eli5 – Can someone explain ADHD? Specifically the procrastination and inability to do “boring” tasks?
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ADHD is like having short-term attention amnesia most of the time. You were focusing on one thing, and now you’re focused on another, and you don’t notice or remember the transition. Typically, you are distracted by an interesting thought and then whilst you focus on that, your brain autopilots you into whatever you habitually do until something new takes your attention.
If you try to force it not to shift focus, or to focus on something that it doesn’t want to, it can be physically painful. I’ve nearly thrown up forcing myself to fill out forms before, and long meetings give me intense headaches (if I even remember anything said in the meeting after about 2 minutes.) Zoom meetings have been a blessing, I get most of my work done trying to distract myself from how boring the meeting is.
Generally, attempts to remedy procrastination don’t really work because your brain filters them out and forgets them quickly, and if it can’t, it gets stressed out.
It’s not like we can’t do anything though. If it’s interesting, stimulating and engaging, we can do it (and get addicted to it.) If we care about it enough, we can do it e.g. if it’s for someone we love. If it’s about to kill us, we will deal with it. People with ADHD are often drawn to intense professions like journalism and emergency services.
I have ADHD and I have 2 full-time jobs. However, I suck at both in a very particular way, normally whenever there are barriers that require me to wait (because that’s prime time for me to get distracted and then waste 2 hours before I realise I’ve not been doing anything.)
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