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Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

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Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#271

Post by seba_dos1 »

BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #45
rey0927 wrote: post #40

i don't want to sound like a shill but stimulants definitely help. if you really have ADHD at least try them once it will significantly improve your quality of life and help u overcome the impairment.

Yup. The meds help. It was a big improvement from less then barely functional to moderately functional.

Various people react in various fashion. Sometimes it's a struggle to find meds that you will respond well to, and sometimes you may just end up disappointed.

Nevertheless, they do help a lot of people, so it's definitely worth giving a try.

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#272

Post by telcal »

theGnuMe wrote: post #209

Yep, I struggle. Things I've done. 1. Delete my account, change /etc/hosts or use OpenDNS and block it. 2. Restrict it to one device and only for 1 hour a day. 3. Sign up for a digest email from another service and only use that.

100% about the digest. https://www.hndigest.com I set it to arrive at 9PM daily (nice feature!) and spend 30 minutes to an hour browsing the top 20 (another customizable feature). I don't visit any other time of day.

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#273

Post by osigurdson »

fipar wrote: post #221
osigurdson wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I (of course) think of it like multi-tasking in a computer. The machine needs to capture the context (stack and registers) associated with one task in order to switch to another. However, for a human this context can be enormous. Depending on the task, it is possible that one will never get back to the state of understanding that they had at an earlier point if working on a particularly complex thing - just the right…

The ZAMM reference is spot on to me. The moment I used to get an interruption (typically an incoming call, but not only that), what happened to me was just what Pirsig describe of the gumption leaving you like air from a baloon, psssst. I eventually got into 'the zone' and I was actually quite good at figuring out problems with little context, but my gumption was gone nevertheless, and I was useless for whatever thin…

Yes, I think it is the most important software engineering book by far.

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#274

Post by techdragon »

crucialfelix wrote: post #240
varispeed wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'll find in a few weeks time the things that didn't actually matter are gone. What gets me mad sometimes is that when I work on something and hit a road block, then I remember I found an article about it a year or so ago and I definitely saved it. I just have no idea how to find it. I have not looked, but I wonder if there is an indexing tool that would also do an OCR on screenshots, PDFs etc. in the local files…

I run a script daily that fetches my chrome history and creates a daily web log file in my Obsidian. Daily, all links are fetched (as part of a larger web search product I'm working on). I can search this, but mostly i don't bother. I will soon add semantic search and see if there's any magic to be found in my data exhaust. Truth is I'm forced to spend my days googling dull problems and reading vaguely interesting ar…

Don’t suppose you have the script in a shareable form? That sounds pretty useful!

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#275

Post by hollerith »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #270
hollerith wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably don't have ADHD! Or more precisely, whether you would get a diagnosis of ADHD if you consulted the appropriate specialist is probably irrelevant to your life. You are one of the many people who have repeatedly derived pleasure from visiting HN. It is natural for humans to get pleasure from learning new things and getting fresh perspectives from other humans. And HN is easy and comfortable and very safe.…

> But people with a mental disorder have the same mental architecture for motivation as the rest of us You may want to read up on that actually.

Here's an argument for my assertion:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cyj6wQLW6SeF6aGLy/the-psycho...

Let's see your link or rebuttal.

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#276

Post by lexarflash8g »

affgrff2 wrote: post #52
onion2k wrote: post #6

I think I have some sort of weird ADHD combined with a stoic outlook. I want to see all the new, shiny things, but I also understand that I can't, and nothing bad happens if I don't, so I accept that I'll just miss some things.

I agree. I think it is necessary to accept (as in 5 steps of acceptance) that is not possible to process all the shiny things. Keeping bookmarks and not closing tabs thus indicates an early phase off the acceptance process, probably denial.

While I don't deny existence of mental challenges like ADHD, anxiety/depression, IMHO these conditions are overdiagnosed and overprescribed by medical establishment.

I'm a bit neurodivergent myself, although it comes with advantages, it also comes with things that make other parts of life harder. Humans are humans at the end -- not a DSM-5 citation.

