this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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ADHD memes

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ADHD Memes

The lighter side of ADHD


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[–] [email protected] 14 points 18 hours ago

When our house is filthy I tell my wife to gtfo and I overcaffinate and just "stream of consciousness" that bitch. I will hyperactively flit from room to room taking care of a small percentage of one of the hundreds of little jobs that compromise cleaning the house. The moment I get bored or the shits about one task I just wander off and find another to chip away at. Give me 6 hours and its a new house.

Drives my OCD wife utterly mad, because it takes her 6 hours to find the right size containers for the linen press, drive to 3 shops to get enough, then decide on a font for the labels she is going to make on her cricut, print the labels and get them on the tubs and I get home to the hallway full of linen and what I'm sure one day will be a perfectly organised linen press.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

It's simple: remove the wall as well.

/s

[–] [email protected] 3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Has anyone tried removing the CEO? Say a nice deserted island with nothing to distract them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago

I am my own distraction

[–] [email protected] 5 points 22 hours ago

I always tell people "I need something to ignore"

And it's mostly true...I need background sound. And not just white noise - I need something with meaning

Put me in nature, and I'm fine. Bird tweets, rustling of the leaves - I'm at peace. I'll hear even a squirrel hundreds of yards away, but I know what's going on. I just need to know what's going on around me in a way that makes sense. The creaking of the building, distant cars, muffled footsteps... Just the unnatural silence

That's what freaks me out

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Whenever someone suggests the ole remove distractions, I get reminded of that Rick and Morty scene that's like I NEED TO GET ALL OF THIS SKIN OUT OF MY PERSONAL SPACE. Then the character flays themselves.

Thinking about it, if this were possible, I'd probably continue picking whatever is underneath.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I read this post, then read this comment. All while chewing my fingers. I wish i could say i learned something.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm a little better these days. It takes a lot of mental bandwidth for a lot of time. I've retrained myself to just rub my fingers together or sth. Meds help to stay on it. Also lots of moisturizing, so 1) you get to do sth with your hands and 2) there's less stuff to pick at. I'm far from cured though- managed to grow my nails out, but still get my cuticles bleeding regularly.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I had some success with N-Acetylcysteine supplements after my dermatologist recommended them. For me it was like a 75% reduction in urge to pick after 2 days of taking it. YMMV but it's worth the price of a bottle of NAC to see if it's helpful, imo

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

20+ years of unprompted advice (as in, when it's not the topic at hand, just a reaction toy body; your advice is appreciated!) and I have NEVER heard of this, thank you!!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago

The research on it is new and tentative but promising enough I thought it was worth a shot. Fingers crossed for ya :]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Can ADHD be almost the right way to handle undesired work?

If one doesn't want to do work, it's straight forward to not do it. If that isn't allowed then doing everything else is the closest thing to avoiding that work. In that sense, ADHD is either a way of avoiding to be broken or the inability to integrate work into one's accepted goals.

How could it be possible to accept work that one doesn't want to do?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 hours ago

I think there's still a problem in that you need to do some things that are undesired in order to maintain yourself - Household chores, for example. Some things are non negotiable, and for those you need to be able to force yourself, as unpleasant as it is.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

In modern society you either work or starve. There's no adventurous alternative as would have been available before modernity.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

It's mind boggling how different the modern concept of work is from how it was for 99.9% of human existence.

I'm sure the hyper-optimization, hyper-specialization, the alienation, and the constant flux of modern work contributes greatly to the problems we are experiencing.

Even when there was no "adventurous alternative", work was a lot more grounded in society and had a lot more downtime at pretty much any point in history.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 hours ago

This is from David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years. It's an anecdote his grad school advisor told him about a Samoan lying around on the beach.

MISSIONARY: Look at you! You’re just wasting your life away, lying around like that.

SAMOAN: Why? What do you think I should be doing?

MISSIONARY: Well, there are plenty of coconuts all around here. Why not dry some copra and sell it?

SAMOAN: And why would I want to do that?

MISSIONARY: You could make a lot of money. And with the money you make, you could get a drying machine, and dry copra faster, and make even more money.

SAMOAN: Okay. And why would I want to do that?

