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Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

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Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#181

Post by hirvi74 »

modo_mario wrote: post #107
User23 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure about the whole neurological dysfunction story. It sounds a lot like the now debunked chemical imbalance story for depression. So far as I know there’s no ADHD blood or other objective test. I am however sure about stimulant drugs being a shockingly effective productivity booster when properly dosed though. As the comment I’m replying to notes, it’s trivially easy to walk into a psychiatrist’s office and…

>So far as I know there’s no ADHD blood or other objective test. There's a few genes that have been found to be responsible/correlate strongly i believe but I assume genotyping goes a bit far for common diagnosis. I'm sure it's not the same for everyone that's diagnosed tho and there's a good amount of misdiagnosis too.

> there's a good amount of misdiagnosis too.

Until there is a more objective way to diagnose ADHD, how can one argue who really has the condition or not? It's not like we humans even remotely understand the brain in its entirety.

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#182

Post by herdyderdy »

hirvi74 wrote: post #156
herdyderdy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are on stimulants now that seem to help with your long term focus? Is there a concern of tolerance and dependency, like coffee/caffeine, where you'll have to keep upping the dose to get the benefit? Sorry if I'm being nosy but this is rather eye-opening to me and makes me think it might be worth speaking to my doc about this.

I apologize if my response is kind of all over the place. I am somewhat of rush this morning, but I wanted to throw my hat into the ring. To contrast the other user who replied, I have been on stimulants for 8 years now. I will say that there is a very notable drop in efficacy. Not enough to justify stopping them all together, but I'd say I get about 50% of the benefit on my best days. I would consider my current exp…

Thank you very much for your perspective. This is useful to know.

I've basically found some methods to cope with my weird attention issues but since my methods are so unusual and essential for me to be focused it makes it difficult to work with others or keep up my own self-motivation.

I was wondering if there was a magic pill to solve some of these problems, but you've cleared up that it's a double-edged sword.

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#183

Post by hirvi74 »

herdyderdy wrote: post #182
hirvi74 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize if my response is kind of all over the place. I am somewhat of rush this morning, but I wanted to throw my hat into the ring. To contrast the other user who replied, I have been on stimulants for 8 years now. I will say that there is a very notable drop in efficacy. Not enough to justify stopping them all together, but I'd say I get about 50% of the benefit on my best days. I would consider my current exp…

Thank you very much for your perspective. This is useful to know. I've basically found some methods to cope with my weird attention issues but since my methods are so unusual and essential for me to be focused it makes it difficult to work with others or keep up my own self-motivation. I was wondering if there was a magic pill to solve some of these problems, but you've cleared up that it's a double-edged sword.

A wise psych once told me, "Find me a perfect pill, and I will show you a pill that does nothing."

Medications very well may alleviate your focus issues too, and you might have entirely different results than I have, but do what you think is right.

I hope my comment did not persuade you not to seek treatment, I just felt it would be dishonest to not share some of the less than favorable aspects.

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#184

Post by dewert »

xani_ wrote: post #81
antasvara wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like you're defining "fun" or "enjoyable" differently than most people would. Most people don't find their "fun" activities enjoyable all the time. Running can be fun, but it also is tiring and sucks sometimes. Practicing a musical instrument isn't the most enjoyable, but playing in a band and nailing songs is. Lifting isn't "fun," but excelling at a sport is. Point being that not liking the boring parts of…

...people find running fun ?

I'm guessing your comment is tongue-in-cheek, but as someone who used to not like running, I'd like to share my experience.

What made it click for me is not pushing myself too hard. I used to run at an intensity I realize in retrospect I could just barely sustain. This worked, in that my fitness increased and I got faster, but it always felt horrible. This was the case when I ran alone, or with my partner - when we run together, we tend to subconsciously push each other to go a little faster.

Then, we started running with a much more extroverted friend who likes to talk a fair bit. This put a natural limit on the intensity, and apart from enjoying the socializing, I also felt physically better. It also worked fine for fitness, and I got a PR on a 10K race while training this way.

Now I find that even when I run on my own, I'm much better at finding a pace I can sustain comfortably, and I enjoy it!

As a casual runner, I'm very happy I've come to this realization, but I'm sure the experience is very different for someone who is either very unfit and finds any speed uncomfortable, or for someone who's training seriously and needs to push hard to attain their goals.

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#185

Post by nkantar »

Many years ago I dropped out of a Computer Science university program for a variety of reasons, but primarily because I was too disinterested to try all that hard. After a lifetime of computering, having started tinkering at 8, I simply had no alternative plan.

I took an aptitude test administered by the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation[0] and the results were interesting and somewhat new to me. Of the many different potential career paths it indicated I would be good at, I chose design, and a few years later graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design/Visual Communication.

