For reasons that don't matter, I've had to live with a 25-yo since summer that has ADHD and anxiety diagnosed by a therapist. Two main issues I see in her behavior:
- She changed therapist twice until she heard what she was looking for. She said she was looking for a compatible "therapist".
- The fact that she was diagnosed was a relief to her because now she can just offload any responsibility. Forgot to do something? It's normal, that's my ADHD. Not in the mood to go and work tomorrow? that's my anxiety kicking-in.
There's just no hardship anymore and her life is not even that stressful. It's just easy to come with that and give excuses.
The issue is: I want to be sympathetic to her condition and help, but it's really hard to don't sound like I'm judging. I can't just challenge a behavior because she is already doing the best she can. It's like there's an invisible ceiling.
I've seen similar behavior. I can understand that the relief that comes with having finaly a label put on the box one feels trapped into; But then the goal should be to climb out of that box. A diagnosis is only good if it helps fight the condition, after all.
I believe the issue is more broad than that though. I believe the issue comes from the very strong belief in our modern world that our behavior, our ideas and moods are what we are, what we have always been and always will be. That comes with our global theory of mind that one's character is given once and for all, from birth to death. I insist that this is a belief that is not universal, for some other cultures ideas and moods are transient external inhabitants of our minds. And indeed, people do change along their lifetime, and sometimes immensely; once you have witnessed these changes a few times you start to realize how even conditions that are usually considered impossible to cure, can actually be fixed.
the issue comes from the very strong belief in our modern world that our behavior, our ideas and moods are what we are, what we have always been and always will be. That comes with our global theory of mind that one's character is given once and for all, from birth to death. I insist that this is a belief that is not universal
i would go a step further and argue that this belief is simply false or bad. it traps us, and makes us unable to grow. we should aim to reject this idea with a much effort as we can.
this last one is particularly concerning when it comes to an ADHD diagnosis. not that the diagnosis is wrong, but the diagnosis combined with the belief that we can't change. we need to change our attitude and trust that even a person with ADHD can improve. it's just harder. and ADHD diagnosis should guide us in how to best help that person. it should not be used as an excuse to give up.
I wholeheartedly agree; But I also understand why, to those failing to change (or to change as fast as they would want), it can sound patronizing to hear that "it's all about your mindset". It's important to start by acknowledging the circumstances that can make it hard to improve before encouraging someone to fight them.
It's not only about personality disorders by the way, as you said it also applies to behavior. I've seen people who were total sociopaths when young (incl jail time) turn into good members of society much later in life. And I don't want to advocate for leniency here, at the contrary I believe it's important to set the expectations straight otherwise it's easy to learn how to game the system.
I wish there were more movies/books showing how much people can change and what can shape those changes. There are a few, but that really goes against the flow of good vs evil in our tradtional story-telling.
agree with your comment, but to be honest, I'm not sure there's any Swatch I would wear: which model would you choose if you wanted to dress business casual?
Ok, I can give you a Skin Irony, but then you would be paying +200 for a Quartz, why not buy an Orient Bambino or a Hamilton Khaki? much better bang for the buck.
Not to mention the clicking noise of a Swatch quartz. In silence, it drives me nuts.
The most understated watch they make is the Swatch Pay!. Super useful, never fails.
It depends on what you consider a Swatch. If it has to say "Swatch" on it, yeah, any Skin Irony is fine for business casual. Or a Swatch Essentials. I'd probably wear something like Boxengasse for business casual, but that's just me; I like complications. Maybe it's too much.
Whether the quartz movement bothers you depends on why you bought the watch. It doesn't bother me, but it's certainly true that you can get similar watches for much less money.
A watch that does not look ugly. I am usually ok with almost anything visually, but all the watches are in basically same ugly style.
I am not designing own watch if that is what you mean. I settled on cheap plastic ones, because well, since there is nothing better looking that cheap plastic I can go cheap.
This is not the first time I see this here and to be honest, I was in total agreement a few years ago. In principle, I still am.
Then I became a manager, I had to start dealing with more people, to navigate the enterprise environment and I understood that one of my strengths is to be understand people and to accommodate their ways of working. In this context, being hard with people that just say hello just doesn't make much sense to me anymore. People have busy schedules, they start conversations and are interrupted, they receive hundreds of notifications and have other meetings going on.
