Which is not to say I have not done those things, nor is it to say that I have done those things consistently every day.
It's just to say, that pure drive isn't cutting it. I have a hard time ending my day (i.e. getting done whatever I need to get done before going to bed) and I have a hard time starting my day, or getting out of the house in the morning, a white board and some organizational tools and sheer will power are somehow not enough to change that.
Which, I suspect I knew. Still it was calming to see this article in the Washington Post, highlighting a study about the biology of ADHD. Sometimes, it's nice to see that reasserted.
The JAMA study said that, compared with a group of healthy subjects, brain scans of 53 adults with ADHD revealed a flaw in the way they process dopamine, which among other things, alerts people to new information and helps them anticipate pleasure and rewards. Swanson speculated that people with ADHD may even have a net deficit of dopamine.
The findings offer support for a long-held theory about why people with ADHD tend to be so easily distracted and bored -- so hard to teach in school, so prone to end up in high-stimulus jobs such as in sales or the media, and so susceptible to gambling and drug abuse. According to the theory, the trouble is a lack of motivation as well as a deficit of attention: People with the disorder can't generate the same degree of enthusiasm as other people for activities they don't automatically find appealing.
I don't highlight this to say that motivation or Getting Things Done is a lost cause, only that there are issues that might not be able to be solved with a white board, or a program that shuts down my computer at midnight, or a fifth alarm clock or a ... . Note, that here lack of motivation is not a "well if only you wanted it more" kind of lack, it's an actual difference in the way that the brain processes cause and effect.
But that also doesn't mean that I am ready or willing to chalk up distraction, procrastination and the rest to ADD and shrug my shoulders. ADD doesn't need to be an excuse. Making it one just degrades the disorder and diagnosis.
I once had a camper whose mother told me "oh, he's not going to remember anything unless you pin it to his shirt. He has ADD. I guess it was good that she recognized that ADD affects all parts of life and not just his homework during the school year, but I think the positive in that recognition was far outweighed by the message she conveyed. You can give up on my kid. He has ADD. That's a message that is unfair to her son, to his counselors (who managed to get him to learn his lines without pinning anything to his shirt) and to everyone else who has ADD.
Don't even get me started on the people who randomly decide their kid has ADD because it's easier than actually getting tested, or saying my kid is acting up because she's annoyed.
(video from Jezebel).
Given things like this video (throughout the episode of Toddlers and Tiaras, it's clear that more than anything this woman's daughter is unhappy. Notice how the woman used "undiagnosed ADD" and "bratty" as synonyms. Ugh), it's hard to say straight up, "yes. ADHD is a biological disorder, so stop saying it's an excuse," because people are still using the term as an excuse. Still, I wish the Washington Post didn't frame the issue as an open-ended debate:
Is it over-diagnosed? Maybe. Is it hard to understand? Yes. Is it real? Believe me, it is.For decades, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder has sparked debate. Is it a biological illness, the dangerous legacy of genes or environmental toxins, or a mere alibi for bratty kids, incompetent parents and a fraying social fabric?
