eli5 – Can someone explain ADHD? Specifically the procrastination and inability to do “boring” tasks?
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TLDR: Brain no want do a work good; You can’t control what most people can. It’s called executive disfunction.
“Executive Functions” is the psychology term for the mental processes you need to control your behavior.
5 basic executive functions are:
1) Attentional control: The ability to choose what you focus on
2) Cognitive inhibition: The ability to tune out external information (like background noise)
3) inhibitory control: The ability to ignore your base impulses.
4) Working memory: The ability to temporarily remember information
5) Cognitive flexibility: The ability to mentally transition between tasks.
ADHD is a disorder where, for one reason or another, your brain is unable to commit to these processes correctly.
Typically, this is caused by a deficiency in neurotransmitters. If your brain sends signals via mail, neurotransmitters are the paper. ADHD is the brain having a chronic paper shortage. Most symptoms can be described as either “looking for more paper”, or “writing tiny to save paper, but too tiny to read correctly”.
So for example, dishes! Few people like doing dishes (those of you that do, God speed), but the brain does love death-scrolling through Twitter. Social media is a Dopamine factory, and Dopamine is an important neurotransmitter.
So when the time comes to do the dishes, you’ve gotta perform multiple executive functions to do so.
You’ve gotta ignore what you want to do to get off the couch
You’ve then gotta direct your attention to the new task
Then you’ve got to mentally switch gears from “Twitter Mode” to “Dishwasher Mode”
And then, you’ve gotta remember to not leave the faucet on for the 5th time this week, Johnny!
Those with untreated ADHD will routinely fail at these tasks; They just don’t have the hardware necessary to do them all perfectly without help
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