Side effect or skill issue?
Let me preface by saying that I know we all are different and will have different experiences. I’m trying to understand if what I am experiencing is a side effect or a skill issue.
History:
VERY typical ADHD kid. Diagnosed by a psychiatrist as an adult. Spent many more years avoiding meds. But after an entire lifetime of “cramming 6 weeks of work the night before the fifth and final deadline” I decided to give meds a try.
After the early trials I settled on Adderall. I have been on IR 20mg x2 for 2+ years now.
It’s been a game changer but not a miracle. I can focus and work on my tasks without interruption. But the getting started is still on me, and I am still terrible at it.
My consistent problem: I will use a book analogy.
You are writing a book. Instead of going paragraph by paragraph, chapter by chapter you adopt a more disorderly approach. So far so good, many authors work this way. But you, crank it up to the extreme.
- You write 2 paragraphs of chapter 4.
- realize it doesn’t match some of what you had in chap6
- Delete chap8 because it relies on what you are about to change in chap6
- start changing chap6. The changes make you think of a much better idea for the main plot line
- you start including this idea in another chap. You realize this new plot would work much better in a steampunk universe instead of the post modern you have started with
- restart chap1
- ….
This is how I work on stimulants.
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Before meds, I would have done close to nothing for 3 months, worked for 72h straight and delivered the expected chapters just before the deadline (or more likely with whatever delay I could get away with)
With meds, I will effectively write ~6h/day for 3months. But by the time the deadline hits I would have nothing to show for it. Not a single complete chapter, 37 different directions, etc. Worst, the time and effort invested will make it much harder for me to blitz through a few chapters just for the sake of delivering something.
—-
Initially, I assumed my new found ability to focus had exposed my lack of time management experience. But now I’m seriously leaning toward the “side effect” hypothesis. Mostly because of how consistent the behavior has proven to be.
My logic at the time was:
- If it’s a skill issue. Then I should stay on meds. Without them, I don’t even reach the level where I get to practice time management.
- If it’s a side effect, poorly directed work can’t be worse overtime than no work.
2+ years down the line … and it’s not that clear. Overall I am pretty objectively worst off than I was before meds. But it’s also difficult to give up on positives I’ve hoped for all my life.
To keep up the book analogy: Writing consistently for 8h a day will make you a better writer, but getting fired by your publisher will make your life much worse.