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How I Used ADD to Build Great Businesses

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Re: How I Used ADD to Build Great Businesses

#21

Music always helps. But it has to be music with no words that doesn't make you think about anything. Foreign language music works.

Agreed. There is also scientific research that proves white noise can help. Good instrumental music is not far off from that.

Re: How I Used ADD to Build Great Businesses

#22

As somebody who has ADHD (Please start using the correct acronym.) I feel it is my obligation to make it absolutely clear to everyone that there is nothing beneficial about ADHD. If we are successful with ADHD, then we would only be more successful if we didnt have ADHD. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUQu-OPrzUc

I have always been told by my doctors that I have ADHD because there is a component of hyperactivity in addition to my ADD.

Correct. They are two different strands of the same condition. Inattentive type is what is generally referred to as ADD without physical hyperactivity. ADHD has a physical component as well. The kids I knew in school growing up who were diagnosed with ADHD were those who, in addition to what was going on in their brain, couldn't control themselves physically either. They were the ones always wrestling with you, jumping on you etc. for no apparent reason.

Re: How I Used ADD to Build Great Businesses

#23

As somebody who has ADHD (Please start using the correct acronym.) I feel it is my obligation to make it absolutely clear to everyone that there is nothing beneficial about ADHD. If we are successful with ADHD, then we would only be more successful if we didnt have ADHD. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUQu-OPrzUc

I have always been told by my doctors that I have ADHD because there is a component of hyperactivity in addition to my ADD.

And I have the inverse. No hyperactivity, thus diagnosed with ADD.

Re: How I Used ADD to Build Great Businesses

#24
post #20

I'm noticing that there have been a whole lot of discussions/articles on HN recently relating to ADD/ADHD. Do a significant amount of founders have this disorder? I'm wondering what's the explanation here.

Note: This is a response to clicks's comment, not to the linked article.

I'm not going to comment about OP, but I will say I've noticed that, in the majority of these posts, the person is self-diagnosed and has received no psychiatric evaluation whatsoever.

A significant number of founders may have "ADD"[0] in that they have trouble focusing, etc. This is like self-diagnosing depression based on the fact that they "feel sad".

I have no idea how many founders actually have ADHD - ie, DSM 314.xx - but I take any HN post about "ADD" with a whole heaping of salt. It's nothing personal, but let's just say that my internal Bayesian classifier has been trained to detect most as pure noise.

[0] I put this in quotation marks because the term has been outdated and deprecated for quite a long time in the medical community - in my experience, most people who say they have "ADD" haven't received any medical treatment recently, because that's not the term that any current psychologist/psychiatrist would use.

Re: How I Used ADD to Build Great Businesses

#25

As somebody who has ADHD (Please start using the correct acronym.) I feel it is my obligation to make it absolutely clear to everyone that there is nothing beneficial about ADHD. If we are successful with ADHD, then we would only be more successful if we didnt have ADHD. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUQu-OPrzUc

> If we are successful with ADHD, then we would only be more successful if we didnt have ADHD.

Indeed, ADHD is a bane, not a superpower. Yet, more? I don't know. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, which in turn makes you able to overcome ordeals and achieve things, sometimes worse, sometimes better, and anyway differently. This is how I live with ADHD, how I learned to work around or abuse it, how I made it a part of me.

PS: the acronym is only correct when you are hyperactive in addition to the attention deficit part. the H trait is not always present — or at least not as prevalent — which sometimes makes ADD hard to detect.

Re: How I Used ADD to Build Great Businesses

#26
I have it, dropped out of college. Remember being up all night learning other stuff than what the education had planned for me.

School: learn MySQL

Brain: learn Redis.

School: Learn javabeans and JEE and etc

Brain: Learn Obj-C and Cocoa

Contrived example, but something along those lines. Had to drop out, it was killing me staying up all night experiment with stuff that was not related to the education plan setup for me. I mean it's an investment in myself to learn as much as possible, but I wasn't getting any credit for it.

Didn't know it at the time, but recently got diagnosed with "severe" adolescent ADHD. In queue for treatment atm. They said pills might not help.

Does anyone have any cool tip on how to focus without getting distracted and look at George Costanza quotes or research about meat eating plants?

For me, cutting starch/carbohydrates/sugar helped. But only by a little, it got rid of the "fog" brain. At least now the 1000 thoughts in my head running concurrently are crystal clear :)

Re: How I Used ADD to Build Great Businesses

#27
post #25

As somebody who has ADHD (Please start using the correct acronym.) I feel it is my obligation to make it absolutely clear to everyone that there is nothing beneficial about ADHD. If we are successful with ADHD, then we would only be more successful if we didnt have ADHD. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUQu-OPrzUc

> If we are successful with ADHD, then we would only be more successful if we didnt have ADHD. Indeed, ADHD is a bane, not a superpower. Yet, more? I don't know. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, which in turn makes you able to overcome ordeals and achieve things, sometimes worse, sometimes better, and anyway differently. This is how I live with ADHD, how I learned to work around or abuse it, how I made it a…

ADD == ADHD-PI now, there is no ADD anymore

Re: How I Used ADD to Build Great Businesses

#28

It has been my experience that nutrition plays a big role in controlling ADD. Especially eating a good breakfast. Eating two eggs, fresh fruit and whole wheat toast provides lots of energy.

For me cutting starch/carbohydrates/sugar helped. But only by a little, it got rid of the "fog" brain.

Re: How I Used ADD to Build Great Businesses

#29
post #20

I'm noticing that there have been a whole lot of discussions/articles on HN recently relating to ADD/ADHD. Do a significant amount of founders have this disorder? I'm wondering what's the explanation here.

Note: This is a response to clicks's comment, not to the linked article. I'm not going to comment about OP, but I will say I've noticed that, in the majority of these posts, the person is self-diagnosed and has received no psychiatric evaluation whatsoever. A significant number of founders may have "ADD"[0] in that they have trouble focusing, etc. This is like self-diagnosing depression based on the fact that they "f…

In my case, I've gone through a pretty extensive battery of tests with two separate behavioral psychologists that go beyond self-evaluation or those (largely nonsensical) questionnaires that primary care physicians have you fill out. But I agree with what you're saying. There are folks out there who've made claims to being ADD without being officially diagnosed, some in startup spaces.

To be fair though, it can be difficult to diagnose even in the medical community, particularly given that it seems to be the default fallback for any parent wanting to medicate a child that may be going through a natural hyperactive phase.

On the other hand, I wasn't officially diagnosed until I was 20 so I spent 18+ years in the dark. Others I know went through similar (longer) periods of quiet self-diagnosis before they finally decided to go through what would be considered an appropriate test.

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