The Struggle to Right Oneself
MUTATION VECTORS
Status Update
I went back and forth on whether to write anything about this, but: my 15-year-old niece has COVID-19. A very bad case. She was in the ICU a few nights ago and it was, I’m told, “touch and go” for a while. She’s home now and recovering. I bring it up only to encourage everyone to get vaccinated and to be safe. Hospitals across the country are overflowing. I know I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but this shit matters, not just to the elderly, not just to already sick (though shouldn’t that be enough to take it seriously), but to everyone.
ADHD and the Struggle to Right Oneself
I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. I’ve suspected I had it for many years but had never been formally diagnosed nor had I pursued prescription medication as treatment. Not long after the diagnosis I just happened to stumble across this blog post by self-help blogger David Cain (who I’d never heard of) about getting diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 40 and realizing everything he’d been struggling with, the raison d’etre of all his writings about self-help and productivity, was related to his condition. His symptoms and experience are different from mine, but he says a lot of what I’d say about ADHD. It’s worth a read if you have ADHD, think you might have it, are close with someone who has it, don’t believe ADHD exists, or just want to develop more empathy for those who have it.
Via the Metafilter discussion about Cain’s post I also found a podcast discussion with productivity blogger/podcaster Merlin Mann about his own ADHD diagnosis and the realization that his blog was also really about dealing with ADHD and other executive function disorders (the podcast also covers some of what I’ve been planning to write about Buddhism in the future).
From the Metafilter comments:
For a smart, motivated person with ADHD, there is an endless array of strategies that you can enthusiastically pour your time and energy into to try to stay on track—and as a younger person, I was served by a whole industry of people like Merlin Mann, and David Cain, and David Seah, and David Allen (a lot of Davids, lol, hmmm) and it surprises me not at all that one after another of these folks are finding out late in life that they have ADHD, just like me, their fickle disciple.
Seems like you just reach a point where you’re too old and haven’t got the energy any more. You’re still smart, you still know all the strategies, you’re still creative enough to create more strategies, but you just don’t have the energy to execute and sustain them, and you’re forced to confront the fact that, wow, other people don’t live like this—why not?
A relevant passage from Cain’s post:
The other reason I overlooked ADHD is a more common one: its most obvious repercussions sound like the same stuff everyone deals with.
Consider this list of “symptoms”:
I struggle to get things done I find it hard to focus on things that aren’t interesting or stimulating, like homework or income taxes I can’t seem to get organized I have a hard time being patient or waiting for things I overindulge in entertainment, food, and other stimulating activities I procrastinate
Even my own reaction to this list is to roll my eyes. Welcome to being human! Everyone deals with these challenges, and the answer is to grow up and take responsibility for your life.
That’s the message you receive repeatedly, explicitly and implicitly, from yourself as much as others. You just need to make yourself do those difficult things, like everyone else does.
Cain and Mann’s pieces were a bit of a revelation to me about productivity, personal development, lifehacking, etc., even though I’ve long suspected I have ADHD. I’ve always been aware of the critique that all of this productivity stuff is some neoliberal conspiracy to squeeze more labor out of us or industrialize our private lives or whatever. It’s left me in a weird place, feeling, on one hand, guilty that I struggle to keep up with work, cleaning house, keeping in touch with friends and family, and pursuing hobbies, and on the other hand guilty about feeling guilty for struggling. I felt guilty about not getting enough done and guilty about wanting to manage my life more effectively. I wondered if I was a bad artist or a bad leftist for caring about whether I’m used my time well, but also guilty for not getting more creative work done and not finding enough time for activism. No more. I won’t be shamed for my symptoms, nor will I be shamed for managing my symptoms.
Also, here’s something else interesting from Cain in the comments:
ADHD cases are seemingly rising and this is often attributed to the effects of technology on our attention spans and so on. But I think that’s backwards. What we call ADHD is a cognitive difference that has probably always existed, but our economy and education system depend more and more on executive functions. The ability to do “knowledge work” obviously relies much more on executive functions than manual labor does, and as the world shifts toward it, those with weak executive function are going to struggle more and more. And that’s just one example. The more complex and abstract a person’s daily obligations become, the more the ADHD mind is going to struggle with them. So the environment is having a huge impact on the relevance of the brain difference we summarize as ADHD.
(I’ll add that having always-on broadband internet doesn’t help the situation.)
The title for this piece was swiped from an art exhibit by Kerry Skarbakka of the same name.
The Black-Metal Nature of Task Management
The same day I saw Cain’s post, I came across this piece by Wired columnist Clive Thompson about task management apps and why people seldom seem to stick with them. Clive writes:
But when I talk to folks who use these apps, I see a strange inconclusiveness. A scant minority of us check off everything every day. An equally tiny minority simply Cannot Even and are curled in a fetal ball awaiting imminent firing. But most of us? We’re just sort of … meh. We bounce from app to app, never quite finding a home. […]
This is the black-metal nature of task management: Every single time you write down a task for yourself, you are deciding how to spend a few crucial moments of the most nonrenewable resource you possess: your life. Every to-do list is, ultimately, about death. […]
Apps, lists, and calendars can help us put our priorities in order, sure. But only we can figure out what those goals are. And setting limits on what we hope to do is philosophically painful. Every to-do list is a midlife crisis of unfulfilled promise.
