Dopamine is the get-shit-done neurotransmitter. Our brain’s dopamine system is broken. Normies complete a task and get a satisfying feeling of accomplishment, that’s dopamine. You complete a task and get nothing. When you did those tasks before, and got no dopamine, your brain labeled them as useless. Your brain is literally telling you that doing nothing is better than the tasks you need to do. Better to be lazy and save calories for important tasks. You’re not procrastinating, that’s something normies do, you won’t ever do those things. You’re not putting off an unpleasant task, you’re conditioned not to do them.

You need to condition your brain to expect a reward when you complete a task. Figure out what things do give you dopamine, and reward your brain with them.

Clean the house - play video games for 15 minutes.

Do laundry - 15 minutes on social media.

I’ve had varying results combining activities, like cleaning while listening to my favorite podcasts.

It also helps me to spend a moment being mindful of the results of the task. “Look how much better this room is now that it’s clean. I’m proud of myself for accomplishing this task.” It sounds dumb but it works.

I try not to beat myself up about it. I remind myself that everyone has off days, and everyone deserves some R&R.

Dinner tonight was one of my favorite meals, BFMC. Bread, fruit, meat, cheese. A loaf of fresh bread, a hunk of tasty cheese, a little bit of cured meat like salami, and some fruit. If you want to get fancy you can add some nuts and olives.

That’s how I found the word, I saw that diagram.

I don’t want to constantly have to fight against my ADHD just so I can be average. Can you imagine any other disease getting this kind of treatment? “Yeah, you have cancer, but it’s not killing you so just deal with it.”

I prefer positive reinforcement. If I do a task, I reward myself with a dopamine hit. I play a game or hit Lemmy or Mastodon for 15 minutes after.

A couple reasons off the top of my head, 1.) You can’t let 20-30 kids loose without it ending in pandemonium, but you need kids to practice time management skills before college. Homework is a time where kids can learn to manage a workload, outside of the controlled environment of school. 2) Kids can’t candle a 9 to 5, they need recess and art, and music, and gym to give their brains a break. In the 7.5ish hours that kids go to school, there’s probably only 4 hours of work done. (but Bob, I only work like 30 minutes of any given day, and I’m an adult…)

Am I the only one who feels like productivity/organization tools for ADHD people is like bicycles for blind kids? Like, “yeah I can see how a functional person could find this useful, but what the heck am I going to do with it?”

These are the things that keep me from anxiety and depression.

Maintain high-quality relationships with people who enrich your life.

Get good sleep. 7.5 hours of solid sleep every night.

Watch your diet. Don’t eat too much processed food. Keep meat and dairy to 1/3 of what you eat.

Take care of something. Dogs and cats are great but so are reptiles, fish and even plants.

Find work that challenges you in ways that keep you engaged, but doesn’t punish you for being neurodivergent.

Coffee, one cup in the morning. Try to get your focus work done in the first half of the day, while the caffeine is still pumping. If you can handle it, have a 2nd cup before noon, buy only if it doesn’t keep you from going to sleep at a good time.

It depends. If I get into a really interesting book, and then spend several hours reading, I sometimes feel like that. Like I got so sucked into the world of the book that I left this one. Sometimes at the end of a really long, really good movie I feel the same. It doesn’t feel as bad as you describe though. Just kind of disorienting.

If I get into a flow state at work it feels fantastic. At the end I feel tired, but in a good way. I can relax and usually kind of revel in whatever was created during the flow state. It feels so good, I have to be careful not to overindulge. If I don’t watch it, I’ll ignore all the boring work that’s not likely to get me into a flow.

I highly recommend anyone with ADHD to look into flow state theory.

I was just listening to The Hidden Brain, they talked about an experiment. Scientists bioengineered rats to have no dopamine receptors. If they put food in the rat’s mouth it would eat, but if they put the food even one body length away, the rat would starve to death. I have never felt so much sympathy for a rat.

I get routines that, once I get started, it’s hard to stop.

For instance, take a shower, brush teeth, go to bed.

