I conditioned myself to fail • Hacker News Board

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#31

Post by hnuser123456 » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 9:05 PM UTC

csallen wrote: post #29

Aurornis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the traits of ADHD is that our brains crave novelty I know you meant well by your post, but this type of reductionism doesn't really do justice to ADHD and can lead a lot of people astray. It's actually very normal to crave novelty. It's also normal to become bored with repetitive, boring work. It's not a unique feature of ADHD, nor is craving novelty a diagnostic indicator for ADHD. These are normal feature…

It's actually very normal to crave novelty. It's also normal to become bored with repetitive, boring work. It's not a unique feature of ADHD, nor is craving novelty a diagnostic indicator for ADHD. These are normal features of being human and not, by themselves, suggestive of ADHD. Thanks for mentioning this. I see so many comments with people self-diagnosing themselves with pathologies because, "I forget things ofte…

Mostly people who grew up in too pristine of a world, who think that everything should be easy following established procedures, that anything being difficult is a sign of a medical issue rather than just... a difficult task.

We all have our own interests. We are easily bored by things that are very far away from our interests. You cannot force any given person to care about any given topic as much as you want them to or think they should. Or you can, but then you no longer know who that person really is, and your concept of them becomes inaccurate, setting you up for surprise when that person isn't what you wanted them to be.

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#32

Post by balfirevic » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

csallen wrote: post #29

Aurornis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the traits of ADHD is that our brains crave novelty I know you meant well by your post, but this type of reductionism doesn't really do justice to ADHD and can lead a lot of people astray. It's actually very normal to crave novelty. It's also normal to become bored with repetitive, boring work. It's not a unique feature of ADHD, nor is craving novelty a diagnostic indicator for ADHD. These are normal feature…

It's actually very normal to crave novelty. It's also normal to become bored with repetitive, boring work. It's not a unique feature of ADHD, nor is craving novelty a diagnostic indicator for ADHD. These are normal features of being human and not, by themselves, suggestive of ADHD. Thanks for mentioning this. I see so many comments with people self-diagnosing themselves with pathologies because, "I forget things ofte…

> I think a lot of people just don't have a good baseline for what's normal.

True, but that works both ways. "Surely everyone else gets distracted this much".

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#33

Post by hedayet » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 9:12 PM UTC

I’m not a mental health professional, so I won’t comment on the ADHD side of things. But as a tech and business lead, I can say this trait is actually the norm; Zuckerberg-types are the exception.

Most software engineers I’ve worked with love writing code. They’re good at it, they know what they’re doing, and they can make steady progress toward what they set out to build. But what comes after writing code—the rejection, the silence, the outages, the bug reports—isn’t as fun.

Shipping software is easy for us (engineers) because, as engineers, we’re in total control. But landing it in the market? That’s a different challenge—one that requires skills we often don’t have.

But the good news is - like any other skills, we can develop this one too. I have observed significant improvement in myself over last few years in "Landing vs shipping" as I have been working on this trait deliberately. Still a long way to go...

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#34

Post by huqedato » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

The sadest thing in this world for me is not receiving feedback on my work. Any feedback, not necessarily positive. This breaks me down every time, even now, after 25 years of experience.

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#35

Post by ajb » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 9:31 PM UTC

otikik wrote: post #30

codazoda wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very similar to op. What type of mental health professional should we seek out? I talked to a PA about ADD a couple times, but dropped it because they seemed doubtful and I felt a bit ashamed (because you treat ADD and ADHD with a controlled substance). I went on phentermine for a few weeks, for weight loss, and my mind felt absolutely amazing on that medicine. It’s apparently dangerous for long term use though.…

Psychologist first. Psychiatrist if the former recommends one.

Not entirely sure that's the right way round, but it may depend on your jurisdiction.

In the UK, if a psychiatrist recommends some kind of therapy, they will refer you to someone else. But if a psychologist* does, they will do it themselves. Which kind of leaves them marking their own homework.

* Clinical psychologists are the ones qualified to deal with mental health problems. There are several other categories.

