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How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

untappedbrilliance.com

181–190 of 204 posts

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#181

No. ADHD does not work this way for me, or people like me who are inattentive . This article is the equivalent of the time my primary care physician said, “just use a calendar”. You want me to maintain a set of documents? Buddy, without meds I can’t remember to brush my fucking teeth. I’m not exaggerating. ADHD is a spectrum, articles like this paint everyone with the same brush, which furthers many people to feel li…

Very much this. My son has ADHD (full neuropsych eval) and he has attention issues, but his main challenge is executive functioning. Daily routines do exist, but are achieved through literally months of repetition, not by conscious effort to identify and organize all of the things that need to happen before school, after school, etc. Establishing and sticking to a formal program to read books is literally the hardest…

It sounds like your kid has a similar ADHD experience to how mine was when I was younger, so I feel compelled to say this:

The best thing my parents did raising me (and it wasn't easy) was to put a lot of effort into exposing me to books I was interested in and to exercise a very light hand in terms of how late into the night I read. The combination of reading habits and a practiced ability to educate myself from books has served me very well in the decades since. It's operated as both a coping mechanism for the drawbacks of ADHD (such as habitual inattention to in-person communication) and, as my other skills have caught up, a key tool that some of my peers are lacking.

Daily routines were more difficult for me, and took a set of experiments in my early 20s (think daily alarms/calendar events on the order of "wake up" ... "work out"... "eat breakfast" ... "take shower/brush teeth" increments) to really lock into place (although they have taken a blow in the last year).

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#182
post #8

TL;DR: you have many unread books, here's 4 more to add to the unread pile. Don't read all your books, accept that you'll fail and redefine success.

Not sure if this comment was meant in earnest or not, but to be quite honest, "accept that you will sometimes fail" and "redefine what success means" were actually two very important steps in my journey to accept what my limitations were. I didn't get diagnosed until 28, meaning I had had a fairly long life of not succeeding at things, but also not realizing that I flat out was unable to succeed at them. So having to…

>Not sure if this comment was meant in earnest or not

Somewhat satirical with a hint of truth - the article purports to solve the problem of ADHD reading stacks. It did so in a long windy form going all over the place which is generally the opposite of it's own advice. My summary fixes that by applying the article's premise to itself.

I generally have strong agreement with the article. This is as someone that has a significant amount of partially read kindle titles on the go right now and who recently managed to get his browser open tab count down to single digits for the first time in years.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#184

There have been only a few things I have done with frequency in my life. Playing musical instruments in one of them. I have never been deliberate in practice. I have never sat down and made a schedule to practice playing the guitar or piano. But having a guitar always in visible line of sight has meant that I've practiced consistently everyday for years at a time so long as I have a guitar in the room. Books don't ha…

Why don't books have that ease of re-use? I've currently got an open book on every available surface. Restart is just a matter of going there and grabbing it. (The most important ones sit on my desk)

For ones I've already read, they're in a shelf right behind me. Not line of sight, but a 180 degree turn. Same as my guitar. It works very well. (It took a while to get my partner used to books lying around everywhere, but it was worth it)

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of addicted folk talk this way. I couldn’t function without ____, where ____ could be anything from coffee to amphetamines. That isn’t to say that you are abusing the medication, but that the dividing line is more arbitrary than most people understand. Many addicts are simply people with inadequate health coverage who are forced to self medicate, often with the exact same substances (adderal, benzodiazepines, pa…

Best analogy I have is vaguely RPG like. Let's say "normal" is 0, and the medication at a given dosage adds, say, +5. So people without ADHD, take Ritalin, hit 5, get a buzz, smash out that project. Then there's people with ADHD, who're starting at -5. They take the drugs, hit 0, don't get a buzz, and maybe actually start that project now that they're better able to ignore the delights of Wikipedia articles on the ro…

Assuming normal distribution most fall in the middle of this spectrum. The notion that there’s some binary state of “chemical balance” where you either are -5 or positive 5 is a myth. I’m pro-medication mind you, but I’m also pro-reason. The reasoning here is filled with inconsistencies, bias and outright misinformation (eg debunked “chemical imbalance” theories)

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#186
post #84

I really dislike this sort of blog. Every article feels like it was written for their affiliates and for search engines, and rarely for the readers. It's certainly not written for people with ADHD. Here's the only useful paragraph in the article: > This idea came from Megan, a guest on Hal Elrod’s podcast. Megan explained she keeps track of all the books she reads in a spreadsheet. Each time she finishes a book she a…

> Here's the only useful paragraph in the article Looks like you found the ONE thing in this article. (jk) I do agree with you. I read for pleasure and to satisfy curiosity. it's hard (or pointless) to try to find one thing to implement from curiousity driven exploring.

That's not even a joke. I couldn't stand reading the article, specially this late in the day. This article is terrible for reduced attention states.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, publishing world is guilty of turning popular blog post series into books because the bloggers have a platform to promote. Then the bloggers turn each paragraph in their famous blog post into chapters in their book. You can understand that kind of books by reading the first few paragraphs of each chapter. As an example, Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life comes to my mind. I think he turned a Quora answer to a…

Studied is a big word but (on the fiction side) most things by Greg Egan keep me reading with ease. Also Harry Potter :). But also the Commonwealth Saga 1 and 2 by Peter F. Hamilton, the 3 books after that I never finished. Dune kept me going for 5 books until I stopped. On the non-fiction side, Richard Dawkins is a good writer.

Thanks for the recommendations, I will definitely check Greg Egan, never heard of him. I agree with the rest :)

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#188
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link me your website?

You will find it in my post history. I'd rather not spam it too much here.

Are you just referring to your blog? I went through a dozen pages of your comment history thinking you had a website about giving straight forward answers to questions.

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#189
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will find it in my post history. I'd rather not spam it too much here.

Are you just referring to your blog? I went through a dozen pages of your comment history thinking you had a website about giving straight forward answers to questions.

It's All About Berlin, not my personal blog

Re: How to Read Books When You Have ADHD

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very much this. My son has ADHD (full neuropsych eval) and he has attention issues, but his main challenge is executive functioning. Daily routines do exist, but are achieved through literally months of repetition, not by conscious effort to identify and organize all of the things that need to happen before school, after school, etc. Establishing and sticking to a formal program to read books is literally the hardest…

It sounds like your kid has a similar ADHD experience to how mine was when I was younger, so I feel compelled to say this: The best thing my parents did raising me (and it wasn't easy) was to put a lot of effort into exposing me to books I was interested in and to exercise a very light hand in terms of how late into the night I read. The combination of reading habits and a practiced ability to educate myself from boo…

Thank you for your reply. Unless he's up super-late, we let him read as late as he wants.

Despite the cost, doing the full neuro-psych evaluation was the best thing we've ever done. It helped us (the parents) really get insight into how his brain was working, which completely reset our own ideas of how to best help him.

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