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My mind is a distraction.
Maybe I’m the odd one out, but I need some form of background noise to concentrate on anything. Whether that be music or someone endlessly yapping with a monotone voice in a video. Just anything that drowns out my endless stream of thoughts that have 0 to do with my task.
Excellent username really unique I like it
Same to you!
The distractions are all on the inside of my brain going weeeeeee… so should i just remove my brain?
Complete removal seems extreme. Maybe just disconnect some of it, as a treat.
My fingers are fucking fascinating. As are my toes. Not to mention all the bullshit going on in my head.
If I don’t have something to distract me I can’t concentrate
Yep, the goal is to find the correct balance of the correct types of distractions.
Too much or the wrong ones and you veer off course and never make it back to the main task, too much the other way and the main task feels like too much to start.
This is different for everyone which makes it all the more fun. It’s a life skill people with adhd need to learn all on their own and other than telling rach other a path exists, we cannot actually guide each other from our own experience.
And the sometimes what works shifts around or stops working all together as circumstances or surroundings change.
I work best with music/podcasts/streaming all simultaneously blasting. Then I can concentrate.
My wife finds it BAFFLING that I can listen to a TV show with audio description on, or an audiobook, or a podcast, while playing a video game, and be happy as a clam.
My brother gets annoyed by me having like 2-3 audio sources at a time on my computer when I try to have a conversation with him or have him take a look at one of the things producing audio and makes me mute the rest.
It slightly annoys me when he uses headphones because I want the extra background noise. But I realize that’s an absurd thing be annoyed about and keep it to myself normally.
Yesterday, my cousin, whose computer is right next to my room was playing music loudly and when he found out I was taking a nap asked if he needed to turn it and down and I said something that sounded like it could be passive aggressive and then had to say something like “I’m not being passive aggressive. I actually like that noise while trying to sleep. Like people like fans for white noise”.
One of the best things I accidentally did for myself was put a 3D printer in my office. It’s a fantastic level of noise and distraction. I could watch that nozzle laying down plastic for hours, and my brain shower-thoughts its way to problem solving while I do. I love it.
Yes. I hate myself.
“Write stuff down and put it where you’ll see it!”
— proceeds to completely see through the stuff you wrote down because it is now blends into the background scenery —
Yeah, this is why I have a physical calendar with stickers that I can place for tasks (they are called family calendars and have extra space to place pictograms and notes on each day of the months) and an app that notifies me of tasks to do at the same time (for any ADHD havers here, the app is called Habitica, it’s the best app I’ve found for ADHD, try it out; it really helps).
If I blend one out completely that day, the other reminds me non-stop on my phone (post-its were not helping at all on their own and weren’t precise enough compared to a family calendar). It helps with getting more tasks done than if I didn’t use those tools at all (I am medicated, but I still struggle with not doing tasks when my motivation is very low, you all know how it is).
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it.
Yup. Getting tired of people saying “just write notes and reminders!”
Okay, my brain immediately deleted the memory of the reminder once it popped up, now what.
I carry a notebook around for this and that works pretty well. If I need to do something I write it in there first and that way even if I get sidetracked it’s there. It also helps prevent getting sidetracked because I can put whatever is sidetracking me on the list instead.
I’m happy to hear you found something that works. I tried this before and just like every other thing, I forgot about the notebook after a week of it kinda helping. More of a me problem here, though.
Alternative: about six years ago I was struck with an idea for a new campaign setting after watching a video about orbital resonance in tightly-packed planetary systems. I was about to get into the shower at the time, but I completely forgot about that for the next three hours as i started scribbling equations on the walls with soap and on the steamed-up mirrors with my fingers. That was the moment that made me realize I actually needed medication
By “wall” I assume this means smartphone. Because if you’re sitting for 6 hours doing nothing but staring at a wall I think there’s something else going on.
EDIT:
I get that the meme is being hyperbolic, but I find it kind of misleading. As someone who likely has ADHD or/and is on the spectrum, the idea of “sitting still and staring at a wall for 6 hours” doesn’t match how ADHD usually works. If I remove distractions, I don’t just freeze - I end up doing something else entirely, like watching YouTube or pacing around. The paralysis is real, but it’s more about being stuck in a loop of avoiding the right task while still seeking stimulation. So the meme’s wording just doesn’t land for me because it confuses task paralysis with total inactivity, which feels more like depression or burnout than ADHD. Maybe I’m just being too literal, but this is why it doesn’t click with me.If you’re removing distractions, you should probably also remove smartphones /tablets/smartwatches/whatever else people might have. But again, even if people try to remove my distractions, I’ll entertain myself. I personally like to guess and check cube roots, which is much easier to do with paper and pencil, but can be done without. It’s an effective way to kill time.
the task i need to do on the computer:
No. By wall they mean wall/ceiling/floor.
You have a functioning brain right? You don’t need smartphone to get thinking.
Mostly functional yes, but not compatible with sitting still for 6 hours and doing nothing.