I was pretty OK as a design student, with a definite natural knack for it and learned skills that built on top of that foundation, so I tried my best to get a design job. With my web background, however, I got two contract gigs to write code instead, and then dove in after realizing I could succeed even without a CS degree. It’s been a decade now and I’m a reasonably senior software engineer who’s worked on a bunch of different stuff, and I love it.

My design background still comes in handy from time to time, especially the general problem solving skills I learned. It’s also a nice complementary set of skills for someone working on the web. And I probably wouldn’t have had that experience without the aptitude test that suggested I might be good at design.

Sure, I’m merely my own sample size of one, but that’s made me a big believer in aptitude testing results as useful information.

[0]: https://www.jocrf.org/

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#187

Post by hirvi74 »

thenaturalist wrote: post #101
User23 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure about the whole neurological dysfunction story. It sounds a lot like the now debunked chemical imbalance story for depression. So far as I know there’s no ADHD blood or other objective test. I am however sure about stimulant drugs being a shockingly effective productivity booster when properly dosed though. As the comment I’m replying to notes, it’s trivially easy to walk into a psychiatrist’s office and…

> I’m not sure about the whole neurological dysfunction story. Are you a medical professional or do you have a scientific source backing up your suspicion? The point why there is no objective blood test is mainly rooted in the fact that getting a true measurement of a neurotransmitter is prohibitively costly (measurement across intra- and inter-daily blood samples to establish a true baseline). Yet, scientists are do…

> Modern stimulants are even better.

And if you can't get access to them or cannot take them for one reason or another, then you are basically screwed.

One would think if a disorder had such negative impacts, it would be taken with a little bit more seriousness, but alas, that has not been my experience in the US Healthcare system.

It seems to me that system loves to hand out stimulants, then they look for any and every reason to take one off them. But hey, that is just my experience, and I am overly cynical.

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#188

Post by tiborsaas »

kixxauth wrote: post #96

My advice is to not focus. At least not yet. I'm in the 40-45 year old range and assuming you are much younger. Apologies if we are closer in age, since this advice will carry less value. I have often been envious of people who were more focused than I am. I feel they have been able to make more progress in a given amount of time. I worked as a mover in Boston into my mid twenties, spent a bunch of time trying to bec…

> "Do you regret your experiences?"

What would have he said if the answer was yes?

Experiences are not equal, you can have a series of events that not even can time can fix to make them look/feel better.

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#189

Post by iLoveOncall »

kixxauth wrote: post #96

My advice is to not focus. At least not yet. I'm in the 40-45 year old range and assuming you are much younger. Apologies if we are closer in age, since this advice will carry less value. I have often been envious of people who were more focused than I am. I feel they have been able to make more progress in a given amount of time. I worked as a mover in Boston into my mid twenties, spent a bunch of time trying to bec…

I'm sorry but this is survivorship bias to the extreme. Most people that start like you will do the odd unstable jobs for the rest of their life, they won't end up Principal Engineer at Disney.

Re: Ask HN: How to find what I am really good at?

#190

Post by tediousdemise »

pr07ecH70r wrote: post #113
thenaturalist wrote: post #93

Hi there, This might be an off beat chance, but have you had a history of or ever looked into the topic of adult ADHD? Changing several jobs, jumping between hobbies or projects is textbook ADHD, especially if you don't feel like you can get out of it and describe it as a "huge live hurdle". That is the same for me. Got diagnosed at 30 two months ago. If you have a suspicion you might have it, I highly recommend doin…

Actually never crossed my mind it could be a sickness-related. I just thought it as a sort of "too many possibilities saturation" or too quick loss of interest. So I decided to ask like-minded people like you here, at least from the same more or less background. Will make the online test, though...

You’re getting a lot of advice about ADHD and the medications prescribed for it. My advice is to tread cautiously and know the risks, because most doctors won’t tell you (or they’ll just gloss over them).

Amphetamines are addictive and, used as prescribed, you can find yourself with way worse attention and psychological problems. This is especially true if you take them on a daily basis as prescribed. Taken this way, they can lead to chronically depleted adrenals and long term downregulation of your dopamine receptors, which means you’ll feel like shit when you run out of medicine. The road to up-regulating your receptors is long and arduous.

Hopefully you don’t have a problem filling your medicine, as most people who take controlled substances inevitably come across righteous pharmacists who will refuse to fill them (instead, they will tell you they are out of stock).

There are also long term risks such as the development of Parkinson’s disease. Is a little bit of productivity now for your boss worth developing a debilitating disease in retirement? Only you can make that call.

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