Yes. I have ADHD and would never ever tell anyone in my workplace, especially my superiors. I don't want special treatment and I fully know that it would affect my chances of advancing into more leadership roles, because who would trust someone with a job who has a tendency to miss small things, be unorganized and other stigma. (If I were the decision-maker I sure as hell wouldn't)

Yes it's hard for me and I often struggle, but I still feel great for bettering myself and powering through. Medicine is helping a lot for leveling the field, and ADHD hyperfocus can be surprisingly powerful for coding-related tasks.

I mostly agree.

I don't mind telling anyone if they're curious or if I do something very ADHD-typical that needs context. But the spin needs to be this makes me a more organized and diligent employee, which is probably true.

I no longer have an interest in advancing toward leadership roles, so I get to be a bit more relaxed about it, but your point is well taken.

> Medicine is helping a lot for leveling the field, and ADHD hyperfocus can be surprisingly powerful for coding-related tasks.

This is true and I do it too. In a lot of ways I think I do a way better job than my co-workers at solving the hard problems. But the whole work dynamic has a very "take your amphetamines and get back to work" vibe which I'm not super happy about.

I feel like I'm clearly abusing myself for money. But I have normie coworkers that seem happy to be doing the exact same job. And a lot of them have kids!

I have no idea how people function.

As far as I can tell, being employed in software is an exhausting and unfulfilling lifestyle (well, besides the money, that's great) and I'm literally counting the days until retirement.

Only reason my boss knows is that he also has it and told me first lol. A solid 50+% of my office have diagnosed ADHD. Like finds like I suppose!

It's ironic that a common trait of ADHD is oversharing, so usually it's us having this urge to tell people first that we have it, rather than them asking

Reminds me of that meme about neurodivergent people 'running in packs like poorly emotionally regulated wolves'. ;)

But how would you describe to someone who is not diagnosed ? I have a child and would like to know signs: everything I read seems very normal, including that article. Like ofc it's better to transfer idiotic phone calls, block noise when focusing, not multitasking (multitasking is not even a thing, it can't be done, I've never seen it done perfectly, there's always a mistake made at some point even by the highest boss), or working from home in a controlled environment.

Very honestly, I've always believed ADHD was something they told little kids they had so their parents wouldn't constantly scold them for being distracted by normal things and that would then scar them for life with a sickness... everybody has. The only thing that makes me believe it exists is I know I can focus monstruously for something very important, and I feel ADHD would prevent someone to even focus on something important ... but this article seems to say it's also possible, so...

> how would you describe to someone who is not diagnosed ?

Certain abilities that normal people mature in are stuck at the level of a fifteen-year-old for me and will be perpetually. Some of them are:

Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly

Ability to choose to do one task over another, and particularly an uninteresting task over an interesting one

Ability to stop an interesting task to change to another important task

Ability to stay on a single topic in thoughts and conversations

Many people with ADHD also have the emotional regulation of a ~15 year old, perpetually.

Most people can approximately remember how difficult those different abilities were when they were fifteen so there can be some level of empathy. When you were fifteen, university most likely "felt" very far away, and preparing for it "felt" not very important compared to your day-to-day. In hindsight, 15 is not far away from 18 and starting university, and there are many things you can do at 15 to make entering a good university easier.

Everything you've listed (and more) have been major pain points for me for the last 14 years or so, but especially this one:

> Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly

I'm almost incapable of preparing and perceiving the nearness of future events until the panic settles in that I'm late, behind, etc. It is especially exacerbated for things that I'm not good at or have anxiety around, like giving a presentation, working on a large refactor/feature, buying gifts for an occasion, preparing for a trip that involves multiple transitions/transportation, interviews, etc etc.

I'm getting evaluated for ADHD as I've recently been reading the literature and realizing that almost all the things I've been complaining about and trying to fix in myself for the last 10+ years, fall in the description and the features of ADHD.

