if you give me a task with no deadline i will literally never do it but if you give me a deadline i will get it done exactly 1 hour before the deadline even if the deadline is in six years
god dammit my tags got cut off AGAIN I’m hitting the tag limit on like every post lately, I really need to work on that
Anyway I went on to say that there are 5 major executive functions of the human brain. These are the ‘higher functions’ that really distinguish between a human brain and that of any other animal. We have added intelligence on top of that, but these are the functional abilities our brains have that the rest of the animal kingdom does not have on a a structural level. There are 5 of them. ADHD affects all 5. And none of them are actually ‘attention’ (the closest function to anything that can reasonably be called ‘attention’ is what’s called Working Memory, which is your brain’s ability to hold a specific task in mind to come back to it; distractions are inevitable, but a healthy brain will hear a phone ring, look up, and remember to go back to what it was doing before. An ADHD brain will hear the phone riBANG ALL MEMORY OF THE CURRENT TASK IS GONE. ADHD brain looks up, sees the name on the caller id, oh it’s an unknown number, oh it’s probably some political pollster, oh man this year’s election is just awful I can’t believe people are supporting that angry cheeto. Oh cheetos I’m hungry I should go make a snack. What kind of snacks do we have? Did I remember to buy cereal at the store the other day? What about dog food? Oh my god I forgot to let the dog back in the house this is why I should have gotten a cat. Oh my friend sent me a great cat video earlier I should watch that. AND GUESS WHAT YOU NEVER GO BACK TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING BECAUSE THE STRUCTURE IN YOUR BRAIN THAT SUPPORTS RETURNING TO A PARTIALLY COMPETED TASK DOES NOT EXIST THE WAY IT DOES FOR A NORMAL HEALTHY BRAIN. This is why even if you start a task well before a deadline you can’t keep to it until it’s been completed; the consequences of it being done MUST be more compelling than everything else in the immediate environment for the brain to see it. No matter how much time you give yourself to complete the task, if you have ADHD it will take you 100% of that time, every time, which is why having ADHD actually TEACHES YOU to put things off, because it’s the only way to shorten the total time actually spent completing the task – the disorder rewards you for self-destructive behavior because it’s the only way you can get things done at all, and you end up living in a permanent state of extreme stress, hopping from one emergency deadline to the next even though you hate yourself for it every single time). The disorder has been horribly named in a way that trivializes just how serious and life-ruining it actually is.
ADHD is a very, very serious disorder and the pop psych/common understanding of it makes it seem HORRIBLY trivial compared to the real damage it actually does to people’s lives.
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This is both fascinating and… possibly slightly alarming.
When I was in nursing school, I didn’t take notes in class. You know what I did? I played endless games of pocket tetris. The chair of the nursing program approached me about it once, going so far as to say that she thought for a time that I must have copies of her tests, since I aced everything she tested us on, even though I never appeared to be paying attention.
Visual learners, auditory learners, hands-on learners - everyone’s heard of those types, sure. But that’s not all there is. There’s a 4th learning style that is actually best suited to splitting the focus between disparate activities to learn most effectively. For me, that was playing repetative games or doodling, coloring print outs of Sailor Moon characters or fiddling with small ‘fidget’ toys. An English Lit professor had identified this as my learning style a couple years earlier and lo and behold, I started learning better when I started catering to my actual learning style.
I was lucky; the chair of the nursing program knew about the learning style I exhibited and didn’t bother me again about the fact I sat in the back and played mindless games in her classes. The goal of class is to learn, right? What the fuck does it matter if the person learning does so via note taking or doodling or looking at puppies? To this day I most effectively form associations and recall memories of things I’ve listened to by doing something very different with my hands and eyes.
Don’t assume people are slacking off just because they’re not learning the way you expect them to be.
Wow this makes so much sense
Ayyyy this is me too. Whenever I was in class I always, ALWAYS had to be doing something with my hands or I’d never be able to focus on or remember anything. When I was younger my mom recognized this and at the beginning of every school year she made sure to talk to all of my teachers and assure them that while yes, I sat in my seat and doodle the whole time, I WAS paying attention.
Many years ago, I worked in a call center. While working there, I drew my first comic strip, “Thank You For Calling,” which was about funny anthro people who–wait for it–worked in a call center.
We got a new manager who was upset to see me drawing through my calls, even though I had some of the best stats in the company. He told my supervisor to take my paper away. I started drawing on my desk (not on purpose, just as a reflex). He took my pencils away.
My stats plummeted.
This wasn’t me being stubborn or refusing to work: I was trying, I just couldn’t do it. I had no focus or ability to retain what I heard from customers. Finally, my supervisor gave me back my art supplies, and everything went back to normal.
