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How I Run a Company with ADHD

andrewaskins.com

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Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#301

Post by ADHDthrowaway1 »

I have ADHD. I was diagnosed at the age of 33. I had struggled my way through high school, bachelors and masters degree, with an insanely loose cannon approach.

At 33 I knew something was wrong with me. But I didn't know what. I always felt different than other people and I couldn't contain my thoughts and restlessness leading to mostly complete inattentiveness and a chaotic approach to life. At worst it felt like having my head filled with fleeting thoughts, like 3-5 radios next to my ears with music, different positive thoughts and ideas all at once.

I went to a private practicioner and got diagnosed with ADHD. The ritalin and later Concerta tablets have improved my life 10X. I have been able to streamline my career, streamline my life and I can truthfully say that in a way, it saved me completely. I am now employed in a Fortune500 company, making a small ton of money (relatively) and can sustain myself very well. I will be buying my first real estate this fall. But without it, I don't know what I would have done. Become a homeless, drug-addicted hippie in a third world country maybe?

There are trade-offs to taking it. (1) Emotional and energy depletion at the end of the day is one. I don't take it in the weekends, because I don't like the soul-less me that I become.

I am able to have laser focus and almost have an unfair advantage to others when I am working on something that requires intense attention to detail or having to speak on some complex subject.

Moral of the story: If you suspect it, get diagnosed and get medicines to help focus on the toughest of days at work and in your life. It is certainly a life changer if you are undiagnosed. Don't let ADHD waste your life away.

Do this self test to consider whether you should see a specialist (Psychiatrist & MD) to get the diagnosis: https://psychcentral.com/quizzes/adhd-quiz/

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#302

Post by CHsurfer »

My son has many of your challenges and reading this helps put in perspective his challenges. I'm not sure what to do about him not 'reaching his potential'. I want to be understanding, but at the same time, I want to push him to try. It's tough. Your advice about finding work that you like seems to be extremely important. He's only 12, so we have some time, but I will discuss this with him so that he starts to pay attention and learns to identify what he likes and doesn't. Also your list of skills is great. I will try to get him to also identify his strengths as he matures and make sure he understands that everyone has strengths and weaknesses and that it's important to play to his strengths.

For me, this was a really great article. Thanks for sharing.

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#303

Post by amelius »

jordanbeiber wrote: post #168

It’s interesting to see how hard if is to separate ADD from ADHD by a description of traits or behaviors. I have ADD and pretty much recognize myself in a lot of this. It’s almost impossible to focus on anything that is not interesting “right now” and what is “interesting” changes in cycles spanning a few weeks. During a cycle I become completely absorbed, you know, not eat, not sleep and not being communicative, abs…

Are there techniques to trick your mind into thinking that something is interesting?

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#304

Post by badpun »

Veen wrote: post #241
fouc wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the best description of ADHD I heard was that it has more to do with an "attention-switching" deficit. People with ADHD are capable of intense focus on highly stimulating things like a good book. The intensity of focus drowns out everything else, making it hard to deal with other important tasks until the book is finished. It's also much more difficult to maintain their attention on things that are no longer…

This sounds familiar to me. I've been trying to launch a blog for years. It goes in cycles. I start building a site, learning a web framework or static site generator, writing CSS and JavaScript, coming up with topic ideas, etc. Then, when the interesting learning part is over, I get bored and it just sits there for a few months until I start again with a different idea for the design or typography. It's a pattern I…

Maybe you’re actually interested in design and typography?

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#305

Post by travisp »

ddxxdd wrote: post #48
ScottFree wrote: post #36

My reaction to this article has been... complex. ----- Bah! Another article about ADHD. ADHD's over diagnosed and not not as big a problem as people make it out to be. But, I'm curious all of a sudden, so I might as well read it. > For the first 19 years of my life I knew I was lazy. Yeah, I'm pretty lazy too. That's just who I am, though. I don't have ADHD... > So what, you can't stop bouncing your leg at the restau…

An ADHD diagnosis is based roughly on a 5-percentile standard[0]. In other words, if you are a hardworking, industrious person, but the rest of society is harder-working and more industrious, then you automatically become ADHD-diagnosed by virtue of being on the left side of the bell curve. It's also worth noting that in France, ADHD is seen as a problem with a child's environment instead of a medical issue[1]. [0] h…

France also generally views autism this way and fails to diagnose and properly treat autistic children. It’s a huge problem and probably ruins many families and children’s lives. I would not be surprised if in a couple decades we are talking about the “shame” of France’s approach to ADHD as well.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17583123

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/08/france-is-50-y...

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#306

Post by frereubu »

louthy wrote: post #295
frereubu wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give perhaps a slightly more nuanced take on this comment, and without the pointlessly provocative "suspect this opinion to be unpopular": when a mental "disorder" is diagnosed one of the key criteria is usually that it is causing distress. What I think this commenter is trying to get at is that the current structure of society could be causing this distress to a personality type that previously wouldn't have done…

This measured response to the GP is better than other "You're wrong" comments below. I've never been diagnosed with ADHD (I'm in Europe), but I'm absolutely certain I have it from all of the reading I've done on it in the past (and I recognise everything from the blog). I totally get what the GP is trying to say, and you captured it with: > the current structure of society could be causing this distress to a personal…

What you've written feels very familiar. It became clear early on to me that I wouldn't be able to fit into standard models of what "work" is, and running my own company was the way I found to make a living without feeling utterly miserable.

