Imagine knowing that there are lots of things you could, theoretically do with the resources you have at your disposal—but having none of the "willpower" thing that lets people do things that are even slightly boring or unpleasant in the short term.
Imagine wanting to learn skills that require practice, but being unable to invoke whatever mysterious forces cause this "practice" to happen.
Imagine being amazing at stupid skills that you got because their training mechanisms involve short reward loops (for example, video games) and knowing your own potential, and hearing over and over everyone around you tell you about that potential and encouraging you to use it, but just feeling a stab of "ugh" whenever you even consider starting that is utterly insurmountable.
Imagine, even, having skills that could get you a great, well-paying job (e.g. programming—something, as it turns out, that has a short-reward-loop method of learning) but then just not being able to work up the desire to apply for a job; to go to the interviews you applied for; to come to work on time each day; to do anything other than surf the Internet once you're there.
This isn't abstract to me—
I failed out of university. I was homeless on-and-off for a year and a half. I went back to live with my parents for a year. Then (at the age of 24) I got diagnosed with ADHD and put on a medication for it.
Now, two years later, I'm making $250K/yr working as a CTO for a financial startup.
Many people I met while homeless, looking back, also had all the signs of having had ADHD—or, if not that, then major depression, or a social anxiety disorder. None of them thought of themselves as having a condition; they just "didn't want to work." They didn't realize that what they "wanted" was in large part a function of what they would or would not flinch away from because of pain; and that their pain response to attempting certain things was not a matter of "character", not and not something they had failed to learn or needed to "work through", but a treatable handicap, like nearsightedness.
I wish I could take every one of them to the same psychiatrist I went to, but it took me eight months on a waiting list to talk to them. There are far, far too few practicing psychiatrists to help all the people that need help. Something about this needs to change.