Comment by hartator
2 years ago
Funny this is one of the most distracting blog posts I've read in a bit.
Emojis everywhere, boxes, Intercom, sign up to the newsletter, animations, confusing wordings, multiple colors for the text. I doubt the author has a grasping of ADHD.
> I doubt the author has a grasping of ADHD
Do you? It can be hurtful to tell someone they "aren't ADHD enough".
First line of the article:
> I was diagnosed last year & wasn’t able to find an affordable, quality ADHD coach
ADHD people might like the animations, emojis, and colors, and might not read a long boring plaintext article linearly from start to finish. Everyone has different preferences though...
Personally I didn't find anything confusing or distracting about the article, and I felt like I could jump between random sections that look interesting (where the colors, emojis, and animations draw me in to different topics).
> It can be hurtful to tell someone they "aren't ADHD enough".
The author can have ADHD, but not have a grasping of how to solve this. One doesn't preclude the other.
Keep in mind they are the ones trying to sell a ADHD solution. Cutting off on visual and auditory distractions is very 101. It doesn't inspire lot of trust if they don't grasp that. Even if they all have ADHD for real.
Cutting off visual and audio distractions is very 101 for what goal though? We aren't doing homework or taxes. In one situation it may be "distraction", in another it may be "stimuli" and enjoyable. ADHD people like to stim. In this situation I think the visual stimuli were good.
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I know a pair of BFFs who both have ADD. Watching them try to have one conversation is quite eye opening. And a bit exhausting. I'm thinking back to every conversation I've ever had with a polymath or a person with ADD and asking myself, "man, is this what everyone else experienced listening to me?" No wonder the conversations always devolved to 1:1.
People with ADD understand why they shouldn't distract others, but theory and practice are poles apart, even by academic standards. Seeing tangents in text is a good indication they have an accurate diagnosis.
Ironically my friend married someone with ADHD, they visited us, and me and her took a walk, that ended up being 4 hours because it was so effortless for us to just jump topic to topic and talk about 10 different things in detail at the same time. We didn't have to re-focus or focus our energy to keep pace with normal people's way of speaking.
It was the wildest and easiest conversation I've ever had in my life.
Yes! This is what I’m talking about in my sibling post. I’ve never communicated on this level and it’s so easy. We started by texting giant walls of text (we called them stories), but those started getting too long, so we moved to leaving voice memos. It got to the point our memos were 30 minutes long back and forth. Now we talk on the phone for hours and it’s almost impossible to hang up, since we’ll just keep talking and taking.
And yeah, I definitely understand what you mean when you say it’s wild and easy. I don’t know if I can go back to talking with normal people lol.
I’ve been talking with a new friend who has ADHD, and I love the way we talk and interact. We say that we have “motor mouths” because we’ll just talk and talk and talk. We talk over eachother and interrupt eachother constantly, but somehow we are still able to communicate. Other people get upset with me but she really gets what it’s like, so we accept eachother and just go with the flow.
Does anyone know if there is a dating app for people with adhd? I’m curious if I have this kind of connection with other people as well or if it’s just her.
I'm curious, why are you so concerned about how ADHD affects people who don't have ADHD? What makes you think we "shouldn't distract others?" Have you considered that the problem might be failure to accommodate ADHD brains rather than people with ADHD not complying with arbitrary neurotypical standards?
Did you read the message I replied to? It was the experience of someone with ADHD reading the article.
This is sort of the thing. Everyone I meet with ADHD has some similarities, an a lot of nuanced differences and lots of their own little tricks and methods for dealing with it. Many of them have therapists they believe have had a positive effect on them. Many have medications that they believe have a positive effect. That may or may not be true depending. Whatever seems to be working is whatever they're evangelizing and while I'm glad that mental health is becoming more accepted and discussed, I wish treatments/rituals/coachings/medications were left up to the patient and whomever they chose for professional care
Therapy helped for me until it didn't and then medication did and still does. That's just me. My nephew struggles with medications. It's so easy just to get an initial reaction with mental health issues, and then want to evangelize whatever stimulated that reaction, but this stuff is nuanced. There's all kinds of variables commonly shared and some not so common.
Anyway, be cautious of telling people what they grasp with personal health issues, they likely just don't grasp your particular flavor. But with regard to this website, I'd be cautious in general.
It reeks of excited evangelizing done by someone who's way of interacting with the world is business and computers.
Appreciate the feedback! I'm the author here (Christal)...unfortunately I definitely have ADHD!
Many of our members and team need the emojis for the visual relation but I definitely see your point. I will tone down the emojis and make the newsletter show up only at the end of the article. I'll also send this to a content editor for the confusing wordings, etc.! If there are any specific examples, don't hesitate to let me know.
As a person with ADHD myself I'm definitely on the same wavelength with finding emojis distracting but a friend of mine finds them extremely engaging. I suspect that the emoji appeal is more whether you were raised in a setting with them embedded into speech or appended at the end of speech. That's all to say that I don't think the OP was really accurate when they said emojis distracted people with ADHD - it distracts some of us - and engages other[1].
I would also personally appreciate a more neutral professional tone to writing but it's important to get a wider understanding of your audience before over tuning your presentation.
1. (And if you really want to engage me put hyphens everywhere - I do mean everywhere... but that's just me.)
Thanks for this perspective. I generally try to make it at least not distracting for most people, even though I know no 1 style will work for everyone.
Yes, I hear your point on neutral tone as well, I'm a bit dramatic at times.
I am the same with brackets. I use brackets so often-I type them then delete them (or at least reduce them to a "normal" amount) before hitting send, usually.
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Not sure if you've already done it, but I find the current state of it just fine - I wouldn't say it's overboard. Not to put extra work on you, but I wonder if it's worth creating a both a highly visual and low-noise version of your blog posts, considering ADHD tends to be co-morbid with stuff like ASD. Just a thought.
I made a few small changes to current, but not everything. And yes, I like that example of low-/high-noise. We're going to look into this in the coming weeks as we revamp our website.
I thought the emojis and animations and stuff were great. Good job.
My savior! Thank you!
This is an incredibly rude way to give feedback.
I didn't look at the article until now. Gah that's terrible. I think we found a new low, folks!