smartphone addiction
✶ I might have had smartphone dementia. It became a habit to play something on YouTube even when going to the toilet or doing the dishes, and my memory started to fade. I constantly felt like my brain was melting. I stopped doing anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Work became neglected, and household chores reduced to the bare minimum for survival. What I needed in that state was probably an “immunity to taking the long way around things.”
Having binge-watched short videos, I could only take in things that gave instant rewards. Videos on double speed. Seeking only conclusions, skipping the processes. I lost the energy to spend time on “things whose value isn’t immediately clear.”
In truth, it’s precisely the “time when value isn’t immediately visible” that restores a person. Picking up a book you don’t know if it’ll suit you, heading to a boring place, having a conversation that might yield nothing.
That’s when reclaiming inefficiency— in other words, reclaiming the “freedom to make mistakes”—finally got my brain moving again.
✶ I think people who spend too much time fiddling with their smartphones, constantly killing time with short videos or sped-up viewing, tend to have an abnormally overdeveloped reward system that’s wired only for instant gratification, while lacking the ability to solidify things into long-term memory.
Even during bathroom breaks or chores, they’re constantly bathing in information, quickly discarding anything whose value isn’t immediately clear and skipping the process altogether—this isn’t efficiency; it’s a structure that burns out the brain’s memory and melts down its capacity for thought.
As neuroscience warns about the runaway dopamine reward system, a brain that’s constantly bombarded with intense, immediate stimuli loses its immunity to enduring roundabout processes, and as a result, it physically destroys the very circuits responsible for transferring experiences into the long-term memory vault.
Ditching this intellectual laziness of time-efficiency supremacy that rushes straight to conclusions is crucial; instead, reclaiming the deliberate inefficiency of reading books whose value isn’t obvious right away, and embracing the freedom to make mistakes on purpose through those meandering detours—that’s what’s truly important.
hacks
✶ a decent tool for working with ADHD is inverting deadlines. not when something is going to be finished by, but a deadline to begin
“it doesn’t matter if I don’t feel ready or know what I’m going to do yet or how I’m going to tackle this problem. if I haven’t thought of any better ideas by 10am tomorrow, I’m just going to get started”
among other things this flips the deadline from having the pressure of completing an entire task you haven’t even started yet, to requiring nothing at all but showing up
it’s much easier to face that
✶ spritzing myself with perfume when I’m feeling bored or sleepy due to low dopamine really helps wake me up. Just an easy sensory pick me up.
✶ Put the dishwasher on a two hour delay even if half full - you have time to put extra things in but it doesn’t matter if you forget
✶ Put all your food in the fridge in see-through containers so you can see what you have / lack & develop systems not habits as they are easier to adhere to in the long run.
✶ if i cannot sleep - i turn around so that my head is at the foot end of the bed instead. 9 out of 10 times, that change is enough to make me fall asleep - go figure?
✶ I read that ADHD people struggle with things like hanging coats in the coat closet so we just leave them on the backs of chains or wherever instead. A book about organizing for ADHD suggested getting a coat rack instead, so I did, and it works amazingly. No more coats all over the place!
✶ I set 20 minute timers for jobs. 20 mins on kitchen, 20 mins on laundry, etc. It doesn’t matter if the job isn’t done, it’s time to move on. But it’s really motivating.
✶ if i need to clean something but am struggling with my executive functioning, i make it so i have to clean it now. for example: if i need to wash my sheets but can’t bring myself to do it, i’ll “spill” something on it on purpose so it has to be washed now.
✶ Explaining time in seconds vs minutes. If you tell me that we have 5 minutes til we leave and I need to get ready to go, I’m gonna fuck around. If you tell me we have 300 seconds, I’m on it. Logically I know it’s the same amnt of time but my brain registers them very differently.
free will
✶ i use my free will too much bro None of these tricks work for me. “i put laundry on the bed so im forced to fold it” brah i’ll sleep on the clothes. wtf
✶ I literally frustrated my therapist with this. Like, I’m not a pet, I can’t trick myself. I can’t get “a sweet treat” for finishing a task bc I have too much free will and I’m like “I can just do what I want and NOT do that thing”
✶ adhd treatment is mostly emotional, not skills based, and that’s where folks get caught up. yes you have free will but if you’re constantly avoiding discomfort then no solution a therapist provides will actually help.
the reality is that The Thing needs to be done even if the circumstances are less than ideal. but if you’re caught up in shame spirals and negative self talk about getting things done then of course you’re going to find literally anything else to do.
✶ This is why that ocd adhd combination is so deadly. All discomfort no matter how mild is a crisis that must be fixed before anything even resembling something productive can occur
working with it
✶ I know this one seedling genius lady in Canada who embraces her ADHD rather than fighting it by doing what she calls “da Vinci nights.” On da Vinci nights she lets herself be an ADHD renaissance woman. she covers the walls w paper to jot ideas on (with headers in French like “idées mystiques”), then she follows her whims as they switch her rapidly between drawing, playing fiddle, reading research papers, scribbling down half-formed theories, and dancing
I tried it with her and it was a great way to work
brain hyperactivity
✶ “You don’t look hyperactive.” That’s because my hyperactivity isn’t in my legs it’s in my head.
Physically, I haven’t moved from this couch in 3 hours. Mentally, I have started 4 businesses, had 12 arguments, played a song on loop, and panicked about the future.
I am not “calm.” I am just internally vibrating.
✶ Underrated point that hyperactivity can be of thought. One way to identify an ADHD cognitive profile in a formal IQ test (e.g. WAIS or Stanford-Binet) is by measuring how much higher processing speed is than working memory.
✶ People with ADHD tendencies are prone to chronic “overwork and overstrain.” There’s always some part of their mind that’s active, and even when they think they’re doing nothing, they suddenly realize they’re exhausted.
This is caused by “thoughts constantly spinning.” Things to do, unfinished tasks, past failures, unease in relationships—such information keeps being processed simultaneously in the mind, leaving almost no time for the brain to rest.
Even on days off, they hardly feel like they’re resting, and at night, they can’t sleep much either, so fatigue just keeps building up. Daily performance gradually declines, and mistakes increase.
To switch your mindset as well,
・Make time for thorough stretching ・Make time for things like saunas where your mind can go blank ・Create a hobby you can immerse yourself in
Take time for things like these, and consciously give your mind a rest.
I hope we can have a society where it’s easier to rest.
loops
✶ [exhaustion from open loops] is especially prevalent in ADHD btw. you can view ADHD as a disorder/difficulty in loop management. the mind keeps opening new loops while struggling to park or close old ones (dopaminergic dysregulation), so the loops continuously draw cognitive & attentional bandwidth away
✶ I often think of ADHD as “time dyslexia” but when you think about it: How do we measure time? We measure time in loops closed (hours, days, weeks, months, tasks, years in school, projects at work)
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