> Everything you've listed (and more) have been major pain points for me for the last 14 years or so, but especially this one:

>> Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly

One way of putting it that I have found useful is that while other people have

- now

- in a minute

- in five minutes

- in an hour

- tomorrow

- next week

for most ADHD people there only exist:

- now

- not now

if it doesn't get done right now there is a fair chance it won't get done at all.

This can explain jumping from task to task: the fear of not remembering it later.

Also explains hyperfocus to aome degree: it is a learned trait to protect what little focus exist.

I've never heard that explanation before, but that's spot on.

> I'm almost incapable of preparing and perceiving the nearness of future events until the panic settles in that I'm late, behind, etc.

You're spot on. There's this neuropsychiatrist (I forget the name, he's pretty famous) that says that one major characteristic of ADHD is time blindness. Until a deadline stares at you in the face, you can't see it. Medication is like putting the glasses on.

He then went on saying that normal people plan their life 2 or 3 months in advance, and that's such a mind blowing, alien concept to me. I barely have an idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. The farther I think, the foggier it is.

Also, I've noticed over the years I've developed an effective and unhealthy coping mechanism: anxiety is how I am always on time. The major the event, the earlier my anxiety surges, I can't even sleep the night before, and it dissipates as soon as the time has come.

(Getting evaluated in 2 weeks)

> He then went on saying that normal people plan their life 2 or 3 months in advance, and that's such a mind blowing, alien concept to me. I barely have an idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. The farther I think, the foggier it is.

So true. But do you notice emotional blindness as well? My emotions seem to only attract my attention when they reach a certain threshold, which leaves me missing a huge amount of information about how I am, while occasionally being blind-sided by intense feelings seemingly out of the blue.

Inattentiveness is only a very small part of ADHD (and the name ADHD itself is very outdated and doesn't capture at all what this is about). It's more common in children to be inattentiveness (ADHD-PI) but goes away with adulthood. But ADHD is also a spectrum, so some people have it worse in X but very mild (or not at all) in Y.

For me it's more emotional restless-ness, overthinking (esp. what people think about me and self-criticism), oversharing of whatever I am currently focused on (like writing this comment), being late because I constantly forget to account for something obvious like walking time, and a strong "mental barrier" of doing things that I don't want to do, or don't have consequences for not doing. Kind of like a self-drive that only exists when

a) I really really want to do it, but then I have to do it right now because I can't focus on anything else. I want to drop everything I'm doing and only do that instead.

b) there is some external consequence like a deadline driving me to do it.

For example: My apartment has a stack of unopened amazon boxes that I only open when I need the item inside (no consequence of not doing it). But when a task has a deadline, or when I feel that my not-doing something would start to get people angry at me, I'll hyperfocus and rush it out in no time. Or dishes starting to get smelly (consequence), but a pile of washed clothes stays untouched (no consequence) until I need a shirt from that pile.

When I was a child (untreated) I barely ever did my homework or studied, copied all the time from classmates, "daydreamed" and was in my head most of the time instead of listening to the teacher, or talking to my classmates.

ADHD people (from my experience) are also very chatty, jump seemingly random from topic to topic and have a high energy way of writing text messages back and forth, like chopping a longer topic up into many small messages instead of writing longer sentences. We just want to share what we have in our head with someone right now

I'd recommend watching this playlist by Dr. Berkley, even if just the first 1-2 videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg6cfsnmqyg&list=PLzBixSjmbc...

Could you kindly comment, if this resonates, or else set me straight if you can?

Apologies in advance if I’m off beam. I’m really struggling to navigate this.

When my ADHD colleague’s tasks were overdue and dragging the critical path, her response was not what I expected, which would have been to slash the scope just to get completion of core functions in the deliverable. Instead, she’d start new extraneous tasks, and insist on getting my feedback, which I think required praise.

I declined to comment, fearing making things worse by unveiling criticism instead of the desired praise. I just said sorry, I can’t put my attention to that at this point; I must focus on the one thing I’m doing myself now so I can make my own deadline.

