Some people with ADHD thrive in periods of stress, new study shows | Hacker News Reader

Some people with ADHD thrive in periods of stress, new study shows

theguardian.com

39 pointsgrugagag42 comments

This is not especially surprising. It's not that I can't focus. I can, for hours and hours and hours on end. The difficulty is directing that focus productively. High stress environments provide the necessary motivation, forcing my focus onto the thing demanding that attention more strongly than the usual cacophony of distractions. But high stress also leads to burnout; I can't sustain that for months on end, so I have to cope in other ways most of the time. (Typically by altering my environment to reduce distractions.)

I agree. For whatever reason if I have 10 things to do or 1 thing to do I make completing them take the same amount of time.

I like to joke that it's an array indexing issue. Some people loop through their array task list starting at 1 instead of 0, and so if they only have one task it never gets started. :P

Parkinson’s Law: work will expand to fill the time allotted for its completion.

I wouldn't say that I thrive, more that when the flight-or-fight instinct kicks in, I become extremely productive.

Prior to getting diagnosed and medicated, my life was pretty much long periods of nothing, with small bursts where I did everything.

Take college, for example. I was completely unable to partition a project into daily tasks. I'd get borderline anxiety from looking at the problem set, and then get distracted. It was only when the deadline started to get close, that my fight-or-flight instinct would set in. Then I'd sit up 1-2-3 days straight and work on the problem - not 100%, but small bursts of 100% focus and attention, before eventually getting distracted. I'd oscillate between those states.

To outsiders it will look completely ridiculous. You could literally be dealing with life-altering decisions, with the clock ticking down, and then you suddenly start looking at cute cat vids. Before shifting back and grinding away at the problem, but even more stressed.

Luckily medication has worked wonders for me. I'm able to just start on the tasks, and work consistently on them. Work and life now feels like a marathon, rather than a bunch of impossible sprints.

Every assignment is done on the last evening. That's what night time is for, right?

The last moments before the deadline is when the engine's firing on all cylinders.

This reminds me of the time I didn't sleep for 36 hours straight to start and complete a Computer Vision course final assignment and aced it with an A+ because I did way better than others consistently working on it for 2 months. I still don't know whether to be happy or sad about it.

Can you please share what medication worked for you

I was put on Ritalin, and that worked just fine for me. Tried 10mg, 20mg, 30mg, and 60mg. 20mg worked best for me.

Taking amphetamines will work for everyone with or without the extra step of adhd diagnosis

Scientifically and clinically inaccurate, sorry. I’ve personally lived one of many counterexamples to what you describe, even though my ADHD is both quite clear and professionally diagnosed. Amphetamines have a complicated mixture of effects on me that’s often not positive overall.

My current psychiatrist knows ADHD quite well, and she and I found a better non-amphetamine medication solution for me. There are multiple common medications approved to treat ADHD which are not amphetamines, and for some people those are the best option.

Whenever possible, always discuss this topic with a suitably qualified and informed doctor instead of self-medicating (or self-diagnosing).

I don’t know if I have ADHD (though I recently had some tests done and am waiting on results), but I found this relatable. If I’m interested in something I will hyper focus on it all day. If I’m not, and there is no deadline, I’ll find it impossible to get started. As a deadline approaches (a real one, not something made up), a point is reached where I think I can get it done if I literally do nothing else, and then I can focus and get it done.

Deadlines that our made up, I know are made up, have no consequences, and the where the whole project seems pointless, do not work the same way. Those are still ignored in spite of the stress and external person might try to apply.

My old boss saw this pattern and if he gave me a project I didn’t instantly latch onto and turn around, he’d give it to someone else and I’d get something I was actually interested in and spent most of my days working long hours because I’d be hyper focused on whatever project I was working on and put in 12+ hour days every day.

> I don’t know if I have ADHD (though I recently had some tests done and am waiting on results)

Are those physical tests as in requiring lab results or questionnaires/quizzes?

It was about 4 hours of questionnaires, quizzes, and questions. It wasn’t just for ADHD, but autism, and various other things as well. I figured while I was there they might as well evaluate for everything. I was told it usually takes 4-6 hours. I was on the shorter side since I didn’t take any breaks.

I am not the OP, but I have gone through actual neuropsychological testing with a specialist to be diagnosed with ADHD. It did come with a several week waiting period as the results were reviewed and considered against my thorough consultation interview, also completed by the physician.

FWIW I have ADHD and you've described exactly how I work as well. I wish I didn't need to have that pressure in order to get things done -- this work style has definitely been detrimental to my career. Meds do help somewhat but are still far from a complete fix. That's an awesome boss to be able to recognize how you work and maximize your utility. I've yet to have a boss like that. Anyways, good luck out there.

Sadly that boss was forced out by an incompetent VP. My productivity and satisfaction at work has taken a huge hit.

It's weird when this is described as surprising. I mean I'm glad that precise research is being done. But this topic has memes about it. We know. It's on the wiki https://romankogan.net/adhd/

Is correlating yourself with lots of points on that iceberg a sign of ADHD or am I overfitting myself to these condition. The current state of everyone being "i think I might have adhd" is just our brains cooked by phones and doomscrolling, and everyone is on the spectrum some way or other if they start scoring themselves on impulse control, attention span, time sensitivity, organic recall of pertinent time-sensitive information

This is obvious - stress is motivating.

Give me a deadline in six months and I'll procrastinate for at least five of them, feeling terrible about it throughout. Give me an impossible deadline tomorrow and I become a productivity machine, with no time for anxious overthinking.

This is also a result of different dopamine and other neurotransmitter function in folks with ADHD, not just anxious overthinking. With a deadline 6 months away, the dopamine reward to work on it doesn't work like in normal people. While, say doing something in a video game that triggers dopamine release reward which motivates action.

Interesting.

So giving you deadlines for impossible tasks every day is a good way to motivate you?

Only as long as it's a novelty, like many other approaches. If you know daily deadlines are BS, that's it. (Or you actually burn out)

I have to believe the deadlines are serious. It helps too if the task is interesting

Yes, but it's not an invitation :)

;))

> Sibley thought that ADHD patients would experience > the most relief during periods of low stress. What > she found was more counterintuitive.

Did this researcher not talk to anyone with ADHD before starting this project?

Seeing hyperfocus described as a superpower makes me want to flip a table over.

I was today years old when I learned I have ADHD.

Congrats :)

Be prepared for a long process. I'm still learning about it, after putting the pieces together ~5 years ago.

Honestly, I knew this before I knew I had ADHD.

I was in a situation that at least felt “life or death” when I was ~15. In retrospect, it wasn’t that big of an issue, but for me at the time it was an absolute emergency. When the situation became apparent to me, it was like flipping a switch: my mind went completely silent, time seemed to slow, and my emotions kinda faded into the background. I knew they were there, but rather than experience them I only saw how I felt about things as data to make a decision.

Since then I’ve been in a handful of situations that made me feel that way. One of those was a potential car accident where I was able to analyze and react to a dangerous situation in time to pull off a crazy maneuver where I drove up on an (empty) sidewalk at ~40MPH and get back on the pavement before hitting a culvert, with about 12” to spare.

In everyday life, the sooner the deadline, the more work I have left to do, and the larger the consequences of not getting it done in time - the less I have to struggle with focus/attention.

Well, duh. And it works, until it doesn't.

Isn't this just another way of saying their environment wasn't boring though?

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