Ironically, none of this is a problem for me. I used to bounce around to different apps, but I’ve been using MyLifeOrganized for about nine years now. Most people run away screaming when I show it to them, but it seems to fit my brain pretty well. Indeed, I’d say it’s the most important tool I have for managing ADHD. The important thing, though, probably isn’t the app but how I use it (though I’ve tried to migrate to other apps for various reasons and I’ve never been able to make them work for me). I don’t really follow the Getting Things Done process, but I think I subscribe to the philosophy of it. I think of my task management software as a way to capture everything that needs to be done or that I want to do so I don’t have to worry about forgetting things. I know I’ll never do everything that’s captured in the app and that’s OK. Most of the tasks I have in it are basically hidden from my view most of the time.
The important features of a task app, for me, are: the ability to defer a task until a specific date and the ability to set tasks as recurring tasks. That way I can keep my task list slim on any given day, knowing the things I need to do will pop up on the list when I need to do them. Inevitably more things surface on the list than I can do each day, so I have to defer some things. These days I consult my MLO list and then write out a task list on an index card each day. The limited space on the card keeps me from committing to too many things, and it’s satisfying to cross stuff off a physical list as I go. It creates a little bit of double work since I’m pairing down my list and checking things off in two places, but I find it worth it.
Typomania
Twitter got a new font called Chirp. Some people like it, some people hate it, and most people didn’t even notice. I fall into the “like it” camp. It’s getting compared a lot to the trendy font GT America (whichthe CIA used for their redesign earlier this year) but it reminds me more of the open source Work Sans, which draws from a similar pool of old-school sans serif inspirations as GT and Chirp.
Media Diet
Books
- I just finished How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr, an eye-opening look at the US’s long history of colonization, from the annexation of Indigenous lands to its acquisition of The Philippines, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
Tabs
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The conservative publication The Bulwark calls bullshit on right-wing anti-vaxxers: “At Fox News, where vaccine skepticism is on display every night, Rupert Murdoch was one of the first people on the planet to get vaccinated and Fox has a vaccine mandate for employees. And of course, Donald Trump got his Fauci Ouchie a long time ago. Which is not something you hear a lot about. The higher up the food chain you go, the more it seems like being anti-vaxx is a pose, not a lifestyle.”
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America Needs to Break Up Its Biggest States: Noah Millman makes the case for splitting California, Florida, New York, and Texas into smaller states as a way to improve representation. It would surely be easier to accomplish than some sort of new proportional representation scheme, but I don’t buy Millman’s claim that there could be bipartisan support for “Splitting up the largest states would not necessarily favor Democrats or Republicans.” By Millman’s own analysis, the split would create new safely blue states from Texas and Florida, but only create new purple states from New York. If split in three, Florida, in Millman’s view, would create a reliable red, a reliably blue, and one purple state. It sounds to me like Democrats have much more to gain from this arrangement than Republicans. Which one would expect given that the way the system works today is rigged towards more representation for Republicans than Democrats. Any true leveling of the playing field would benefit Democrats, so don’t hold your breath waiting for this to happen.
TV and Film
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Ted Lasso: The style, humor, and plot are very different, but this show reminds me a lot of Schitt’s Creek in that it’s a very good-natured comedy. I was skeptical at first since it appears to be about sports, but the show hooked me quickly. The headline for Jelisa Castrodale’s piece on the series and its particularly cultish cult following for Vice says it all: “‘Ted Lasso’ Makes Me Want to Be a Better Person.” The quote that really hit home for me: “For me, success is not about the wins and losses. It’s about helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.”
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Reservation Dogs: This comedy about teenage life on a reservation in Oklahoma proves again that Hulu is the best streaming service online right now.
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Blood Quantum: A zombie movie set on a fictional First Nations reservation in 1981. Remember how I warned that Fear Street is brutal? Blood Quantum is much more so. One of the most graphicly violent movies I’ve seen.
Podcasts
- I’ve really been enjoying the tabletop role playing game interview podcast Lost Bay. The most recent episode features Ava Islam, creator of Errant an intriguing old school D&D variant and I think the only game I’ve backed on Kickstarter in the last couple of years.
Games
I prepped to run a one-shot of The Spire, a game I’ve been wanting to run or play for the past few years, but the session fell through. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to run it at a later date.
Logoff
I’m starting to think “well, that’s quite enough out of me” should be my signature sign-off. Anyway, I’m always glad to hear from you, and if anyone wants to talk with me about ADHD, feel free to reach out. And, to paraphrase Couch Beard from Ted Lasso: buy yourself some scissors and cut yourself some slack.