She was furious, and withdrew, then abandoned the project.

Another friend who has an ADHD diagnosis and an education about useful clinical responses, told me that what I saw was common. She said it’s “the cycle of shame”, which she herself had repeated in the past ad nauseum before she’d obtained assistance from new clinical approaches.

What is the cycle of shame? I took it to mean that the ADHD colleague knew the task overrun was deliterious to the project, but was powerless to respond other than to start a fresh (extraneous) task, which only made matters worse for the team, but apparently more tolerable for herself in the short term, but ultimately she had to live with the shame?

???

> When my ADHD colleague’s tasks were overdue and dragging the critical path, her response was not what I expected, which would have been to slash the scope just to get completion of core functions in the deliverable. Instead, she’d start new extraneous tasks, and insist on getting my feedback, which I think required praise.

The ADHD brain can't break down tasks into bite sized chunks in some situations. You should have given the praise. Possibly also of taken over and assisted in, one-on-one, breaking those tasks down. my reasoning for this is that the ADHD brain needs reassurance and dopamine hits. She wasn't getting ANY from herself and the only way she saw to get something, even if it was negative, was to make the scope larger and make it more novel or interesting. dont even ask if she wants help in breaking down a project. just do it. do it before hand. if you're all on a team at work or whatever then help eachother out actively.

EDIT: do you know what is the most fun for people on the ADHD spectrum (and i think just engineers in general but there is a critical difference)? planning out a thing. making that list. coming up with ideas. sketching it out. everything up until DOING THE ACTUAL THING. there is no reward in that. nothing. no one is going to see us struggling and working and doing the repetitive task or coding or whatever the thing is. but hell, our brain lit up like a christmas tree when we were together with everyone talking about ideas for the thing. that was awesome!

> I declined to comment, fearing making things worse by unveiling criticism instead of the desired praise. I just said sorry, I can’t put my attention to that at this point; I must focus on the one thing I’m doing myself now so I can make my own deadline. > She was furious, and withdrew, then abandoned the project.

i would have been PISSED off if you did that to me. oh, so you're so fucking good at things that you just DECIDED that you can't pay attention to the thing i'm struggling with. mister/miss no struggles? oh you gotta fuckin' focus? great cool, guess you only care about yourself and your deadline even though we're fucking collegues and not rivals! I QUIT!

that's... what i'd say...

> Another friend who has an ADHD diagnosis and an education about useful clinical responses, told me that what I saw was common. She said it’s “the cycle of shame”, which she herself had repeated in the past ad nauseum before she’d obtained assistance from new clinical approaches. > What is the cycle of shame? I took it to mean that the ADHD colleague knew the task overrun was deliterious to the project, but was powerless to respond other than to start a fresh (extraneous) task, which only made matters worse for the team, but apparently more tolerable for herself in the short term, but ultimately she had to live with the shame?

cycle of shame is REALLY hard to describe because its per individual. but everyone pretty much with ADHD is a failure in their head. no matter how successful we are. no matter how many little wins we structure for ourselves. at the end of the day we are broken, physiologically, our brains aren't giving us what we need from the tasks we do. even in a perfect situation where we dont need to work and only find our own joy in life there just is a general "ugh i know i have all these fun hobbies and projects that i myself have set up for myself to do but i cant do anything. no i'm not depressed. i have absolutely zero in the tank for even enjoyable things. i have no volition left." every hit of dopamine that matters is exogenous or from extremes but not from the everyday monotony.

> but everyone pretty much with ADHD is a failure in their head.

> planning out a thing. making that list. coming up with ideas. sketching it out. everything up until DOING THE ACTUAL THING.