If the worst they do to me is to say hello and never talk to me again, I'm ok with accommodating this in my daily workflow.
not to mention that if someone is supposed to be a professional coordinator, they would benefit from being a good communicator. starting a discussion with "hi" and disappearing for minutes is absolutely disrespectful and shitty, not to mention the opposite of efficient.
It's fine unless the other person is your superior. Too many managers are oblivious to the fact that their authority over other people's futures makes every interaction threatening by default.
I've always liked the band Kraftwerk's [past] strategy for dealing with interruptions, from their Wiki page[1]:
"... anyone trying to contact the band for collaboration would be told the studio telephone did not have a ringer since, while recording, the band did not like to hear any kind of noise pollution. Instead, callers were instructed to phone the studio precisely at a certain time, whereupon the phone would be answered by Ralf Hütter, despite never hearing the phone ring."
> being hard with people that just say hello just doesn't make much sense to me anymore
This is the problem I run into, I want to just reply to any "Hey" message with a link to this page, but then I'm the one being rude. We just need a better way to let other people know that this isn't a good way to do async chat. I've heard of other people making their status message this site, so then people see it when they go to message you and it doesn't have to be explicitly brought up
> If the worst they do to me is to say hello and never talk to me again, I'm ok with accommodating this in my daily workflow
This I can't really get behind, because if they just send a hello it's implied that I then need to follow-up and find out what they were asking about
You’re not helping people by neglecting to point out errant use of messaging platforms. It harms productivity and is something that a manager should be treating. You don’t need to be “hard” about it, but not guiding people is arguably more harmful than maybe a couple of hurt feelings. Make things better.
On the efforts to guide people, I added small things like this to the rules of engagement. But there's just so many more things to frame in the context of team management that this becomes just a foot note.
What really harms productivity is lack of leadership, vision and organization. I try to avoid micromanaging this sort of thing.
So it bothered you when you had actual work to do, but once you moved to a position where everyone else was doing the actual work and you just sat around benefiting from their labor, you didn't mind minor interruptions and time wasters anymore? Shocking.
Being a manager is not benefiting from other people's work, is to try my best to eliminate barriers so they can do their best work. That includes making them comfortable in the work environment. When you reach a point where you work with many people from different backgrounds, you really have to learn to adapt to people and accommodate to their ways of working.
If that means that I don't get triggered when they leave me a "hi" and never come back, that's fine by me.
As someone who worked closely to the Omega / Swisstiming operations at the Olympics, this is super cool stuff. Congratulations to all involved in being able to deliver when it mattered.
The team also makes really interesting stuff on other sports, such as Beach Volley. Worth checking how it's done.
This is true to some extent. The observation that all 8 runners were within 120ms of each other suggests this sort of hyper-optimization will only continue without really making us better informed. Lyles himself was under the impression that he had come in second, per his on-track interview.
I'm speaking of the mindset, it's the same competitive mindset which leads us to capitalism, and to seeing each other as competitors we have to overpower, instead of collaborators we have to build with
I will keep on working on my Cybersecurity newsletter [1] and expand it to more things Cyber with the inclusion of adjacent tools i.e. data breaches list, privacy guides, maybe job board.
A rebrand is also likely on the way, as the concept has proven to work.
I honestly feel for you and understand how frustrated you must be feeling. I also think you put too much pressure on yourself and that you went after a lifestyle instead of working on a product that solves a problem and with that achieve your goals.
Two things that come to my mind:
- The majority of the startups operate in new/unproven markets. Three startups is far from being a lot in this scenario. Ask how many failed startups the best entrepreneurs have worked on and on some cases you'll see 30+.
- If you don't have access to venture capital, it's wise to work on your startup as a side gig and see how it goes from there. You would have much likely had more runaway ($$$) and be confronted with other business opportunities that would result in other (sometimes better) ideas.
The last point I want to add is related with the type of startups I see being founded. I view the Product Hunt feed on my Telegram and if I do a scroll over the next month or so, +80% are startups about tools for other entrepreneurs or slight variations of already existing companies (with the majority being note taking apps). I'm really not feeling a lot of innovation there.
PS - I run a side-gig Cybersecurity newsletter (cyb3rsecurity.tips) with decent results and the traction is definitely there while having 0 followers on Twitter.
There's just no hardship anymore and her life is not even that stressful. It's just easy to come with that and give excuses.
The issue is: I want to be sympathetic to her condition and help, but it's really hard to don't sound like I'm judging. I can't just challenge a behavior because she is already doing the best she can. It's like there's an invisible ceiling.
PS: I'm only 12 years older than her.