Post by @andyc

@andyc@yakshaving.social Haha! I probably have ADHD to thank for that. Always looking for new rabbit holes... Discovering and learning about new things has never been a problem for me. Sticking with them, however, is another story. I'm not always successful on that score.

@jac@404brain.boo Golly. That sounds unerringly like me.

@andyc@yakshaving.social I mean, I wouldn't tell someone they might have ADHD based off one trait alone (it's a complicated thing!), but for me this is a heavily featured trait. I've been this way my whole life. I only suspected I had ADHD about 4 years ago (officially diagnosed earlier this year). Previous to that, I assumed I was just a massive failure at pretty much everything. Now I know that it's my dopamine seeking ADHD brain that has me on a permanent quest for new knowledge, but also likes to discard things at the drop of a hat.

It's a blessing and a curse, as they say. :)

@jac@404brain.boo Sorry - I wasn't suggesting for a minute that I have ADHD although I remember years ago, I attended some external consultant's personality profiling type workshop where we all had to describe ourselves and endlessly post yellow Post-It's on a whiteboard. Excruciating, lasted all day, tedious and not my thing at all.

I was surprised when everyone got their certificates and final verdict.

I was told I was a 'starter not a finisher'. I had never heard the term before but subsequently I often reflected back on this and thought 'God that was really accurate. That's exactly what I am'.

@andyc @jac@404brain.boo Whenever I recount this story, my wife just grunts and says 'Accurate apart from the Starter element' (as she waits for that dripping tap to be fixed).

@andyc@yakshaving.social Yeah, that sounds like my idea of hell. If I had to sit through that, I'd have been bored within 30 minutes and likely would have zoned out for the rest of it, rendering any "verdict" mostly inaccurate. :D

But yeah, that describes me pretty well, too! There are some things that I stick with, but even those tend to get put on the back seat while I investigate shiny new things for a while.

@jac@404brain.boo ...although almost as a contradiction, I can be incredibly tenacious and persistent going down a rabbit hole to resolve or investigate a particularly thorny or challenging technical problem. Sometimes, it was required as part of my job, sometimes it's just something a fun side project that interested me.

@andyc@yakshaving.social Well, for me, I can easily slip into 'hyperfocus'. By that, I mean I'm in a state where the new project is all that I can think about. I can be so wrapped up in it that I'll forget to eat, drink and sleep.

That can last for days, weeks, sometimes months. It depends how quickly my brain decides it's bored and it's time to move on. ADHD hyperfocus would be an absolutely amazing thing if it were something you were able to control. Often I will spend intense periods learning everything there is to know about something, only to drop it and find some months later I've forgotten almost everything about it. Which is highly annoying.