This post hit me right on the head. I have infuriated colleagues with this type of behaviour. At an old job I got bored with a mildly interesting task that I just could not focus on and the progress fell behind. My boss moved me on to the most boring job on the project thinking I could better handle it and boy did I pull out a 6 hour focused task into 6 weeks of depression and anxiety. I would stare at the same 2 windows for an entire day sinking deeper into unproductive spirals.

Ironically HNews might have kept me sane in providing interesting things to read. It’s probably why there are so many ADHD types here.

I have discovered now that a “normal” job just doesn’t work for me. I’m going to get weird with it.

Thank you. None of what you say is intuitive or obvious to me. I have no way of working out what goes on without these candid insights you shared. Thank you so much. What you say seems to fit with what I witnessed in my colleague so at last I have something to go on.

> the ADHD brain needs reassurance and dopamine hits. She wasn't getting ANY from herself

That sounds like the core deficit.

> but everyone pretty much with ADHD is a failure in their head. no matter how successful we are. no matter how many little wins we structure for ourselves. at the end of the day we are broken, physiologically, our brains aren't giving us what we need from the tasks we do.

I see. OK. I would not have dared assume that. At last I have a model to work with, of the voice in my colleague's head.

> "ugh i know i have all these fun hobbies and projects that i myself have set up for myself to do but i cant do anything. no i'm not depressed. i have absolutely zero in the tank for even enjoyable things. i have no volition left."

Zero in the tank, OK. So, if that's the case, I can't expect her to bootstrap or therapy herself. I need something else. At the time, I couldn't do as much for her as you suggest - giving her praise, stepping in to organise and structure her tasks. I wasn't available for that. But what you're saying, is that without the external assistance, the result will be failure.

> do you know what is the most fun for people on the ADHD spectrum (and i think just engineers in general but there is a critical difference)? planning out a thing. making that list. coming up with ideas. sketching it out.

Yeah, she loves that. So do a lot of people.

> everything up until DOING THE ACTUAL THING.

This seems to be where we fork. Other people learn how to get rewards from the doing and the completion of tasks. The rewards take time to manifest, so nobody learns straight away. It takes time and repetition and faith. Before we can learn, we have to learn how to learn. But most people learn eventually, because the rewards for KPI manifestation are the biggest of all. But it sounds like you are saying ADHD people can't go through this process.

> […] most people learn eventually, because the rewards for KPI manifestation are the biggest of all.

I don’t feel that way at all.

My greatest reward, by far, is the moment when the all the pieces “click into place” - the moment of understanding a process or system. I feel absolutely no positive reward at all for getting things done. At best, I feel a bit of relief from the rapidly increasing pressure of a looming deadline.

I was thinking of the concept of getting paid for completing a job! For example, mowing a lawn and getting paid. Serving a table and earning a tip.

Have you ever had a job that works like that?

A design or engineering job doesn't have such an immediate connection with the completion/reward nexus. I wonder if experience with the earlier mentioned type of work could help to build an expectation circuit that reinforces completion.

What you're missing is the basic fact that the ADD is a disorder of the reward system. That's why you can use a drug that increases dopamine activity (amphetamines) and thereby fix the ADD.

Without the exogenous dopamine source, the dopamine synapses in the brain do not fire. Without those synapses firing, the causal emotional chain is broken. The feeling is absent. The very same feeling that would be there in other people JUST IS NOT THERE.

Nobody "learns" how to fire their dopamine synapses. They either fire or do not fire. You either have a feeling or not.

The reward system is functioning in ADHD subjects in some circumstances, just not in others. If that were not the case, ADHD subjects could never learn anything, and that clearly isn't the case.

My friend gets excited about conceiving projects and beginning tasks. She has problems with completing them.

My friend is perfectly able to learn new procedures, including complex procedures. On occasion, she performs them with hurricane enthusiasm, such as the time she whipped up a dog carrier backpack for my small dog with her sewing machine in 15 minutes flat. She was amazing on that occasion. And then, for 3 weeks, she couldn't bring herself to hem a curtain - the simplest and most mundane application of a sewing machine. From what other people are saying in this discussion, those are the clues: too simple, too mundane, and the problem is the lack of drive in particular circumstances, not learning the task.