In terms of organisation I have a system that's like a low-tech version of Todoist. I have these text files on my desktop set up to sync through Dropbox so I can access them on my phone too:

today.txt - Tasks specifically for today so I don't get distracted by other, later tasks.

week.txt - A list of the next seven days with specified tasks in each. If there's something that comes in which I don't need to do today, but will need to at some point relatively soon, I put it somewhere this file. At the beginning of each day I move tasks for that day into today.txt and move the day header to the bottom of this file.

later.txt - Non-urgent tasks that I look at once in a while, and move things into week.txt if I have time.

current.txt - A simple list of projects that I'm currently working on.

I have various others, and use a calendar app for meetings etc, but I've found that structure to work well. I actually find apps like Todoist more distracting than they're worth sometimes, because I get caught up in configuring and reconfiguring them, adding tags to tasks etc. Plain text fulfills my need for simplicity and clarity.

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#307

Post by astalwick »

INTPenis wrote: post #259
yc-kraln wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diagnosed at 6 with ADHD in the US by a proper battery of psychiatrists, therapists, etc. Medicated until 17. Still going to therapy regularly in the EU to deal with a myriad of ongoing issues as ADHD has changed how it impacts my life into adulthood. I am a "textbook" case. So basically the reality of my life is not subject to your opinions. Stop projecting your value system onto other people's lives.

I'm sorry to hear that but just because someone diagnosed you at 6 doesn't mean I believe it's right to medicate a child that early. If you could do it all over again, would you have waited until you were grown before you took medication?

You don't know how hard it is, as a parent, to make the call to medicate your six year old child.

Here are some of the things that went through my own mind:

- Maybe he'll outgrow it (he's fairly severe ADHD, but we went through a long process of hoping that it was just a maturity-level thing)

- Paper after article after paper sent by well-meaning family members about how ADHD is over-diagnosed. Doubt.

- Side-effects (obviously, first thing every parent thinks about)? How severe will they be in my child?

- Ritalin + suicide [0].

- If we medicate him at six, _will he ever learn the tools to manage ADHD without meds_? He'll potentially spend his entire childhood on meds.

- If we don't medicate him, and he's consistently labelled a 'problem child' in his class, how will that affect his self-esteem as he grows up? How will it affect his feelings about school and work?

- If we don't medicate him, and he struggles and falls behind his classmates in his schoolwork (which, even in Grade 1, he was - significantly), are we holding him back? He's a super smart kid, he just can't focus.

- If we medicate him, and it doesn't work (we have to try multiple meds), how will it affect his self-esteem to be constantly visiting psychiatrists, pediatricians, etc. A thing I've noticed: doctors have zero problems talking overly-candidly in front of my kid about his failings, as though he's not there.

- We were literally told by a doctor that once you get on the medication train, 99% of parents don't get off until at least mid-high school. Am I comfortable with that?

After that long thought process (and so much more), we put him on medication. We're going very slowly in ramping up the dosage, but he's already caught up to his classmates in school, and he seems happier. I don't know if we've done the right thing, but I do know: it's not as clear-cut right/wrong as you make it out to be.

[0]: http://healthycanadians.gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-sc...

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#308

Post by tapland »

kolinko wrote: post #280
tapland wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats true. Also there must be documented start in childhood.

Depends. I was diagnosed independently in EU (Poland) and in US (California) at the age of 32. They didn't need a paper documentation, just asked about my childhood.

Ok. In Sweden I had a lot of trouble since my parents refused to cooperate (friends of scientologists, don't 'believe in diagnoses'), but I eventually got my living grandparent to help as much as he could after about a year.

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#309

Post by louthy »

bartimus wrote: post #291
Mordisquitos wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if ADHD were part of the natural variation of different personality types, or if it were only manifested as a disorder in modern society, that would not be mutually exclusive with it being a genuine neurodevelopmental (not mental) disorder. Whether the behaviours and feelings that we define as ADHD are natural or not has no bearing on the fact that people who present them can be very adversely affected as indivi…

> The fact that certain medications and therapeutic interventions are so demonstrably effective at improving the quality of life for people with ADHD means that refusing to recognise it as a genuine disorder is actively damaging to them. Or perhaps those drugs and treatments might also provide benefits to "normal" people. The true damage being that normal people are unable take advantage of them.

I echo this, but also that point that it's "demonstrably effective" doesn't invalidate the original poster's point, which is that perhaps it's a normal personality trait that doesn't fit with the modern world. The medication might put you 'back in your box' so you can interact with the modern world more effectively, but it doesn't mean the trait is in itself abnormal.

Re: How I Run a Company with ADHD

#310

Post by blue4 »

amelius wrote: post #303
jordanbeiber wrote: post #168

It’s interesting to see how hard if is to separate ADD from ADHD by a description of traits or behaviors. I have ADD and pretty much recognize myself in a lot of this. It’s almost impossible to focus on anything that is not interesting “right now” and what is “interesting” changes in cycles spanning a few weeks. During a cycle I become completely absorbed, you know, not eat, not sleep and not being communicative, abs…

Are there techniques to trick your mind into thinking that something is interesting?

Rewarding yourself after a boring activity is kind of cliche?, but it works. Eating a piece of candy after going to the gym for example.
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