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- ADHD... As An Adult?
Loading Screen Tip: Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything, even if your whole world seems upset.
⏰ IN A RUSH?
Today’s 30-Second Summary
If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:
Our dopamine (motivation/reward hormone) levels go in peaks and troughs, but we don’t have to wait for them to rise when we need to do something. We can trick them into going back up more quickly! (See today’s video and associated text for details)
ADHD is a brain difference and doesn’t magically vanish in adulthood. Adults are just a lot less likely to seek diagnosis for themselves, than parents and schools are for children.
Because adult lives are very different from kids’ lives, the same underlying condition can present differently. Common symptoms include:
Lack of focus/motivation
Too much focus/motivation (on or for the wrong things)
Poor time management
Forgetfulness
Read on to learn about these things and more…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
"This Method Quickly Cured My Procrastination" — Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman's Scientific Trick
Here, Dr. Huberman talks about leveraging the peaks and troughs of dopamine (the motivation/reward hormone) to get out of the troughs disproportionately quickly:
Superficially, we could view this cynically as “if you can’t find the motivation to do a task that doesn’t seem rewarding, do a task that seems even less rewarding first”. It seems a lot like “if you can’t do 10 push-ups, do 20 first”!
However, on a human level, it does leverage the feeling of “I would rather be doing anything else” and test how much we really mean that!
Suddenly, when we think of the task we were avoiding, it’s now relatively more fun than whatever we’re inflicting on ourselves in the meantime, so our brain goes “you know what, I’ve changed my mind, we should do that other thing we were avoiding; it’s not so bad after all!” and gives us a spike of dopamine to speed us on our way to it.
Also! A thing about dopamine is that not only is it associated with motivation/reward/pleasure, but also, it is the neurotransmitter that we need in order to perform certain tasks adequately. This can create a catch-22 situation:
“I need to do this audit, but that is the most boring thing on Earth and I have so little dopamine” is not just a matter of “I’m not feeling motivated”, but also, “...and I will do badly at the task—probably making mistakes—if I try right now”.
In such cases, doing a task that is unpleasant, but does not require dopamine to perform it adequately, and/or the stakes are low, can get us out of the dopamine trough!
Note: if you think “Aha, I’ll do the cleaning”, no. In fact whatever first comes to mind, no. If it comes to mind quickly, it’s not unpleasant enough.
Good options are things that are mentally easy but involve (safe!) suffering.
Writer’s example: when I need to remind my brain there are worse things than the task I’ve been avoiding, I’ve been known to grab the mechanical epilator and go to town on my bikini line. Easy, but definitely not fun!
Need an idea that’s more regularly repeatable? Try a cold shower! It has plenty of health benefits too:
🧠 MAIN FEATURE
ADHD—not just for kids!
Consider the following:
If a kid has consistent problems paying attention, it’s easy and common to say “Aha, ADHD!”
If a young adult has consistent problems paying attention, it’s easy and common to say “Aha, a disinterested ne’er-do-well!”
If an older adult has consistent problems paying attention, it’s easy and common to say “Aha, a senior moment!”
Yet, if we recognize that ADHD is fundamentally a brain difference in children (and we do; there are physiological characteristics that we can test), and we can recognize that as people get older our brains typically have less neuroplasticity (ability to change) than when we are younger rather than less, then… Surely, there are just as many adults with ADHD as kids!
After all, that rather goes with the linear nature of time and the progressive nature of getting older.
So why do kids get diagnoses so much more often than adults?
Parents—and schools—can find children’s ADHD challenging, and it’s their problem, so they look for an explanation, and ADHD isn’t too difficult to find as a diagnosis.
Meanwhile, adults with ADHD have usually developed coping mechanisms, have learned to mask and/or compensate for their symptoms, and we expect adults to manage their own problems, so nobody’s rushing to find an explanation on their behalf.
