>> 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.
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)
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.
> 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.