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#36

Post by Aurornis » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 9:41 PM UTC

csallen wrote: post #29

Aurornis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the traits of ADHD is that our brains crave novelty I know you meant well by your post, but this type of reductionism doesn't really do justice to ADHD and can lead a lot of people astray. It's actually very normal to crave novelty. It's also normal to become bored with repetitive, boring work. It's not a unique feature of ADHD, nor is craving novelty a diagnostic indicator for ADHD. These are normal feature…

It's actually very normal to crave novelty. It's also normal to become bored with repetitive, boring work. It's not a unique feature of ADHD, nor is craving novelty a diagnostic indicator for ADHD. These are normal features of being human and not, by themselves, suggestive of ADHD. Thanks for mentioning this. I see so many comments with people self-diagnosing themselves with pathologies because, "I forget things ofte…

> I think a lot of people just don't have a good baseline for what's normal.

I saw a lot of this when I mentored college grads for a while.

I also saw another problem where people were resistant to the idea that they were normal. This happened a lot with tech students who grew up being the smartest kid in their local elementary school and the computer wizard in the family. They grew up being told they were smart and destined for success. When they didn't get selected for a FAANG job or their startup wasn't successful, they'd often go searching for alternate explanations. ADHD was a common one. I can't count how many times I listened to people explain to me that they were "going to get a FAANG job" or "going to do a startup" but then they "discovered they had ADHD". Like it wasn't okay to just get a normal job, they had to have a specific and public reason why they weren't in a 99th percentile position.

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#37

Post by htk » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 10:01 PM UTC

Love to read posts like this one. Honest, straight to the point, relatable, and as a bonus makes me want to do something about it as well. I hope the author keeps on writing.

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#38

Post by jarebear6expepj » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 10:08 PM UTC

This entire domain is bot, btw. Yes. It learned how to express in thought what a psilocybin trip was... decided to learn how to register a domain, and has established a character with which to interact with the network. TLDR; AI-cosplay is hawt.

... It's also using twitter.com links. A little outdated for 2025 models apparently.

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#39

Post by richarme » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 10:16 PM UTC

balfirevic wrote: post #32

csallen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually very normal to crave novelty. It's also normal to become bored with repetitive, boring work. It's not a unique feature of ADHD, nor is craving novelty a diagnostic indicator for ADHD. These are normal features of being human and not, by themselves, suggestive of ADHD. Thanks for mentioning this. I see so many comments with people self-diagnosing themselves with pathologies because, "I forget things ofte…

> I think a lot of people just don't have a good baseline for what's normal. True, but that works both ways. "Surely everyone else gets distracted this much".

Disagree. I think adults with ADHD are well aware that they are not "normal" with respect to many of the symptoms, even if they don't know it's due to ADHD. At least that's my personal experience.

Few examples off the top of my head:

- being unable to pay bills/fines on time even with plenty of money in the bank.

- being physically unable to keep sitting in a chair after a while in meetings.

It's easy to see that most people around you don't exhibit such traits.

Re: I conditioned myself to fail

#40

Post by robocat » Mon, Feb 03, 2025, 10:17 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #36

csallen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually very normal to crave novelty. It's also normal to become bored with repetitive, boring work. It's not a unique feature of ADHD, nor is craving novelty a diagnostic indicator for ADHD. These are normal features of being human and not, by themselves, suggestive of ADHD. Thanks for mentioning this. I see so many comments with people self-diagnosing themselves with pathologies because, "I forget things ofte…

> I think a lot of people just don't have a good baseline for what's normal. I saw a lot of this when I mentored college grads for a while. I also saw another problem where people were resistant to the idea that they were normal. This happened a lot with tech students who grew up being the smartest kid in their local elementary school and the computer wizard in the family. They grew up being told they were smart and…

How can we help our friends that buy into this self-victimisation?

Our culture accepts and normalises the behaviour of using self-deceptive excuses. Our culture provides prepackaged excuses which are socially unacceptable to confront. It is a self-reinforcing system including professionals and woowoo practitioners.

The word trauma gets trivialised to be used as an outcome for the normal vicissitudes of life: blame your parents for everything and accept you can never "recover" and you must never repress. Woowoo past-life trauma and regression therapies and discussions - arrrgh.

My responses so far are limited to (a) dropping people I like from my life because their behaviour was unacceptable, (b) playing along with the beliefs of other friends regardless of the damage of those beliefs, (c) slowly trying to influence those I care about the most (d) blithely ignoring everything - training myself to not care.

We can all clearly see faults in others. Our other problem is to recognise within ourselves when we are making self-deceptive excuses or blaming others for things under our own control. Should I buy into the self-help industry? Counselling, coaching, or woowoo?