This is such a curse to me. I experience it too: I seem to do better when I know what needs to be done and it's like, in-my-face important.

It's easy to fall into a routine of just working, resting just barely enough, and working again, and I might be "less ADHD" but behold, I lost my personality, years have zipped by, and I have become a drone. A husk. The self awareness of this is painful misery.

So realizing this, I should be able to work on my own dreams and make things work for myself right? No. As much as I value my independence, I seem to fall apart when left to my own devices.

It feels so shitty, like I have the soul of a fierce self-thinker but a brain born to just take orders and "be helpful at all costs." It feels so pathetic.

I was just thinking that when I read:

“This might mean that people with ADHD perform their best in more demanding environments (perhaps environments that have stronger immediate consequences, like needing to put food on the table for a family or pay rent monthly). It also might mean that people with ADHD take more on their plate when their symptoms are relatively at bay.”

You mean the condition associated with dopamine regulation is affected by periods with a high density of short term goals with well defined, tangible outcomes?

You fucking people are really making me feel like I have this.

Hospitality is this for me, and has been for the last 18~ years.

Really you have a good hour of power where the bulk of customers will want to eat, drink and have a good time - all at once because fuck the kitchen and the bar.

Having to relay information from the kitchen, make sure the bar hasn't lost a docket, dealing with spills, intoxicated patrons, wait people missing a meal / adding the wrong meal to an order plus the general meeting and greeting of walk-ins / bookings.

It's also managing wages - when to knock people off, who to send home early, who costs more, who is unwell or le' tired. Who can't work together, who is bad at pack down or requires micromanagement once the busy period is over.

It's a never ending list of monitoring, putting out fires, managing expectations of patrons and staff - all the while being legitimately nice and keeping your cool.

Oh, and if something gets missed you've just put the next days crew in a bad spot. Didn't prep that aquafaba? Forgot to swap a postmix bag, change a gas bottle, polish cutlery, clear tables or even check the fucking toilets for passed-out patrons?

Rinse and repeat 5+ days a week. And this isn't including how to manage personal relationships, hobbies and general self-care when everyone else is working a 9-5.

At least I'm not bald or grey yet.

So much this

70+ hour 5-7 day work weeks in a super high demanding job where people are basically hollering things for me to do that needed done in 2-5 minutes no-stop? I did that shit for 2 years. But man would I crash and burn out when I'd crash and burn.

Panic attacks, drinking like a fish, smoking pot like I was afraid of a non-smoke filled breath.

0/10 would not recommend.

This 100%

There is a limit to how much I can excel under high pressure environments until everything falls apart and I spiral into what seems like incompetence.

It’s actually that fall that caused me to finally get diagnosed. It took a couple years, a pandemic, and multiple people at my job retiring in short order, but I finally couldn’t balance all the spinning plates any more.

If everything's a crisis, then nothing is.

I hope you're doing alright now. I know moving can be extremely stressful, and hopefully your recovery time is enjoyable.

I remember once in college that I had a big paper to write, and I decided that I was going to get started on it "early" so that I could finish it early and avoid the deadline stress. I legitimately started it early, but somehow still managed to finish it at the very last minute. I spent my entire weekend in the library, and I don't think the final product was significantly better than if I had procrastinated on starting. I just spent a lot more time on the research part of it, and didn't really start putting anything together until the deadline stress kicked in.

Since that experience, I find it even more difficult to convince myself to start things early, since I'm afraid it will just mean spending more time on stressful tasks.

Any suggestions on ways someone might use this theory to better manage their symptoms? How can I make myself feel more busy when life isn't keeping me busy enough?

I've tried asking my manager for more work, but they've instead shifted some of my work to other people. I've been considering looking for a second job, but I'm afraid that will swing things too far to the other side.

Yeah, my experience is that if I have too much free time, I somehow don't get anything done. I'm much more productive and happy if I have a busy, but manageable to do list. Short periods of "too much" to do are also okay, especially when they have a clear end in sight, but they must be balanced out by a break of some sort.

Same here! I've repeatedly tried to explain this to my manager, and their response is that I should learn to delegate more. I feel so lucky to have a job that demands so little of me, but it sucks because I end up underperforming and unhappy. Since it's clear at this point that my manager won't give me more work, I guess I need to find other ways to make myself feel busy.

This is still locked behind subscribing

Is the psypost.org link paywalled for others? Or just the link to the original study?