ADHD

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A casual community for people with ADHD

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Relevant Lemmy communities:

Neurodivergent Life Hacks

lemmy.world/c/adhd will happily promote other ND communities as long as said communities demonstrate that they share our values.

founded 2 years ago

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Struggling to set life into motion (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/adhd

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I either have an exciting plan,
or when that fails, no plan (I resign).
Since the exciting plans usually fail, I end up living on autopilot.

I really struggle making things in life move. There's too many simultaneous Big Tasks* whose logistics I need to keep track of that I can’t hold them all in my head at once (I can only focus on one Big Task at once). Especially when most tasks are timelines where you need to wait for responses, compose emails, search for things (there might be none – what then?) etc. and where you need to think about the order of the tasks in the timeline so that you save time. Not to forget remembering to notice if people haven’t replied to your e-mail and having to either remind them or come up with a Plan B (this usually leaves you stumped because you now can't get the thing you started the whole journey for). There's so many steps to keep track of and you can't even write them down because the amount of steps keeps changing.

*Finding the next place to rent, booking a dentist for my hurting tooth, planning journeys (what is the Plan B if the journey is too expensive?)

The cluelessness and dread of having to come up with a Plan B is why I hate searching for things. Having to come up with a Plan B is so disorienting. And it's the opposite of stimulating: you've put in a ton of effort and gotten nowhere. How do you all deal with it?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Try using external tools. Tracking can be done with a physical Kanban board.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Bruh. Nothing called a "board" can contain all the steps to even one of my plans.

And I've got a lot of plans. Hundreds of "I just need x to get to the next step of y plan" pass through my mind daily.

I have no money, so I have no reasonable way to obtain x, so y is at a standstill.... For now. Rinse and repeat with everything, and you'll have a good idea of the chaos I live with.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah I have this problem too. There's so many

“I just need x to get to the next step of y plan”

weighing my head down but writing them all out and updating them would be such an arduous and impractical task. Let alone dragging around (ie. losing) a physical planner. I don't knw what to do. I wonder how people without ADHD deal with this. I've been thinking that it would really help me to be able to study how a youtuber like Tom Scott (who travels to a new place for each of his videos) keeps track of all his planning. Because the logistics of filming his videos are essentially the same tasks that we struggle with but a much bigger volume.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The answer is likely "other people".

I know that Tom, doesn't really have much of a team, if any, but that doesn't mean he doesn't get help with stuff like organising and booking flights and stuff. I don't believe for a second it's just Tom, jumping a flight to somewhere and setting up his camera, talking to it for a while, then editing it and posting it, all by himself.

I'm sure that was the case once upon a time.... Currently, not so much.

Don't get me wrong, his content, the scripts, the research.... I'm sure Tom is either directly involved, or doing that stuff entirely on his own. I believe the words he says are his own and that he has taken the time to learn the subject matter himself. Whether anyone helped with writing may be in question, I haven't really dug into his process, so I don't really know, but in the end, Tom is saying things that he believes to be true based on his own understanding of the matter. I believe that 100%.

How he got here? Idk.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Agreed. But in any case, the process of contacting a place, waiting for a response, reminding them, finding a date, booking a hotel and arranging transport is exactly the sort of process that us ADHD people struggle with, and I'd be curious to see what techniques he's developed to keep track of them all. Not because he has ADHD (I don't think he does), but because the shear scale of the process would put him or whoever he's employing into the same position as us.