It’s thinking about what you could / should be doing, and then realizing you’ve been staring at a wall for half an hour.
It’s hearing Step 3 and panicking because you had a question about Step 2, but maybe they’ll answer it later on so you don’t want to interrupt and- oh we’re on Step 7 now.
It’s wanting to listen to some music, and spending the next several hours deciding on the perfect playlist.
Wanting to listen to some music -> picking your favourite songs in the ideal order for perfect vibe graphing -> realizing your music player doesn’t do gapless playing which is necessary for a perfect experience -> looking up C++ tutorials so you can fork your music player and add gapless playing -> it’s suddenly 2032
And then realizing maybe it would be easier to have an AI pick similar songs for this project and then spend 2 weeks writing python scripts to do so like 75% of the final goal to only get bored with the project after the hard part is done and leave it unfinished.
only get bored with the project after the hard part is done
Ah yes, the ADHD prioritization list…
Interest
Novelty
Challenge
Urgency
It’s because ADHD people don’t get any “ah, it feels good to complete this thing” dopamine for mundane tasks, and only get it for doing big tasks.
If they’re interested in the thing, then they don’t care about the dopamine reward; The task itself is the reward. Lots of ADHD people will have their comfort games or shows that they can focus on for hours at a time.
If it’s not interesting, it needs to be novel. Learning something new rewards that dopamine in a way that simply doing the task does not. And being challenged in new ways means you get dopamine rewards even for otherwise small tasks.
If it’s not interesting or novel, it needs to be challenging enough for your brain to consider it a large task worth rewarding.
And finally, if it’s not interesting, novel, or challenging, your brain can substitute adrenaline and cortisol in place of dopamine. So the task needs to be urgent enough to trigger those stress hormones. Every person with ADHD has stories of doing a week long project in three hours, because they put it off until it was so stressful that the stress was its own motivator.
If the task doesn’t hit one of those four basic points, it simply won’t be prioritized.
A 10 page research paper with 2 weeks to complete; written overnight and realizing how much more time you should have spent on it, and why did I do this to myself again (no AI to “help” you at that time). Saving, printing, and sprinting to class because you somehow managed to complete it 10 minutes before class starts.
Never considered using “Urgency” as a motivator, but it checks out… a lot. I like to consider it just being “optimistic” about how much time I have
I had gapless playback working on desktop a few years ago but now I just have this HTML5 player I threw together because it works and there’s no way I’m gonna program for Android for free
It’s wanting to listen to music but installing Linux on an old computer instead because the thing you wanted to listen to is by a band who you saw live and they were great and you want to listen to a specific live version so you go to YouTube where your feed has an Action Retro video where he’s putting Linux on some shitty old hardware again and you’re like ‘that looks fun’ and you end up not listening to music and still managing to fuck up the installation.
It’s posting this reply 👆🏼 because it sprang into your brane then hitting post and realising that it’s basically the same as the other reply that the comment got and feeling guilty for wasting everyone’s time.
It’s thinking about what you could / should be doing, and then realizing you’ve been staring at a wall for half an hour.
It’s hearing Step 3 and panicking because you had a question about Step 2, but maybe they’ll answer it later on so you don’t want to interrupt and- oh we’re on Step 7 now.
It’s wanting to listen to some music, and spending the next several hours deciding on the perfect playlist.
Wanting to listen to some music -> picking your favourite songs in the ideal order for perfect vibe graphing -> realizing your music player doesn’t do gapless playing which is necessary for a perfect experience -> looking up C++ tutorials so you can fork your music player and add gapless playing -> it’s suddenly 2032
And then realizing maybe it would be easier to have an AI pick similar songs for this project and then spend 2 weeks writing python scripts to do so like 75% of the final goal to only get bored with the project after the hard part is done and leave it unfinished.
Ah yes, the ADHD prioritization list…
It’s because ADHD people don’t get any “ah, it feels good to complete this thing” dopamine for mundane tasks, and only get it for doing big tasks.
If they’re interested in the thing, then they don’t care about the dopamine reward; The task itself is the reward. Lots of ADHD people will have their comfort games or shows that they can focus on for hours at a time.
If it’s not interesting, it needs to be novel. Learning something new rewards that dopamine in a way that simply doing the task does not. And being challenged in new ways means you get dopamine rewards even for otherwise small tasks.
If it’s not interesting or novel, it needs to be challenging enough for your brain to consider it a large task worth rewarding.
And finally, if it’s not interesting, novel, or challenging, your brain can substitute adrenaline and cortisol in place of dopamine. So the task needs to be urgent enough to trigger those stress hormones. Every person with ADHD has stories of doing a week long project in three hours, because they put it off until it was so stressful that the stress was its own motivator.
If the task doesn’t hit one of those four basic points, it simply won’t be prioritized.
A 10 page research paper with 2 weeks to complete; written overnight and realizing how much more time you should have spent on it, and why did I do this to myself again (no AI to “help” you at that time). Saving, printing, and sprinting to class because you somehow managed to complete it 10 minutes before class starts.
Never considered using “Urgency” as a motivator, but it checks out… a lot. I like to consider it just being “optimistic” about how much time I have
I had gapless playback working on desktop a few years ago but now I just have this HTML5 player I threw together because it works and there’s no way I’m gonna program for Android for free
anyway I hate phones
You went much farther than I ever did. Mad props
It’s wanting to listen to music but installing Linux on an old computer instead because the thing you wanted to listen to is by a band who you saw live and they were great and you want to listen to a specific live version so you go to YouTube where your feed has an Action Retro video where he’s putting Linux on some shitty old hardware again and you’re like ‘that looks fun’ and you end up not listening to music and still managing to fuck up the installation.
It’s posting this reply 👆🏼 because it sprang into your brane then hitting post and realising that it’s basically the same as the other reply that the comment got and feeling guilty for wasting everyone’s time.
Why are you doxxing me like this?
I thought this was illegal
Absolutely brilliant comment.
Shit, I need to get checked for ADHD.