my parents just took a hard look at me and took me to a psychiatrist.

Armchair psychiatrists of Hacker News: please stop this irresponsible and dangerous public criticism of your interpretation of mental illness or the state of psychiatry.

People who are currently struggling can fall into a self limiting mindset. I can attest to that from personal experience. I don't have ADHD, but I can imagine that having it might make you believe that you couldn't improve your attention at all. The reality is that you might just be able to, even though it would probably much harder than for the general population - in the same way that an underweight person would find it harder to build muscle than someone of average build.

From my perspective it's a positive message, not finger wagging at the impaired.

On the contrary, one of the biggest sources of suffering in an ADHDers life is constantly being pounded with this very message your entire life despite trying your absolute best.

When the vast, vast majority of people are capable of a baseline far above yours, they hold you to their standards mercilessly.

The number of times I've been reduced to tears by this conversation. I'm telling you. This is by far the worst part of it all.

I'm familiar with the experience - not directly from ADHD, but from my own issues. Trying desperately to keep on top of things, running as fast as you can just to stay in the same place. I'm not saying that "ADHD is easy, just don't be lazy lol", but that you may still be able to do a little better than yesterday if you practice the right skills. I'm in no position to hold someone with ADHD to baseline standards, but I would encourage anyone to just try to be a little better than yesterday, every day.

There's also an awful lot of people, as the parent said, who don't have ADHD but still struggle with {focus, attention, willpower} from just not having used it. Those people should definitely be trying to focus harder and shouldn't be led down the path of "focus is innate/unchangeable".

You might, and you might not.

The incentives for me to be better are already as strong as they can possibly be. Not to screw up my health worse, not to lose my marriage, not to lose my job, not to make rash financial decisions. The amount of effort I put into this already is just exhausting.

I'm glad I recognise these days the times when the car is out of gas and people are telling me "if you just turned the key a little harder, maybe the car would turn on" and ignore them.

At the end of the day, every individual knows themselves better than anybody else does. I'm just relaying that it helped me, even though I was trying really hard to stay afloat and struggling to focus on most aspects of my life, to just practice focusing - working harder wouldn't have done anything because I didn't have the focus to apply to hard work in the first place. I have no idea whether people with ADHD can improve their focus, but there's people out there who think they might be because they can't focus but aren't, and don't realise that focus is a skill you can practice.

The flipside being there are people who are, and it doesn't cross their mind that they might be, and they're spinning their wheels consuming productivity porn in the hopes of finally cracking the code.

I do agree with what you're saying btw. I think you can and should try to improve things, no matter which side of the coin you're on. The crux of the issue is that it's very, very important to understand which side you're on because the advice and strategies are fundamentally very different.

I'm not at all worried about the people who think they might be ADHD. They fall into 3 camps. 1) people who suspect they have it and it's a life changing revelation and they seek treatment ASAP, 2) people who suspect they have it for a long time and are right but for some reason or other never do anything about it and 3) people who don't have it, and don't understand it well enough to realise they actually don't have it

Group 1 sorts itself pretty quick. The trouble is realising you're in group 1!!!! This is why from time to time I talk about it here if its mentioned. Once it clicks it's unbelievable. I'm very interested in helping those people as it's pretty life changing.

Group 2 I mourn for. But at least they can recognise what advice and strategies apply and understanding why their life is how it is. Knowing is half the battle.

Group 3 I'm not worried about at all. It can be such a devastating problem that when it clicks and you can finally connect the dots, you sort of know. For this group the dots will be too few and far between though naturally for everyone there will be some and they'll hum and haw about it and mull it over in their mind before forgetting about it altogether. If you genuinely think you have then you must feel as if there is and always has been something quite wrong with your life. Though you may simply identify with the list of symptoms because it's somewhat vague, and just be unsure as to what it really means. If you actually think it could be an answer to solving a problem in your life you will go for an evaluation. If you don't think it's an answer to solving a problem in your life then almost certainly you don't have it and will just forget about it. You may go for an evaluation and it comes back negative but unearthed a different problem at the cause of some real troubles for you, and that's ok, as it's a differential diagnosis for exactly that reason.