I'm just wondering what the limits are to learning and then what those limits might tell us about the disease mechanism. Since ADHD people are capable of learning, might there be processes they could learn which could alter the application of their disregulated reward system so as to facilitate self-drive in more circumstances?

If not, why not? Or how not? What is the dysfunctional component of neuroanatomy responsible for the condition?

> The reward system is functioning in ADHD subjects in some circumstances, just not in others.

It's functioning differently, regardless of circumstances. It's not "In some circumstances."

> If that were not the case, ADHD subjects could never learn anything, and that clearly isn't the case.

Your reasoning is bad here.

> I'm just wondering what the limits are to learning

You keep using phrases like "limits to learning" that are question-begging and wrong.

> might there be processes they could learn which could alter the application of their disregulated reward system so as to facilitate self-drive in more circumstances?

I don't know what you're talking about.

What you suggested earlier is that ordinary people "learn" to have the emotional reactions to task accomplishments while ADD people do not "learn" to have these same emotional reactions.

That is incorrect: you did not learn to have any such emotional reactions. You are falsely attributing agency to yourself. This is something called Fundamental Attribution Error.

A friend of mine has ADHD and is a street performer in Covent Garden in London, and it fits him to a tee - 15 minutes of hyper-focus on doing the show and interacting with the audience then an immediate reward of gratification and money, which he has to do two or three times a day. It wouldn't fit my ADHD but it fits his perfectly.

> Have you ever had a job that works like that?

Yes, for many years. I do drone work on the side even today.

> help to build an expectation circuit that reinforces completion

It’s not a function of what I “expect” of myself - if anything, if I expect to complete something and fail to do so, I could enter a rapid self-reinforcing failure cycle that is extremely emotionally taxing and difficult to break out of.

> Other people learn how to get rewards from the doing and the completion of tasks.

No, they absolutely don't LEARN HOW.

When I was in school in the 80s and 90s, there was a lot of stigma around ADD/ADHD. Kids taking ritalin were ostracized for it. It was common for parents to refuse the possibility and instead punish their children. A lot of kids grew up and went on to adulthood on hard mode thinking they were just bad at life, never realizing there was a diagnosis and _treatment_ they'd been denied.

Even people with ADHD like myself thought it was bullshit. One day I got an Adderall pill from a friend, found myself in a deep state of calm and concentration (a bit too much) for hours and thought to myself "heh, that's why they give it to kids to study, it's so unnatural".

Fast forward 15 years, and I learn that the inability to sit down and complete a task or having to force myself to do pretty much anything isn't normal, and I've been living my life in hard more all this years, berating myself for my laziness when I know I can be pretty fucking smart sometimes.

I’ll recommend watching this video to understand more about it. https://youtu.be/jhcn1_qsYmg

As someone that is disabled, I feel like you’re hitting the most important points, but maybe generalizing a little about wanting to be treated normal.

More often than not, people have to accept the realities of their disabilities and not being treated normal is absolutely necessary for them to succeed. As for how to go about it, your last words are right on the mark.

> … be kind. Don’t make folks lives harder than they already are.

I’d add that if they don’t approach their manager/employer about accommodations, their superior should be very careful about how they offer assistance. It really shouldn’t be more than “Hey are you comfortable with your work environment? Is there anything I can do to help you be efficient?” And if they say no, that’s it. Say they can reach out anytime and you’re done.

“How can we make your work environment better?” is a question everyone should be asked from time to time.

I’m frequently the odd one out in these conversations but: I don’t want ADHD to be treated as normal. I don’t want it to be treated as not-a-disability. I want it to have intentional accommodations. I want to be recognized and acknowledged as someone with distinct challenges.

I have distinct challenges that I have to address, every day. Normalizing many of them can create more confusion than understanding.