But modern media is somewhat designed to be addictive to generate ads and revenue -- endless content and scrolling, links...Im referring to news sites but social media is way way worse...

Acceptance is good advise -- I think each person is capable of adapting and learning to function on a high-level.

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#277

Post by seba_dos1 »

hollerith wrote: post #275
seba_dos1 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But people with a mental disorder have the same mental architecture for motivation as the rest of us You may want to read up on that actually.

Here's an argument for my assertion: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cyj6wQLW6SeF6aGLy/the-psycho... Let's see your link or rebuttal.

I recommend reading any actual research on ADHD instead - you'll find out that motivation deficit and executive dysfunction are pretty much its defining aspects, and that it's not quite about seeking "effortless risk-less pleasures".

For example:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9066661/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3010326/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2626918/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170216105919.h...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1744-9081-1-8

Even got you one directly related to this thread:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01651...

There's plenty of popsci too around the phrase "interest-based nervous system":

https://www.additudemag.com/secrets-of-the-adhd-brain/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/optimized/202107/the...

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#278

Post by thr717272 »

hollerith wrote: post #213
thr717272 wrote: post #142

Alt account of long time HN reader/user here: But I admit that with my life circumstances (adhd, coming from a non wealthy family) and choices (active Christian, more than twice as many kids as the average around here) there will never be time. I deal with it all by storing it in raindrop (used to be pinboard.in but I finally got utterly fed up). I also have a bullet journal (ok, Logseq these days) where I have pages…

>I felt had an almost crippling addiction to HN, then since late February last year I have barely read HN Can you say more? How did the invasion of Ukraine cause the ending of your HN addiction?

Yep, by replacing it with another :-/

I've been hunting disinformation, spreading information and hope and support, donated, tried to raise awareness with politicians and newspapers, that kind of stuff.

Got a severe back pain last fall that set in whenever I touched Twitter last fall, and scaled back, then scaled up again.

Now I need to take a break. Will still pray and donate if possible, but while 11 months on the information war frontlines is a lot of fun it is unpaid and mentally taxing comes on top of normal responsibilities and in addition you get to see and understand in your heart a lot of pain.

Luckily things are moving in the right direction now. Now even the leopards will be sent to roam the steppes of the east.

(Do I care about the Russians? Yes, unlike many others, yes. Thats the second reason why Ukraine needs to win before more of them are sent into the meat grinder.)

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#279

Post by manmal »

stared wrote: post #15

> There’s a never ending number of things I bookmark. One of the key features of ADHD is a never-ending list of things to do. Edward M. Hallowell (who wrote "Driven to Distraction") remarks that perhaps it is the most characteristic feature of ADHD. Previously, browser crashes saved my sanity— killing dozens of open tabs with fascinating articles. Now I try to let it go . In a Zen/stoic way, knowing that nothing will…

I second the recommendation for Pinboard. I rarely ever revisit bookmarked pages (and don’t expect to), but every once in a while this pays off big time.

I can also highly recommend a clipboard manager (I use Paste with a high history limit), which is kinda like a second short term memory. The most profound effect this has for me is lowered stress. Once I‘ve committed something to the clipboard, I know that I‘ll be able to recover it. I think that it also makes me more productive.

Re: Ask HN: How do ADHD people cope on here?

#280

Post by BatteryMountain »

hidelooktropic wrote: post #88
BatteryMountain wrote: post #34

Pi Hole with my own blocklist. That is, I block all of my problem sites, then let someone else set my pihole password and then I delete my ssh key off the server. Then on the phone, remove all apps that allows consumption (social media, games, readers, youtube, even the browser). Debloat it with adb too. Switch off all notification except for your main chat app (like whatsapp) and alarms. If still too distracting, se…

I completely disagree about caffeine. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-does-caffeine-affect-people... "if you don't learn to focus it." this is nonsensical and harmful

Depends on the person. Caffeine is a mixed bag for people with adhd and related disorders. If wasn't, we'd all just be taking caffeine pills and call it a day, yet we don't. It does work in some cases, specifically if you throttle your intake so you don't build up tolerance and use it intermittently.

And you can learn to focus your adhd traits and exploit them.

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