Comment by klondike_klive
2 days ago
One thing I've come to understand about myself since my ADHD diagnosis is how hard thinking actually is for me. Especially thinking "to order", like problem solving or planning ahead. I'm great at makeshift solutions that will hold together until something better comes along. But deep and sustained thought for any length of time increases the chance that I'll become aware that I'm thinking and then get stuck in a fruitless meta cognition spiral.
An analogy occurred to me the other day that it's like diving into a burning building to rescue possessions. If I really go for it I could get lucky and retrieve a passport or pet, but I'm just as likely to come back with an egg whisk!
Your description feels relatable.
I think all this stuff is so complex and multi-faceted that we often get only a small part of the picture at a time.
I likely have some attention/focus issues, but I also know they vary greatly (from "can't focus at all" to "I can definitely grok this") based on how actually interested I am in a topic (and I often misjudge that actual level of interest).
I also know my very negative internal discourse, and my fixed mindset, are both heavily influenced by things that occurred decades ago, and keeping myself positively engaged in something by trying to at least fake a growth mindset is incredibly difficult.
Meanwhile, I'm perfectly willing to throw unreasonable brute force effort at things (ie I've done many 60+ hour weeks working in tech and bunches of 12 hour days in restaurant kitchens), but that's probably been simultaneously both my biggest strength and worst enemy.
At the same time, I don't think you should ignore the value of an egg whisk. You can use it to make anything from mayonnaise to whipped cream, not to mention beaten egg whites that have a multitude of applications. Meanwhile, the passport is easy enough to replace, and your pet (forgive me if I'm making the wrong assumption here) doesn't know how to use the whisk properly.