For example, I’m intensely sensitive to sound. A non-ADHD person sensitive to sound in say a shared office would surely benefit from noise canceling headphones. But I’m also very touch sensitive particularly on and around my ears, and that often gives me headaches. A general accommodation for this not only could but has basically left me unaccommadated.

Be kind and don’t make folks lives harder is a good principle. But sometimes acknowledging people have different needs and experiences is part of that.

This isn’t meant as a rebuttal of anything you’ve said, it’s a “yes and” more than anything. But I want it to be part of this conversation too.

I couldn't agree more.

We need to demand equal representation of ADHD people in politics, media and in the boardroom.

We're in oppressive times folks. Non ADHD people shoudlnt be running everything.

Last I checked, demanding didn't do jack. Not unless it has leverage.

I'd bet that there are plenty of politicians with ADHD who don't talk about it. Just as there are certainly plenty of politicians with personality disorders who don't talk about it.

We need to demand more than that. All of those venues don’t have enough seats to be representative, even if you consider one seat per representation.

Please don’t do oppression Olympics. It’s just a wedge that benefits no one. We’re better off building bonds and acting in solidarity.

By the way, there’s a very high overlap between LGBTQIA+ and ADHD and autism (hi including me, I’m queer, I’m nonbinary, I’m grey-asexual, I’m ADHD and I’m autistic). And there’s a multiple generations of similar struggles among us.

Unfortunately no one has the focus to work on this longer than a day.

The thing is that being ADHD is normal. Many people are just maladapted to the work and life style prevalent in city/office living. Instead of the person being broken, it can well be the environment that is.

No. It is not normal. Forget about work for a second.

I have people who depend on me. I am responsible for their livelihoods. I have to get rest, wake in the morning, do chores, shower and groom myself -- you get the idea. What's the alternative? That's not a world I want to live in.

A thought experiment I use often is: imagine I hired a personal assistant to help me with mundane tasks I struggle with. They start and take that burden off of me.

Is this a good thing? Am I going to be able to improve or overcome my disability now that someone is doing that for me?

Imagine that the personal assistant is a volume knob. Why would I never have that knob turned all the way up? Could I even bring myself to do it? If I could, where would I set it? Other than the extremes, what is the healthiest volume?

I know what would help, and I know what I need to improve, but finding a balance is next to impossible.

There's the theory (I have no links and don't know how prevalent it is) that people with what we now call ADHD used to be the hunters in their tribes. For that it may have been a great trait to be able to both quickly notice many small details and also be able to zero in on something specifically interesting for a long time.

Then again it can be said for many things.

It is not normal. I still have not bought christmas gifts for my family, who I love dearly and who I do not want to disappoint, even though I have their wish lists in a different tab and it will only take a few clicks to be done. Instead I have fought my ADHD brain for weeks trying to get myself to do it and failing.

That is different from a neurotypical person who feels gift giving is difficult. Happy christmas.

I hope things get better. Cut yourself some slack, it's been a hard year.

Update: I got it done. Printer ran out of ink at the last minute but I found a spare. When there's no margin for error, little things like that can bring the whole thing down.

Thanks for the kind words.

I've bought all of my stuff in the past two and a half days, and was only able to do it because I had family around to help me out. You're not alone brother/sister.

This is pretty dismissive to everyone with ADHD

Maybe a better question is "in what jobs is an ADHD personality not a problem, or even an advantage?".

Any kind of creative pursuit (where creating is in the eye of the creator) where they’re free to hyperfocus and given relief when that’s exhausting. We (with ADHD) are notoriously productive to the point of severe exhaustion or burnout when we’re working on what we care about or can get motivated to care about.

> That's the real problem with being disabled: you're treated abnormally.

That's not been my experience: I've been treated normally.

I have not one but two disabilities: I'm an alcoholic/drug addict, and I'm a diabetic. I'm upfront about them, and people don't seem to care--they treat me the same as everyone else.