MISSIONARY: Well, you’d be rich. You could buy land, plant more trees, expand operations. At that point, you wouldn’t even have to do the physical work anymore, you could just hire a bunch of other people to do it for you.

SAMOAN: Okay. And why would I want to do that?

MISSIONARY: Well, eventually, with all that copra, land, machines, employees, with all that money—you could retire a very rich man. And then you wouldn’t have to do anything. You could just lie on the beach all day.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Me sitting on the couch listening to my clock and making it go from "tick tock tick tock" to "tock tick tock tick" back and forth in my head for 27 minutes straight.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago

My mind is a distraction.

[–] Zink 24 points 1 day ago (7 children)

I’ve learned that my brain’s ADHD department needs the opposite. It needs constant stimulation to keep it distracted so that it leaves me alone to have some semblance of executive function.

Audio stimulation works best. I used to always listen to podcasts, but I’ve found that specific types of music are best for getting work done. (in my case, it’s upbeat energetic thrash and groove metal)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Audiobooks baby. Nothing too dense and full of symbolism. Good pulpy scifi works best for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 hours ago

Oh yeah. This does it for me too. A 20-something volume series space-opera or tactical space-war is perfect for GSD. Works great for insomnia too.

Fortunately we’re in a sci-fi golden-age so there’s lots of great stuff to keep a brain happily occupied while the body mindlessly toils. Urban fantasy is another great genre for this. There’s even urban-fantasy space-opera if that’s your thing, lol.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That’s interesting. I kind of go back and forth. Sometimes I’ve got the TV going and three other devices plus headphones in, sometimes I need everything quiet.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

Even with relaxing. Just yesterday I told myself, “Hell yeah it’s Sunday I’m having a gaming day for myself!!”

I turned on my game and sat there for 5 hours doing nothing. I hate it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago

I literally clutter my space in the vain hope that random mis-positioned object x will remind me to do task y. Blank wall isn't going to remind me to do shit.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I have to, I mean HAVE to, get paperwork done today.

So far today I have mowed/weed wacked the yard, weeded and watered my garden, pulled meat from the freezer to defrost and planned dinner for tonight, and took one phone call in regards to said paperwork. They called me, of course.

I'm now on break and it's nearly noon. This paperwork is over my head and I am overwhelmed. I could start on other chores just to avoid it, instead I uh, am taking break. I have to get this done, and I am annoyed as to why I have to do it at all.. I might just pull it out to look at it. That's step one no?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

Paperwork and accounting are the absolute worst. Like, it feels like it was specifically designed to be torture.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 22 hours ago

I also get so insanely productive when I have something else to do. You're on the right track. You do the minimum possible step towards what you want to do even how small it is just find something small enough that you can manage.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes definitely pull it out. Celebrate any progress in the right direction. Write down one word. Fill out one tiny section. Now positively reinforce it - that section was easy, nice. If that's what you get done today then so be it. The next section will be easier.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

Got 7000 words done, fuck yeahhhhh Dinner was never made, but got a large chunk of it done! You folks are so supportive! Thank you! Warms my heart

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 day ago (4 children)

"Write stuff down and put it where you'll see it!"

— proceeds to completely see through the stuff you wrote down because it is now blends into the background scenery —

[–] GTG3000 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yup. Getting tired of people saying "just write notes and reminders!"

Okay, my brain immediately deleted the memory of the reminder once it popped up, now what.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Me with distraction: feeling fine, barely getting work done

Me without distraction: rumination HELL, feel like shit, still barely getting work done

Give me interesting work and I will give you unlimited output

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

on a related note, when i dont have anything to do i feel like mosquitoes are assaulting me every half a second, 10% are real, the other ones i probably just imagine and it was just wind on my legs

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago

This is the bane of my existence right now. I used to bounce between jobs because my work would get boring and made me lose interest in my job. I stuck on my current employer because the company specializes in research consulting so each project has kept me interested in the work but lately with the economy in the shitter the projects we took on is more run-of-the-mill and it's tanking my productivity.

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[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 day ago

I will make up a story more elaborate than game of thrones before doing something I don't want to

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Would you look at that, I have hands.

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