I would say I have decent will power, but specifying how much energy trying to concentrate on just someone talking to you face to face is spot on. So I can blend in with all of my peers the first round, but if it comes up again in a short amount of time is where the ADHD crowd stands out.
So I would describe that as running laps. We are all in gym class, and the coach tells you and your peers to run a lap. I can force myself to do it and end up with everyone else from the coaches perspective, but if when we finish the coach says "run another lap now," some of us just haven't even recovered our breath while others have. In other words, "choosing" to focus on something when needed seems to be a pure will-power issue to me. But the amount of energy it takes to do so is where the actual disorders come into play.
I feel like I have a natural state where I can let myself be "distracted" by whatever I want to do, which usually involves getting hyper focused on things and going down different rabbit holes, but whenever I actually have to do something like study or even follow through on one of my personal projects it's like the energy required to do that becomes a finite resource unless of course it's the night before a deadline and suddenly I kick into gear while kicking myself for how much easier it would've been had I started sooner and split up the work...
We say we're exhausted but meanwhile we're over here doing jumping jacks while bench pressing instead of running, while some people are legitimately exhausted by the effort the actual task took, the coach thinks we are just assholes who refuse to listen to him. I mean to say its not the actual task that causes the mental effort, its doing one specific task. I know you probably already meant the running to be 'focusing on one thing', but I just wanted to elaborate.
Ha. You are probably right about that. Doing the daily grind in the work-world, I have noticed that I excel at things if I can do a little bit of one thing, do a little on another, come back, etc. But if I am asked to do one thing all day, I just lose all my strength. I obviously don't know much about this complex issue, but I do know enough that a lot of variations of this disorder are certainly real and vary from person to person, regardless of race, class, IQ, nationality, etc.
You're sort of on the right track (no pun intended). There are different levels of disorder. Lets say an average person could do the task you described for 10 laps. A person with a mild disorder may be able to do 5 laps. A person with a sever disorder cannot will them self to start running at all.
Yup, I am quickly learning here all the different levels and frequencies. Very interesting to hear. I really hope I didn't offend anyone by saying that starting the run is simply will-power. I know all too well those speeches from people about my specific disorder, but it is true for me. I can force myself to almost do anything, but specifically audio is something I have never been able to keep up with. I even ran a Customer Service Dept for years at a mulit-million dollar company, and it was amazing how many customers I completely converted to email instead of phone conversions, as I just solve problems from emails so much more efficiently.
Audio recollection is diminished in ADD. Personally, I would kill for the will power to do. Not even joking - if I could highlander that @!#$ I would. Without it my entire life is just one big farce
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u/[deleted] May 30 '17 edited Sep 24 '19
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