My take is that most people are so self-absorbed that they don't spend many cycles worrying about everyone else.

Well they would if it would impact either them or the work. Being diabetic is frankly uninteresting, it's not clear how your work output would be ever damaged by it (until you reach a crisis and need to be out for weeks, then you'd see people care A LOT).

For the alcoholic, drug addiction, I suppose you're recovering and not currently injecting heroin at work, so I suppose it's the same: as long as you just say it and show no particular behavioral impact, what do you expect people to do ? It's not like they'll spit at you for having paid drug cartels or overly help you and bring you coffee more often as a sign of pity.

Again, bring a needle at work and start injecting and see how they are so self-absorbed they don't care :)

This is an exceedingly uncaring response to someone who expressed being disabled by their addiction and by their diabetes. In particular I hope in the future you will not encourage people to bring their acknowledged addiction to work for attention.

What I have realized overtime is that desire to be normal just causes stress. One needs to admit that they are different from others and they will have to play the game [life] with the cards they are dealt with. ADHD is no disability IMO, but different enough from normal people to become very incompatible.

Just this acceptance to oneself relieves a lot of stress. But it comes with some experience and I guess most ADHD people would just feel inadequate during teenage and in university. Its horrible when you feel there is so much to do and you cannot accomplish most of it. Its only when you find/realize that there are people who would treat over-accomplishment in some aspects as a fair trade to be not able to be good at everything.

Workspaces/Life Partners/Friends -- not everyone will work with ADHD people. They need to understand that they will have to spend parts of their life experimenting and finding a environment where they are valued. I guess that is the cost of being different in anyway.

A lot of people seem to be disagreeing with you but I definitely agree with what you said.

I too have ADHD and I hate it when I see it being treated as a crippling disability. It's really not. ADHD is much more common than people would think. As for everyone, people with ADHD learn to cope with their weaknesses and play into their strengths. For a person with ADHD it's about finding what works and doesn't work for them, not about shaping the entire world around them to make them fit. It will only make them feel worse.

I learned to do it and I'm seen as a respected member of my team today. I am seen as somewhat of a quirky oddball too though with how I always do things, but nothing that can't be solved by just being positive and laughing with your colleagues. They'll treat you with respect.

> The thing that most (if not all) people who have ADHD want is to be normal.

Another viewpoint: ADHD can be as much a blessing as a challenge. Well-handled ADHD seems better to me than being neurotypical.

Yeah, ADHD is a difference to non-ADHD, but that doesn't make it a disability. It's just a different mode of thought, in the same way that introversion and extroversion are different modes of thought. Most people in fact have periods of introversion and extroversion, and surely modes of attention are not fixed or static in people either.

Which mode is an "ability" and which is a "disability"? The question is ill conceived.

A friend noted that ADHD is probably over-represented in the arts. That's because in the arts (but not exclusively), you need different modes of thought and action to get things done. A classic example is the arts festival, which is a collection of artistic performances over a period of time, organised around a theme, embracing different modalities of production such as dance, theatre, music, visual arts, poetry and more.

Arts festivals typically have two executives in charge -

Artistic Director - Responsible for finding the creative acts for the festival that will convey the theme.

e.g. Burning Man has confirmed the theme for its 2022 edition, Waking Dreams. Organisers have said the theme will "explore the transformative power of dreams, both literal and figurative, and celebrate the dreamers who channel this potent energy in eye-opening, often surrealistic, sometimes life-changing ways".

That's not something you can get a tech CEO or accountant or board of directors to pull off. You need some crazy, connected creative genius to frequent 1,000 bars, alleys, galleries and theatres over 12 months to find the talent and curate it into a festival.

The other executive who makes the arts festival work is a completely different hat - the Program Director. This is the adult in the room; the super clerk, the master accountant, the disciplined project manager who works the spreadsheet and the gantt chart to make sure what the Artistic Director has chosen can be paid for with the budget and delivered on time.