Additionally, the stigma of neurodivergence—especially something popularly associated with children—isn’t something that many adults will want for themselves.
But, if you have an ADHD brain, then recognizing that (even if just privately to yourself) can open the door to much better management of your symptoms… and your life.
So what does ADHD look like in adults?
ADHD involves a spread of symptoms, and not everyone will have them all, or have them in the same magnitude. However, very commonly most noticeable traits include:
Lack of focus (ease of distraction)
Conversely: high focus (on the wrong things)
To illustrate: someone with ADHD might set out to quickly tidy the sock drawer, and end up Marie Kondo-ing their entire wardrobe… when they were supposed to doing something else
Poor time management (especially: tendency to procrastinate)
Forgetfulness (of various kinds—for example, forgetting information, and forgetting to do things)
Want To Take A Quick Test? Click Here ← this one is reputable, and free. No sign in required; the test is right there.
Wait, where’s the hyperactivity in this Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?
It’s often not there. ADHD is simply badly-named. This stems from how a lot of mental health issues are considered by society in terms of how much they affect (and are observable by) other people. Since ADHD was originally noticed in children (in fact being originally called “Hyperkinetic Reaction of Childhood”), it ended up being something like:
“Oh, your brain has an inconvenient relationship with dopamine and you are driven to try to correct that by shifting attention from boring things to stimulating things? You might have trouble-sitting-still disorder”
Hmm, this sounds like me (or my loved one); what to do now at the age of __?
Some things to consider:
If you don’t want medication (there are pros and cons, beyond the scope of today’s article), you might consider an official diagnosis not worth pursuing. That’s fine if so, because…
More important than whether or not you meet certain diagnostic criteria, is whether or not the strategies recommended for it might help you.
Whether or not you talk to other people about it is entirely up to you. Maybe it’s a stigma you’d rather avoid… Or maybe it’ll help those around you to better understand and support you.
Either way, you might want to learn more about ADHD in adults. Today’s article was about recognizing it—we’ll write more about managing it another time!
In the meantime… We recommended a great book about this a couple of weeks ago; you might want to check it out:
Note: the review is at the bottom of that page. You’ll need to scroll past the video (which is also about ADHD) without getting distracted by it and forgetting you were there to see about the book. So:
Click the above link
Scroll straight to the review!
🌏 AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
More to come tomorrow!
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions - by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths
As humans, we subconsciously use heuristics a lot to make many complex decisions based on "fuzzy logic". For example:
Do we buy the cheap shoes that may last us a season, or the much more expensive ones that will last us for years? We'll—without necessarily giving it much conscious thought—quickly weigh up:
How much do we like each prospective pair of shoes?
What else might we need to spend money on now/soon?
How much money do we have right now?
How much money do we expect to have in the future?
Considering our lifestyle, how important is it to have good quality shoes?
How well we perform this rapid calculation may vary wildly, depending on many factors ranging from the quality of the advertising to how long ago we last ate.
And if we make the wrong decision, later we may have buyer's (or non-buyer's!) remorse. So, how can we do better?
Authors Brain Christian and Tom Griffiths have a manual for us!
This book covers many "kinds" of decision we often have to make in life, and how to optimize those decisions with the power of mathematics and computer science.
The problems (and solutions) run the gamut of...
Optimal stopping (when to say "alright, that's good enough")
Overcoming cognitive biases
Scheduling quandaries
Bayes’ Theorem
Game Theory
And when it's more efficient to just leave things to chance!
...and many more (12 main areas of decision-making are covered).
For all it draws heavily from mathematics and computer science, the writing style is very easy-reading. It's a "curl up in the armchair and read for pleasure" book, no matter how weighty and practical its content.
Bottom line: if you improve your ability to make the right decisions even marginally, this book will have been worth your while in the long run!
What did you think of today's newsletter?Sorry to bother you. But the feedback really helps us. |
May your decisions be wise and your motivation plentiful,
The 10almonds Team