Goblin.tools: simple, single-task tools to help neurodivergent people with tasks

I've tried all the distraction reducing techniques, and the distraction reducing techniques have been tried on me.

In school, I was, at least 70 percent of the time, sent to the isolation desk, facing a wall, only a pencil. This didn't help.

I've tried going to remote cabins, no internet. I've tried no devices. This did not help.

The problem (so far as I've come to understand) is not that I am unusually susceptible to distractions, it's that it's unusually difficult to convert 'needing to do something' into 'focus'.

The problem is not that something derails the train, but that there's no tracks. Starting something does not make it more likely that I'll continue it. Going in a direction doesn't have 'momentum'.

This is very difficult to understand, since it's not really 'a tendency that everyone has but more', it's a different brain. You aren't going to understand it by going 'oh like when I'm distracted', you have to try and create a picture from scratch, not based on your experience, but by listening to people.

Not that what people tell you should be just immediately imported into your worldview, people sure can be wrong about themselves. But you can't necessarily check other people's experiences against your own.

(The word "you" in this comment is referring to the general non-ADHD person)

Assuming even a tiny amount of those are loud when exploring their discovery would mean a lot of people talking about it online.

This is likely also combined with Millennials (my cohort at least) being one of the most self-aware generational cohorts in history (while also being a tad self-centered).

I have my own journey with ADHD ("many markers" but no official diagnosis, as that could negatively affect my life in Sweden) and it was really liberating to learn that, no, I wasn't just lazy, that I may have an issue with executive function and if I work around it I can at least partially tackle it.

The amount of stress that gets applied by society for people who are "not performing up to their potential" or slacking off or what-have-you is actually quite immense when you cannot force yourself to work, so I understand people who feel liberated in the moment and who seek solutions, loudly.

My largest executive function issue is the guilt of not doing some other thing.

If I have a very stressful situation, I can easily organise my thoughts and ruthlessly prioritise what is important from what is not important.

In "peace" times, this doesn't work at all, and instead if I have something that I know will take half a day (say, for example, fixing a subtle bug in the email system) then I will feel guilty about doing that over something else (say: doing paperwork for the worked hours that month).

Thus, I do neither. Until one becomes critical.

It's fucking stupid, but I can't fix it.

I went my whole life thinking that I was broken. I had intense anxiety surrounding social interaction, was horribly depressed, got terrible grades through high school, and just generally did not enjoy most of life. I eventually learned how to cope and function normally to an outside observer, but still would go through cycles of intense anxiety and depression that I didn't know how to explain.

A few years ago I finally was diagnosed with ADHD and suddenly everything clicked. My anxiety, my depression, my grades, my intense hyperfocus on one thing at a time but also inability to keep consistently focused on one thing for more than a few weeks. All of that suddenly made sense, and there were people in the world who knew exactly how I felt. And the thing is, the anxiety and depression have largely gone away. Now that I know what's going on inside my brain I don't have to beat myself up about it, instead I can learn from and lean on hundreds of thousands of other people who have to cope with the same thing.

So yeah, today I will often notice "oh, that's an ADHD thing" at random times in my life. But it's not so much that it's an essential part of my identity as it is that it's enormously comforting to finally have an explanation for all of the weird quirks that I have, and it's a huge relief to have a community of people who experience the same things that I do. When I say "that's my ADHD", it's me reminding myself that I am not broken, just different, and different is okay.