One thing about ADHD is that it makes people unable to focus well on things they don’t care about (school or work, chores,…), but makes them able to focus extremely well on things they strongly care about, probably even better than other people can, to the point where they stop paying attention to time and hours and hours can pass without them noticing, but on the other hand even 5 or 10 minutes of doing a chore they don’t want to is like torture and brings emotions down. In my case, the hyperactive boosts are computer games, learning about history, geography, youtube,etc., back in school I was barely passing any grades due to difficulties studying, but I was the best in class in history, geography and english (as a foreign language) and that’s even without studying, I was scoring the highest just by remembering things the teacher was saying in class.
Language learning however is mixed for me, I love learning languages and I get that hyper focus boost when I first start a language and it can last for weeks and months, I knew English at a C1 level when I was 13 years old just by watching TV and Internet, I learned Russian to B2 level,etc, but after a certain point I stop caring and when I start feeling about it as a chore, I abandon it. For example I have learned German to an A1 level, maybe even half way to A2, it was going great, my favorite TV show is in German, but for a few months now I haven’t even touched any learning material, whether apps, audio lessons or books. 2 months ago I started learning Hungarian (which I need to get a Hungarian/EU citizenship and hopefully with that move into a country with a better life standard), the first month was going great, I was enthusiastic about it, but again, I got bored and now I can’t get back into it, even though it can potentially give me an opportunity to have 5 or more times higher salary than the one I have in my country (2000 euros instead of 400 a month), but even that isn’t enough of a motivation for me.
So, can this hyperfocus boost as I call it be controlled somehow?
You can with medication. I have a child with ADHD and after everything else failed, we tried medication. I was reluctant to try the meds, so the doctor told me to take one so I could see how it would effect him. Holy cow could I laser focus on anything that needed to be done.
That said, if you figure out how to accomplish this without meds, please share!!
The best I can control it is that sometimes if I have something physical to do that I don’t really want to do I can get just the right music that pumps me up and I can almost hype myself up and really just crush some physical task that needs to be done. I’ve never taken meds though. I do hyperfocus on things that really are in my wheelhouse because they’re stimulating enough. I know a lot of people that even with meds struggle to regain a lost focus though. I’ve learned to fight through things at times that I struggle with (like learning Wordpress and building websites) but it comes with a lot of frustration and many expletives. I’m either interested or I’m not, and I don’t get to control it much.
I’m impressed you’re learning Hungarian! My grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from Hungary around the turn of the 20th C. (one before, one after). My mother knew Hungarian, but didn’t want to speak it as a kid because of anti-immigrant sentiment where she grew up. As a result, she could mostly understand it, but was very definitely not fluent. She moved to California, got married, and had us. Since we had little contact with our grandparents, we didn’t learn any of the language. My mom did teach us one phrase as a kids that I wish I could still remember (I’ll slap you so hard your eyes will pop out). So when I went to university I wanted to try to learn it. First, it was offered for a while (Ronald Reagan budget cuts), then it was offered two quarters before I graduated. It was hard!
Yeah, it’s doable for me, given sufficient incentive.
I do most of most productive work in the last possible moment before it’s due. In college, I would double or triple up on my adderall and start writing term papers 24 hours before the last session of the class.
In my current professional life, I write the annual performance reviews for my staff no more than two hours before their annual performance review meeting. My company recently went through a 20% RIF due to the virus and nobody in my org was let go.
In my own reviews, my bosses consistently give me feedback like “excels under pressure,” “calm decision-making in moments of crisis,” etc. Nothing sharpens my focus like a ticking bomb.
Yeah, without meds it doesn’t seem possible. At least I’ve never taken medication and I’ve never experienced hyperfocous for anything I don’t enjoy; at best I can force myself to pay attention to boring unavoidable things, but it’s always a painful slog. Fortunately for work’s sake I like some strange things, like doing literature searches.
Can one really medicate oneself out of a nasty procrastination habit?
I do not mean that ask that in a judgmental manner – I myself consistently fail at bearing down on certain concentration-intense work tasks. Additionally, there are a few members of my close family diagnosed with ADHD and/or Aspberger’s (a brother, two nephews, and one of my own children).
I mean … is this the kind of thing I’d go see a professional to address? Would it ever get to the point where I’d get some medicine that would truly make up the interest/concentration deficit and allow to flourish on the job?
Right now, I kind of skate by day-to-day and get more motivated by tight deadlines than anything else. I’d like to be able to take on concentration-intense work in small bites and take my time with it … but I invariably get distracted by dang near anything until the last minute.
If I need to concentrate without meds, then one technique that helps is to allow the feelings of distraction / dissatisfaction / overwhelm to run free for a moment, then let them go. I’ll often have a feeling of “I’m sick of this” or “I can’t do this” or whatever, and if I stop, have a little break, look at something nice (I like being able to see trees out my window), and just wait 30 seconds, then that feeling will pass, and I can go back to work. I used to think that if I had that kind of feeling, it meant that I was done with concentrating and needed to move on to something else, but actually, if I give myself a minute, my concentration will often come back. It’s not the same hyper-focused feeling but it’s still a way to get through stuff.
Big picture motivators, like being able to get a better job in a few years, are rarely effective for moment to moment motivation, I find.
Bordelond, medication helps with concentration, but doesn’t in itself change your habits.That’s more complicated. Medication does make a lot of things much easier though.
A good ADD/ADHD mental health professional will do a lot more than just prescribe medication for this condition. My own psychologist (who worked with an MD who prescribed medication) mentioned—and I have no idea if this is true, or represents medical consensus on the question—anyway, mentioned that adult executive functioning disorders like ADD may arise through problems in any of about a dozen areas of cognition. Medication affects only two or three of those areas. The rest can be helped primarily through cognitive behavioral therapy exercises, though changes in diet and exercise help too.
Make no mistake, medication helps. My first time taking a delayed-release amphetamine version, I commented to the doctor that it felt like ‘the adult’ finally decided to take sit in the big chair in the control room. It felt amazing and beneficial while it lasted. Routine, exercises, and things like being compulsive about writing things down and being consistent in my routines, helped with the rest.
I still procrastinate. But I’m better about starting earlier, and pushing through to achieve my intermediate goals.