You need both executives to produce an effective arts festival. But the Artistic Director position is less of a discipline that can be described algorithmically and more of an art form itself. To really pull off a great arts festival, you need a hurricane supernova of an Artistic Director who will be impossible to control, will drive his colleagues a little crazy, especially the Program Director, but who will find the most unexpected genius in the most obscure artists who together will combine to deliver an experience that moves the audience and uncovers thoughts and feelings that nobody knew were there to be had.

And of course, without the Program Director, there's no way all those artists will be paid because the budget will be exceeded by a factor of 10, and the gantt chart will be spaghetti mashed pototoes Jackson Pollock disaster.

But the two of them together, and an army of clerks, interns, admins, techs, and junior ADHD creatives might just pull off the festival of a lifetime.

> Yeah, ADHD is a difference to non-ADHD, but that doesn't make it a disability. It's just a different mode of thought,

It's a great theory but I consider it a disability that I have to wrestle with myself _every single night_ to force myself to start doing the dishes, which I want to do but my ADHD brain doesn't find interesting enough to start doing. I can spend several minutes just physically pacing and trying to hype myself up to start on something that I _want_ to do, and it is every day, for basically every task that my brain doesn't find interesting, and it doesn't get easier.

Also, brainscans of ADHD-diagnosed individuals clearly show certain parts of the brain are under-developed compared to normal.

Whenever i have to do boring chores, such as the dishes, i put on a podcast to keep my mind engaged.

My SO laughs as i literally put on a podcast to take the garbage out, but it does help my ADHD for tasks such as that

I use the exact same method. Hello from the magic tavern, darknet diaries, and the dollop are all top billed. what are some of yours?

Same, but it's fast paced music, usually psytrance to do the laundry and the dishes. In fact psytrance is great for the ADHD brain, it's fast, it's always evolving with tons of different sounds and effects to keep you interested, and there's no vocals to distract.

For me it's all about the reassuring inevitability of the techno kick drum, always thudding on, comfortingly constant. I love psytrance but techno is life.

you know what i do when i put a podcast on? i stop everything and listen to it.

you know what i do when i put music on? i'll go on my computer and distract myself with "remastering" the album because i'll end up hyperfocusing on something that sounds "off" about the music while i'm trying to do my chore that is clearly not enjoyable.

Let’s not conflate ADHD with personality traits. I actually feel that my personality is high in conscientiousness, but my ADHD makes it extremely difficult to actually execute the behaviors that my personality would prefer. If that makes any sense…

That's very interesting, thank you. It makes a lot of sense, and helps me to see how ADHD sets the trap for self disapproval, which is so costly.

So you would not ask the Artistic Director to focus on his year-long visit planning, take notes of all the names, and come on time at representation ?

I mean, if ADHD is just about being very open minded and dedicated to non-mathematical subjects, that would be fine, but I think people would still struggle with ADHD in the context you describe if they can't focus, can't resist distraction and can't listen well to what people express for instance in a theatre piece.

I think you have such an inability to understand art that you think it's just fuzzy magic, but in fact there are still people, plans, budgets, timetable to respect, notes to take even when scouting.

I think people are getting too hung up on the term disability. A big reason why it's used in the US is a legal one: to simplify, if it's a disability, employers must make reasonable accommodations for it.

> Yeah, ADHD is a difference to non-ADHD, but that doesn't make it a disability. It's just a different mode of thought, in the same way that introversion and extroversion are different modes of thought. Most people in fact have periods of introversion and extroversion, and surely modes of attention are not fixed or static in people either.

I talked briefly with a psychiatrist about this - to be clinically diagnosed with ADHD (in his clinic anyhow...) it has to be severe enough to be a major detriment to your life, basically. To quote DSM-5

> There is clear evidence that the symptoms interfere with or reduce the quality of social, academic, or occupational functioning.

How would you define a disability? What criteria must be met?