ADDer – Page 12

ADD Blogging Writing with ADHD

I sat down nearly two hours ago to write a post for this oft neglected ADD blog. What happened? Well, not to put too fine a point on it: ADD.

Let me start by saying that I don’t “blame” my ADHD for things. That is neither productive, nor completely accurate. However, it is often the case that I look back and smile when I can see the ADD traits unfolding as I recall recent events.

Let’s start by clarifying what I mean by sitting down to write a post.

English: Symptoms of ADHD described by the lit... What I really mean is that I was looking at the analytics for my personal finance blog at FinanceGourmet when I noticed that the traffic had blipped back up here at Addessories. Curious, I got distracted (Hey, look! Something shiny) and started looking at what posts here were getting increased traffic. Eventually, I hit the big Addessories text at the top of the screen to get back to the home page where I noticed that is has been a very long time since I last wrote here. Doh!

Thus, I decided to write an ADD tips post for this ADHD blog.

To write the post, I entered the WordPress dashboard. So far, so good.

I noticed that a few of the plugins needed to be updated (Uh, oh.)

Of course, I don’t want out of date plugins, so I checked them all and clicked update. When they were finished updating, I should have gone right back to writing, but it seemed like one of my usual plugins was missing. Unable to determine which one, I went and logged into my freelance writing blog in order to look at what plugins where installed there.

If you don’t know how this ends, you must be new here.

Anyway, long story, short, I ended up installing a new plugin, writing a blog post about it (Zemanta WordPress Plugin for Online Writers) at the writing blog and then found about a dozen other things to do including checking Facebook, looking to see when the Broncos play this weekend and checking my Google AdSense earnings.

If it makes anyone feel better, that graphic came from the Zemanta plugin, so it was worth installing 🙂

At this point in time, it is well after 10:00 p.m. and I have numerous things I must do before going to bed, some of which have been urgent for an hour or more, including getting a drink, and ironically, going to the bathroom.

What is the point of all this?

Nothing, other than further proof that I am definitely one of us. Oh, and, now I don’t feel so bad about not actually writing that update even though this one isn’t really too much of an update.

Don’t worry, I’ll be back tomorrow (or the next day). Procrastination is the enemy of all, but especially those of us with the inattentive form of ADD.

See you later.

ADHD ADD Awareness Week

Written by ADDer Leave a Comment

Apparently, there is an ADHD Awareness Week. It’s going on right now.

And, why not? There is an awareness week, day or month for pretty much everything that exists, good and bad.

I’m not a big fan of "awareness." It’s not that I don’t think it is a bad thing for people to be aware, it’s just that these days, weeks and months accomplish just about as much as those anti-smoking commercials on TV. I mean, seriously, is there anyone left anywhere in a America who doesn’t know that smoking is bad for them? Is there really someone in Cleveland right now, who, if he just saw a commercial that showed a bunch of people pretending to die in front of a cigarette company’s headquarters, that he would stub out his last cigarette ever?

Likewise, are there really teachers, bosses, parents, students who have never heard of ADD/ADHD?

The reality is that people are aware or not aware of what they choose. Furthermore, even if they are aware of something, they care or do not care according to how they choose. Awareness, at least the kind of awareness practiced by the PR types who run these things, accomplishes nothing.

Next week, most people in America will know what ADD is. The same amounts of those people will think it is a sham or not, and the same amounts of people will have it.

Let’s call these things what they really are. Feel better about yourself by connecting with others who have, know someone who has, or otherwise is affected by ADHD, and raise some money while we are at it week.

If you are interested in the official version, you can check it out here: http://www.adhdawarenessweek.org/

Procrastinating by Saving

Written by ADDer 3 Comments

There are a lot of programs, applications, and online services to help you be more organized and have a better schedule. There are ways to manage to-do lists, to create to-do lists and to create and print calendars. I’m even working on an ADD Planner application to help with people with ADHD improve organization and scheduling. However, there is an unfortunate side effect to some of these time savers, they can make procrastination worse.

add-focus-adhd One of my toughest procrastination challenges comes from internet browsers. I generally use Firefox because I have built up a suite of plugins and add-ons that allow me to get things done faster and more efficiently. I also use Google Chrome. Some of those Firefox plugins block annoying things like Flash, ads, and JavaScript, so when I want to see the un-sanitized version of a website, I use Chrome where I have resisted the urge to add all of my usual blocking plugins.

However, bookmark management is absolutely terrible in Google Chrome. There are no tags for bookmarks, which is just dumb. Furthermore, when you open your bookmark manager, every one of your bookmark folders is expanded by default, which defeats the entire purpose of folders. In other words, bookmarks are useless in Google Chrome. When I want to bookmark something, I literally open Firefox and paste the URL into it, and then bookmark it there.

Too Many Bookmarks?

The strange thing is, that for all of the technically savvy, demanding internet users that use Google Chrome, there is a shocking lack of complaints about how bookmarks are implemented in Chrome. That got me thinking.

Do I have too many bookmarks?

