Backing this one up with my own experience of ADD (I was never hyperactive):
I've tried all the distraction reducing techniques, and the distraction reducing techniques have been tried on me.
In school, I was, at least 70 percent of the time, sent to the isolation desk, facing a wall, only a pencil. This didn't help.
I've tried going to remote cabins, no internet. I've tried no devices. This did not help.
The problem (so far as I've come to understand) is not that I am unusually susceptible to distractions, it's that it's unusually difficult to convert 'needing to do something' into 'focus'.
The problem is not that something derails the train, but that there's no tracks. Starting something does not make it more likely that I'll continue it. Going in a direction doesn't have 'momentum'.
This is very difficult to understand, since it's not really 'a tendency that everyone has but more', it's a different brain. You aren't going to understand it by going 'oh like when I'm distracted', you have to try and create a picture from scratch, not based on your experience, but by listening to people.
Not that what people tell you should be just immediately imported into your worldview, people sure can be wrong about themselves. But you can't necessarily check other people's experiences against your own.
(The word "you" in this comment is referring to the general non-ADHD person)
Yeah, just when people who have never experienced depression, anxiety, and panic attacks tell me to "think about something else"...
I can't focus either especially if there are any sounds, for possibly different reasons than ADD/ADHD, but Lord knows, I am full of psychiatric co-morbidities.
> Backing this one up with my own experience of ADD (I was never hyperactive):
I'd like to add also that a lot of people without ADD/ADHD think "hyperactivity" must be stereotypical "hyperactive annoying brat that acts out", something that is still haunting diagnosis in Poland.
Meanwhile a lot of people sorta "channel" the hyperactivity in different ways - I personally have tendency to do all sorts of stimming-like behaviours that are pretty much "designed" to not make a mess where I am, or purely mental stuff, then "acting out" physically a bit when I am completely in private.
Unless of course I could hit the right kind of tasks to do that nicely slot exactly where my ADHD shines (Flying airplanes is wonderful)
Interesting framing, I've seen a similar 'If it's a meal, then where's the meat?' attitude from my own family, I've had some thoughts on where it came from, but I think part of it was escaping poverty in my grandparent's generation, and seeing 'success' as being able to afford meat in the first place.
Meat was then a part of every meal, because doing otherwise would be socially... embarrassing? Not necessarily in a conscious way, but in a way it would be like giving you kids gruel. (Not that I have a problem with savoury oatmeal now :P)
Then my parents grew up in that environment, and it was just part of the landscape of life. Meals have a meat ingredient. Or meat is the meal.
There's a similar resistance to breakfasts that aren't egg-based. (honorable mention oatmeal again for breaking through) Or a similar resistance to eggs as the protein source for dinners, notice it just doesn't happen in north american cooking very much. Happens in other cuisines all the time though.
I don't think it needs to be some deep seated gene-based flaw (at risk of putting words in your mouth) it only needs to be 'normal', and there's massive resistance to changing what's 'normal' when diverging from 'normal' isn't immediately more emotionally or physically comfortable than staying. Sometimes even then, if it makes you an outlier in the social landscape.
I think the prevalence of the "soyboy" epithet is also evidence though. And hunting is a deep seated cultural value -- it is a rite of passage for many in American culture and is an important component of American masculine identity.
Definitely not ruling it out, it's not 0% for sure. Though as a Canadian I don't think we got it as bad here, so I wouldn't say I really have any idea how big a factor it is. Especially in the USA.
I mean Costco kept theirs, and in a lot of cases federal grant money is now contingent on removing it, so this seems like a hasty conclusion.
That being said I'm sure a lot of companies just threw up a statement, maybe a meaningless committee or whatever with no interest in actually changing anything.
I wonder which way the causal arrow goes? I'm confident more complex (and also excellent) music is being made now than ever before so it wouldn't be a supply problem. Could be a demand problem, or a transit problem, maybe.
It wouldn't be terribly surprising if it's the audience that has dragged things towards simplicity.
Could also be the homogenizing effect of recommendation algorithms that select for mass appeal, a song that everyone likes at an average of 7/10 is selected for way harder than a song that 50% of people like at an average of 9/10.
Fair point, and I'd add that there's a spot above the average where people used to flock to because it felt special and not just random average stuff. That's where society picked stars and new trends, something slightly special, complex, original yet not vulgar.
True, but the causal link is hard to demonstrate. There's also a drop in friends, especially close friends. In-person social activity is down across the board.
Not that porn definitely isn't a factor, but I'm pretty certain there's larger factors at play.
I love ABS but I use it mainly for podcasts since it downloads each episode to my server which I then stream from. It’s awesome. My only gripe is the iOS app, which is a pretty slow webapp wrapper.
It doesn't really need to be them doing the studying, making the code viewable allows end-users to choose who to trust or to get second opinions, instead of only having the word of the company producing the software.
One or multiple people who can study the software, even in small numbers, are still adding more information, and so more potential trust, than the alternative.
I've tried all the distraction reducing techniques, and the distraction reducing techniques have been tried on me.
In school, I was, at least 70 percent of the time, sent to the isolation desk, facing a wall, only a pencil. This didn't help.
I've tried going to remote cabins, no internet. I've tried no devices. This did not help.
The problem (so far as I've come to understand) is not that I am unusually susceptible to distractions, it's that it's unusually difficult to convert 'needing to do something' into 'focus'.
The problem is not that something derails the train, but that there's no tracks. Starting something does not make it more likely that I'll continue it. Going in a direction doesn't have 'momentum'.
This is very difficult to understand, since it's not really 'a tendency that everyone has but more', it's a different brain. You aren't going to understand it by going 'oh like when I'm distracted', you have to try and create a picture from scratch, not based on your experience, but by listening to people.
Not that what people tell you should be just immediately imported into your worldview, people sure can be wrong about themselves. But you can't necessarily check other people's experiences against your own.
(The word "you" in this comment is referring to the general non-ADHD person)