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The way I've come to describe it with my therapist is that it feels like, internally, I have 12 different brains. All of them are constantly scanning around, interested in different things, making it very hard to focus on one thing, but conversely making me very good at understanding a thing as a whole.

The other part of this analogy is that when there is something that grabs my interest, it grabs it with all 12 brains and I bury myself in that interest until I burn out after a few hours.

I find that ADHD makes me a very good architect and a very bad regular programmer.



I think as awful this sounds, it is also why often adhd people can synthesize a lot of information very quickly because their brains have this rapid association chain which can lead to absolutely lucid insights, downside is that it's hard for them to stay on topic and not go into rambling monologue mode.


I always had that. I can’t go as deep on subjects without force of will, hard. But I have always had a knack for integrating information and learning new things with a relatively high amount of new things but not a lot of density for each thing. This can add up, sneakily, to very dense knowledge on a subject and I have made that a part of how I learn. It’s great learning new frameworks, languages, and subjects. That surface scan and seeing the whole of something comes easily.


> I find that ADHD makes me a very good architect and a very bad regular programmer.

I know what you mean. I think if I could click with someone who's really organized and good at execution we could turn one of my 9 billion potentially-pretty-good ideas into an awesome company (I have a pet theory that this pattern is often why it takes 2 to found), but I have never really been able to connect with neurotypicals. They can play along where I can't even tune in, and worse, they are content where I am passionate.


You have no idea how much sense that last sense made to me :)




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