The answer is a resounding YES. I not only have bookmarks that I have no idea what they are for, I have FOLDERS of bookmarks that I don’t know the purpose of. I opened some of these mystery bookmarks and still don’t know what I ever saved them.

Did I think it was a good webpage design?

Did I really care about Colorado crystals at some point?

Do I really want to sign up to be a volunteer for a non-profit organization five states away?

It was about this time that a little light bulb went on.

The reason I have many of these bookmarks is because I meant to do something with them LATER.

I have another extension for Firefox called Read It Later which essentially bookmarks webpages for you to read later. It is so full that I could never hope to read half of what is in there. What’s worse, is that while I regularly add pages to Read It Later, I never actually go in an read any of them.

Computer Enabled Procrastination

Everyone procrastinates but people with attention deficit disorder have a whole extra layer of procrastination tendencies. Procrastination for us with ADD comes in two very sneaky forms.

Procrastinating to avoid uninteresting tasks
Procrastinating to avoid being distracted

The first is not uncommon whether you have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or not. However, for those with ADHD, it can be tougher to notice.

My wife, who does not have ADD, knows when she is procrastinating. Sometimes, she does it anyway. There are many times when I don’t even realize that I’m procrastinating.

It is most common when I’m online. One moment I’m diligently researching a freelance writing article and the next I’m reading about World War II bombers thanks to an intriguing link from the Smithsonian website. Having been unknowingly distracted, it isn’t until I manually check in with myself that I realize I’ve moved off task.

At that point in time, I will either:

a) Chastise myself, close the window and return immediately to work

b) Decide I’ll do better later, and keep reading

c) BOOKMARK the webpage so I can read it later when I have free time

Which, brings us to procrastination type #2.

After being diagnosed with ADD you begin to try and not indulge your ADHD habits. ADD medications don’t solve everything they say, over and over again. You also have to change your habits and ways of exhibiting ADD behaviors. To do so, you try and notice when you are ADDing and then, stop it.

One method of trying to accomplish this is to put aside distractions until “later,” in other words procrastinating.

If you are putting off something that is distracting you from work or other important tasks, then that is good procrastination, even if it is technically procrastinating.

What I have noticed is that my bookmarks and my Read It Later list are filled with things that I meant to get around too, either productively or leisurely. For example, there are dozens of programming tutorials or tips that I have bookmarked to look at later. There are also dozens of “interesting” things to read.

Either way, those bookmarks are procrastinated tasks that were never completed.

It’s time for a new standard. From now on, bookmarks are reserved for known-useful references and functions, not for things to get back to. If it can’t be done now, I will leave a tab open in the browser. When there are too many tabs, choices will have to be made. In the end, virtually none of the “get back to” tabs will ever be read. After all, life is too interesting and new distractions appear every day.

Whenever I have free time, I can be assured that there will be numerous useful, interesting, entertaining or provocative things ready and waiting before my eyes without every clicking a link or opening a bookmark folder. Thus, those that were saved will be forever on the to-do lists, at least, that is, until they are finally purged as too old.

Do you procrastinate with bookmarks? Do you productively (or not) use Read It Later, or the like? Let me know.

Adult ADD Symptom Criteria

Written by ADDer 8 Comments

An interesting ADD research review from November 2010 ask whether the proper criteria are being used to diagnose adult ADD. Attention deficit disorder, or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as it is officially called, has three clinically defined types. Each type of ADHD has its own symptoms and potential treatments. However, the criteria necessary for a diagnosis of adult ADHD is laid out in a manual known as DSM-IV. One group of researchers reviewed clinical interviews to see how the ADD symptoms criteria should be re-examined for the upcoming publication of DSM-V.

Diagnosis of Adult ADD

One interesting result of the research was that almost half of the people who had ADHD as a child still meet the DSM-IV criteria to be diagnosed with adult ADHD. Of those, almost all of them still report a current attention deficit disorder (94.9%) while just over a third still report a hyperactivity issue (34.6%).

In other words, the persistence of ADD into adulthood is correlated much more with attention deficit rather than with hyperactivity.

To put it another way, you are much more likely to outgrow being hyperactive than you are to outgrow an attention deficit.

The main issue raised by the researchers is that many consider ADD to have three factors. Two of the factors are recognized by the DSM-IV as requirements for a diagnosis of adult ADD, while the third is not.

According to the researchers, the three factors of adult ADD are:

Inattention / Hyperactivity
Impulsivity
Impaired Executive Function

Executive function is not a recognized criteria for adult ADD, however, as the review shows, it is the least likely of the three to be outgrown. In other words, it is the key component of an adult ADD diagnosis and it is not currently used as a criteria.

Whether anything will come of this research remains to be seen, however, it does provide some useful information for us adults with ADHD. Just because you are not hyperactive, doesn’t mean you don’t still have the core issue that comes with ADD. Furthermore, perhaps as you age and choose your ADD treatments based on solid scientific data and medical research, you may want to prioritize those that focus on executive function.