If I get really dirty and have to take a shower at noon, I have to actively remind myself NOT to brush my teeth and yes, even not to get into pajamas.

If you don’t do the important things in life you’ll die. Your genes built the dopamine system to make sure you’ll do those things. Your dopamine system doesn’t function correctly. When you do a life sustaining thing, your broken dopamine system says, “meh, that was a waste of time, don’t do that again or you’ll die. Do something that does give dopamine.”

Here’s my hack. Give your brain dopamine. Figure out the things that engage you and make you feel good. If you’re engaged and feeling good, it’s because the dopamine is flowing. I like reading, video games, TV, and interesting complex problems. Right after I do a boring task, I reward myself with some dopamine. I play a game or I work on an interesting problem. I treat my brain like a labrador. Good boy have a treat. The bigger the task the bigger the reward.

Slightly less helpful but still good is affirmations. When you do something good, take a moment to recognize it, just to yourself. “I cleaned my room, which is good. I should feel good about it.” It sounds corny, but it helps.

Or my favorite, “here let me show you how to use a calendar.”

Great, next maybe you could teach a blind kid to ride a bike.

Here’s me in 6th grade, reading at a college level, learning algebra, picking up coding because it’s fun, and you think the problem is that I don’t conceptually get calendars?

They may ask you to get other people, who are close to you but can be more objective, to answer the questions.

Have you seen Lucky Number Slevin? There’s a great scene where Ben Kingsley says, “The first time someone calls you a horse you punch him on the nose, the second time someone calls you a horse you call him a jerk but the third time someone calls you a horse, well then perhaps it’s time to go shopping for a saddle.”

I’m saddle shopping. I have an evaluation scheduled tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Caffeine is a stimulant. I find that after a cup of coffee I’m OK for about 4 hours. I try to schedule my focus time during the first half of the day, and then allow the second half to be research time.

While I’m working, I tend to have a list of three things I want to work on. If thing.1 stalls, I can open thing.2 and then thing.3. I can’t do more, or I’ll forget to go back to thing.1. If all three things stall, I grab a bit of dopamine via a video game or SM and then go back to thing.x where thing.importance is max.

I also have a couple of backup tasks in case I can’t work on the big three. There’s always documentation and expense reports.

P.S. I have dysgraphia, which was diagnosed when I was a child. To my knowledge, no professional ever diagnosed me with ADHD. I’ve tried to ask my mom about this, but she’s being cagey. She says, “we all knew you had ADHD.” I was never given medication for ADHD. The only help I got was for the dysgraphia. All this is to say, if you want to get help for another disability you will absolutely need to be proactive.

This answer is for the USA.

A health care professional is going to ask you questions from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). There are 9 symptoms for each kind of ADHD. If you have five of one or the other, you have ADHD. The difficult part is, everyone does these things sometimes. The question is, do you do them often, and does it have a negative impact on your life. A mental health provider is going to have more training on evaluating you than a general practitioner. When it comes down to it though, anybody can ask the questions, you have to give the answers.

I scheduled a physical with my GP and figured I’d get to take care of everything at once. Unfortunately that’s not how the helthcare system works. The doctors don’t like to combine multiple ailments into a single visit, because they can’t bill them that way. So I left with a referral to psych. I haven’t gone yet and still don’t have a diagnosis. If you’re going to go the GP route, make a specific appointment for an ADHD diagnosis. Make sure to ask beforehand if your GP feels comfortable giving the diagnosis and, if you’re interested, prescribing meds. If you don’t ask, your GP is likely to wait til after you’ve paid your copay to tell you that you’ll need to see a psych specialist.

Those folks will re-upload old content onto the new platforms. I know people don’t like to talk about money, especially in relation to the fediverse, but it’s important. If you want someone to dedicate a large portion of their energy into making high-quality content, it’s not unreasonable for them to want to make money doing it. How can we get money into the hands of content creators without allowing centralized control of the content?

Those folks will re-upload old content onto the new platforms.