p.s.: argh, typed this over 12 hours ago and just found this open page. It's clearly not working. But here we go anyway:
Oh she might be me.
It is with great grievance that I had to put an end to this and install a plugin that closes the oldest one when I get over 15 (Limit Tabs). (Actually, that is only great, unless I'm in a shopping decision frenzy and actually need this.)
I find that it belongs here, as anxiety and ADHD can play right into each other.
ADHD will very typically lead to missed deadlines, for example: Already getting the 2nd demand note on something you had to file, apartment is a mess but the landlord comes over in a few hours to inspect something, work.
Now anxiety can trigger when there is nothing to be anxious about, that's what makes it pathological, but it does NOT get better when there really IS something to be anxious about.
And when anxiety peaks, ADHD can make it feel differently. Just like a regular task that becomes an unmanageable tangle of unordered steps and potential escalations and obstacles rather than a clear series of steps, ADHD can also make the perceived consequences of a missed deadline more chaotic and harder to process, reason and think yourself out of.
I agree that it's not a good answer to the question "What does it feel like to have ADHD?", but microblogging is all about simplifying and giving one example, from a layman perspective who will not be able to draw a clear line between the related ailments she has.
That is smart! Could also do a reverse-challenge: The goal is to write something worse than anything that has has ever been turned in to that teacher. "teecha has a stoopit" (but don't forget to delete)
Brian Tracy mentioned a similar trick for his shady cold calls business: A reward to the first employee who gets a rejection every morning, with a bell and everything.
Pets are so nice, and I think about them every day. But after the last 8 year period where I took care of them every day, I had to take a break and stopped getting new ones.
It's this one extra thing. A day has you beat down completely, you feel like you could just pass out on the floor, but the pets need the full program with cage cleaning and everything. Vet appointments that can hit any time. A dying, suffering pet and the vets are closed on weekends and holidays (we have no clinics here, just ONE emergency vet for 250,000 people).
On top of what's been said: People will suddenly spawn right next to you and start talking, seemingly mid-sentence. Your thoughts will be interrupted, errors will increase, and on top of all that, they expect the right response.
It's hell, at least for me. Try it if you want.
Great advice that works for many, including myself!
Even if you don't get into the flow and do a single pomodoro session per day, a lot will be gained over 1 year, 5 years, 10 years. A degree 3 or 5 years later is much better than no degree.
The time put in is a huge factor, even when it's done "all wrong".
I achieved a lot in terms of studying and failed a lot in other areas.
Ask yourself: Counting only focussed, undistracted studying, do you achieve significantly less IN THE SAME STUDYING TIME than your peers? If the answer is "no", improve your method. If "yes", you will need to put in a few extra years, but do keep going!
Hit that problem with methods. There are tons of methods that work for some, don't work for others. Pomodoro, X-effect, habit building, Leitner system etc.
Some things are completely uneffected by ADHD, for example building habits. The prefrontal cortex is not involved in that.
I use pomodoro, and I'm super strict about it. Here is my old comment: https://lemmy.ml/post/24026788/15853247
It's good that you have that method in the library! I'd say keep it as it is, don't water it down. Those special focussed sessions will help you a lot. But it should not be an excuse like "I can't do the library thing today, so I do nothing".
Instead, for situations where you can't, maybe try my method. Think of it like squid game: Players have 10 minutes to study as hard as they can, then the ones with the lowest relative gain are culled. You'd rather pee in your pants than go to the toilet, and you'd not look at your phone when it makes a noise during that time. Maybe you can start with 25 instead of 10 right away, up to you.
Don't get put off by false perfectionism. There was a group fight in the barracks last night, you haven't showered in days, you didn't drink enough, you got hit on the head and feel dizzy - better put those 10 minutes to good use anyway and survive another game!
I show up to appointments with a structured list only. Downside: Every GP thought that, whatever I have, it's certainly NOT ADHD.
I always have the feeling that there is "no time" to start in the beginning. "I SHOULD know that already", "I'll pick it up on the way", "It'd take too long to start there" and other excuses.
But experience tells a different story: When I dare to start at the very beginning, no matter how small, it often lead to great success, while jumping into the middle never got me anywhere.
In your concrete situation with programming: After getting a grasp with BASIC and Pascal in the late 80s, I wanted to learn Assembly and really understand it. And so I did. And it was not wasted time. (Except for macro assembler, aimed at really using it for big projects; could have skipped through that and just used the old MS-DOS debug tool.) Some of my most fond memories with the PC were not fancy UIs I developed, but how I wrote a 10 byte long program directly into the MBR of a floppy disc and booted from it to execute it, without loading any OS.
Later with C, C++, Java, I also focussed on the core language and libraries, only then moved on to UIs and big frameworks. And it did me a great service once more. I notice people around me who skipped through the Java fundamentals in less than a week and got right into a big framework - even 10 years after, they have odd misconceptions and knowledge gaps that hinder their development.
But I also respect that there are different approaches that work better for other people.
You could also go a middle way, for example: Set a weekday that is for "core research". But don't try to "wing it", won't work. It needs to be an automated reminder on your calendar, a differently marked column on your habit tracker, whatever you use.
I got to get back there, too. I lived like that for a decade, back then no clue that ADHD was one of the main problems, and it seemed to help. But due to lack of "evidence" & a diagnostic that requires this, I slipped up. Now I'm the average eater with some good, some bad parts of the diet.
My diet was a kind of "low carb", but not in the strict sense that it's much lower than recommended, just much lower than the average sinner.