It’s directly related. I can read books on complicated subjects with no trouble grasping what they’re talking about, but give me a book on making something complicated, and it’s all just a roaring in my head until I start doing it, then I “get it.” By this, I mean that I can skip reading much of the book and work entirely by instinct. This comes in handy, because I have real problems with math. If I start trying to learn advanced mathematics, I get locked into a cycle of trying to figure out why a formula works the way it does, and not focused on learning the formula. This puts me in a loop that it’s difficult for me to break out of.
One of the benefits of having ADD and being a machinist is that I get what I call “flashshoulds.” If I’m trying to figure out how to do something for which there’s no blueprint, the answer will appear to me like a flashback does to someone remembering something that happened to them years ago. I’ll see the solution to the problem in an incredible level of detail. The problem with this, however, is that it becomes frustrating to me that I can’t create it in the real world as fast as I can see it in my mind. I know exactly what needs to be done, how to do it, but I can’t make it happen rapidly, since making things takes time.
This works in other jobs I’ve had as well. Quite often, I’ll end up understanding something better than the person who originally designed it. If I know the job well, in times of chaos, I’m often the only person who can keep track of what’s going on and I tend to enjoy those moments better than others.
There are downsides to this, however. Since I learn things at a different rate than most people, people often don’t believe me when I say I know what to do, or they feel threatened because I learned the job faster than they did. Presently, I’m in a bit of hot water at work, because my supervisor doesn’t believe that I know as much about the job as I do. He’s convinced that I’m taking shortcuts instead of doing my job properly and has tried to trap me into either confessing that I’m not doing my job or catch me in the act. So now, I’m facing Hobson’s choice: If I stop doing the job so well, then he’ll fire me, if I keep doing the job as well as I presently am (including learning more aspects of the job), then he’ll become more convinced that I’m cheating and expend more energy trying to catch me doing something wrong so that he can fire me. It’s such a problem that I’ve started looking for another job, as I expect to get let go any day now.
On a personal level, it’s been a real problem with relationships that I’ve had. In the beginning, my mind is rapidly working on ways to make my partner happy and show her how much I care. At some point, however, my brain goes into “auto pilot” mode when I’m around them, and I start focusing on other things instead of them. This means that I suddenly seem distant and withdrawn from them and they think that I don’t care, when that is not the case.