Doing nothing implies just physically nothing though. If you have a fun brain there are a lot of things you can do. It’s specifically useful while traveling long distances
I’ve been diagnosed twice with ADHD. I have it. I’ve tried a bunch of different meds and some work sometimes etc etc
Ive definitely had spacey days where I will literally lose myself staring at nothing for 15 minutes. That’s rare though. Most of the time removing distractions, setting a routine, and ensuring I am on task when meds kick in help a bunch. The last one especially. With meds I HAVE to actually be doing the thing I’m supposed to with little opportunity for distraction when they kick in or I will fuck around.
This meme and many others do not match my experience with ADHD. I’m sure it does for some.
Hot take? I think a lot of people with ADHD (me included) use it as an excuse to not try. It’s typically not impossible to overcome but it does make it more difficult. I say this having more often than not failing to over come my adhd.
People with ADHD are often impulsive and self destructive and memes like this, to me, are an expression of that self destructive part.
Tbf to the meme though if you are deep in a spiral of self destructive procrastinating for months and that’s lead to issues at work, home etc then it’s easy to hit burnout and be depressed.
But at the end of the day you have to use methods like removing distractions, taking notes and making checklists or whatever works for you so you don’t fall down those ADHD doomspirals. At least I don’t know any other way to stop it lol
Adult diagnosed forty years person here. Basically this is my experience, can add to these excellent tips to provide yourself with a lagom, level headed amount of stimuli, you research what is correct for you, it may be jungle rain, iron works sounds, sped up techno with echo, but don’t be a problem and make it excessive or extravagant just use it for its purpose and don’t make it your identity to be eccentric, just find the frequencies that tune fork vibes your brain activates from and use it.
Comments like this give me the feeling that it’s the neurotypicals that actually have something wrong with them and they just convinced ND people that they’re the normal ones.
Can ADHD be almost the right way to handle undesired work?
If one doesn’t want to do work, it’s straight forward to not do it. If that isn’t allowed then doing everything else is the closest thing to avoiding that work. In that sense, ADHD is either a way of avoiding to be broken or the inability to integrate work into one’s accepted goals.
How could it be possible to accept work that one doesn’t want to do?
In modern society you either work or starve. There’s no adventurous alternative as would have been available before modernity.
It’s mind boggling how different the modern concept of work is from how it was for 99.9% of human existence.
I’m sure the hyper-optimization, hyper-specialization, the alienation, and the constant flux of modern work contributes greatly to the problems we are experiencing.
Even when there was no “adventurous alternative”, work was a lot more grounded in society and had a lot more downtime at pretty much any point in history.
This is from David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years. It’s an anecdote his grad school advisor told him about a Samoan lying around on the beach.
MISSIONARY: Look at you! You’re just wasting your life away, lying around like that.
SAMOAN: Why? What do you think I should be doing?
MISSIONARY: Well, there are plenty of coconuts all around here. Why not dry some copra and sell it?
SAMOAN: And why would I want to do that?
MISSIONARY: You could make a lot of money. And with the money you make, you could get a drying machine, and dry copra faster, and make even more money.
SAMOAN: Okay. And why would I want to do that?
MISSIONARY: Well, you’d be rich. You could buy land, plant more trees, expand operations. At that point, you wouldn’t even have to do the physical work anymore, you could just hire a bunch of other people to do it for you.
SAMOAN: Okay. And why would I want to do that?
MISSIONARY: Well, eventually, with all that copra, land, machines, employees, with all that money—you could retire a very rich man. And then you wouldn’t have to do anything. You could just lie on the beach all day.
I think there’s still a problem in that you need to do some things that are undesired in order to maintain yourself - Household chores, for example. Some things are non negotiable, and for those you need to be able to force yourself, as unpleasant as it is.
Me with distraction: feeling fine, barely getting work done
Me without distraction: rumination HELL, feel like shit, still barely getting work done
Give me interesting work and I will give you unlimited output
Same. I don’t struggle with difficult tasks that I can dig into and use my knowledge and problem solving skills to resolve. I spent 2 hours writing a script last week that will save me 2 days of work and didn’t get distracted once. What I struggle with is tedious bullshit.
When our house is filthy I tell my wife to gtfo and I overcaffinate and just “stream of consciousness” that bitch. I will hyperactively flit from room to room taking care of a small percentage of one of the hundreds of little jobs that compromise cleaning the house. The moment I get bored or the shits about one task I just wander off and find another to chip away at. Give me 6 hours and its a new house.
Drives my OCD wife utterly mad, because it takes her 6 hours to find the right size containers for the linen press, drive to 3 shops to get enough, then decide on a font for the labels she is going to make on her cricut, print the labels and get them on the tubs and I get home to the hallway full of linen and what I’m sure one day will be a perfectly organised linen press.
It’s simple: remove the wall as well.
/s
Has anyone tried removing the CEO? Say a nice deserted island with nothing to distract them.
I literally clutter my space in the vain hope that random mis-positioned object x will remind me to do task y. Blank wall isn’t going to remind me to do shit.
I will make up a story more elaborate than game of thrones before doing something I don’t want to
